These H-Town Restaurants Will Expand Your Food Palate

Hey everyone, burgers, barbecue, and Tex-Mex are staples here in H-Town, but with our diverse population comes incredible food. So today we're putting down the brisket and tacos so we can diversify our palettes with restaurant picks from Cron.com Food Editor John Henry Pereira. It's Wednesday, September 13th, 2023. I'm Rick Hill, I'm Sonny Lee, and here's what Houston's talking about. John Henry, welcome to CityCast Houston, how are you, man? I'm doing good, how are you doing? I'm doing great. I'm so excited to chat with you. Erica recommended us to chat with you because you are the person to talk to you about awesome food around the city. So before we get to... I'm eight percent. Yeah. Before we get to our conversation about diversifying our food palette, I want to ask you, you've been covering the food scene for so many years in the city of Houston. What's the best thing you've ever eaten here? Oh gosh. You know what? One of the, this might upset some people. I actually had some really good french fries from Trump Burger in Belville, Texas. It's exactly what it sounds like. It's this Lebanese guy. He a huge, huge fan of Donald Trump started this restaurant in Belville. I drove out there for assignments, like 50 miles from Houston, I think, and I really wasn't expecting anything, but I mean, the burgers were fine and everything, but I thought the fries were pretty good. Okay. I did not think we'd be talking about Trump fries as one of the best things you've ever eaten, but that's why you're here, and that's why we're putting in this conversation to people. I would not recommend going out there to try fries. It's a nice city, but you know what, you know, I mean, it's like just a little, a little low key racism out there. All right. Let's talk about diversifying our food palettes, and there's so many communities and so many cultures that are being celebrated in the city of Houston, and of course through that celebration comes great food and restaurants. So I want to start off with a big one. Give me a spot right now that our listeners need to try to diversify their food palette. You know, in terms of like our, you know, just overall like communities, there's definitely a lot of stuff that doesn't really get enough of the spotlight. These communities just haven't really surfaced their restaurants to the forefront. For sure, one of the interesting ones that popped up recently was Lankemex. They were like a Sri Lankan Mexican fusion food truck, and you know, I'm a big sort of fusion skeptic, but it was interesting to see a Sri Lankan eatery like out and about. But right now, you know, Lankemex is like off of I think West Timer, and it's a like literal hole in the wall. It looks like a gas station without the pump. You go inside and it's got the, you know, it's got that kind of dinghy convenience for a vibe. I mean, there's some gambling machines in the back, but you go in and, man, it is a nostalgia trip. If you're a Sri Lankan, I mean, bottles of like Nelly juice, but there was really just a lot of stuff that reminded me of of home and even the island, you know, which I've been able to go to like, you know, more than a handful of times in my life. So yeah, definitely. I probably want to give a shout out to Lankemex, for sure. So what should we order when we go there? Ooh, I, so one of the big staple, you know, Sri Lankan cuisine is rice and curry, right? That is like there. That's basically the core block of their entire meal. But they do have a specialty street food that's called Kuturoki, which is like bits of chopped up godambo roti with like rice, vegetables, protein. It's definitely kind of like decadent on the decadent oil side, but it's, it's quintessential single street food. I know a lot of like in Colombo, you know, when people are out clubbing, there's vendors out on the street just selling Kuturoki and people just eat it up, you know? So I would definitely try that for sure. I don't skip out on, on, you know, cutlets, you know, fish cutlets. And it is a low-key vibe, I mean, they give it to you in a paper bag and I'm sure that paper bag is going to get greasy. So yeah, that sounds like the perfect place to go. Okay, as we diversify our food palette here, let's talk about something spicy for our listeners. Give us a good spot that could hit that spicy feeling, that sensation where we probably wouldn't go. Oh man, this is a tough one because, you know, you obviously want to be able to eat somewhere that's like not going to like, you know, destroy your taste buds. I have to go with August and I know it's August is like, it's not, I know a lot of people know about it and I know that it's certainly like not under the radar by any means, but I do love the way that, you know, shock I'm already as kitchen. I mean, I do love the the spice mix, the heat level that they've used in their dishes. Nothing comes off as like too overpowering and it, it, it does strike me as somewhat authentic to the community that it's, it's in just to give you guys a context like I live in a task to see that like I am like literally on the opposite corner of this restaurant and it's, it's always funny in my neighborhood, Facebook group, there's always like, what's the best Indian restaurant in Houston and someone will inevitably say August and like in my head, I'm like, that is a road trip if you're driving from like my area. We love August here. We've interviewed show with uncle before about what they do so well there. So we are big fans and again, it's a great way to diversify your food palette, right? Try out something that you might not have tried before. One of the best things about all of these places and communities, yes, you got the spicy food, yes, you've got those decadent foods, but the desserts, okay, they bring something new to the table. Give me a spot that we need to go to for dessert that will help us diversify our food palette. So for dessert, I really do have to shout out Nico's cheesecake. Number one, I love the couple who owns it, they're a Vietnamese couple from California. They are actually like forward dentists and they basically just were like, I'm tired of this and they were looking to start a business and basically what they did was they moved, this couple moved their lives halfway across the country to Houston because that was a place where they could try this concept, this Japanese cheesecake bakery and that was really impressed with the cheesecake. I think Japanese cheesecake is light, it's fluffy, it's bouncy and also shout out to artists in 360. I did a story on key ramen. This is like sideways kind of thing, but I had lunch with one of the proprietors of Deho Square, which is a shopping mall with lots of like super viby restaurants right now in a Bel Air asia town, key ramen, Uncle Tatsu's, Nico Nico's, Honeypick, lots of really cool like Instagram-y viby places and one of the people that came with us was the owner of Artisan 360 and we tried some of their desserts, man, these are some of the prettiest desserts you will ever bring home, super colorful, they were pretty good from what I had and I haven't been inside, I haven't been there just to go just to visit because I've got two kids and it isn't hard to go anywhere but it was impressive enough to be like I kind of want to go there again and try some more of their stuff. I need to try Artisan 360, I've heard a lot of good things about it as well so that's definitely going to be a my list. Let's talk about date night, okay? I know a lot of couples are looking for cool places to try, interesting places to try. Give me a spot for a date night that we need to hit up. Oh man, you know my wife and I have like the food triangle, you know we would go there like Sunday mornings for brunch or just for breakfast really and like just hang out and it's this little place on the energy corridor, it's called like Pecan Creek Grill, very unassuming. I think that place is just special to me because that's where my wife and I would like have our dates and be that talk but man I love their biscuits, biscuits, crispy bacon and like you know just their coffees were really great, you know that's a really good date morning spot. If we're talking night, I can't, you can never really go wrong with cultivar, you know agricultural hospitality has done a great job with that restaurant. It's easily probably one of the best Italian restaurants in the city and you know they have pretty good wine selection, nice cocktails. I love their gin and tonic but you can never go wrong with a bowl of ketchup and the pizza from there. There's never a miss there and their desserts are fantastic too, especially their crostadas and their all their little seasonal fruit options. I'm going to throw a recommendation in here for a really interesting date night, especially for like new couples, you got to go hit up Lucy's Ethiopian food on Southwest freeway. Oh my God. I swear to God, the only reason I didn't say Lucy's was my dad went there and my dad is such a dork. He had his birthday there and they, I don't know if the restaurant dressed him up but just out of literally just pure secondhand embarrassment, I did not mention what he did. Okay, as we move on John Henry, I'm going to go through some rapid fire questions for you. Okay, give me something that will hit that comfort food slash party option that we need to try. I'm going to, this is going to be out of left field, all right. So my in-laws, we, you know, we all, like the my in-laws are in North Shore but every like Sunday they bring this like, they, you know, they bring the old Styrofoam thing from their breakfast pot and it's these two waffles and I swear to God, like they're not even fresh but these are like some of the best waffles. I never tasted and it's this thing, the place they get it from is in Crosby. It's this place called Hungry Jack and I, I have been like dying like I need to go there because I, I have heard like amazing things, you know, things like along the side of August where like, you know, when you like run a restaurant of that size, it's like super efficient. Like that is what I've heard of this place. I, based on their waffles alone, which are not fresh, the ones that I've had are like, you know, they took a few hours to get, get there but they're just still so good. I'm, I'm going to throw out Hungry Jack. Okay. Give me a low key spot that we can hit up for our introverts who just want to go diversify their food probably but, you know what, they just want a low key place. Where are we going? Low key place. You know what? If, if, if you want to someplace that is like super diverse, like not even diverse so far out there, envy and be sure. This is the ultimate of like low keys. It is in a, in like, I'm pretty sure like in a industrial quarter, but it's not a restaurant. It's more of like a grill slash like fishing experience. So this guy I talked to, he got the idea from like Taiwan where they have like these places where people can just go fish for shrimp in these like little indoor pools and, you know, and they're, they're usually stopped with like prawn or, or crab or, or whatever and he, he stalks his with like crayfish and blue crab so it, it sounds pretty good. Anyway, whatever you catch, you can eat and they have grills on site and they'll even grill it for you like simple salt and pepper. I mean, I wouldn't call it the boonies, but it's, it's definitely like a little bit off like kind of north of Jersey Village. It's, I think it's like super unique and, and nobody else in the city has that. That's such a good recommendation and this conversation. It's an experience. You'll diversify your food palette. You're going to leave feeling like, okay, that was really cool. So that's a great one. Hey, John Henry, thank you so much for joining us. And that was a lot of fun and a lot of great recommendations there. Thank you so much again. No problem. That was John Henry Pereira. You can read his work on cron.com. Okay, before we go, September 28th is ask a stupid question day. So send us your stupid questions about Houston. We'll try our best to give you a not so stupid answer on the podcast that day. For example, why do we call it a feeder instead of a service road? No question is too stupid. So send us your questions with the info in our show notes. That will do it for today. Thank you for listening and I hope you learned something new.