Has anyone eaten at Underbelly in houston?

I've eaten there once and it was fricking awesome. Jealous you're going. The menu changes up a lot all the time, just get whatever you think sounds good. Really fantastic wine list as well so don't neglect that.

Get some good beers at Hay Merchant next door before dinner.

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get whatever you think sounds good

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That's what I was planning on doing (not sure about the confused man pic). Heard their dumplings were different so I gotta try those. Pretty excited

What I'm saying is it's tough to recommend food to someone you don't know because there's such a wide range of tastes people have. If it's someone I know and I know their habits, likes and dislikes it is easier to rec a specific dish.

I'll say this, I just looked at their current menu and if i were going tonight my order would be:

heirloom tomato gazpacho (had a cucumber gazpacho there last time that was a killer start to the meal)
charcuterie (their cured meats are outstanding)
wagyu carpaccio (umm duh, sounds awesome)
korean braised goat & dumpling (had this last time .. fricking on point)

When you get a beer at haymerchant...get you some fried pig ear strips. Mmmmm Pork.

That's what I'm looking for. Thanks for the recs. I'll get at least 2 of those.

This place is hard to get a reservation for. I called Tuesday and all I could get for 2 was 5:15.

Underwhelmed, TBH.


I got the whole bycatch, which was pretty bland. I think they just scored and deep fried it. I do that at home. For $40+ I thought it was very disappointing.

The Korean goat and dumplings were pretty good, but the sauce a bit too sweet. Tasted a little Westernized. However, I will say that those little dumplings you get in the dish were somewhat common in Korea, and this was the first time I've seen them here.

There was a third dish, but I don't remember what it was. That should tell you enough right there.


The wine list is actually pretty damn good, and the prices on it are very reasonable.


All in all it wasn't a bad meal per se, but I wouldn't think about going again unless the prices were halved. For what I spent I could have eaten at August, Mark's, Stella!, Damian's, or any number of much better places.


But I seem to be the only one who doesn't think it's awesome.

Ok, so underbelly was delicious. It for the most part met or exceeded my expectations. The restaurant is so cool in the inside. Rustic wooden tables, a kickass wine room, shelves full of pickled veggies that they are preserving, and you can even see sides of meat hanging to dry in a room adjacent to the kitchen (which is visible to everyone, so you can see the staff cooking).

I went with the girlfriend and here's what we had:

Took R2R's advice and started with charcuterie, bread with garlic leek butter, and Korean dumplings with goat. The charcuterie was great and came with blackberry mustard and pickled peaches, and 5 meats. The garlic leek butter was really good. But the dumplings... God damn, they were good. Chewy, sweet, spicy and a roasted flavor.. It had just enough spice to bring me to the edge without being too hot. Will order again next time.

We then ordered one more thing, the Korean bibimbap. It was a rice dish with chili sauce, pickled vegetables, Kim chi and seared beef (they were out of pork loin so used beef). Another good dish but was a little too pickled flavor for me.

For dessert we took the servers rec and ordered the caramel popcorn creme brûlée with fried pretzels and vanilla ice cream on top. One of the best desserts I've had and I recommend it if you like sweet/salty. This was tied with dumplings for the best we had.

All in all it was good.. I hate to bring up te price but some things were blatantly overpriced, namely the charcuterie at $26. For what you get, if that was $13 I would have still felt it was high. It was really good though but I can't justify getting it next time.

Anyway if you are looking for some awesome food and a unique farm to table experience, and don't mind spending a little extra, go to Underbelly. I'll be back hopefully soon, if only for a drink and dumplings.