Houston: One of America's best food cities

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Houston, you have a problem. Your food scene deserves more love.

News flash: Every eater who cares about creative cooking and innovative restaurants needs to make a trip to the fourth-largest city in the country and the ninth stop in my soon-to-conclude survey of the 10 best food cities in America.

New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, New Orleans and Chicago were obvious inclusions from the start, as were Philadelphia, Charleston and Portland (Oregon). But Houston? Of the dozens of reader suggestions I’ve fielded since the launch of my cross-country tour, not one has flagged Space City, best known as the home of NASA. My own vague sense of the city, where I’d touched down but once before, and eons ago, had more to do with its size — 600 square miles — than with anything I ate. But increasingly frequent and favorable reviews from food pals put me on a plane in October, the goal being to trust but verify.

Now, fresh back from a week of grazing up and down the food chain, I’m crushing on Houston, which had me at hello, specifically lunch at Helen Greek Food and Wine, a spirited new taverna that wraps its dolmades in collards and slips a mash of Greek cheese and corn bread into grilled banana peppers. I quickly learned how amenable the restaurants are to turning outside influences into distinctive meals. At the soulful Kitchen 713, braised turkey necks in cool lettuce wraps get a jolt from a dipping sauce that tastes straight out of Thailand. Meanwhile, Cuchara beckons with the cooking of seven female chefs hired from all over Mexico and dishes that stay true to the flavors of home: Expect avocado leaves on the refried beans, iguana as a protein and snapper that arrives from Veracruz via the world’s 10th-largest port. (It’s Houston.)

How Houston stacks up
Creativity
Among chefs garnering the most attention are Chris Shepherd, whose Underbelly roams the world for inspiration; Justin Yu, a wonderman with vegetables at Oxheart; and Hugo Ortega, whose Caracol shows off Mexico’s coastal cuisine. Both the barbecue and Tex-Mex scenes are redefining themselves. Count on the sides at Gatlin’s BBQ to be as mouth-watering as the meats, and watch for a margarita cart to roll through the upscale Añejo restaurant.

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