MIKE RICCETTI
  • The best of Houston dining
    • Best Values
    • Breakfast
    • Chinese
    • Cocktails
    • Fajitas
    • Hamburgers
    • The Heights
    • Italian
    • Indian / Pakistani
    • Mexican
    • Middle Eastern
    • Pizzerias
    • Sandwiches
    • Splurge-Worthy
    • Steakhouses
    • Sushi
    • Tacos
    • Tex-Mex
    • To Take Visitors
  • Musings on Houston Dining
    • The best new restaurants to open in 2023
    • Houston's Italian restaurant history
    • Restaurants open for lunch (or brunch) on Saturday
    • Restaurants open for Sunday dinner
    • Restaurants open for lunch on Monday
    • Restaurants open for dinner on Monday
    • The top 10 new restaurants of 2022
    • The top 10 new restaurants of 2021
  • The margherita pizza project
  • The martini project
  • Italian restaurant history
  • Italian & Italian-American
  • Entertaining tips
    • Booze basics
    • Styles of Cheeses
    • Handling Those Disruptive Guests
  • Wine
  • Beer
  • Cocktails and Spirits
  • Miscellaneous
  • Blog
  • The best of Houston dining
    • Best Values
    • Breakfast
    • Chinese
    • Cocktails
    • Fajitas
    • Hamburgers
    • The Heights
    • Italian
    • Indian / Pakistani
    • Mexican
    • Middle Eastern
    • Pizzerias
    • Sandwiches
    • Splurge-Worthy
    • Steakhouses
    • Sushi
    • Tacos
    • Tex-Mex
    • To Take Visitors
  • Musings on Houston Dining
    • The best new restaurants to open in 2023
    • Houston's Italian restaurant history
    • Restaurants open for lunch (or brunch) on Saturday
    • Restaurants open for Sunday dinner
    • Restaurants open for lunch on Monday
    • Restaurants open for dinner on Monday
    • The top 10 new restaurants of 2022
    • The top 10 new restaurants of 2021
  • The margherita pizza project
  • The martini project
  • Italian restaurant history
  • Italian & Italian-American
  • Entertaining tips
    • Booze basics
    • Styles of Cheeses
    • Handling Those Disruptive Guests
  • Wine
  • Beer
  • Cocktails and Spirits
  • Miscellaneous
  • Blog
MIKE RICCETTI

Musings about food and drink in Houston

plus more than a little about Italian-themed fare and random ramblings about other things

Hopefully you will waste a little time on this site

The goal of this site is to provide some interesting and possibly even useful articles about dining and imbibing, mostly, and mostly about Houston from the point of view of a dedicated diner and experienced food writer and former Zagat editor with a decent palate and a wide-ranging appetite.  And Houston is a great place in which to indulge that appetite.

It might be best to just skip to the frequently updated blog.  Mike Riccetti is a Houston-based food writer, albeit a part-time one these days, who knows the city quite well, and some other things, too.  In addition to scores of articles published in a number of outlets like My Table, Serious Eats, Palate Press, i-Italy and The Tasting Panel, he is the author of three editions of the well-received Houston Dining on the Cheap and contributed to several other guidebooks about the area.  He was the local Zagat editor for Houston since 2007 and was until Google, which owned Zagat owned at the time, eliminated those positions in 2015 or so.


Concerning things Italian, he released a fun and informative e-book entitled, From the Antipasto to the Zabaglione - The Story of Italian Restaurants in America, which is part of a larger and possible future book project.  And, he also co-wrote The Guide to Ridiculously Easy Entertaining - Tips from Marfreless, which is a very good resource
 – and actually a fairly enjoyable read, too.  In fact, a couple of sections from this book continue to draw some traffic and might be of interest: The Basics of Hard Liquor and Styles of Cheeses. Then there is the Margherita Pizza Project, which is no longer fun, but the dining portion of it has mercifully finished at the end of July, 2018.

Here are a few links to other writings, available in either physical or electronic format:
  • Houston Dining on the Cheap
  • The Guide to Ridiculously Easy Entertaining - Tips from Marfreless
  • From the Antipasto to the Zabaglione - The Story of Italian Restaurants in America​
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