A couple of blocks from the Menil, the smallish, low-slung building has housed several restaurants over the years providing the comfortable neighborhood of older bungalows and some newer and larger contemporary structures with something that most Houston neighborhoods lack: an interesting and approachable dining and imbibing option within walking distance.  The new Night Heron from the folks at Agricole Hospitality (Coltivare, Eight Row Flint, Revival Market) continues the trend.  Taking over from the recently departed Lowbrow, the stolid booths are gone, and interior of the space is roomier and airier.  The patio in front remains the same, still a bit ungainly if perfect for folks bringing their dogs with them, though with the big television (that came in handy during the ‘Stros amazing playoff run).  It’s probably the nicest of the iterations this address has seen over the years.
 
Visiting about a week after opening, Night Heron appears to be a good fit for the neighborhood and visitors to the Menil.  The highlights of the visit and seemingly the strong point of the restaurant were the cocktails, which wisely borrows that expertise from its siblings Coltivare and Eight Row Flint.  My friend, who lives a block away, couldn’t wait for me to try the place, she had been the night before for just drinks and had a grapefruit cocktail that she raved about and ordered it again to start, the usually simple Salty Dog.  This one, like the other updated and refined versions of classics on their menu, was a modernized and improved version.  Featuring a honeysuckle vodka, grapefruit juice and a slice of the fruit for garnish and aroma, black pepper, vanilla, and pink salt, it was terrific, refreshing and a far cry from the Salty Dogs I consumed in my youth.  I opted for a much more bitter option, a Manhattan, in regards to the daily atorvastatin.  Served neat and with two Luxardo-like cured cherries, this version went for bourbon in place of rye, amaro for the Angostura, and madeira instead of sweet vermouth, this was different than the Manhattans I have been enjoyably imbibing at Public Services for the past couple of years or so, and elsewhere, but excellent.  The sixteen or so cocktails on the menu come with the provenance of each – the Bloody Mary comes courtesy of Harry’s New York Bar, Paris, 1920s, for example – and are described as: “the canon of America’s classic drinking culture. There are infinite ways to spin these classics. What follows are our favorites.”  These outputs from these two pages are reason enough to visit Night Heron, if you like those sorts of things.

As for the rest of the adult beverages, the restaurant offers something nearly unheard of these days: most of its wine by glass are priced at $10 or less.  About 70% of the roughly sixty bottles offered are food-friendly Old World wines.  The beers are mostly hoppy and alcoholic, with a handful of Belgium classics in the form of a saison, a dubbel, a Flemish red ale that is the favorite of Antwerp, and the Trappist Orval.
 
The food at Night Heron, all meant for sharing with the possible exception of the cheeseburger, seems also meant as accompaniment to the various drinks.  Most of the ones we ordered worked the other night.  The star, by far, was the Salt & Pepper Pork Ribs that comes as four spare, lean ribs in a bowl.  It’s not an impressive sight, but the taste is terrific, moist and nicely incorporating the lemon and sumac the menu states are in the preparation.  The Singapore Chili Clams were the second best, a preparation of numerous clams made with fermented black beans and a tomato-y broth with mint and some spice.  As tasty as the broth at the bottom of the bowl was, frustratingly there was no bread to sop it up, a similar misstep that Coltivare did, or maybe still does, make.  The waiter, earnest if often absent and still learning the ropes of the newly opened spot, suggested we use some of the Fried Curry Spiced Potatoes for the broth.  It did not do the trick as well as some bread, and those small potatoes, charred and dull, were a disappointment.  All of its minimal spice were in the mild ketchup that came with it.  More enjoyable was Turmeric Chicken Frites made with a noticeable buttermilk marinade along with some dill and yogurt.  Its taste was enjoyable, subtle, and pieces judiciously sized.  It was a welcome bar snack and a ways from Raising Cane’s.  The last dish was even more lackluster than the potatoes, Jasmine Rice Congee.  Though the congee, rice porridge seemingly inspired by those served in Vietnam or China, came with mushrooms, almonds, a little bacon, plentiful scallions and a poached egg, it was a bland rice porridge, as rice porridge is apt to be, after getting past the nicely cooked egg.  For some reason it was served in an oversized portion.  A small cup would have been sufficient.  I found it to be a very odd addition to the menu.
 
Though I would have liked more spice in the dishes, I have to applaud the kitchen for embracing subtlety and nuance.  Very nicely, the food items run from just $4 for a snack of olives to $16 for a take on jerk chicken. 
 
I’ll be back, and I think my friend is quite excited about it.  And Night Heron is a very welcome neighborhood restaurant, and a cool place, in general.  It might not be the best restaurant in the immediate vicinity with the Bistro Menil right there.  Or, maybe it is not really worth the drive across town, well, maybe for the cocktails, but a worth a reasonable drive, especially when drinks are involved.  Drinking responsibly, of course.

 Night Heron
1601 W Main (at Mandell) (713) 527-8010
agricolehospitality.com/night-heron/

​The mantra at Underbelly, from where Chef Chris Shepherd won a James Beard Award a few years ago, is “The Story of Houston Food.” The wine list, however, strays far from the region and even the continent; two-thirds of it is dedicated to wines from Europe, the Old World. This affection is not unusual among the top local restaurants including, or especially, those with a strong locavore attitude in their food-sourcing and a penchant for creative cooking. Not just Underbelly, but places like Oxheart’s successor Theodore Rex, Pass & Provisions, Nobie’s, the new, casual neighbor of the Menil, Night Heron, and even the notably locally attune State of Grace, all boast wine lists where the majority of the space is dedicated to bottles from the historic wine-producing countries of Europe.  These make up over 80% of the list at Theodore Rex and about 70% at State of Grace.
 
Even at the upscale steakhouse, an unabashedly American restaurant concept, the wine lists, which were once dominated by big Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignons, are finding more room for Old World wines, well beyond the long-present expense-account trophies from Bordeaux. Highly regarded Pappas Bros. Steakhouse has the lengthiest and possibly best wine list in the city and wines from Europe make up 60% of its offerings. Gary Lapuyade, who once led the wine program at another excellent home-grown steakhouse, Vic & Anthony’s. His top recommendation for steak?  A Hermitage from France’s Rhône Valley. When queried the other night about her top wine preference with a steak, Adele Corrigan, who runs 13 Celsius, responded with Cornas, another Syrah from the northern Rhone.
 
The reason for this European predominance at top local restaurants is rather simple. “At Oxheart, we use a great deal of Old World wine because it pairs with the food better than New World wines,” Justin Vann explained a few years ago. “Old World wines,” he continued, “have lower alcohol and higher acid, which generally make them more food friendly.”  Wines from the New World, which includes the United States, Chile, Argentina, Australia and New Zealand, tend to be much more fruit-oriented, sometimes aggressively so, less acidic, and often feature prominent flavors and tannins from oak aging. Most New World wines seem meant to be enjoyed first as a standalone beverage, without food. Contrastingly, most Old World wines seem to naturally complement food and some even need food to be enjoyable.
 
Matthew Pridgen, who manages the very personable and easily enjoyable wine lists both at Underbelly and One Fifth a few blocks away, opined, “I find Chris [Shepherd]'s food to be deeply flavored, and layered, but not heavy, and I think wines that have similar qualities make for the best pairings.”  Those just happen to be mostly from the Old World.


At a wine tasting in the Collio a few years ago.

Last night I booked my flights into Rome for a trip this summer.  I won't be in the Eternal City longer than for a single lunch this time, and it won't include Fettuccine Alfredo, which is the best known dish that originated in Rome, at least among Americans.  That rich and creamy pasta dish exists today in the restaurants of Rome, but barely.

Fettuccine Alfredo is the most famous of the Roman pasta dishes, at least in terms of its preponderance on restaurant menus, mediocre buffets, and in frozen and sauce form available on supermarket aisles in this country.  It is essentially unknown in Rome and seemingly only served in two restaurants in the Eternal City, both heirs to the establishment where the dish was created.
 
Fettuccine Alfredo is one of those rare widely influential dishes that owes its origin to a single restaurant, Trattoria Alfredo at 104 Via della Scrofa in the historic center of Rome.  It was created in 1920 according to the original restaurant as a very rich version of a traditional pasta al burro – fresh pasta with butter – amping up both the butter and the Parmigiano to create a luxuriant, very rich dish, especially as a primo piatto, the pasta course.  When honeymooning Hollywood stars Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks fell in love with the dish and presented owner Alfredo with a golden fork and spoon in honor of it, the attendant publicity made famous what become known as Fettuccine Alfredo.
 
In the 1940s, Alfredo sold the original restaurant, which is now known as Alfredo alla Scrofa.  In 1950 he decided to get back into business and opened a trattoria called Il Vero Alfredo.  Both claim the heritage of the original, and seem to be the only places in Rome that serve the dish.  At least those are the only two places that I was aware of during my recent few days in Rome.  We stumbled across Alfredo alla Scrofa and its dear 20-euro version of the dish, which did not seem to affect business at all, as the smart-looking establishment looked fully booked. 
 
Maybe the dish is still served elsewhere in Rome, but I did not encounter it on any other menus.  When I have asked Romans over the years about Fettuccine Alfredo – even in my limited Italian – nearly all have expressed a blank look, confessing never to have heard of the dish or anything like it.  But, it appears to have once been popular in the city’s trattorias.  A New York Times article from 1981 claimed at least 50 restaurants served a version of it under the name fettuccine alla romana. 
 
Maybe it is the acknowledgement of excessively caloric and cholesterol-laden nature of the dish that has chased it off the Roman menus – visitors might not be ordering a second course after consuming a portion – but it has certainly found a permanent place in Italian-American restaurants and in (and on) the hearts of diners in the United States.  We like hearty here.
 
This is the (minimal) recipe for the dish from the website of Alfredo alla Scrofa, “the original recipe of ‘Fettuccine Alfredo’”:
 
Ingredients:
Egg pasta
Butter
Parmesan cheese
 
Preparation:

• Boil the water, salt moderately and add pasta.
• Once pasta is cooked (time of cooking depends from the type of pasta) remove it from the water and lie it on an oval plate that was warmed in advance and where butter was placed.
• Cover pasta with a lot of parmesan cheese and melt everything gently.
• When everything will be well melted and you will see a cream sauce coming out, you can serve and taste it.

 
Expertly and freshly made fettuccine featuring plentiful eggs, top-quality butter used nearly in excess and good Parmigiano-Reggiano help quite a bit, plus likely a bit of pasta water at the end.
 
Alfredo alla Scrofa
Via della Scrofa, 104, +39 06 6880 6163
alfredoscrofa.com
 
Il Vero Alfredo
Piazza Augusto Imperatore, 30, +39 06 6878 734
alfredo-roma.it
​

Ristorante Alfredo alla Scrofa a few years ago