MIKE RICCETTI
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  • The best of Houston dining
    • Bakeries for bread
    • Banh mi
    • Best Values
    • Breakfast
    • Breakfast tacos
    • Cajun and Creole
    • Chicken Fried Steak
    • Cocktails
    • Crawfish
    • Downtown Dining
    • EaDo and East End Dining
    • Fajitas
    • French
    • French Fries
    • Fried Chicken
    • Galleria Area Dining
    • Greek
    • Guinness pours
    • Houston-centric
    • Italian
    • Italian-American
    • Japanese
    • Kolaches
    • Mexican
    • Middle Eastern
    • Midtown Dining
    • Montrose Dining
    • Pizzerias
    • Pizza at Non-Pizzerias
    • Raw Bars
    • Rice Village Dining
    • Sandwiches
    • Seafood
    • Splurge-Worthy
    • Steakhouses
    • Sushi
    • To Take Visitors
    • Tex-Mex
    • Thai
    • Tough Tables
    • Wine Bars
    • Wine Lists
  • The margherita pizza project
  • The martini project
  • Musings on Houston Dining
    • The top 10 new restaurants of 2022
    • The top 10 new restaurants of 2021
    • The top 10 new restaurants of 2019
    • The top 10 new restaurants of 2018
    • The dozen best Inner Loop values
    • Dining recommendations for visitors to Houston
  • 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

Mostly food and drink...

...and mostly set in Houston

Support your local Houston restaurants (and bars)

3/20/2020

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During this unprecedented and very sudden closing of restaurants to dine-in customers that began Tuesday morning here, it is possible to support these businesses during this time of pandemic.  Necessary, too, if you enjoy dining out in Houston.  With the immediate reduction in the vast majority of their traffic and a limited amount of cash on hand facing most establishments for what could be a number of weeks or longer, these will have to try to remain viable on what may develop with their take-away and delivery operations.  My admonition is order from your favorite and worthwhile local places for pick-up or delivery meals.  And, be safe. 
 
Food is almost always in better condition when you pick it up directly, but you’ll have to take time to transit – almost always driving, albeit on largely uncrowded roads now – so it is more of a hassle, but it will also be cheaper.  Those delivery services are quite expensive, after all.  Some restaurants have set up online ordering, making it easier to order, but be patient.  These aren’t large online retailers, so you might encounter a glitch or two.  Some have also transitioned to more functional take-away and delivery menus like H-Town Restaurant Group (Hugo’s, Xochi, Caracol and Backstreet Café) and Underbelly Hospitality (UB Preserv, One Fifth, Geogia James and Hay Merchant).  Morning time, from 9:00 to 11:00, both Hugo’s and Backstreet Café are serving breakfast tacos for just $2.50, which is cheaper than most places these days.  The Underbelly Hospitality menu includes the Vietnamese Short Rib Fajitas that I had at UB Preserv just after Christmas.  Those are terrific.  I recommended trying to order from these, as these two groups include a number of the best restaurants in Houston and also can certainly use your business, as we don’t know how long current conditions might last and which places might not be able to survive.  To that, I heard word this afternoon that two long-time, small area chains might be closing permanently or might have already closed.
 
From Underbelly Hospitality you can also order wine.  The selection is not terribly broad, but it is well-chosen, as can be expected from Matthew Pridgen, its wine director, who puts together some of my favorite area wine lists.  That ordering of wine, also allows non-restaurants like Public Services to sell wine and beer.  An order of food is also required with the alcohol, which is easy to do with a selection of cheeses and excellent Spanish preserved seafood.  I really like Justin Vann’s selection of wines at Public Services, and I go there frequently to expand my wine horizons.  Some of the cool stuff there includes a few from the estimate orange wine producer in Oslavia on the Italian-Slovenian border, Radikon, the excellent and idiosyncratic Rioja-based Lopez de Heredia – with a rosé from 2009 – plus more than a few of Vann’s pet petillant naturel sparkling wines, and a lot more.  Public Services is one of the best wine and whisky bars in the city – and among the very best cocktail bars, too – it would be a shame if it cannot weather this violent storm.
 
Just think, you can be very helpful in aiding what is part of the very enjoyable fabric of the city, by eating and drinking; eating and drinking very well, at that.
 
Relatedly, charities need assistance, too.  Among the area charities that you might want to support is the Southern Smoke Foundation, Chris Shepherd’s effort, whose stated goal is “provides funding to individuals in the food and beverage industry who are in crisis.” Also, the Houston Food Bank, for those facing food insecurity, which might be many more these days, or soon, with the stark economic toll the pandemic is seemingly already taking.

Even the sandwiches look great from Chris Shepherd and company, and they are the menus.
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Still around and still (somewhat) useful

3/15/2020

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​I make very regular use of the Houston Public Library, and I made what could be my final trip there for a while yesterday.  The libraries in New York and Los Angeles have just closed and Houston could soon follow suit.  While strolling the food- and restaurant-related aisles at the Central Library downtown, I noticed a familiar title that I was a bit surprised to still see on the shelves: the third and final edition of my Houston Dining on the Cheap – A Guide to the Best Inexpensive Restaurants in Houston.
 
Published in July 2007, it is somewhat dated.  That information is almost thirteen years old, after all.  Given the thankful longevity of that many of the city’s best inexpensive restaurants have had, two-thirds of the places recommended in it might still be open.  Quite possibly less than that.  Though proud of the effort, I haven’t really recommended the title to anyone in a while as the distance from the publication date has lengthened.  Good material fairly well rendered, but not so fresh, I believe.  In addition to the local libraries, the book is still available on Amazon, and it still sells in drips and drabs.  The book works as a historical document of Houston dining, at the very least.  And it’s pretty cheap, too.
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Where it is safe to order a margherita pizza in Houston

3/8/2020

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I had enjoyed my first pizza at The Gypsy Poet, a smart and friendly, newish pizza joint in a slower of Midtown, and decided to sample their version of the margherita on my second visit.  It was fairly disappointing.  Order another pie there.  I had shied away from ordering margheritas after the slog that my Margherita Pizza Project turned out to be, but I have occasionally craved a good or even decent version, with memories of the vibrancy and tastiness of an excellent slightly charred dough combining with seemingly magical amalgamation of pureed tomatoes, quality mozzarella, and a few basil leaves that a well-made margherita offers.  I had one at an outpost of the lauded Gino Sorbillo in Milan in October. 
 
Where to get a good version in Houston?  The top margheritas in Houston take inspiration from Naples, not surprisingly, since this is where the margherita was born and is still one of its most popular pizzas. 
 
Where you should order a margherita pizza:

  • Dolce Vita – Nicely light and Italian-tasting if not really Neapolitan in style, even with its soft wet center and raised crust.  Dolce Vita remains the city’s best pizzeria and it will remain open, thankfully, after news this summer that it was going to shutter.
  • Amalfi – More Neapolitan-tasting than Dolce Vita’s, even with the addition of sliced tomatoes to the sauce.  This is one of Houston’s best Italian restaurants and the chef / co-owner Giancarlo Ferrara hails from Salerno, down the coast from Naples.
  • Da Marco – The version at Dolce Vita’s big brother might have been the first really good version of the margherita pizza here
 
Where you can order a margherita pizza in decent conscience, in order of preference:

  • Fresco Italian Café – Rectangular-shaped and cut into squares, the small and inexpensive pizza seemed to me to be almost a cross between the traditional thin, cracker-like crust pizza of Rome and its thicker, spongier pizza al taglio.  This features fresh tomato slices, noticeably good quality ingredients and a nicely tasty crust.
  • Osso & Kristalla
  • Solario – Featuring nicely clean flavors and pretty decent ingredients, if not quite the highest quality, and done in the traditional Neapolitan or at least Italian style that is a great value during lunch.
  • Grimaldi’s – Easily the best of the New York-style places for the margherita; lighter and more flavorful crust that was more Italian than New York-style
  • Fratelli’s
  • Weights + Measures
  • Tiny’s No. 5
  • Prego
  • Pizaro’s
  • Cane Rosso – It’s alright.

The Regina Margherita at Amalfi
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    Author

    Mike Riccetti is a longtime Houston-based food writer and former editor for Zagat, and not incidentally the author of three editions of Houston Dining on the Cheap.

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