It was fifty of years ago tonight that Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin from the crew of Apollo 11 landed on the moon, in case you have missed any of the considerable news surrounding the event and the slew of television shows about it.  The best of the shows I’ve seen have been the trio that aired on PBS last week, which were quite illuminating and very well-done.  I’ve also heard reminisces from my folks who remembered quite vividly watching it and where: Praha, a Czech restaurant and bar in the Yorkville section of the Upper East Side of Manhattan.  My Mom remembered drinking White Russians, appropriately or not.
 
There are certainly no memories of the moon landing for me, but all of the publicity around it has made me remember the trips to the Johnson Space Center as a kid.  I loved heading there.  This was before the creation of Space Center Houston, which I found that to be far less enjoyable visit.  Back then at the Johnson Space Center, you could walk through the actual Mission Control.  Sometimes, if things were slow with a not so important mission, they would let a couple of us kids to play with the controls.  They also had a lot of moon rocks lying around, too, and I seem to remember that they let us touch and play with those.  I don’t what I did with the one that might have ended up in my pocket, though.  It’s probably worth something today. 
 
We were treated to lunar buggy races, test of the in-development ray guns – created in case those Ruskies tried anything on the upcoming international space station – and we got to see a couple of the Martians walking around the campus who used to hang out there.  One December visit we were serenaded by a group of old rocket engineers with at least a couple songs including “O Tannenbaum.”  Another, that they sang more heartily could well have been a Party song, as I later realized that they were part of Werner von Braun’s team.  They were nice old Nazis, in any case.
 
As interesting as all this was, best of all, there was all you could drink Tang, the drink of the astronauts.  My memory could be a little faulty about all this.  Except for the great taste of Tang….well, for a kid.

It was almost exactly twenty years ago today, in July of 1999, that I started work on the first edition of Houston Dining on the Cheap and began to become a professional food writer.  The local restaurant scene was much different then than it is today.  In a forlorn bookshelf at home I spotted a copy of Zagat’s 1999 guide to Houston, which can help provide some perspective.  Zagat’s top restaurant was Deville, a French concept in the Four Seasons, followed by Rotisserie for Beef & Bird, Chez Nous, Café Annie, La Reserve that was in the Omni, Mark’s and Brennan’s.  Four of the top seven were French-themed; I am not sure if Houston was ever a great city for French food.  Another top-rated one was unapologetically Continental, a description that no longer applies to any local restaurant.  The best Mexican and Tex-Mex options were deemed to be Otilia’s and Pico’s and, quite oddly, Little Pappasito’s.  The top Chinese restaurants included Empress up in Champions Village, Hunan and Shanghai River, though laudably, Fung’s Kitchen, too.  Chinatown was much smaller and terra incognito for nearly all Houston diners back then.  And hardly any of the Italian restaurants listed actually served Italian food.
 
In those two decades, the dining landscape of Houston has changed quite a bit, nearly all for the better.  In short, the Houston restaurant scene has improved in every regard than how it was twenty years ago: the food is better and usually more interesting at restaurants, there are many more enticing dining establishments, with a good deal more worthwhile choices in a greater range of cuisines and concepts, and with much wider and better beverage options.  I can’t think of any type of restaurant that’s not as good as it was a couple of decades ago.  Many of these trends are national; a fair number of them are designed to increase the size of the check.  Caviar service, anyone?  With all the changes, a few things have stayed pretty much the same: a level of casualness continues, more so than other top restaurant cities, most likely because the frequent heat and humidity; the level of service remains functional at best at the vast majority of restaurants; and Houstonians still love, love, love steak.
 
Below are the most notable changes to me since I’ve been writing about Houston restaurants.
 
On the plates

• Diversity – Houston chefs have much more fully embraced the diversity of the local dining scene, incorporating a range of influences, cuisines and ingredients found in the Houston area.  This trend is seemingly found at nearly every restaurant that does not have a defined cuisine.  Looking at a recent menu from Riel, a restaurant I like, you’ll find chimichurri sauce, Chinese sausage, kimchi, soba noodles, béarnaise sauce, and mascarpone among the components shown.
• Small plates – The advent of small-plate and sharable dining in recent years, for better or worse.  Though not unusual across the country, it stood out in contrast with New Orleans, where I went for a couple eating trips in the past year or so.
• Local foods – There has been a much greater emphasis on local and regional food sourcing, usually resulting in tastier items on the plates.  The names of nearby farms and ranches are often displayed on menus proudly asserting provenance.
• Humanely raised meats – Along with the more locally sourced products, the meats are often from animals raised without hormones and without constrained quarters.
• Better burgers – The past decade has witnessed the appearance of often-excellent burgers at nice restaurants.  This time has also seen the advent of quality counter-service national chains.  Both welcome occurrences, if not for my cholesterol level and waistline.

 
On the menus

• More and better wine – Wine lists have gotten much longer and much more interesting, with best wine lists having a mostly European in focus.
• Craft cocktails – Cocktails have become a lot more serious, and a lot better. 
• Better beer, too – Well, at least more beer options, mostly from local small breweries.
• More booze – Hand-in-hand with growth in cocktails, the range of spirits have gotten much broader, with much more expensive choices.
• More steak options –There is now a larger – and much pricier – range of steak options including American Wagyu, the famed Japanese breed and steaks from true Kobe beef, and even the most-prized and expensive grade, A5.  To give just one example from an upscale steakhouse, B+B Butchers sells a cut of steak from Hyogo Prefecture in Japan from “100% Tajima cattle, the rarest and most exclusive beef in the world” it proclaims.  Four ounces will set you back $220.
• More crawfish – Crawfish is far more widely found than it once was.  I was part of a group that held the very first crawfish boil at the West Alabama Ice House in the mid-1990s, which was deemed as rather exotic.  Now, there seems to be one there every weekend during crawfish season along with about every low-key bar with a substantial patio.  Then there is even Vietnamese crawfish that has drawn national attention.
• And, more money needed to order from the menu – Dining is generally more expensive, even factoring in the effects of inflation.  Two give a couple of examples, a burger and fries at a non-fast-food restaurant twenty years ago cost me $6.60 on average and a plate of brisket at a barbecue joint was just $7.60.  If the prices had followed the annual rate of inflation since then, I should have expected to pay $10 and $11.50, respectively.  Those same meals in the past year have cost me an average of $14.30 for the burger and fries and $17.50 for the barbecue.  Beef has gotten much pricier since then, especially brisket, but also it’s gotten considerably more expensive to operate a restaurant inside the Loop.

 
On the town

• It’s just better eating – As I mentioned above, the restaurant scene has gotten better in nearly every regard than it was twenty years ago.  There are better restaurants in every category now than compared with twenty years ago and what is on the plate is typically tastier because of the ingredients that are better and the greater skill and imagination of the kitchen staffs involved.
• Gotten noticed – Houston has received deserved national attention for its dining.  One indicator of that is now each year at least one Houston restaurant will be listed among the best new restaurants in the country.  And Chris Shepherd was recently proclaimed the best chef in the world by one publication.
• Chefs as the reason to visit – Who is the kitchen has been why many people decide to visit a particular restaurant.  A Chris Shepherd, Manabu Horiuchi or Bryan Caswell or that a new executive chef who worked for them now heading a kitchen is a how many people choose where to dine.  In that Zagat guide from last year of the last century, the phrase ‘celebrity chef’ hadn’t been coined.  There was probably only a few who would have earned that accolade back then, and Robert Del Grande and Mark Cox were about the only two who drew diners.  They still do today, sort of.
• Captivating ‘cue – Barbecue has gotten a lot better since the opening of Killen’s Barbecue in Pearland in early 2014.  Now the list of terrific barbecue includes Pinkerton’s, The Pit Room, Truth, Blood Bros., and Roegels to name just the best ones.
• Close-in Chinese – Authentic Chinese food has become available inside the Loop, most notably with Pepper Twins and Mala Sichuan, but also Wanna Bao and Spicy Girl.  Though I’m most concerned about inside the Loop, where I live and work, high-quality and truly Chinese food can be found in many parts of the city now, including Sugar Land and in Humble, near the airport, where my boss from China has raved about the a place there that serves the best Peking duck in the area, a recommendation the Chronicle recently seconded.  Chinese influence has greatly expanded in the past twenty years.
• Upscale Mexican – Mexican food has found nicer, more authentic and proficient outposts, led by Hugo Ortega and his team’s trio of Hugo’s, Caracol and Xochi.  Pico’s – which is better than it ever was in the years it was on Bellaire Boulevard – Saltillo and Cuchara are three more, plus several nicely affordable counter-service spots, 100% Taquito, Mexico’s Deli and Polanquito, to name a few.
• Truly Italian today – Italian, more truly Italian, has become much more widespread, if not widespread.
• Superior fare from the sub-continent – Better and more upscale Indian options like Kiran’s and Surya and the more casual but immensely enjoyable Pondicheri; and then there’s the even the much more casual Himalaya.
• Heights on the rise – The rise of interesting dining options in the Heights has been very welcome.  Squable, Better Luck Tomorrow, Calle Onze, Fields and Tides, and Eight Row Flint are places that are worth the drive.  I’m still bummed about the failure of Hunky Dory, Bernadine’s and Foreign Correspondents, though.
• Chinatown expanded – Chinatown has expanded and with a good deal more options than there were in the past, and now includes various regional Chinese cuisines, Taiwanese, Vietnamese, Malaysian, Korean, Japanese and savory, sweet, full-service, counter-service to name an incomplete list of them.
• Valets – Valet-parking at nice restaurants has become the norm, not the exception, as the city’s center has become much more populated.  But, far less diners need parking today with the advent of the ride-sharing services.

 
On the minds (and at the fingertips) of the diners

• Smarter patrons – Diners have become more knowledgeable about food, wine and dining in general.  This has made them more demanding and the Houston restaurant scene even better.
• Smart phones and social media – Social media and smart phones have helped to popularize restaurants and dishes that can beautifully photographed here, there and everywhere.
• Weaponized diners – Diners have a weapon against restaurants that don’t live up to their expectations with Yelp and other platforms.
• More tipping – The expected amount of tipping has increased from 15% to 20%, all while restaurants typically pay there wait staff just $2.13 an hour, a wage that has not changed in years.

 
I’m sure that I’ve forgotten more than one significant item, like delivery services, but this article is already long enough.

One of the artful presentations at Shun, on Shepherd.

​The gin-and-tonic is so very well-suited to Houston’s often hot and humid weather, which lasts for nearly half the year here.  It’s cool with plentiful ice and refreshing with the crisp-tasting and effervescent tonic water – engendering a relaxed feeling because of the complementary, smooth- and usually dry-tasting London-bred booze – and nicely bolstered by a bit of fresh citrus, is easy to drink when even not-so-well-made.
 
The cocktail has the added benefit that the recipe is pretty much in its name if sans lime.  Along with the rum-and-Coke and Jack-and-Coke, it’s the about simplest drink to concoct at home.
 
And gin-and-tonics have gotten better in recent years, part of the advent of the craft cocktail movement that began here a decade ago.  The biggest reason has gotten much tastier is because of the availability of high-quality commercial tonic water, most notably the Fever Tree brand, which is found in most even somewhat serious bars serving cocktails these days.  As Justin Vann, a proprietor of the excellent Public Services downtown mentioned to me after I complemented him on the tastiness of their gin-and-tonic that it’s mostly in the quality of the tonic water, as the drink is mostly tonic water, after all.
 
But, the best gin-and-tonics I’ve ever had have been at BCN, the upscale Spanish restaurant in Montrose.  The offer about twenty different versions these days, half seasonal, using various gins and tonic waters, all of which I’ve had or sampled have been terrific, including a few recently.  The Spanish have done wonders in advancing the range and palatability of the gin-and-tonic.  This seems to have begun around fifteen years ago or so, possibly in reaction to the influx of British tourists to Spain.  I don’t really know, but I certainly enjoy the result.  Aromatics in the form of herbs and citrus play a big role in BCN’s creations like prominent sprigs of rosemary and strips or pieces of lemon or another citrus.  On my last visit I had a summer offering made with blood oranges that had a red hue and drank quickly coming in from the hot sun, another with Fever Tree Elderflower tonic water, lavender grapes, lemon and thyme, and the Mediterranean featuring Gin Mare, Fever Tree Mediterranean tonic water, rosemary, olives, and sea salt.  BCN pours only part of the small bottle of the tonic water into the glass to start and you can add more along the way.  This actually makes the drink more enjoyable as you consume more of it, even as the percent of alcohol in each sip diminishes. 
 
Though the gin-and-tonics taste very good no matter where you sit at BCN, if you can grab one of the nine seats at the bar, you can interact with an excellent bartender, which can add to the visit.  They do an exceptional job.
 
If you need any further reason to consume also drink gin-and-tonics, think about your health.  You surely don’t want to get malaria; the quinine in the tonic water has prophylactic properties against malaria, which is why the British created the cocktail in the first place.  And the cheap gin tasted much better mixed with the tonic water and chilled in the very tropical climate of southern India.  We can believe that the cocktail tastes far better today with much better gin and, more so, much better tonic water.  Add to that inspired creations like you find at BCN, it’s a reason for celebration.
 
BCN
4210 Roseland (near the intersection of Montrose and Richmond), 77006, (832) 834-3411
bcnhouston.com

​By the end of my first trip to Italy many years ago and what proved true in a few subsequent trips, especially in the inexpensive trattorie and osterie that I was visiting, is that with the complimentary bread on the table that’s the custom there, the better the bread, the better the restaurant.  This also proved very true here in Houston during the past week. 
 
In the last several days, for some reason, I’ve had a few meals in Italian-themed restaurants.  First, the new, self-proclaimed Italian-American B.B. Italia in the former longtime home of Carmelo’s on the west side, then the original Carrabba’s on Kirby, which I hadn’t visited in at least a couple of years, and yesterday, Nundini Chef’s Table that is set gloomily in the midst of a windowless retail space.  The bread at B.B. Italia, a small, noticeably fresh, somewhat spherical boule, was fairly mediocre, not nearly as good as the breads later at the original Carrabba’s and Nundini.  And, the food, too, at B.B. Italia was not nearly as tasty, which is an understatement.
 
It’s not surprising that the bread at Carrabba’s was better than at B.B. Italia.  Proprietor Johnny Carrabba bought Common Bond, the city’s best commercial baker, back in 2016.  At lunch at Carrabba’s, the basket of very crusty white bread – that tasted like it was probably even leftover from the previous night’s service – and a brown roll both did excellent work sopping up the olive oil and dipping sauce and then leftover tomato sauce from my pasta dish. The soft squares of the pre-pranzo focaccia at Nundini, if not tasting of coming from Common Bond, was also enjoyable, and better.
 
Though the bread at B.B. Italia might have been disappointing, I didn’t realize right away that it would be a harbinger for the rest of the meal.  That was quick to prove true with the simple Caesar salad that was basically just cut up romaine lettuce, heavily white and pale green, in a straightforward dressing dotted with lame, unevenly and often barely cooked croutons – not helped by the bread, of course.  It wasn’t bad, but measured up poorly to about any version of the salad I’ve had in memory.  The pasta dish I ordered was necessarily better, but also below-par of what you would expect at a restaurant, at least what I would expect.
 
It was the Grandma’s Ravioli, ravioli filled oddly with short rib stuffing, and served with what is described as mushroom Marsala ragù.  Though the pasta shell was actually pretty decent, the filling of minced beef and, more so, the sauce, a thin bit of Marsala wine with mushrooms about, not a ragù at all, tasted discordant to me and made the dish much less than the sum of its parts.  Plentiful grated Parmesan (or maybe it was Parmigiano) could not help too much.  The sauce tasted to be, basically, just quickly cooked cheap Marsala.  My dining companion also had a pasta dish, ravioli topped with a pesto.  That pesto was an overly liquid-y version that tasted almost solely of basil; the pine nuts and taste of cheese was entirely missing.  We agreed that their pesto tasted nothing like that made in its home of Liguria or in the neighboring regions where it is also found; also, a far cry than what I make at home with a mortar and pestle.  It was also not nearly well-done as the version I just had with similarly properly prepared potato gnocchi Nundini, which was appropriately more viscous and richer, more flavorful with evident pine nuts and cheese in the mix.
 
B.B. Italia seems to be playing at Italian-American food.  Both the dishes and the concept seemed to be artifice to me.  What I experienced there was the antithesis of soulful food.  None of this would have mattered too much at B.B. Italia if the food was very good, or good, but it was not.  It was a far cry that the food that I had at Carrabba’s on Kirby the other day.  Maybe it’s not surprising, given that Carrabba’s on Kirby and Voss – not the chain outposts, of course – have long been judicious and often eminently enjoyable destinations for well-made, sometimes upscale Italian-American cooking with a local bent.  I had ravioli at Carrabba’s, too.  It was far better.
 
I have to state that I found the name of Grandma’s Ravioli for what I ordered at B.B. Italia as rather ridiculous, even pandering, as it alludes to the fact that it might have been something a typical Italian-American matriarch might have regularly cooked for the Sunday lunch.  Not so.  The ravioli dishes cooked by the Italian-Americans here were ricotta-stuffed and served in a tomato sauce.  No one cooked ravioli that with minced beef short ribs.  This is just made up.  Then came the ravioli filled with ground meat that were long a staple at Italian-American restaurants.  A well-made version of this, featuring distinctively large rectangle of pasta, is what I had at Carrabba’s.
 
And there were other disconcerting signs at B.B. Italia, in addition to the not-so-great food.  Service, though friendly, was not terribly professional.  The service specifically at the bar, we had wine sold to us as 9-ounces that looked and drank very suspiciously like 6-ounce pours in every other establishment in the city – I usually order a few glasses of wine out each week.  Thinking wine, the restaurant sports a very limited and largely uninteresting wine list for wine list, but which of the three of the wines we ordered were out that night.  I can’t recall that I’ve ever been to a restaurant where a trio of the wines were not available; a very high percentage for B.B. Italia.
 
As disappointing as the visit to B.B. Italia was, I feel the need to give it at least another try.  It had only been open for a month or so, and drawing a final judgement so quickly is not fair and possibly not accurate.  And, with as the owners also have a steakhouse, I have hope that the meat preparations are much better than the couple of dishes that I had.
 
Carrabba’s, The Original
3115 Kirby (between W. Alabama and Richmond), 77098, (713) 522-3131
1399 S. Voss (at Woodway), 77057, (713) 468-0868
carrabbasoriginal.com
 
Nundini Chef’s Table
500 N. Shepherd (north of I-10), 77007, (713) 861-6331
chefstable.nundini.com

A tasty version of ravioli, at Carrabba's on Kirby, showered with plentiful Parmigiano.