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

The best new restaurant of 2016 might be in Friendswood

8/30/2016

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​I don’t believe that I had ever eaten meal in Friendswood before.  It hasn’t exactly been a dining destination, and that’s rather an understatement.  But, a recent trip to Galveston provided the excuse to detour a few miles west of I-45 for lunch at Brasserie 1895, the new restaurant from Kris Jakob, a longtime instructor – and lead instructor, in fact – at the Culinary Institute LeNôtre and the ‘Kris’ in its Kris Bistro, which had garnered a fair amount of critical praise.
 
Opening a restaurant in Friendswood was a chance for him to work very close to home while providing a nice dining alternative – a chef-driven restaurant – for the burgeoning area that is both interesting and accessible.  In doing this, he wanted to take advantage of his wide-ranging culinary background and time spent cooking in Belgian.  Assisted by his mentor, who happens to be a Belgian master chef, true to its name, Brasserie 1895 is actually a brasserie in a broad sense.  Serving the hearty, well-crafted food and having an emphasis on quality beer in the Parisian brasserie tradition, the kitchen offers echoes enjoyable Belgium – which has a magical beer tradition well-suited for the restaurant’s ethos – while also providing tastes around the world. 
 
Serving a globally menu influenced can be difficult in many restaurants, but Jakob’s and the kitchen’s skills seems make this a natural.  The first visit the other day, just three weeks after it opened, showed the kitchen’s adeptness with a diverse array of offerings.  The three lunch entrées were a quiche Lorraine, diver scallops with crab and wrapped bacon served atop a polenta cake, and their burger.  Everything was excellent.  The quiche with a light crust and custard-like interior was a little different, but excellent; the top-notch quality scallops were perfectly rendered and accompanied, and the sturdy polenta enlivened with the juice of the seafood was very good, far better than most local restaurant versions; and the burger, with its moist beefy centerpiece, excellent house-made bun and caramelized onion, raisin and brandy compote to be ladled on was fantastic, and much better than another recent burger from Ritual in the Heights, also newcomer; its fries even more so.
 
Set in an older strip center, the décor is actually pretty cool and comfortable: featuring lots of purple-upholstered furniture that might have be purchased from auction it gives off a DIY vibe in the best and most appropriate sense.  It’s got a good, interesting and idiosyncratic beer list – possibly enough for beer lovers to make the trek to Friendswood – and a wine list that is good and Old World-enough, especially for the area.
 
Brasserie 1895 gave a great first impression, and it very well might be the new restaurant to open in the Houston area in 2016, at least that my thought after a fair amount of research thus far.
 
Brasserie 1895
607 S. Friendswood Drive
Friendswood, 77546
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The Blog Begins....

8/29/2016

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​Examiner.com – the website that I treated like a blog since 2009 to post articles about Houston dining, Italian-themed fare, wine and beer – ceased operations in July.  That site made is fairly easy for me to post articles fairly quickly and get paid (very little) for them when I had the time and desire to do so.  This was especially welcome as I was preoccupied with things other than opining often about food and drink.
 
Now that Examiner.com is dead and gone, and I now feel the need to write some more, I am starting this blog.  It will be Houston-focused, but will ramble off to other areas of food and drink just like the rest of the site.  Please check in, as I hope to make it at least somewhat informative and interesting.
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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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