​It’s not quite fair to call The Original Fish Tacos at Berryhill a guilty pleasure, as these have long been quite good, in my opinion, and Berryhill Baja Grill Cantina – its ungainly full name these days – a commendable, comfortably casual counter service spot for generally inexpensive Mexican food that’s a little different than most local options.  I’ve been indulging in these for years at the location on 11th Street, which I often do after a haircut, as its just down the road from my longtime barber, Doug’s, formerly Doug and Don’s and Don’s before that, the barbershop in Rushmore.  There’s been comfort in the consistent quality and value in each for me.
 
The Original Fish Tacos at Berryhill consist of two or three large pieces of breaded and fried white fish placed in two soft corn tortillas and served with shredded red cabbage, a fair amount of cilantro leaves and a spiked mayonnaise sauce.   The tacos are large.  The fish is always clean-tasting, often arriving at the table piping hot from the deep fryer with the cabbage adding some firm texture to the usually crispy fish and the cilantro and sauce helping with additional complementary flavors.  I always spoon on a lot of the watery tomato-based salsa found at the condiments bar that helps some more, especially its spicy small pieces off jalapeño.  Berryhill used to use catfish but now, from all I can gather from a cashier who seems to be the manager, it is a white fish from the sea that is not tilapia.  It works well, if not as well as the catfish did.  The pieces of fish sometime become mushy a little too readily, mostly courtesy of the mayonnaise-based sauce and the addition of the salsa.  It detracts from the taco, but it’s still an enjoyable, messier dish.
 
I can’t say these tacos are in the same league as what you will find in San Diego or Ensenada, but these have been more enjoyable than the ones I’ve had up the road in Orange County at cheap chain outposts. I find that an order of two Original Fish Tacos makes for an inexpensive and quick lunch.  Two with water with tax and tip comes to $9.64 these days.  A find value that also includes chips and salsa.  The help-yourself chips found with the salsa are store-bought and really not very good even when there are no hints of the occasional staleness.  Though both the chips and are below par, I can’t help but finish a basket helping make for a properly satiating lunch.
 
There are eight Berryhill locations now.  They used to vary widely in quality.  I am not sure these days, as I’ve only been to the 11th Street location in years.  Not as interesting as satisfying as the original location in the Village many years ago, it can still be a decent stop that’s a at least a decent value.
 
Berryhill Baja Grill Cantina
702 E. 11th Street (a few blocks west of Studewood), (713) 225-2252
berryhillbajagrill.com

​One of the most anticipated, if not the most anticipated, annual area restaurant-related event began the other day on August 1, Houston Restaurant Weeks.  Running through September 2, when diners visit one of the 282 participating restaurant locations and order from the Restaurant Weeks menu that will feature a set multi-course menu with several options, the restaurant will donate $7 during dinnertime and $3 for lunch to the Houston Food Bank.  Lunches are $20 and dinners are $35 or $45, with some optional upcharges at some places.  If you don’t know, the Houston Food Bank is a rather worthwhile local charity, a non-profit organization that collects and distributes food to hunger relief charities, which happens to be the largest food bank in the country. 
 
Helping the community is rather easy, just dine out at one of the restaurants and order from the Restaurant Weeks menu.  It’s not only easy, but enjoyable.  It has resonated with locals: since Cleverley Stone started the event in 2003, it has raised well over $10 million for the Houston Food Bank.  Houston Restaurants Weeks seems to encourage people to visit restaurants, and especially restaurants that are new to them.  In addition to aiding the charity, it has definitely increased traffic for local eateries, both new and familiar.  August was once about the slowest of months for area restaurants.  No longer.  This has helped not only the bottom line for the restaurateurs but also their staffs, who are among the lowest-paid workers.
 
With so many restaurants, there is certainly plenty from which to choose.  The restaurants from Hugo Ortega and Tracy Vaught – Backstreet Café, Caracol, Hugo’s and Xochi – which are known for doing a very good job for Houston Restaurant Weeks, are taking part again.  Some other notables include Amalfi, Etoile, Latin Bites, Pappas Bros. Steakhouse, Potente, Riel, Reef, and Houston’s grand dame, Tony’s.  Do some good and have some fun, visit one of them or one of the many other participating restaurants during this next month.

A delectable dish from one of the participants, Bistro Menil

​Flying to the Chicago area last weekend, I was looking for a convenient place to meet a friend near O’Hare and ended up at a branch of Harry Caray’s, more properly Harry Caray’s Italian Steakhouse.  I had enjoyed trips to the original location downtown many years ago.  And, this most recent visit worked out well.  I needed some food as I waited, and my order of toasted ravioli, that deep-fried St. Louis treat, was quite tasty.  Crusty ravioli filled with a mixture of four cheeses, and served in a very pleasant, light marinara sauce.  As it turned out, my friend has had very good luck with the place for business meals, and a cousin I saw that weekend had long liked up their pastas.
 
The menu at Harry Caray’s – there are three of these in addition to their other concepts – has long-popular and more current Italian-American and Italian-themed preparations like Eggplant Parmesan, pasta alla Vodka, Shrimp Scampi, fried calamari, and a well-regarded signature Chicken Vesuvio, a Chicago Italian-American classic, along with salads, seafood, and then wet- and dry-aged steaks in filet, strip and ribeye cuts.
 
The Italian steakhouse, at least in America and at least in name, has predated Harry Caray’s use of it in recent years.  There are hardly any steakhouses in Italy, though.  Outside of the Florentines and later other Tuscans, there has been no steak tradition in Italy.  In fact, the bistecca in the famous bistecca alla fiorentina comes from the English “beefsteak” because there was no suitable Italian name for the dish. Similarly, rosbif is the Italian word for roast beef.  I was in Piedmont late last year, a region that is very proud of their beef, and asked a winemaker during long luncheon if there were steaks to be found in Piedmont – which I hadn’t encountered in two trips there – or anywhere else in Italy, in addition those Tuscan steaks.  He said that there might be a steak somewhere in the Veneto, he wasn’t exactly sure where, but that was about it.  There are plenty of steaks to be found here, of course.
 
“Being American is to eat a lot of beef steak,” as Kurt Vonnegut rightly observed, and Italian-Americans found it both profitable and enjoyable to serve steak, as have innumerable other restaurateurs over the years.  The first Italian steakhouse might have been The Palm in Manhattan that opened in the 1920s, even if it did not consciously start out as a steakhouse.   It was later joined, especially after 1990, by numerous others primarily in the Northeast and Midwest.  These served similar preparations and steaks as the typical grand American steakhouses.  What made them “Italian” was simply that the menu was filled out with a number of rote Italian-American dishes, and usually the restaurant’s full name included the phrase, “Italian Steakhouse.”
 
The phrase Italian steakhouse does make some sense in this country, even if there really is very little or no Italian heritage involved.  What it translates to is a menu of aged steaks often from the great slaughterhouses of the Midwest in familiar cuts and preparations alongside a slew of Italian-American dishes.  These have long been two of America’s favorite cuisines, after all, and what’s wrong with that?

Lunch at an actual steakhouse in Italy a few years ago