It’s been an interesting year for Houston restaurant openings, a very pleasantly interesting year given the ongoing pandemic. I’ve had few thoughts and insights about it in a recent post. This one is just for the best newcomers in a crowded year for very worthwhile new eateries. My criteria is firstly and primarily the quality of the food with setting, service, beverage programs, value following. It thought that a sense of utility, usefulness is also important; a high quality restaurant that can be visited for different meals and maybe even on the spur of the moment will be a more integral, and more often enjoyable, part of my dining future and for most. Below are the top ten new restaurants to open in Houston in 2021, listed alphabetically, and described in a mostly concise if occasionally blowsy fashion.
 
To note, the approximate average prices for each reflect a typical dinner, which might be an appetizer, side or dessert in addition to the entrée – or a suitable number of small plates – a couple of drinks, tax and a 20% tip.
 
Alba – $150 – The new concept at the Hotel Granduca replacing Ristorante Cavour features an updated rich, plush, green-hued setting, but thankfully has the old chef, Maurizio Ferrarese, who might be the top Italian toque in Texas and some ways beyond. At the new Alba, the “dishes are a balance between innovation and Italian traditions,” and with a very experienced hand and a big fan of the famed Michelin three-starred Piazza Duomo in Alba in Ferrarese, it offers a very enjoyable insight into the contemporary, refined and often indulgent cuisine of the region of the Langhe that surrounds Alba, which is highlighted by Barolo, Barbaresco, and white truffles. Even the region’s signature pasta dish, on Alba’s menu, ravioli del plin, is sometimes advertised in that area with being made with forty yolks of egg, for example. Terrific with fresh pasta like this and gnocchi, there is certainly no chef that does a better job with risotto that’s on the menu a couple of times, befitting one from Vercelli not terribly far from Alba, the European capital of rice production. You are in excellent hands here. Not unexpectedly, Alba is not cheap; the four mains featuring proteins average nearly $60. Uptown Park
 
Concura – $110 – Another Italian, and somewhat of a regional one with an emphasis on the cooking of the Marche, from where the owners and chefs hail. This is a region in central Italy north of Rome between the Adriatic and the Apennines that is rarely visited by American tourists, but which has some of the best scenery in that beautiful country and exemplary food, both from its coast and the interior. Some of that is replicated here with versions of Coniglio in Porchetta, aggressively herbed, stuffed and roasted rabbit, and the pasta-like passatelli served with stewed mushrooms and truffles along with the region’s most famous appetizer and a great party dish, olive all‘ascolana, stuffed and deep-fried large olives. Fittingly with chefs from the seaside town of Fano, there are several compelling seafood dishes, raw, fried, in a ragù over pasta and even a cod liver foie gras appetizer plus some Tuscan preparations and a couple found over much of Italy. The wine is rather tiny if studded with stars, but oddly no Verdicchios, the region’s premier varietal. Concura is small inside with a décor that blends contemporary and rustic notes in plenty of black and dark gray with an open kitchen that feels like a newer restaurant in Italy, as does its outdoor seating along a sidewalk. Highland Village
 
Da Gama Canteen – $60 – “Drawing inspiration from the former Portuguese-Indian territory of Goa, Gujarat and Portugal all through our Houston lens” is how the experienced local restaurateurs (Oporto and The Queen Vic) describe the fare here, which will be mostly recognizably Indian to local diners but something a little different, and readily appealing. Appealing also applies to the quite comfortable, contemporary space scattered with tables, banquettes that feels roomy along with an attractive long bar punctuating one end and pleasant patio seating off the side. Set in the somewhat sprawling M-K-T complex at the edge of the Heights, the restaurant resides alongside a breezeway and a park that adds to the charm. Also do the presentations of dishes, belying its reasonable prices, including water served in fetching metal cups that are very appropriate for our heat- and humidity-racked climate. Well-crafted mains run from $14 to $24, meat, seafood and vegetarian. And there plenty of tempting appetizers like East Coast oysters, plus house-made breads, curries, salads, and desserts, too. Cocktails in line with the cuisine, several fun wines on tap, and an intriguing, natural-heavy wine list. It all can encourage many returns. Heights
 
Golfstrømmen Seafood Market – $80 – The name is quite appropriate, meaning Gulf Stream in Norwegian, as this seafood spot from a duo of acclaimed chefs, one from Norway and the other in Texas, employs products, inspirations and preparations from there and here. It begins with excellent fish and shellfish sourced nearby and the north Atlantic, the bounty of the Gulf Stream and the Gulf. In the new Post Market development in the northwestern edge of downtown, the food hall setting isn’t much, but there is usually a tempting display of seafood set on ice that can be gastronomic eye-candy that might include fish commonly seen and not like langoustines, scallops, and oysters like the delicious and different Belon (though from Maine rather than Brittany). Christopher Haatuft, from coastal Bergen who has been on site in the early days, and Paul Qui, who had the excellent Aqui on lower Westheimer, have a kitchen that highlights the high quality of their sourcing with mostly straightforward creations in ways usually familiar to locals that can be absolutely delicious. A recent open-faced sandwich featuring plenty of the slightly sweet lump Jonah crab meat with melted lightly herbed butter, a bit of mayonnaise and some welcome strands of raw onion atop a toasted, tasty sourdough loaf with a side of crisp, freshly made potato chips was one of the best things I had eaten in a while. A nice array of wines, too, to complement, that have a welcome strong French accent. Downtown (Post Market)
 
Ixim – $50 – The A small counter-service place with a somewhat limited menu in Bravery Chef Hall, this effort from Tim Reading, a former executive chef at Caracol, dishes excellent, vibrant, attractive preparations from the broad culinary landscape of Mexico that are among the best in the city. The dishes might be on the small side among local interpretations of the cuisine, but pack a lot of flavor. Even the taqueria morning staple, chilaquiles was rendered artfully and deliciously with some carne asada that was aided by guajillo salsa and grilled red onions. Plancha-grilled Crispy Pork Tacos drenched in a mild salsa were nearly knife-and-fork-necessary and quite an enjoyable, messy lunch. The menu changes often the Vuelve a la Vida and Aguachile de Cameron that were popular early on might no longer be available but there still is the cumin-scented fried lamb and pork meatballs with chipotle sauce that is nicely out of the ordinary and a fun, if less healthy, way to start. Downtown (Bravery Chef Hall)
 
J-Bar-M Barbecue – $50 – The grandest setting for barbecue in the city has the smoked meats that at least match the clean-lined, extremely handsome build-out led by its moist and deeply flavorful brisket, as it needs to be. And that is USDA Prime. It goes into what is the best chopped beef sandwich in the city. That’s largely because it is not really chopped, rather mostly sliced, but, no matter, it’s delicious, helped by an excellent soft fresh bun. Pork ribs, pulled pork and turkey are the other meats, and the kitchen puts out a greater array of sides than any other barbecue joint around, including hand-cut fries and some fun desserts not seen at similar spots. The brisket alone warrants a visit, but the big well-stocked bars inside and out and the great picnic area with views to the downtown skyline a few blocks to the east might entice when you might not need to eat. EaDo
 
Le Jardinier – $135 – The new fine-dining star of the new, grand addition to the Museum of Fine Arts complex, the Kinder Building, this also succeeds grandly serving fairly ambitious modern French restaurant fare that largely substitutes many non-Gallic influences for the tradition extending from Escoffier through Bocuse. The results are interesting, intelligently composed and artfully constructed while being delectable, most importantly, from the amuse-bouche through dessert. Maybe not cutting-edge – foams are frequent, not entirely au courant while working very well at a meal this summer, for example – but this is still something new for Houston. The wine list is expansive, heavily French-laden and very food-friendly. A branch of a restaurant group with places in Miami and New York, which carries a Michelin star, along with La Table in the Galleria area, this place exudes professional competence and in an inviting way that makes a visit a real joy. The comfortably modern dining room looks out to the Isamu Noguchi-designed Cullen Sculpture Garden – always way too much concrete for my tastes – that does allow a gaze at a dramatic Rodin while dining, an additional pleasure not found elsewhere in town. Museum District (MFAH, Kinder Building)
 
March – $285 / $560 – Though it had a brief initial run in 2020, it truly opened this year, this is the best of breed of the quartet of pricey set-menu-only restaurants that came on the scene in 2021. The most ambitious offering in the Goodnight Hospitality Group (Rosie Cannonball, Montrose Cheese & Wine), and one of the most ambitious around, March is staffed by a very capable and broadly experienced team led by executive chef Felipe Riccio that can pull off Michelin-starred-quality creations inspired by top restaurants around the Mediterranean. It’s only dinner here in six- and nine-course meals that begins with snacks of the fanciest kinds and drinks in the lounge area. A seafood escabeche cooked in piquant harissa sofrito and aided with Jamón Ibérico, and blood sausage paté with black currants are a couple of the current items from menus inspired by the southern Spanish regions of Andalusia and Murcia. The food is exquisitely rendered and served in a nicely understated setting along with informed and attentive service to make this one of the premier dining experiences in the city. One of the two wine pairings might be the easiest way to proceed but if you want to use the wine list you will be rewarded: eighty pages put together by Master Sommelier June Rodil has plenty of Burgundy or Bordeaux, but also lot from the finest cellars in Piedmont and a number of wines from top Italian and Spanish producers like Quintarelli, Fontodi and López de Heredia, and some nice choices in the two-digit range. Montrose
 
Soto – $125 – A transplant from Austin sporting a gorgeous dark interior, unrecognizable from that of the previous tenant Bistecca on the lowest of Westheimer, this offers an approachable, well-executed, well-sourced take on the popular Tokyo-style sushi occasionally spiked with some regional favorites like jalapeño, avocado and even tacos of a sort. Truffles and foie gras make appearances, too. Some items arrive from Tokyo’s Toyosu seafood market; the uni here is from Hokkaido rather than Santa Barbara. Japan Express menu changes daily and with often about ten seasonal available as nigiri or sashimi. The daily hour happy from 5:00 to 6:30 each day can be an enjoyable and generally affordable way to end the work day or begin an evening especially if it includes the Chef’s Choice of five pieces nigiri. One of the omakase menus, at $150 and $250 a head, offers an indulgence. In that vein is the A5 Wagyu beef that’s one of the fairly numerous hot dishes on the menu that might be worth visiting even if sushi is not part of the meal. Montrose
 
Urbe – $55 – Though this does not have the culinary fireworks you may encounter at one of Hugo Ortega’s other three local Mexican restaurants – Hugo’s, Caracol and Xochi – Urbe is easily the most accessible and maybe the most useful for many diners that is counter-service morning and midday and full service in the evening with pandemic-friendly take-away items easily feeding two. You can your quality Mexican fix here for breakfast, lunch and dinner seven days a week all for a very fair tariff at an enticing, welcoming place that seats almost 300 people plus a patio. Attractively plated dishes inspired by the street foods of a lot of Mexico with maybe an emphasis on its sprawling capital include highlights like the Torta Ahoga, shredded inside a terrific birote bread with a side of chile de arbol-centric salsa, the large fried pork rind with sides of guacamole and salsas, an entire roasted cauliflower with aioli and cojita cheese, and the Arrachera, a tender and flavorful wood-grilled skirt steak complemented by roasted pineapple and mushroom relish. Uptown Park

One of the artfully plated dishes at Alba

The pandemic continues but the restaurant openings, which slowed considerably in 2020, made up for that lost time.  Briefly, there have been a number of very welcome new dining spots in an delectable array of cuisines this year.  The city’s restaurant landscape has gotten even better and broader.  Here is an overview of what’s happened in this busy year for Houston restaurants.
 
The new restaurants

• The most attention-grabbing development might have been the emergence of a quartet of set-course-only menu restaurants with very high prices for the area, $115 to $225 before drinks: March, Hidden Omakase, ReNeiki, and Degust.  March, from the folks at Goodnight Hospitality (Rosie Cannonball, Montrose Cheese & Wine) and Degust in Spring Branch, both with a recent influences on the plate from Spain, were each named among the top twenty new restaurants by Esquire last month.
• A couple better Italians: Alba, Concura. OK, maybe one, as Alba is the revision at the Hotel Granduca from the excellent Ristorante Cavour with the estimable Chef Maurizio Ferrarese still at the helm.  Inspired by the rich cuisine of the Langhe – the home of the most-prized white truffles, Barolo and Barberesco, etc. – it might have claims to being the best Italian restaurant in the state.  Concura serves mostly the food of the Italian region of the Marche, something new for Houston, and most diners.
• New places from top local restaurateurs: Urbe from Hugo Ortega and Tracy Vaught, Georgia James Tavern and Red Sauce Italian from Chris Shepherd – that will become Pastore when in moves in the spring of 2022 – along with couple more on the way from and team in 2022; Mark Cox and Carmelo Mauro, formerly of the long-lived Mark’s and Carmelo’s, respectively, are involved in an upscale Mexican place, Maize, in the latter’s former space; and the Berg group opened another place with Trattoria Sofia.
• One of the big changes from Chris Shepherd is the shuttering of the excellent and widely interesting UB Preserv, the successor to the ground-breaking Underbelly, at the end of this year.  Its chef, Nick Wong, will move to Georgia James Tavern making that much more worth a visit.
• Big new food halls offering a wide range of cuisines and gustatory fun: Railway Heights and The Post Market, both are worth visiting and can be a lot of fun.  It’s not going to be the best food, except for maybe Golfstrømmen and The Butcher’s Burger both in the Post Market, nor it is necessarily a great value – relatively small portions are typical – and presentation is secondary in counter-service spots without much emphasis on the service, but all caveats asides, these two offer an enjoyably diverse array of cuisines and dishes done well or well-enough for repeated trips.
• The East End including EaDo offers more dining and imbibing options, with J-Bar-M Barbecue, now the city’s grandest spot for smoked meats, the cocktail bar Nightshift, and Roostar adding a location on Navigation.
• Downtown has even places to spend that expense account on Prime steaks with the addition of the Latin American-inspired Toro Toro in the Four Seasons that replaced the long-running Italian concept there, Quattro, and the relocation from Westheimer of The Palm, which is under the Landry’s corporate umbrella.  Now the city center boasts seven high-end steakhouses: Pappas Bros., Vic & Anthony, Guard and Grace, Morton’s, Shula’s, Toro Toro and The Palm, which might be dumbed down somewhat as Landry’s positions each of its broad array of upscale steakhouses.
• The restaurant scene in the greater Heights continues to grow, including a few spots where you can be parted a fair amount for an evening meal.  Led by the terrific Squable, the neighborhood’s dining landscape has returned to pre-pandemic levels prior to the pandemic’s demise.  Piper’s Barbecue, presciently named by J.C. Reid in the Chronicle as one of the city’s best ‘cue joint, and Ume that opened in late 2020, Da Gama, Fegen’s, Chivos, Studewood Grille, Studewood Cantina, the Italian-themed Trattoria Sofia from the Berg group, and a location of the fun, counter-service TJ Birria’s y Mas, with successful and acclaimed Austin-bred Loro en route.  And, the nearly revitalized commercial farmers market on Airline is just beyond the Heights borders.  Assertive foreign flavors might be muted and some of the concepts needed some fine-tuning out of the gate, but the Heights has certainly gotten better for dining and imbibing.  There is certainly a well-heeled appetite for it there.
• The MFAH got a couple of worthwhile new spots, the modern French Le Jardinier and the cafeteria-like casual Italian Cafe Leonelli from acclaimed New York chef Jonathan Benno.  Both are location in the new Kinder building, and both can be worth a destination by themselves, especially Le Jardinier, one of the best restaurants in the city.
  
• Though it has been turning into a haven for out-of-town restaurant chains in recent years, unfortunately, the Rice Village welcomed a terrific new retail bakery, Bādolina Bakery & Cafe, from the folks from the Doris Metropolitan steakhouse. Led by its executive pastry chef Michal Micheali, it turns out something a little different, done very well: "modern Middle Eastern and Israeli baked goods, sweet and savory pastries, along with specialty sourdoughs, croissants, babkas and more."
  
• The demise of the beer bar with The Ginger Man – America’s first contemporary beer bar – and The Hay Merchant, the city’s most serious spot for hops shuttering along with the famed Falling Rock Tap House in Denver.  The last was the best beer bar in the entire Mountain Region and a requisite stop for beer tourists during the GABF, run by a trio of brothers from Houston and alums of The Ginger Man, The Red Lion on Main Street, and The Mucky Duck.  Sad but true.

 
At the restaurants

• Straightforward preparations, high prices.  Gratify, Tonight & Tomorrow, The Nash, Georgia James Tavern, Studewood Grille and the steakhouse Gatsby’s were examples of this.  Many folks here have a lot of money; the markets have soared during the pandemic and seemingly a lot of Houstonians will pay a pretty penny for a version of comfort food, sometimes middling, if nicely presented in a pleasant setting. In fairness, a couple of these have to appeal to a wide array of hotel guests, and many business travelers look for the familiar when on the road, from the likes of Dubuque and usually elsewhere, too.  The Four Seasons, as always with this hotel chain, took a different and better tack with its very appealing Latin American-influenced steak-centric Toro Toro.
• Service has gotten even worse.  Houston has always been behind the other top handful of restaurant cities in terms of the level of service.  It has gotten worse, understandably so, during the pandemic.
• Q codes for menus.  It saves the restaurants with time and expense to update menus.  It’s mostly a hassle for customers, especially with some gaps in cell phone service, as sometimes happens at The Post Market, home to vendors mostly utilizing Q codes, and when those online menus are not updated.

 
On the menus   

• Wine become more so pink and orange.  Somewhat more natural, too. 
• Caviar is found much more often. There is plenty of money in Houston, even more so these days.
• The spicy chicken sandwich craze continues, with new restaurants arriving here specializing in these, a popularity due to the recent-years press for Nashville’s hot chicken and subsequent craze for Popeye’s chicken sandwich that was introduced a couple of years ago (which the newcomers actually rarely equal).  It’s been a boon for those who like the common, unnaturally hefty Chernobyl Farms-style chicken breasts battered with plenty of a cayenne pepper-heavy rub, enough to induce a runny nose if not completely obscure the invariable dullness of the plentiful white meat.

 
It’s been an interesting year.

One of the attractively presented dishes at Le Jardinier.