Before a trip to Pavia recently, all I had really heard about it was zuppa alla pavese, a historic soup named after this city that’s not far south of Milan, something that I had come across in Ada Boni’s classic “Italian Regional Cooking,” which was published in English fifty years ago.  The legend associated with its creation is related in that tome:
 
“On February 21, 1525, Francis I, King of France, was losing the battle of Pavia. Pursued by the Spaniards and about to surrender, he stopped at a cottage near the city and asked for a meal. As it happened, a classical vegetable minestrone was being prepared in the kitchen, and the cook, with a proper sense of occasion, decided to enrich it. She added a few slices of stale bread, toasted and buttered, broke a couple of eggs over the, threw in a few handfuls of Parmesan cheese, and poured the boiling vegetable broth over the top.  Francis ate this strange new dish with great curiosity, and as the Spaniards closed in, he thanked the peasants for their hospitality, declaring, “What you have given me was a King’s soup.!” And that, according to authorities on Lombard cooking, was the origin of Pavia soup, or zuppa alla pavese.”
 
As my trip was sponsored by Pavia’s chamber of commerce and mostly of a gastronomic nature, I assumed that zuppa alla pavese – it’s named after the town and seemingly it’s most famous dish, after all – would be served at least one of the meals, and likely more.  It wasn’t.  Not only that, but the dish does not seem to exist on any of the town’s menus – at least I didn’t find and I was looking – and might not even be cooked much at all in the area.  Our guide and translator, both from the area, had never had the dish.  One reason that it might not be found on too many menus is that it’s relatively straightforward and unfussy dish, and one with centuries-old roots; how many menus sport items that were created in the 1500s, after all? 
 
The dearth of the dish, and the resonance of its name, had encouraged the self-same chamber of commerce to encourage local eateries to update the dish in a variety of creative ways in a program called, “zuppa alla pavese 2.0” that might not have gotten too much traction.  I did encounter that, well, a sign announcing it at one restaurant.  I couldn’t get a table at the only place where I saw.  The restaurants are especially tiny in Pavia, it seems, befitting a pedestrian-centric municipality not needing to seat an influx of tourists.  No matter.  A rendition of zuppa alla pavese is easy to recreate at home.  Good bread and good stock are quite helpful.  And, if you can get some of those gorgeously orange-yolked eggs that are used in Italy, even btter.
 
Zuppa alla pavese – adapted from “The Silver Spoon”
 
Serves 4 as a first course
 
Thick slices of hearty bread with the crusts removed – 4
Butter – 2 tablespoons
Meat broth, homemade if possible, of course – 3 cups
Eggs – 4
Parmigiano-Reggiano – 4 tablespoons
 

1. Preheat oven to 400 F
2. Bring the broth to a boil.
3. Melt the butter in a pan and fry the bread on both sides.
4. Put the bread in four ovenproof bowls.
5. Break on egg on top of each slice of bread and pour over the hot broth.
6. Add the Parmigiano-Reggiano to each bowl.
7. Put into the oven for a few minutes or until the cheese melts.

I finally made it to Rosie Cannonball, the new restaurant that’s part of a cluster of related establishments on lower Westheimer that began with the slick neo-honky tonk Goodnight Charlie’s.  The fare from the short menu at Rosie Cannonball is mostly Italian with trattoria fare rooted in the Emilia-Romagna region of central Italy along with pizzas and a handful of Spanish and Portuguese items.  It’s a comfortably attractive and quaint place that seems especially well-suited during the day for the ladies-who-lunch whom made up most of the clientele when I visited the other day.
 
After spending the previous week in Italy dining quite well, I still had the hankering for Italian food and pasta, as usually do in any case.  The Cavatelli Al Sugo Bolognese all’Entra, Parmigiano Reggiano seemed to fit the bill on a crisp day.  It featured a short, sturdy pasta served with a slowly cooked meat sauce that is a specialty of Bologna and its surroundings and seen throughout central and a fair part of northern Italy.  Their sauce, the ragù, is made with ground beef and pork, no veal.  The Entra designation, and likely the recipe, comes from the restaurant north of Bologna where the chef once worked, I was told.
 
I quite enjoyed the dish.  Their cavatelli is made in-house with all-purpose flour that provided a nice bite, flavor and cavities to catch the meaty sauce.  The other pastas on the menu use the softer, more finely milled ’00’ that’s appropriate for those.  The ragù tasted like it should, hearty but not overly so, if with just a touch of chalkiness likely from the beef.  I could have used some bread to sop the remaining little bit of it – “fare la scarpetta” as the Italians say – but none was offered, unfortunately.  Their ragù was maybe slightly less flavorful as the couple ragùs I had eaten the week before in Italy, and what I make at home, using a slight adaption of the Marcella Hazan’s terrific, very long-cooked version. 
 
Though like what I ate, the portion for the cavatelli was quite small.  It was certainly smaller than what is usually served these days as a primo in Italy, the first course, usually pasta or risotto, traditionally meant as a preface the secondo, the protein-centric course.  The portion sizes have grown larger at Italian in the past decade or longer, but it’s been since about the start of the millennium – a span of time that includes nearly a dozen trips to Italy – that I can remember a pasta portion as thriftfully sized as this was.  This might work without much concern for the ladies-who-lunch, or children, but I doubt it will satisfy most diners even at lunch.  Even less so at dinner, as the waitress told me the portions are the same for dinner.  You’ll need another course in the evening to be sure.
 
Another thing caused me a pause in addition to the parsimonious portion was that the price was an outstanding $22.  Not only smaller than what is served in Italy for a similar dish, and nearly everywhere else, it was much more expensive.  On this recent gastronomic trip to Italy, a well-known national food writer and I talked about how pasta prices in Italy have nicely remained around €11 or €12, or so, about $12.25 to $13.50, at most restaurants for the past decade or longer.  Though I enjoyed the cavatelli preparation, I felt that it was one of the worst dining values I’ve had in a while. 
 
Another caveat in addition to those two for the cavatelli, were the wine prices.  Perusing the wine list, I found just eight of the two or three dozen Italian reds were under $100, which I found annoying to state the least.  With two Master Sommeliers with the hospitality group, I expected more.  There are certainly many excellent choices on the list, but the accompanying prices, which may be fair, are on the high side for most diners.  Based on one visit, I believe that Rosie Cannonball is a welcome addition to the local dining scene, one that I plan to revisit.  It’s just one that might be a little pricey for what it is.
 
Rosie Cannonball
1620 Westheimer (between Mandell and Dunlavy), 77006, (832) 380-2471
rosiecannonball.com


Cavatelli al Sugo at Rosie Cannonbal

I just returned from a trip to Pavia and its surroundings that was sponsored by its local chamber of commerce and included the significant nearby wine region of Oltrepò Pavese.  Located in northern Italy barely a half-hour train ride south of Milan, this is a city and region just a little further south that are essentially unknown to most American wine drinkers, including those who purchase a lot of Italian wine, like myself.  Just as unknown is that the Oltrepò Pavese produces a lot of Pinot Noir.  In fact, with more than 7,000 acres of the grape and roots in the area back over 150 years, the Oltrepò Pavese “earns the distinction of Pinot Noir’s Italian home” according to the Wine Spectator.
 
Used mostly in sparkling wines – where the region is also a big producer and unknown to American consumers – it also makes a fair amount of still Pinot Noir.  Or, Pinot Nero, as the varietal is called and labeled there and nearly everywhere in Italy where it is bottled.  It’s been planted in Italy since the mid-1800s at least and the Italianized name is quite longstanding unlike the more recently planted Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon.
 
The labeling of Pinot Noir as Pinot Nero is a problem, I believe.  If American can find a Pino Nero from the Oltrepò Pavese or anywhere else in Italy, they might not immediately think that the wine is Pinot Noir.  Or if they know Pinot Nero is Pinot Noir that might think that it is something outside the bounds of typical Pinot Noir, maybe even adulterated.  I mentioned this to the owner of Prime Alture, one of the wineries that we visited.  I should have looked at his Pinot Noir first.  He seemed to have the same concerns as me, and his is labeled as Pinot Noir.  Unfortunately, though he said that he is in most of the top restaurants in Milan, he doesn’t yet have an American distributor, even if he might be more ready for the market than most.
 
I had several versions of Pinot Noir recent trip and enjoyed them all, including a white wine made with the grape, which was new to me.  It very nicely complemented the sturgeon dish at a famed long-running trattoria in Pavia.  A few years ago, at a dinner at a sommelier’s house, I had a Pinot Nero from the Alto Adige that was fantastic, even outshining an excellent white Hermitage from the cult producer Jean-Louis Chave that had nearly twenty years of age.  To generalize, the Pinot Noirs produced in Italy provide a different take on the grape, neither Burgundian or Californian in any of its guises, dry with subtle red fruits like blackcurrant and raspberry, not bold, and balanced with nice acidity.  Each has tasted Italian to me, maybe with a hint of underlying bitterness that is present in a great many of the reds of the country or something.  If you enjoy Pinot Noir, especially with food, it’s worth your while to give Pinot Nero a try, from Oltrepò Pavese or elsewhere, provided you can find it.

A white Pinot Nero (or Pinot Noir) at Antica Osteria del Previ in Pavia just over a week ago. 

​I’ve long been a big fan of a good muffaletta sandwich, and eaten countless versions over the years.  The muffaletta is the New Orleans-bred classic that has its roots in the immigrants there from the Palermo area, and maybe most specifically the Central Grocery on Decatur Street in the French Quarter over a century ago.  I pick up at least a couple of mufalettas from there each time I’m in New Orleans to take home, including when I was there earlier in the year.
 
As most avid-dining Houstonians know or might know, mufaletta consists of the readily imported or sourced cold cuts like Genoa salami, ham, and mortadella along with sliced Provolone and Swiss cheese that’s topped with an olive salad.  This distinctive condiment traditionally consists of a lengthy mix of ingredients: chopped green olives with pimientos, Kalamata olives, cauliflower, carrots, celery, red bell peppers, capers, pepperoncini, water, vinegar, salt, spices, garlic, and olive oil, all left to marinate for a while before use.  Maybe more distinctive is the bread that gives the sandwich its name, the mutaletta, a roughly 10-inch in diameter sturdy loaf that topped with sesame seeds that forms an appropriate base for the oily and vinegary olive salad to seep into.
 
I mentioned in a post about my passion for the sandwich and a friend replied that I needed to try it at the Ragin’ Cajun.  As long as I’ve been dining there, I had never thought to order a muffaletta there, it’s usually a shrimp po boy and maybe a cup of gumbo.  I’m very glad I got the heads up.  The Ragin’ Cajun does a terrific job with the muffaletta, even better than at the Central Grocery, at least for me.  Called the Special Muffalotta on the menu, the individually sized half a muffaletta is $10.  Toasted and served a bit warm, the fine-quality ingredients seem better than in most version of the sandwich and the meats, slightly melted cheeses and the bracing olive salad meld together extremely well, maybe helped by some of the cooking heat.  The bread is properly robust, tasty and fresh.  It makes for a great start and base for the sandwich.  It goes from there, with the slight crunch of the warmed loaf, the vinegary touch of the vegetable mix and soft, hearty slices of proteins, making for a delicious bite.  It’s one of the best sandwiches I’ve had in a while, and another reason to visit the Ragin’ Cajun.
 
Ragin’ Cajun
4302 Richmond (west of Weslayan), 77027, (713) 623-6321
9600 Westheimer (at Gessner), 77063, (832) 251-7171
ragin-cajun.com

​A couple of months ago the trade publication Restaurant Hospitality – citing sandwiches that best highlighted some of the sandwich trends across the country and that “won their hearts” – named The Tex-Mex Cheesesteak at Antone’s Famous Po’ Boys here in Houston as the best sandwich in America.  I have been down on Antone’s for quite a while, but reading this and hearing that they had revitalized their menu, I had to give it a try.  It was certainly worth the recent trip.
 
The relatively small-for-a-cheesesteak sandwich priced at $9.95 features thinly sliced top sirloin, sliced sautéed red bell peppers, banana peppers, jalapenos and onions, pepper Jack cheese, doused with some red wine vinegar, salt and pepper and slathered with some chipotle-spiked mayonnaise in a toasted roll from their longtime supplier Royal Bakery.  I found it delicious, the best sandwich I’ve had at Antone’s in memory.  Tasty and tender beef, a good amount of spice and other complementary flavors and a quality bread.  But there could have been a little more cheese on this cheesesteak, and I wish the peppers, skin-on, could have been cooked a little longer for my taste – and stomach, as these seemed to have caused some distress later.  Plus, the nicely toasted, fresh roll provided enough texturally contrast to the soft beef and other fillings.  No real matter.
 
This isn’t the best cheesesteak sandwich in Houston, any of the ones at Pappa Geno’s including the basic one I had there a couple of days ago are better, but it is worth a trip to Antone’s if you have the hankering for a tasty hot and properly unavoidably messy sandwich.
 
Antone’s Famous Po’ Boys
4520 San Felipe (just inside the West Loop), 77027, (713) 623-4464
2724 West T.C. Jester (just north of the North Loop), 77018, (713) 686-4338
antones1962.com


The Tex-Mex Cheesesteak at Antone's (courtesy of Restaurant Hospitality)

​Though some restaurants were becoming more Italian during the 1980s, several widespread aspects of the Italian restaurant in America were not to be found in Italy.  This included a small bowl or cruet of olive oil set on the table along with a basket of bread for dipping into the oil.  This seems to have begun sometime in the 1980s.  It might have been one of Pino Luongo’s innovations.  He, the Tuscan-bred and New York-based restaurateur who helped introduce Tuscan cooking to this country with places like Il Cantinori and Coco Pazzo that resonated with both critics and celebrities alike.  Though the concept of dipping raw vegetables into oil, pinzimonio, is found in parts of Italy, the similar use of bread is not, at least the way it is done in this country.   Olive oil for the bread quickly spread and became expected by most diners, even if it was an additional freebie for the owner and a way for customers to waste a lot of decent olive oil.   It became emblematic of Italian restaurants here – as much as soft, overcooked pasta – and was resisted only by those able to adhere more closely to the Italian model.
 
If presented in a bowl or plate, the olive oil was often studded with herbs, garlic and sometimes balsamic vinegar.  The use of the sweet vinegar became another hallmark of American Italian dining.  Balsamic vinegar in its truest, most artisanal form, was nearly unknown outside of its home in and around the city of Modena in Emilia-Romagna until it began to be imported into the U.S. and used at the most discerning restaurants around 1980.   As it took years to make small amounts, it was expensive, but its concentrated flavor went a long way as a condiment.  As the original aged versions gained traction with Americans and the American press, commercial vinegars bearing the name “balsamic vinegar,” tasting vaguely similar and far less pricey, began to be produced.  It was with these that most American diners grew to enjoy, both with bread and more so mixed with salads.
 
Predating both the table presentation of olive oil and the familiarity with this uniquely Italian-esque vinegar was the Italian steakhouse, at least in America.  There are no steakhouses in Italy.  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.   “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.   The first 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 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.”
 
Frank Sinatra was a reportedly a big fan of one of the longtime Italian steakhouses, Gene & Georgetti’s in Chicago. Sinatra was reportedly a big fan of countless Italian-themed eateries.  In fact, “Frank Sinatra ate here” might only be rivaled by “George Washington slept here” in the northeast.  According to the dedicated road food warriors, Jane and Michael Stern, who would know better than anyone, “there are countless places between Philly and Boston (not to mention some in Vegas and Palm Springs) where, if you judged by the pictures on the wall, you'd have to say that Frank was the management's best friend.”   A tree of decades-old Italian-American eateries in the Los Angeles area can trace their heritage back to Sinatra beginning with Hollywood’s Villa Capri.   Though Sinatra was, by all regards, a terrific customer known for his extremely generous tipping, he also brought a tremendous amount of star power and glamour.   He was, after all, one of the most famous Americans since the time he burst on the scene in the early 1940s until his death in the late 1990s.  The advertisement of a restaurant’s connection to Sinatra was and continues to be a recognizable feature of the Italian restaurant here, just as it once was with previous Italian-American heroes, Joe DiMaggio and Enrico Caruso.
 
Sinatra’s fixture is more permanent, because Sinatra’s music – and in some sense his persona – has become intertwined with Italian-American food and joyous carousing.  Sinatra might be as much a part of the American Italian restaurant as red sauce.  His songs and those of the other popular Italian-American singers interpreting the Great American Songbook after the Second World War have become a requisite part of the soundtrack of Italian-themed restaurants.  Sinatra was just the best and has been the most played, but he is often joined by Dean Martin, Tony Bennett, Louis Prima, Bobby Darin, Jerry Vale, Jimmy Rosselli, Mario Lanza, Perry Como, Frankie Laine, and Vic Damone as part of the ambiance when out at an Italian restaurant.
 
Though American-bred singers seemed natural complements to the restaurants serving the food, what might be surprising is the disdain that the vast majority of Italians have to Italian food with any American concessions.  Most Italians absolutely cannot stand Italian-American food, or at least they say so.  This seems to stem largely from the fact that Italians have possibly the narrowest palates in the world.  That and their intense local pride fostered by history and geography.  They complain bitterly about the preparations of dish a town over in Italy if it is slightly different than their own.   Of course, they are typically quick to complain about restaurants here.
 
This was adapted from my eBook, From the Antipasto to the Zabaglione: The Story of Italian Restaurants in America.

​I had been meaning to finally have dinner at the downtown location of Pappas Bros. Steakhouse when I saw that it was participating in Houston Restaurant Weeks.  The fact that it featured a steak on that menu made the decision to go even easier.  Not just any steak, but a USDA Prime New York Strip dry-aged in-house, the type of steak that has drawn diners and raves by the score since the Pappas Bros. opened on Westheimer in the mid-1990s. 
 
The dinner last night, did not disappoint.  It was the best New York Strip I’ve had in memory and also the best Houston Restaurant Weeks meal I’ve ever had.  It was an excellent meal, period, and wonderful dining experience, even just sitting in the bar area. 
 
I started with a Caesar Salad, my usual steakhouse starter.  Featuring manageably sized pieces of Romaine lettuce, which I really enjoyed, in a rich, creamy sauce studded with properly crispy croutons made from good-quality bread, this was exactly what I had hoped for to prologue the beef course.  My New York Strip was perfectly cooked medium-rare, as requested.  Tender, juicy but was a slight bit of an exterior crust that exhibited a noticeable hint of the Kosher salt, black pepper and butter finish, the steak tasted like it should, just better.  Deeply flavorful, but without any discernible funk from the dry-aging.  It was terrific.  Well-done mashed potatoes and haricot verts were welcome accompaniments to the steak.  The friend I was dining with and I also split an order of their cheesy au gratin potatoes in the odd chance we might not get enough calories along the way.  Delicious, too.  To finish, I had a Key Lime Pie tartlet made with Graham crackers, toasted pecans, lightly sweetened whipped cream and a few fresh berries.  It also was very enjoyable, the product of a very adept pastry station, if tough to finish after the several large and caloric prefaces. 
 
Those three courses from the Restaurant Weeks menu was just $45, excepting tax and gratuity.  The similar 14-ounce New York Strip on the menu is $51.95.  Though the steak I had might have been a little smaller, maybe the 10-ounce version that is usually served at the bar, the three courses for $7 less is an excellent value, and provides more than enough food for nearly every diner, as each of the three courses is quite generous, in the typical Pappas restaurant manner. Then there is also fresh, top-notch bread on the table with softened butter upon request.
 
The visit confirmed that, to me, Pappas Bros. Steakhouse – boisterous, always loud and usually delightfully indulgent and even excessive – and Georgia James are clearly the best two steakhouse concepts in the city.  Not only is the food excellent, especially the nearly unparalleled steak, but the compendious wine list is the most impressive in the city along with its sibling – and with some values, too, the acidic and tannic Burlotto Nebbiolo di Langhe 2016 for $55 that I had previously encountered at Public Services worked very well with steaks.  The wait staff here, too, is also a cut above among the local steakhouses.  The attentive, friendly and proficient service we had last night stood in stark contrast to the choppy, not-so-professional-for-the-considerable-price service I had fairly recently at Mastro’s, another upscale steakhouse.  The New York Strip and other foods were far better at Pappas Bros., too, as was the overall experience. 

If you are going to do the all-American steakhouse experience, which is always expensive, you can't beat Pappas Bros. Steakhouse in Houston.  During Houston Restaurant Weeks, it is even somewhat of a value, all while benefiting the Houston Food Bank.  Do good while eating very well.
 
Pappas Bros. Steakhouse
1200 McKinney (at San Jacinto), (713) 658-1995
5839 Westheimer (between Chimney Rock and Fountain View), (713) 780-7352
pappasbros.com

The New York Strip is more flavorful, but the filet at Pappas Bros. is about as good as it gets.

​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

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.

I was reminded to revisit this after having a desultory version of the margherita pizza the other day at Laurenzo’s, a place I generally like.  It just confirmed that the most important thing that I learned after eating close to one hundred margherita pizzas mostly in Houston for my more fatuous than fun Margherita Pizza Project over the past three years is that if you see “margherita pizza” on a menu, don’t order it.  The Project was illuminating, if ultimately quite disappointing. 
 
Most margherita pizzas to found in the Houston area, the vast majority in fact, are lousy: tasteless at best, and exposing cardboard-tasting crusts and cheap, worthless slices of tomatoes at worst, with far too many featuring cheap, industrial-quality mozzarella that adds very little to the enjoyment of the pizza.
 
The margherita pizza is very simple – it’s just tomato sauce that’s usually uncooked, mozzarella cheese and fresh basil leaves atop a pizza crust that has been quickly baked – but that simplicity is a big obstacle for most restaurants to overcome in making a good margherita pizza.  A margherita puts a premium on the quality of the few ingredients, which have no place to hide, and the crust, which should be fairly soft and tasty, playing a bigger role than in most pizzas as there are fewer components.  And most local versions are lacking a taste of freshness, a vibrancy, that a good margherita pizza should have.
 
Some other things I’ve learned:

• Definitely do not order one if it is spelled “margarita” on the menu, a sure sign that the restaurant does not know what it is doing with this pizza.  You'd be surprised how often margarita finds its way from the drinks section.
• Be very way if you see tomatoes as one of the ingredients.  A proper margherita uses tomato sauce, which will seep into the crust and complement the cheese.  Tomato slices don’t have enough moisture to do that, and most tomatoes used in inexpensive and moderately priced Houston restaurants are terrible.  There are exceptions like the ones at Amalfi, which leads to another important takeaway:
• Restaurants serving Italian-themed food, especially those with roots in or inclinations to the Naples area, the birthplace of pizza and the margherita, are about the only places you should order a margherita pizza.

 
If you are thinking about ordering a margherita pizza in the future, you’ve now been warned.

Dolce Vita actually has a margherita pizza that you should order.