Restaurants & Chefs
Western gourmet report with John Mariani
By JOHN MARIANI
In which our Western gourmet savors Houston sophistication that won't break the bank and searches for the best pizza west of Chicago.
DIVERSITY RULES IN HOUSTON
Courtesy Hotel Icon
Angus sliders with caramelized onions, pepperjack cheese, and truffle-Parmesan fries at Voice in Houston.
While other Texas cities seem to be adding more chain restaurants each month, Houston's ever-vibrant dining scene continues to emphasize diversity and variety in addition to its ubiquitous steakhouses. Three new entries are banking on Houston's taste for sophisticated upscale dining, without busting the budget.
Voice is the replacement for Jean-Georges Vongerichten's short-lived Bank in the Icon Hotel lobby. Housed in the historic 1911 Union National Bank building, the stately 25-foot columns and heavy-lidded windows needed lightening up. Thanks to a sage redesign of the vast space, Voice is now far more intimate, starting with a very convivial 360-degree bar encircled by cowhide-covered stools.
The menu is a strong study in contemporary cuisine via chef Michael Kramer, who established his high rep at McCrady's in Charleston, South Carolina. His no-nonsense approach to ingredients means he never compromises their essential flavors, so that you taste the potato in his gnocchi with morels, asparagus, and prosciutto. The sweetness of apples is countered not only by their own tartness, but also by the tang of a sour-cherry sauce served with a lightly gamy venison. His roast chicken with lobster, soft polenta, and a ragoût of vegetables is simple and wonderful in every satisfying morsel. True, he dusts French fries with truffles and Parmesan cheese, but no one's complaining.
Local culinary hero Robert Del Grande (Cafe Annie, Cafe Express, Taco Milagro) has done the city a real service by opening the smart, hip two-story Grove restaurant at Discovery Green Park, across from the George R. Brown Convention Center, not far from where the Astros and Rockets play. He and his partners also plucked the highly regarded Ryan Pera from the Alden Houston hotel's H17 restaurant. At The Grove, Pera is showing just how well a master chef can marry classic technique and precision to down-home style — as evidenced by dishes like his pulled pork with corncakes and maple sweet-and-sour sauce. He also demonstrates enormous flair with squash blossoms stuffed with Texas goat cheese, basil, and pine nuts, and his wood-fire-grilled whole barramundi with spicy greens and pepper salsa. The family-style chef's tasting menu is as lavish as it is generous at $68: You'll (happily) take some home.
Courtesy Leading Hotels of the World
Executive chef David Denis at Ristorante Cavour in Houston.
Ristorante Cavour in the Hotel Granduca offers the kind of sophisticated reserve and grown-up ambience of a well-tailored dining room, with Venetian chandeliers and French doors opening onto the lush garden. Here chef David Denis combines Northern Italian and French flavors in dishes like fresh porcini risotto; a filet mignon Rossini with butter brioche, fresh foie gras, and a Marsala reduction; and a zuppa di pesce Cavour teeming with lobster, shrimp, mussels, sea bass, snapper, clams, and potato laced with a garlic-rich rouille mayonnaise. Amazingly, for this kind of posh, nothing tops $39 on the menu. Cavour is utterly romantic at a time when we could all use a little old-school glamour.
THE GROVE — Discovery Green Park, 1611 Lamar St., Houston, TX, (713) 337-7321; www.thegrovehouston.com
RISTORANTE CAVOUR — Hotel Granduca, 1080 Uptown Park Blvd., Houston, TX, (713) 418-1000; www.granducahouston.com
VOICE — Icon Hotel, 220 Main St., Houston, TX, (832) 667-4470; www.hotelicon.com/voice-restaurant
THE BEST PIZZAS IN THE WEST
Despite what you may have heard, pizza was not invented in New Haven, Connecticut. It was, and is, the great contribution to world gastronomy of Naples (Italy, not Florida), where the mozzarella, basil, and tomato pie was created in 1889 by pizza-maker Raffaele Esposito and named in honor of the new king's consort, Queen Margherita. The concoction ultimately became much more popular in the United States than in Italy after Italians migrated by the millions to Eastern American cities in the late-19th and early-20th centuries. But it wasn't until after World War II (except in Italian neighborhoods) that pizza began to show well in Western cities, where by and large the pizza became bigger, fatter, gooier, and more indigestible via chains like Godfather's (founded in Omaha, Nebraska) and Pizza Hut (Wichita, Kansas).
These days, though, there is terrific pizza in the West, inspired by early innovators like California's Alice Waters, who serves bubbly, charred pizzas in her café above Chez Panisse in Berkeley; Wolfgang Puck, who created the "Jewish pizza" with smoked salmon, caviar, and sour cream at the original Spago in West Hollywood; and the great Chris Bianco, whose Pizzeria Bianco in Phoenix has rightly been hailed by Food & Wine magazine as making "some of the best pizza in the United States."
There is hardly a contemporary restaurant in the West not serving pizza in some form, whether it's the tartlike crostata-style baked at the new Digestif in Scottsdale, Arizona, with toppings like house-made chorizo, fresh shallots, pistachios, and grated pecorino; or the lavish versions served at Amici in Sugar Land, Texas, where they load on rapini greens, provolone, cream-filled burrata mozzarella, and prosciutto. At The Red House in Austin, Texas, people file in at happy hour when the pizzas are half-price and late at night for a white pizza made with garlic, ricotta, parmigiano, and mozzarella, as well as three types of calzones — stuffed sandwich pockets made with pizza dough and packed with mozzarella, ricotta, spinach, and mushroom; pepperoni and sausage; or meatballs.
San Francisco probably has bragging rights to the most new restaurants with pizzas as a significant component. The locals seem particularly in love with thin-crust so-called Tuscan-style pizzas, available at the very lively Beretta in the Mission District, and at A16 (named after the autostrada that leads in and out of Naples), where they specialize in the cooking of the Campania region, including some classic pizzas with mushrooms, grana padano (a famous Italian cheese similar to parmigiano reggiano), garlic, oregano, mozzarella, and tomatoes; and another with fennel sausage, rapini, red onions, mozzarella, and chiles. These heavenly pizzas are backed up by more than 500 wine selections, many from Southern Italy.
One of the best Baedekers to pizza around the U.S.A. — including 20 pages on the best in the West — is Pizza: A Slice of Heaven (Universe, $24.95) by indefatigable pizza maven Ed Levine. One of the best he and I would both agree on is Angelini Osteria in Los Angeles, with its crackerlike crust and marvelous smoky aromas. I'm a pizza purist: You won't find me at a California Pizza Kitchen eating something topped with caramelized pear.
Luckily there are more and more great places in the West doing the pie proud.
A16 — 2355 Chestnut St., San Francisco, CA, 415-771-2216, www.a16sf.com
AMICI — 16089 City Walk, Sugar Land, TX, 281-242-2800, www.amicitownsquare.com
ANGELINI OSTERIA — 7313 Beverly Blvd., Los Angeles, CA, 323-297-0070, www.angeliniosteria.com
BERETTA — 1199 Valencia St., San Francisco, CA, 415-695-1199, www.berettasf.com
DIGESTIF — 7114 E. Stetson Dr., Scottsdale, AZ, 480-425-9463, www.digestifscottsdale.com
RED HOUSE PIZZERIA — 1917 Manor Road, Austin, TX, 512-391-9500, www.redhouselounge.com
SPQR — 1911 Fillmore St., San Francisco, CA, 415-771-7779, www.spqrsf.com
• Click here for John Mariani's tequila report
Issue: April 2009
