1. Lucille’s
Museum District
Chef and owner Chris Williams has been named a James Beard semifinalist for Outstanding Restaurateur, and it’s an honor that’s well-deserved not only for his inventive takes on traditional Southern cuisine — Lucille’s fried chicken sandwich, for example, features the Asian chile paste sambal oelek and five-spice powder — but also for his work combatting food insecurity and providing training opportunities for underserved communities in Houston. Williams’s foundation, Lucille’s 1913, launched during the pandemic and provides nearly 800 meals a day to schoolchildren, the elderly and Houstonians in need.