The 10 Restaurants That Defined Houston Dining This Year

Earlier this year, chef David Skinner of celebrated Kemah restaurant Eculent struck up an unlikely partnership with James Beard Best Chef Texas winner Benchawan Jabthong Painter (“Chef G”) and her husband, Graham Painter, known for their Thai hot spot Street to Kitchen. The resulting collaboration — th_prsrv (pronounced The Preserve) — offers a rare and truly unique dining experience focusing on Native American and Thai indigenous cuisine that aims to take guests on a journey through time.

Each culinary stop on the 12- to 15-course tasting menu showcases precolonial ingredients (e.g., game meats, fish, wild rice, beans and corn — sourced from Native American producers wherever possible) that are deftly prepared using ancestral techniques (think fermentation, pickling, and smoking) and presented through a modern lens. The purpose: to honor “the old world” while bringing forth “an even newer world of progressive cuisine,” as Skinner, a Choctaw native, and Painter put it. Current highlights include blue corn bread served with a nutty sunflower-seed butter and leatherwood honey; bison steak accompanied by fermented ramp sauce, and served with forest mushrooms and duck fat confit potatoes; and wild boar with garlic, shallots, spicy Thai chiles, green peppercorn, and fragrant makrut lime leaves.

Located behind Eculent in the Galveston Bay city of Kemah, this Resy-only restaurant has just two seatings per week on Thursdays and Fridays. You know what to do.

The newly revived Belly of the Beast hasn’t been open very long at its new location in Spring, but the restaurant’s chef and owner, Thomas Bille, has been around these parts long enough to gain an avid following for his Mexican-inspired dishes. Bille’s previous iteration of the restaurant opened in February 2020, just as the pandemic was shutting down the world. After it closed in July 2021, Bille moved on to lead the kitchen at Chivos before leaving to devote his efforts on hosting pop-ups and launching Belly of the Beast anew.

Now that the restaurant is ready to serve again, guests can expect tried-and-true favorites like the birria tacos and carne asada, alongside newer creations like a saag paneer appetizer: a seared block of queso blanco that’s finished in the oven and served with spinach mole verde and tortillas. Something Bille also does incredibly well is transforming vegetables. One taste of his honey nut squash — which has been nixtamalized and glazed with a piloncillo syrup, served over mole negro, and topped with pomegranate, salsa seca, and marigold petals — and you’ll understand.

Call 281-466-2040 or find more info here.

If you’ve been paying attention to the dining scene over the last couple of years, you know that sushi — and omakase in particular — has been enjoying an upward trend in our fair city. Katami is the latest restaurant to join the wealth of excellent options, and it comes from four-time Beard award-nominated chef Manabu Horiuchi (“Chef Hori”) and partner Yun Cheng, the team behind the long-established and highly regarded Kata Robata.

Katami, which means “gift” or “keepsake” in Japanese, expands on what’s been done at Kata Robata and gives Horiuchi room to innovate on what he views as the “future of Japanese cuisine.”

The sushi-focused menu features fish flown in almost daily from Japan (diners can opt for à la carte nigiri or choose an omakase experience) and also emphasizes premium A5 wagyu and an extensive sake program. You’ll want to save room for dessert — the kakigori, or Japanese-style shaved ice, uses ice imported from Kanazawa, Japan, and comes in three flavors. The green tea, with azuki ice cream, white chocolate cream, caramel and condensed milk, is an event unto itself.

In the past, the word “speakeasy” would conjure images of dimly lit, top-secret bars serving up strong old-fashioneds and sidecars. Today, at least in Houston, the term is fast becoming associated with sushi, thanks to Japanese hot spot Hidden Omakase (discernible only by a window display of comic books indicating you’ve arrived at the right spot) and its sister concept Sushi by Hidden (which diners enter through a door concealed behind a large painting in a small NFT art gallery).

The latter is led by chef Jimmy Kieu and a rotating crew of chefs from Hidden Omakase, who guide 10 guests through each 45-minute sushi tasting consisting of 13 hand-selected pieces of the day’s best catches during dinner service. For a mere $75 a person, it’s one of the best bargains in town and a quick way to get an omakase fix. And since sushi is our new currency, so to speak, this is a sign that it can be great in Houston at any price along the scale.

Seafood restaurants have made a big resurgence in the Bayou City this year, and one of the standouts comes from none other than the prolific Pappas restaurant empire.

Their chef-driven concept in Montrose is led by seasoned California chef Jason Ryczek and shines a spotlight on fresh catches from the Texas Gulf Coast. That, of course, includes sweet Gulf stone crabs, wild-caught Gulf shrimp, and famous Texas redfish served with Castelvetrano olive salsa verde. For an extra special treat, order Little’s white sturgeon caviar service, impressively harvested by Ryczek himself. Ryczek understands that being a great seafood town means embracing our local bounty.

Veteran chef Terrence Gallivan last graced Houston diners with his acclaimed cuisine at the much-beloved and equally missed Pass & Provisions. Thankfully for everyone, Gallivan returned this year with this homey neighborhood pizzeria and crudo bar — housed in a vintage bungalow — lovingly named for his children, Eleanor and Ronan.

So, why pizza and crudo? Perhaps the better question is, why not? Most people love a well-made, fresh-from-the-oven pie, especially one with thoughtfully paired ingredients and a perfectly charred, crisp crust. (A prime example: the velvety mortadella pizza with pistachio pesto, balsamic onions, and Parmesan.) And what’s not to like about a beautifully light and refreshing crudo? (The smoked kampachi with shiso, pumpkin seeds, and yuzu chile paste is a must.) Sounds like an irresistible combo to us, and one we expect might be replicated before too long.

In a city as multicultural as this one, some of the most compelling meals come from the marrying of different cuisines into cohesive, thrilling new flavors. We’ve seen it done impeccably with fusion fare such as Viet-Cajun, Viet-Tex, Chinese Puerto Rican, Japanese Peruvian, and more recently Tex-Indian. With Jun, which debuted to much fanfare earlier this year, chefs Evelyn Garcia (who grew up in Houston in a Mexican-Salvadoran household) and Henry Lu (who hails from a first-generation Chinese American home in the Bronx) continue to push those boundaries as they celebrate their diverse backgrounds, channeling their exploration into what they describe as “new Asian American.”

Before opening their brick-and-mortar spot in the Heights, the business partners had built up a loyal customer base through their catering business, monthly tasting menu pop-up dinners, and farmers market booths. You may also recognize Garcia from the Houston edition of “Top Chef,” which aired in 2022, and on which she was a finalist. Dining at Jun, guests can expect inventive dishes like oysters topped with fermented mango, pickled butter, and mignonette; fried chicken marinated in fermented shrimp paste, ginger, Thai chile, and herbs; and cornbread served with berries, duck-fat butter, and Thai basil–key lime gelato for dessert.

Call 832-469-7664 for more info.

When it comes to seasonal reinventions, arguably no one is more fully committed than Goodnight Hospitality partner and chef Felipe Riccio and his team at March, who close down the dining room for a one-month break each quarter to immerse themselves in researching whichever part of the Mediterranean they plan to explore next.

The resulting menus thus far (which have taken diners from Northwest Africa and Andalusia, Spain, to Greece and Italy) have been absolute triumphs as the dishes regale our taste buds with the region’s gastronomic history. The last date of service for the current Sicily journey is Dec. 31, but not to worry if you miss it: All signs point to the next destination being just as exciting. And that change-up demonstrates why March itself is a legit dining phenomenon.

This little mom and pop Lao-Thai restaurant is by no means new, but it is representative of the city’s current (and completely valid) obsession with the bold flavors of Laos and Thailand. Tucked away in a small shopping strip in North Houston, this cozy spot offers all of the staples: savory noodle dishes stir-fried with a jumble of vegetables and your choice of protein; spicy, rich curries to warm your insides; and well-balanced sweet and sour seafood soups, among other dishes.

But the real stars? That would be the umami-laden Thai boat noodle soup with tender slices of beef swimming in either dark or light broth, and thin or thick noodles. And the cooling papaya salad served in tangy-spicy vinaigrette. And definitely the nam khao, a crispy rice salad that’s been enlivened with red curry, deep fried, and served with peanuts and fresh lettuce to wrap it in. Pro tip: Keep the heat level at or below two if you’re sensitive to spice.

Call 281-630-1319 for more info.

Chef and owner Aaron Bludorn came to Houston by way of New York City, but you’d think he was a born-and-bred Houstonian with the way the city has embraced him as its own. That just speaks to the influence his eponymous restaurant has had on the city’s dining scene since it debuted in August 2020.

Here, luxurious lobster pot pie and truffle-topped spaghetti regularly commingle with fried chicken dinner nights and fried chicken sandwich pop-ups. (What’s not to love about that?) Moreover, the fact that the restaurant frequently collaborates with other Texas chefs (Truth BBQ’s Leonard Botello IV and Burger Bodega’s Abbas Dhanani among them) only endears Bludorn to us more — and explains why his restaurant has become another mainstay of Houston dining in just a couple of years.