Flavor Boulevard

A couple of millimeters thin, chewy, savory, bánh bèo, the waterfern-shaped appetizer, is as familiar to the Vietnamese dining tables as crab cakes to Americans. But not everyone makes it at home because it takes more time than its worth: make the rice flour batter, steam the banh, make the toppings, mix the fish sauce. In fact, I’ve had homemade bánh bèo only once, and it was at my friend’s family restaurant. That said, there are skilled and dedicated grandmas who insist on making everything from scratch for the best bánh bèo. One of them is Mrs. Tự, and Little Mom happened to see one episode of her cooking show on TV last week.

So below are some tips on bánh bèo from Mrs Tự, collected from the show Nghệ Thuật Nấu Ăn Bà Tự (The Cooking Arts of Mrs Tự) on Global TV Houston.

1. Texture:
The thinner bánh bèo is the better bánh bèo. Of course, resilience is a must, it should not be as chewy as a mochi, but it should have enough strength to hold itself together as the eater picks it up with chopsticks. How to make a thin but resilient bánh bèo? Heat the bánh bèo plates (or molds)* in the steamer before pouring in the batter and steaming the bánh. I suspect that this preheating helps cook the batter evenly in all directions, instead of having the bottom cold and cooking it with steam from only the top surface during the first few moments.

2. Toppings:
Bánh bèo of the South has savory mung bean paste for topping, and bánh bèo Huế usually has pan-dried shrimp (tôm chấy), which blogger Tran Ngoc Kha translated as cotton shrimp for its fluffy texture. Fresh shrimp** (with head, legs, shell, everything) goes without saying: while peeling off the shell, you can keep the gạch, a substance located in the head of the shrimp that becomes reddish orange when cooked, to sweeten and fatten the toppings***. How to make the shrimps dry and fluffy? Microwave the peeled shrimps so that the meat is red, plump, and has a spring to it. Then pound the shrimps to break up the bodies, but not to a paste. And fry it on high heat with constant shuffling.

But bánh bèo can also be topped with pork rind. To make the pork rind, Mrs. Tự would slice the skin off the pork belly, boil it, cut into thin strips, refrigerate them, and finally deep fry them. The refrigerating step prevents the fat from shooting everywhere while frying. How to tell when the skin is refrigerated long enough? If you bend the strip and it gives a loud, clean snap, it’s done.

Then there is also topping made with bean paste, meat and tapioca, seen on bánh bèo in Quảng Nam Đà Nẵng. The better tapioca flour (bột năng) is not the white powder straight from the bag, but that which is pan-dried to really rid of moisture. How to know when the flour is dry enough? Mrs. Tự puts either a pandan leaf or a piece of a banana leaf into the wok as she constantly stirs the flour, the heat from the flour vaporizes the moisture in the leaf, when the leaf dries up and becomes crunchy, the flour is done.

(*) Bánh bèo should be made in mini shallow cups (like sauce cups) made of porcelain. The molds are convenient but render a metallic taste, the bánh bèo would be too thick and oily because the molds have to be greased before steaming.
(**) Some places serve up bánh bèo tôm chấy with packaged dried shrimp (tôm khô). Never go there.
(***) Crabs have more gạch than shrimps, so gạch cua (gạch from crabs) is more well-known in Vietnamese cooking. In Japanese, gạch cua is indeed kanimiso, the brownish grey substance that is a mix of the crab’s internal organs (brain, liver, pancreas, intestine, eggs, etc.). Good stuff. 🙂

If you’re a student, you know the significance of frozen pizza. It comes only second to instant noodles, i.e., packaged ramen, and on some days I might even argue that it’s better than instant noodles in terms of efficiency. There are three sections that I always check when I go to the groceries: the noodles, the ice cream, and the frozen pizza. Yesterday when I first learned of Annie’s, I went to their website and found out that Berkeley Bowl carries their product, so I’ll be looking for it, but if you’re in Houston and got some time to kill this weekend, why not beat me to a slice of “the first-ever-certified organic rising crust frozen pizza”?

Annie’s will hold their “Slice of Happiness” tour during lunch hours at four Whole Food locations from this Friday to next Monday: 4004 Bellaire Blvd – Friday, March 23 (11 am – 2 pm), 11145 Westheimer Road – Saturday, March 24 (10 am – 1 pm), 701 Waugh Drive – Sunday, March 25 (10 am – 1 pm), and 2955 Kirby Drive – Monday, March 26 (11 am – 2 pm).

The tour will feature their recent February-launched pizzas in four flavors.

The most interesting thing of the tour, though, is the Truck Farm, an herb garden in the bed of a pickup truck. Finally, a good use of the space that’s hardly ever used but consumes a lot of energy. It actually seems quite feasible to implement in every household if the garden could be set on a removable platform, so you can leave it in your garage for a day in case you actually need the truck bed to move furniture or your garden hose.

Anyway, that got me thinking about the food truck trend in my neck of the wood, Houston. This May 12-13 will see the second annual Haute Wheels. From the list of participating trucks, it appears to have, as expected, a fair amount of mixing between Asian and Southern cooking, with lotsa meat (of course, that’s how Houston rolls), but pretty much everything is comfort food. Nothing too out there. I wouldn’t expect vanilla ice cream topped with mealworm. But that’s actually good: food trucks weren’t created to carry crazy foods or culinary inventions, they were meant for specific comfort food mastered by vendors to satiate the common people’s palate. They shouldn’t be strange. They just have to taste excellent.

A while ago, I was fairly convinced that of all the different types of spiciness, I can handle the Korean spiciness. Take kimchi for instance, it usually looks scarier than it tastes, and the scorching can be quickly washed away with corn tea. Not an eye was bat when I saw the garnet broth of Il Me Jeong‘s specialty. It’s just loads of shredded beef, sesame leaf, glass noodle, green onions, etc., in a thin soup. Then tears rained down.

No more yuk gae jang (육개장) for Mai. Ever.

Il Mi Jeong has good unagi don and bossam though. 😉 Go for those instead.

Address: Il Mi Jeong (or Il Mi Jung)
10017 Long Point Road
Houston, TX 77055
(713) 827-8808

Like with most Asian eating establishments, it’s virtually impossible to answer the question “what is the best Vietnamese restaurant in [name of city]?” Let me stay there for about half a year, and I can tell you where to get the best pho, the best cha gio, the best bun thit nuong, the best banh mi, but not the best Vietnamese. Assuming you would agree that I can’t compare a place that specializes in noodle to another that specializes in beef, I would admit: I don’t know what you mean by “the best Vietnamese”. Do you mean everything on the menu is the best of its kind? Everything is good? Everything is cheap and good? Everything is cheap and good and the service is the best? Everything is cheap and good, the service is good, and the ambiance is the best? You see, there are more variables in your generic question than I could possibly control with my subjectivity. And that is not to consider the possibility of you asking that question just because I’m Vietnamese, which doesn’t bother me at all, but I’m usually not sure of how much detail you’d like to receive. (I’ve included the preferred question at the end of this post.)

That said, if you ask me, what is the best Vietnamese restaurant in Houston, which I take that you’ve given me the full freedom to interpret your meaning and exert my subjectivity, I’d say Banh Cuon Hoa. Why? Because they serve the best of my favorite Vietnamese dish, and as I’ve discovered, the “best Vietnamese” shops are those with the best steamed rolls. Steamed rolls are hard to get right, so when they get them right, everything else they have is good. 😉

The flour skin is super thin, cool but not sour, and not oily. The pork-and-mushroom stuffing is well seasoned, not too much to bore, and not too little to bore. This banh cuon is better than banh cuon from Tay Ho’s. Ask any Vietnamese person, and they’d agree that that statement is not to be precariously thrown around unless the banh cuon is very good.

The mi Quang tastes as good as it looks (the yellow noodle). So does the bun chao tom tau hu ky, a shrimp and tofu variant of bun thit nuong. The price? Students can afford this.

Address: Banh Cuon Hoa
11106 Veterans Memorial Dr
Houston, TX 77067
(281) 820-3388

They have another business near Hong Kong Market IV: Banh Cuon Hoa II, but this Hoa is not as good as its sister shop.
Anyway, the question I usually ask my friends is: “Where do you usually go for [type of food]?”

The 7-year-old Antica Osteria is much too young to be one of “the nurseries of our legislators”, but it sure feels like one: warm brick walls, dark wood work, an old house nested in the green, sleepy residential area northwest of Rice University, and a patronage mainly composed of old white men. The smell of books might have been replaced by the smell of pasta and cheese (this place was previously a bookstore), but Chef Velio Deplano and his partner Ray Memari have kept Antica Osteria in that hidden, rustic, peaceful feeling of a bookstore. The gentle orange light made me excited like a drifting sailor seeing a lighthouse.

Normal bread and butter, not bread, vinegar and oil, accompanied our post-ordering conversation, followed by some airy garlic bread. A tiny voice in some little corner in my mind whispered that the garlic bread was waiting for the salad to travel down the pipe, but who could resist such beautiful orange color. We made sure that the garlic bread’s presence on the table was as fleeting as its texture. 😉

The insalata campagnola was great by itself anyway. The buffalo mozzarella, plain with a nutty lightness of marshmallow, deems superior to mozzarella from cow milk. I grew up hearing that water buffalo meat is leaner and “whiter” than beef (as in white meat vs. red meat, no racist joke here), so I was appalled to learn that water buffalo milk is much richer (higher levels of protein, fat, and minerals) than cow milk. (To produce 1 kg of cheese, 5 kg of water buffalo milk is needed versus 8 kg of cow milk.) The richness really doesn’t show in this cheese ball though, it’s like eating air.

I guess Varun didn’t feel particularly adventurous that day, as if one could ever be adventurous in an Italian restaurant, seeing that he got grilled salmon. As long as he’s happy…

I got petto d’anatra al pepe nero (black pepper pan-fried duck). It’s good, but again, not adventurous either.

The most exciting thing of the night was Aaron’s choice, also a special del giorno: cappellini aragosta, or angel hair pasta with lobster. Not that it was anything few people dare to eat, but the battle between Aaron and the lobster tail was captivating. Battle Aragosta. I can imagine directing a dinner date scene where the heroine of my movie has such trouble eating lobster and the guy finds it both uncouth and endearing at the same time. 😀 That said, I never order lobster.

Address: Antica Osteria
2311 Bissonnet
Houston, TX 77005
(713) 521-1155

Dinner for three: $95.26

Every year just after the winter holiday hustle and bustle, Mom and Dad let me choose a restaurant for my early birthday dinner. Last year it was Martin’s Place for barbecue. Dad never tells me no, but let’s just say that Mom didn’t feel too confident of my aesthetics since then. This year she gently insists on French. But I manage to sneak in a twist of Texas. 😉

After all, Chef Philippe Schmit dubbed himself the French Cowboy. His two-story Philippe Restaurant & Lounge opened last February just a mile north of The Galleria. Looking out to the Houston’s limitless horizon, the second-floor dining room is bathed in a warm chocolate hue of the furniture, accented with soft vanilla light and word decorations made of Chef Schmit’s quotes in watermelon red. In contrast, the menu is bold, extensive, spanning from Texas BBQ and cactus to foie gras and fish pâté, from the classic croque monsieur to the carefree duck confit tamales; there’s a little something for everyone.

“The Moroccan”, beef tartare with raisin, almond and the Tunisian hot sauce harrisa served with flat bread, rings amazingly close to Mexican flavors.

The roasted duck magret is drowned in a rich clementine-Cognac sauce and accompanied by one crispy fried duck confit ravioli on a lustrous carrot flan.

The four monkfish medallions topped with sun-dried tomato tapenade are pleasing. Although their texture errs on the dry side, the supple artichoke confit makes a fine complement.

The most pleasant surprise must be the garlic-butter escargots, listed among the “contained decadence”, served in a jar with airy brioche toast on the side. On one hand, my Vietnamese friends have chastised me many times for not having eaten snails ever; on the other hand, Little Mom isn’t a snail advocate. Today, the snails win. In Mom’s words: these snails have the fragrance of the roots of rice plants, the earthy but comforting hint of mud and grass. To me, they’re like chubby shiitake smothered in fennel puree and a “tipsy mushroom” paste. It’s a good first impression.

And finally, the deciding factor in my choice of restaurants: the desserts.

A smooth tonka bean creme brulee. The lime scent in the chantilly is a bit too faint for me, and the liqueur taste in the griottines is a bit too strong that I almost felt drunk (guess I’m not cut out for Western alcohol); besides, I’ve never fancied whipped cream and candied cherries. But Little Mom likes this one. And I like that there are three cherries for our family of three bears. 😀

The second dessert, plated like the setting sun on a mountain range, is much richer than the first, as it’s whimsically named the “Texas Millionaires tart”. Decadent chocolate and lace cookies are tempered by the super sour grapefruit. To top it off, the jasmine ice cream is a sweet lullaby.

As we get to the desserts, the dinner rush starts, the patrons fill the room, but the atmosphere remains easy. A waiter, tall and slouching, whose bushy Abraham Lincoln’s goatee makes him look like a toothbrush, leisurely takes a gander into the bright night cityscape. Through the voluptuous portions and the rich sauces, Philippe the Restaurant embodies Houston: bountiful, down-to-earth, wittily romantic. And above all, it is wholeheartedly welcoming.

Address: Philippe Restaurant and Lounge
1800 Post Oak Blvd, Suite 6110
Houston, TX 77056
(713) 439-1000
www.philippehouston.com

Last night I was reading this manga, Oishii Kankei (“Delicious Relationship”), and two things there reminded me of my family: a family of three who love to eat out and explore new restaurants, and the girl who can’t cook (but she has a better sense of taste than me, it’s a story after all ;-)). I also got reminded of a ton of Japanese food, although the main plot revolves around French cuisine and a fictional restaurant in Tokyo called Petit Lapin (“Little Rabbit”). I’ve been in the mood for something comforting, and Little Mom wants to have some Japanese food that isn’t sushi, so we decided on Kata Robata for our Christmas Eve. Actually Oanh recommended this place to me just before my flight to Houston, and I trust her when it comes to the Land of the Rising Sun. My dad’s opinion today? He had to come whether he wanted to or not. That’s Beauty #27 of a family of three: odd number makes decisions come easy. 😉

Thank goodness, he liked it here. Or should I say, he *loved* the kakuni don.

The rice, wet with the runny yolk of a 60-degree soft-boiled, was aptly seasoned by the rich sauce of the sweetly soy-braised slow-cooked pork belly (kakuni). The kakuni was a tad too fatty, but the seasoning strikes home just right. Little Mom fancied the juicy shiitake, and Mai the crunchy pickled radish. A little something for everyone makes the don truly comfort food.

The cold plate. At first they hesitated (Vietnamese don’t like things raw), but the American Kobe beef carpaccio charmed The Parents at first bite. They said it’s the thinness of the slices, whose texture reminded me of salmon sashimi, but I think it’s the olive oil dressing and the yuzu juice.

The yakitori, too, was surprisingly fish-like in texture. But yakitori is yakitori, nothing you can’t make at home.

Brought forth at the same time with the yakitori was the fois gras and unagi. At first I was debating between this and the miso-crusted bone marrow, but Little Mom, an eel fan, cast her vote on the former, which also has bone marrow, in powder form. The accompanying pickled apple and the huckleberry sauce were more high school cheerleaders than Broadway stars. That big fat slab of foie gras needed some searing and slicing to pair with the delicate unagi. But the bone marrow powder was rather perfect: it had the salty richness of katsuobushi, the creamy innocence of feta cheese, and the fluffy, melting texture of snow.

The starter didn’t arrive until almost the end (it would have been the end if we didn’t also order a shoyu ramen). But it was well worth the wait. Little Mom placed this uni chawanmushi top of tonight’s dinner mainly for its yuzu egg custard and ginkgo nuts. The chicken and shrimp bits were not too necessary, but the uni was fresh.

And a bowl of noodle soup to wash everything down. The broth erred on the salty side but the charsiu pork was perfect. No menma (bamboo shoot), and the noodles were more straight than curly. It’s a hearty bowl and just fatty enough to make Dad happy. 😉

For dessert, our host tried to lure us into either a fancy chocolate roll (with coffee cream, red bean puree and lemon gel) or a liquid-nitrogened white chocolate namelaka (with green tea streusel and huckleberry curd), but I insisted on the December 24 special: black sesame panna cotta, topped with mango sorbet, candied sesame, sesame soil, and ginger foam. I’ve never had any bad sesame treats, and this springy, fragrant, sweet but mild one is another triumph. The mango sorbet is bit tart like a puffy porcupine: it’s from a real fresh mango (yes, as opposed to a fake one).

I think we’ve done pretty well covering all bases: rice, noodle, seafood, chicken, pork, beef, from street to posh, from East to West. What does this dinner have to do with Oishii Kankei? Nothing. I just wanted to mention a manga worth reading for food fans.
How many stars for this restaurant? Like Imamura-san said about Petit Lapin: One. The food is good. 🙂

Address: Kata Robata
3600 Kirby Dr. Suite H
Houston, TX 77098
(713) 526-8858

The damage: dinner for 3 – $84.44

Great Khan is big, clean, American-looking, and in Houston. Little Mom took me here. It’s an ideal place to get glutton and gain some weight, that probably was her intention for me. The idea is splendid: ~$8 for the first bowl, which includes a small bowl of meat, a small bowl of vegetables, rice or noodle of choice (or both), and an extra $2 for unlimited extra food if you’re still hungry. The “wok” masters gather at the big grilling platform in the middle (no wok), waiting for you to hand over what you think would constitute the best bowl of Mongolian grill. Confronted by rows of shining vegetables and meats and a dozen kinds of sauces, you’re tempted to pile and press as many different things as possible into the little bowls. Over the years, I’ve had my share of stirfries (a Mongolian grill is really a stirfry). To put it more bluntly, I’m Vietnamese, I know stirfries. Truth is, a good stirfry is a simple stirfry.

0. The starch: choose thin rice vermicelli
That stuff soaks up the sauce the best and meshes well with other things texturally. Thick noodle would be too bland and oily. Rice would be too crumbly.

1. The meat: choose pork.
If you’re vegan, don’t choose tofu. In my last post I claimed tofu was the coolest of the cools, but in a stirfry, the tofu can never soak in enough sauce for the life of it.
Fish is a no-no.
Chicken is too dry. Beef is too tough.
Shrimp and squid: okay.
If you don’t eat pork, you might as well be vegan.

2. The vegetables: get pineapple.
Pineapple isn’t a vegetable, but the point is it’s good. It’s the best thing in stirfries. I’d forsake the pork for the pineapple. Its tart sweetness enlivens the taste buds, its juice keeps the rice and the noodle moist, its acidity tenderizes the meat.
Don’t get: broccoli (takes up too much room of your specious little bowls), waterchesnut, snap pea, carrot (too crunchy, discordant texture), mushroom (too chewy), beansprout (too long and stringy), tomato (pretty, but good for nothing)
Do get: sweet onion, potato, garlic, bokchoy

3. The sauce: choose anything with soy and garlic.
A stirfry is no stirfry without garlic. Avoid the sweet and sour, it tastes artificial. If you got pineapple, you got the sweet-and-sour part covered.

When our hostess brought the bowl, all steamy and tossed and glistering with flavors, I smirked in my head: meh, I’ll definitely have to go for seconds. But the seconds never got to see the light of day, because after one such serving I only had room for one thing: more grill, or dessert, and dessert won.

4. Dessert: get the coconut sorbet with coconut shaving. It’s heaven in a coconut shell.

Address: Great Khan Mongolian Grill
2150 South Highway 6 #200
Houston, TX 77077
(281) 531-1122
Lunch for three: $32.39

Unpredictability #1: “Are you opened today?”
Before you set your GPS to Myung Dong in Houston, make sure you call and ask that question in the clearest, simplest way possible. Aaron tried different versions, most were a bit too elaborately polite with a perfect American accent, and only succeeded in confusing the poor old man. I tried it once and got the answer “Yes, open.” We hopped en route.

(If you don’t call, there’s a slim chance that your schedule will coincide with the owner couple’s schedule, which depends on the lady’s health, and she’s the only chef. That slim chance didn’t happen for me the first time I set out for Myung Dong.) The limited English conversation is nothing uncommon at Korean and Vietnamese mom-and-pop diners, but I have to mention it because it’s one of those things that make me classify Myung Dong as more “authentic” than the other Korean restaurants in Houston. The second thing is that its name doesn’t contain “Seoul” or “Korean”, they go more local: Myungdong (명동) is a part of Seoul (in Vietnam, its equivalent would be a phường). The third thing is that its name contains its specialty: kalguksu (칼국수). In fact, that’s the only part of the name still visible on the sign, the Myungdong part has faded completely, which explains why we couldn’t find it the first time (aside from the other fact that we couldn’t read Korean at the time)*.

Of course we ordered it. It was the first kalguksu I’ve ever had. It’s a handmade, knife-cut noodle in soup, and this version has only noodle, broth, and vegetables. The broth was sweet and deep, the noodles were wonderfully chewy. But kalguksu is like fireworks, the first two minutes are great, then you ask yourself “just when is it gonna end?”. Now that I’ve had kalguksu, unless I get a two-minute-size bowl, I doubt I will gather enough curiosity for a second kalguksu in my life**.

But kalguksu was still a memorable thing. In my Commis post I went off on the memorability of meals, and here I go again. Myungdong has something worth remembering: the portion (Unpredictability #2). Aaron and I each ordered a dish, him the kimchi duaeji bokkeum (김치 돼지 볶음, stir-fried pork with kimchi) and me the kalguksu, and we decided to share a pajeon (it was a really good pajeon too, thick, crispy, airy, and chewy, oh, and not oily). The usual banchans came. We were both starving like baby goats. Then the big stuff came, covering the whole table. A diligent hour later, in Aaron’s words, “it looks like we hadn’t eaten anything at all”. We looked at the old man with hopeful eyes, for boxes. Many boxes. Also in Aaron’s words, “he’s quietly laughing at us: gotcha, foreigners, didn’t know what you were getting into, did you”. He did laugh with us, a very congenial laugh of old men, as he poured the goods into the containers and loaded the containers into a cardboard box. Aaron had enough food for the next week. And Aaron is no timid diner.

Address: Myung Dong Kalguksu
6415 Bissonnet St
Houston, TX 77074
(713) 779-5530

Dinner for so many more than two: $50. See Menu pages 1 and 2.

(*) It’s a neon green one-story house with no door sign. Very noticeable. If in doubt, ask the people in the same parking lot, they’ll confirm “The Chinese restaurant? Yes, that’s it there!”
(**) This is why I didn’t get kalguksu at To Hyang, although it’s one of their recommended’s. In a few ways, such as the homemade kimchis on the table, Myung Dong is similar to To Hyang. When my Korean is better, I’ll ask them if they grow herbs in the back too.

There is this quote of Anton Ego that I heard again tonight and is still ringing in my head: “In many ways, the word of a critic is easy. We risk very little, yet enjoy a position over those who offer their works and their selves to our judgment.” That is true: the critic (or the self-proclaimed critic, aka the food blogger) goes to a restaurant, eats the food, and writes about the food with respect to his expectation of what it should be. The expectation usually comes from a long list of preset rules that he goes through with check marks and x’s: beef is tender, vegetables are crisp, bread is crusty, truffles are included, lobsters were kicking the tank minutes before they turn red. But every so often, his expectation might come from friends’ recommendations. The judgment then includes not only the subjected restaurant or dish, it also indirectly includes the friend’s credibility. Whatever the (self-proclaimed) critic puts down in writing, be it positive or negative, he risks a part of his friend’s and his own credibility in his friend’s eyes, which is not a “very little” thing.

As such, I feel like tiptoeing with my words tonight. Der Miller has recommended Ruggles since last year and I was looking forward to their coconut crusted shrimps, but they only open for dinner. With 4 hours to go until dinner time, we swung by Ruggle Greens, where der Miller attested to be basically the same as its dinner sister, only more downtown-lunchy. It has take-outs.

The parking lot was packed. If we are to judge a restaurant by its number of patrons, Ruggles Green has no fear. If we are to judge it by price per fillingness, from this Berkeley-trained student’s perspective, Ruggle Greens is quite reasonable. I was full after an appetizer and half a dessert. Der Miller was full after two thirds of an appetizer and half a dessert, which kinda made me question my appetite. 😛

The hempenadas (hemp–empanadas?) ($9) were mealy, as expected of a hemp-and-wheat coat and a crowded filling of hemp seeds, raisins, beef, cheddar, and mozzarella.

The crab cake ($14), as der Miller put, was “bready”, but softened by its accompanying roasted tomato butter sauce. I’ve always liked the mini crab cakes that you can put all at once in your mouth like a sesame ball, break through the rough crunchiness into the sweet shredded meat, and repeat. I missed that with this Ruggles Green’s solo gargantuan version.

The bread pudding ($7), unlike the crab cake, didn’t have much “bread”. Coupled with a melting chocolate lace and vanilla ice cream, it sure was as warm, gooey, and chocolatey as puddings ought to be.

How would I rank Ruggles Green? Der Miller said that I’m a difficult eater, but he is one himself. His eyes showed neither approval nor disapproval of the food that day. For me, it is pleasant to see that the Houstonians are embracing the green fashion of today’s cookery, and that the Houstonian restauranteurs are making it a casual, affordable affair instead of some hippie hipster thing, which it isn’t. Although I don’t remember seeing any bamboo hats, I like that they show you how to stop junk mail. 🙂

Next time, I’ll go to Ruggles.

Address: Ruggles Green in River Oaks
2311 West Alabama, Suite C
Houston, Texas 77098
(713) 533-0777
www.rugglesgreen.com

*Bread pudding pictures credit: Jason Miller