Alison Cook

Fire-grilled shrimp on the half-shell at Baso Technique is (almost) everything when it comes to these unconventional shrimp at Baso, the young Basque-inspired restaurant in the Heights. The wild-caught shellfish are stored at freezer temps so they won’t overcook while they’re shaken over the wood coals, so they emerge juicy and immediate under their coating of powdered chile and garlic. If you’ve ever wondered what it woud be like to crunch up the shrimp heads, shells and all, try it and marvel…

The Google listing for the original Nickel City on Austin’s east side describes it thus: “Retro watering hole with craft cocktails & a laid-back attitude plus coney dog food truck.” Prowl a little more, and you’ll run into acres of copy about instant-dive-bar decor and the owners’ Detroit and Buffalo roots. Two of them are Brandon and Zane Hunt, the brothers behind Austin’s Detroit-style Via 313 pizza, an outpost of which opened in Memorial just before our version of Nickel City. A third partne…

Yes, chef Anthony Calleo has a gold tooth. The metal glints at the upper left corner of his wolfish grin, and the idea of him swapping it out for cosmetic veneers is laughable. It’s part of the piratical, pizza-ninja image he has cultivated since he began dealing outlandishly delicious pies out of a truck parked in front of Catbirds, a storied dive bar near the Westheimer Curve. GUIDE: Houston’s best pizza Twelve years on from Calleo’s food-truck beginnings comes his eponymous, mostly takeout…

Some restaurants take up residence in my head. Auden, the stylish, vegetable-forward spot in the hopping Autry Park mixed-use development, is one of those establishments I can’t stop thinking about. The details of a riveting Chicken 65 variant keep replaying: the evanescent rice-flour crust of the fried morsels; the bright, controlled red-peppery punch of the sambal marinade; the crunch of sesame seeds; the sharp mustard-seed pop; the herbal twang of flash-fried curry leaf snaking through. High-…

“This feels like Friday night!” exclaimed my dinner guest at Rumi’s Kitchen, the upscale Persian spot new to the upper reaches of the Galleria/Post Oak axis. It was Monday, hardly the most festive evening on which to take the measure of a restaurant. But she was right. The monumental scale of this moody, glamorous space; the sophisticated lighting and glimmering, reflective surfaces; the quiet buzz of the well-dressed international crowd all made the room feel, as my friend noted delightedly, Fr…

Houston Fridays during Lent just seem to call for fried catfish. In the Midwest, they’d be obsessing about walleye, lake perch or cod today, but catfish is the Friday fish-fry king across our swath of the South. Which brought me to the northwest hinterland of Cypress recently and the fetchingly named Orange Lee’s PoBoys & Wings. The first thing you see when you step inside the little Creole/soul sandwich shop is a queenly, eye-popping selfie niche: two tall leather thrones set against a wall of…

“For 20 days, we have the busiest restaurant in Texas,” said prolific Houston restaurateur Ben Berg. Dressed in a safari-style jacket, black jeans, black cowboy boots and a well-pressed pink shirt, Berg stood beneath the tented ceiling of his rodeo pop-up, the Ranch Saloon & Steakhouse — 16,000 square feet of climate-controlled Wild West fantasyland. He sounded proud and slightly disbelieving. On day two of the restaurant’s brief life in 2024, he had 1,200 seats booked for both Friday and Satur…

Super-good news for barbecue fans and for residents of the Near East End: Brilliant pitmaster Willow Villarreal and his talented partner, Jasmine Barela, are planning for a brick-and-mortar project on McKinney in the new year. The couple has a letter of intent with Romulus Development — the firm headed by architect Tim Cisneros and his son, David — who are developing the site. The Cisneroses have already placed a bright red Southern Pacific caboose on the Eastwood property, where Bravery Chef Ha…

When Chicago-based food journalist Steve Dolinsky messaged to say he’d be in Houston a few weeks back, I immediately suggested we check out Nonno’s. After all, Esquire magazine had just named chef Martin Stayer’s new spot the “Pizza Joint of the Year” in its annual Best New American Restaurants issue. Better yet, Nonno’s serves Chicago tavern-style pies, one of Dolinsky’s abiding passions. Indeed, he told me as we waited to be seated at Nonno’s — which is walk-ins only — he is convinced that ta…

“Delicious” is a word I might use two or three times a year in conversation — like “tasty,” it’s a flabby descriptor I avoid. So I was amused that I kept blurting out, “This is delicious!” during my first visit to Josephine’s, the new Midtown restaurant on the busy corner where Izakaya once held forth. Dish after dish made me say it. The chicken and andouille gumbo, its dark mahogany roux tilting to the brothy rather than the viscous side, a boon to the cool-weather diner. The astonishing fried…