Weekend in Houston

[maxwellh]

<<Wrote this to someone checking up on my long weekend, so I thought I'd just post it here for others to read>>

Our stay was good, though unfortunately, I spent the majority of my time working. I'm a corporate chef for XXXXX. We have a massive showing at the Southwest restaurant show there. My food experiences were mostly missing entirely from the picture. In four days, I only ate in three restaurants, and in only two of these did I have any say in the matter.

Upon arrival we were able to go to Yum Yum Cha Cafe, which turned out to be pretty good dim sum to order. It's over in Rice Village, if you haven't been over there, it makes a nice lunch. The bao are especially quality, as are the little flat chive and shrimp dumplings.

First night was t'afia, for the second time this year. I enjoyed the food more than last time: very clean and precise flavors with minimal manipulation (not that there's anything wrong with manipulation!!) I really find Chef Pope's current style to be truly Alice-Waters-like, which I suppose is going a bit out of favor at the moment, but it happens to coincide with what I'm currently in the mood for. Big problem with t'afia is the service which always means well, but frequently fails to execute. Re-silvering the tables is a constant concern--delivery of beverage tends to drag. Servers have too many tables, and there is almost non-existence of bussers/backwaits. I seriously considered writing Chef Pope a letter to ask her to get out in the dining room and look at the service. The food, for that style is nearly perfect, but the service is not up to snuff. Period.

Second night, I was forced to eat at Sambuca--a pre-arranged meal with my entire company present (perhaps not all, but at least 30 of them). Food was very mediocre. But you probably knew that already. The only highlight was the server bringing over a bottle of Grand Marnier immediately after serving coffee and asking if I preferred it doctored. After a so-so meal, and when hanging with a group that I don't really want to be with for long periods of time, yes sir: please doctor it thoroughly.

Third night, I got overruled for dinner (I would have been happy to try Gravitas, Shade, or--my personal wish--Dolce Vita, which sounds really great.) Instead, a member of our group demanded that we go to Yao's over at Westheimer and Gessner. A long drive from the Four Seasons for sure, and not really what I wanted, but I'm still fairly new, and I'm trying to make a good part-of-the-team impression, so I felt obligated to go. Well, we ended up having a good time. The food was better than I expected, and had some actual semi-authentic dishes (at least according to a Chinese member of our team). The company also turned out to be better than expected, so it didn't totally suck.

So that's about it, looks like next time we can make it happen, my wife and I will come down for a night or two just to eat and hang out. I promise we will be making a trip to laidback manor and Dolce Vita on that trip!!

[jscarbor]

Wow! You sure are a good sport. I would have ditched the crowd and headed to DV for sure. I mean Yao's?! Thats a little on the wierd side for someone to demand to eat there when they are downtown?

Edited June 30, 2006 by jscarbor (log)

[Kent Wang]

Yao's is one of the worst restaurants I've been to in Houston. It's barely authentic with all these bizarre Western influences and priced way above what it's worth. I'm sure they get plenty of business from the name, though.

[Bill Miller]

I like Sambuca.

[maxwellh]

We have a Chinese man in my department, and he had heard that Yao's was good. Again, I'm fairly new at this place, and on a prior trip, I was accused of not acting as "part of the team," so I was trying to make up for this with being in general a good sport--hence, why I didn't ditch.

As far as authenticity, I am not Chinese, nor have I ever been to China, but my Chinese co-worker said that there were some things that had a some authenticity to them, as well as plenty of things that were very standard American Chinese restaurant fare. A couple of the "authentic" parts which I enjoyed to one extent or another included a shredded chicken and cucumber appetizer, an interesting duck and "tofu-skin" bar of sorts, a pork belly and tofu entree, and a couple of giant braised pork meatballs. As far as pricing, most of the entrees were around $10 each. Maybe a little pricey for a standard Chinese restaurant, but I didn't think that they were way out of line. All of the Western influences I thought were absolutely necessary to survive in the neighborhood in which it was located. In a sentence: it was better than I had expected, but I obviously would have preferred to go elsewhere.

Sambuca? It isn't horrible; it's just very very mediocre. To be fair though, I was there in a private dining area with a 50-person group and a limited menu. It wasn't the worst meal I've ever had, but it was far from the best. It just was what it was. I doubt I would be back.

The good thing that's come of this is that it has made me want to go back and spend a weekend there sometime in the near future. I think my restaurant choices would be Dolce Vita, Gravitas and laidback manor. Oh, and I really want to get over there for the market at t'afia.

[SuperLuckyCat]

Nothing is worse than traveling for work and having people who make the food decisions not be foodies. For example, going to Ruth Chris' while in downtown Chicago and you want to say, for that amount of $$ we could go to dozens of better places. But then in the reverse, when I speak up I end up being the person making the plans and dragging picky people to adventurous places or having to be the cat herder to get all of my colleagues to a reservation on time. And then people complain.

My other pet peeve about work dinners is having to sit at a table for a large number of people and you know that you're not getting as good food or service. Or someone orders an appetizer sampler platter. Or you feel like you have to pass your appetizer around and let everyone try it.

[maxwellh]

My other pet peeve about work dinners is having to sit at a table for a large number of people and you know that you're not getting as good food or service.  Or someone orders an appetizer sampler platter. 

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Ugh--the sampler platter is the WORST!

What's pretty cool about my job is that I am one of only two members of the "Culinary" staff, so in general people usually allow me to make a lot of the dining decisions even though I am very very "junior" to others in a group. To some degree, I do have the luxury of putting my foot down and being somewhat demanding as to which restaurant, which wines, etc. Some times, though, it's just so much easier (especially with large groups) to allow the flow to dictate. And there is almost nothing worse than "draggin" people to the adventurous/interesting restaurants with the knowledge that the meat and potatoes crew might play along to some extent, but are in the end unhappy that they can't just get a steak and creamed spinach.