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 The Lone Star Lowdown A roundup of the the best new restaurants in Texas BY JOHN MARIANI Nothing drives me crazier than to hear an otherwise sophisticated traveler ask, "Are there any good restaurants in Texas? I mean, besides Tex-Mex and barbecue?" To which I-not a Texan-vociferously respond by saying, "As a matter of fact, there are scores, and a few of them rank among the best in the country." I then go on to name award-winning restaurants like The French Room at The Adolphus and The Mansion on Turtle Creek in Dallas, Brennan's of Houston and Café Annie in the same city, La Rêve and Biga on the Banks in San Antonio, and Jeffrey's, Hudson's on the Bend and the Driskill Grill in Austin. I add that Texas does indeed have terrific Tex-Mex and barbecue places, from the wonderful El Mirador in San Antonio, where the breakfast soups are more restorative than confession, to the famous Kreuz Market in Lockhart, where the beef brisket can bring tears to a cowboy's eyes (although that may actually be the accompanying chile pepper). Factor in a significant Vietnamese population that has brought good Asian food to the state, and the questioning usually stops. Having been a regular visitor to Texas for more than 25 years, I'm always delighted to uncover even more good new restaurants (or restaurants that are new to me), located not only in the major cities but in smaller places like Plano, Colleyville and Salado. Some of my most recent finds are in Houston, starting with a restaurant that's been around since 1965, when the city was still dry. Tony's, now with a third location-is the talk of the town. Indeed, it always has been, but after four decades owner Tony Vallone's high-society crowd was getting a bit long in the tooth. In the new Tony's he's aimed squarely at a younger audience that can appreciate the dazzling decor. Vallone has handed his new executive chef, Olivier Ciesielski, the challenge of making Tony's the best Italian restaurant in America, and he's getting there fast. No one has better ingredients, some quite exotic, like pinkie-sized Adriatic crabs that are fried and then popped into your mouth one by one. Red snapper arrives dramatically in a salt crust, which is cracked open to reveal the tender white fish, filleted, then drizzled with a reduction of Barolo wine tableside. If you want to see and taste where modern Mexican cuisine is heading in America, do not miss Hugo's, the dream restaurant of Hugo Ortega. His is a classic success story: The teenager arrives in Houston from Mexico and works his way up from dishwasher to chef and finally to owner of his own namesake restaurant. For the past three years now, Ortega has proved that the clichés of Tex-Mex grub-however fiercely beloved-are merely a starting point for regional dishes like succulent roasted rabbit with guajillo adobo, purple sweet potatoes and jicama salad. Roast duck is lavished with a red mole sauce, and pork is stewed in a casserole with chayote and green and white beans in a green mole. Ortega makes his own queso fresco and chorizo, grinds his own corn and roasts his own cocoa beans. His brother Ruben is a marvelous dessert maker: His churros are stuffed with dulce de leche and served with Mexican hot chocolate and chocolate ice cream. His luscious chocolate flan with kumquat sauce and cajeta cream comes with an amaranth cookie. These desserts represent two of the best things I've eaten in a very long time. Meanwhile, in Dallas, there is an amazing young chef named Anthony C. Bombaci, who has just taken over the stoves at Nana, itself a well-established fine-dining room, located high above the city on the 27th floor of the Wyndham Anatole hotel. Long a torchbearer for New Texas cuisine, Nana now proffers a more international style. The best way to appreciate Bombaci's cooking is to go with one of the fairly priced tasting menus, which change seasonally. When I was there, I started off with small tastes of marinated king salmon with chilled pea broth and tempura-fried vegetables and a ravioli "à la carbonara," with a soft egg center that oozed when cut into, dressed with woodsy wild mushrooms, garlic, pancetta and parsley. Forthcoming were a lustrous confit of suckling pig with glazed pineapple and passion fruit, and tender Texas antelope with Thai peanut sauce, caramelized bananas and roasted salsify. Out in the quickly gentrifying town of Colleyville, between Dallas and Fort Worth, David McMillan, Nana's previous chef, opened 62 Main Restaurant about a year ago in the large, new town center. The upstairs dining room, with its roomy banquettes, exposed copper piping and track lighting, is fairly small, as is McMillan's kitchen. You can tell immediately that he creates menus based on what he wants to cook and what he can give a personal signature to, starting with an absolutely enchanting black kale and rabbit soup as full of flavor as any soup I've ever had. McMillan serves panfried quail with cranberry beans, candied shallots and sherry butter sauce. His Mission fig financier with mascarpone and honey is a paragon of fine pastry-making. Plano, Texas, is not a town where you expect to find a big-name chef like Kent Rathbun, whose posh Dallas dining room Abacus has long been a huge success. But Rathbun figured there was room-literally and figuratively-for a fine restaurant that didn't take itself too seriously up here, about 20 miles northeast of Dallas. Rathbun's two-and-a-half-year-old Jasper's-named after painter Jasper Johns-is an establishment that shows just how right he was. This is "gourmet backyard cuisine," as the chef calls it, with real snap: rotisserie prime rib with onion jus and stuffed baked potato, Texas peach barbecued pork tenderloin with bourbon-laced creamed corn and scallion potatoes, and crab cakes with tomatillo-serrano salsa. Dishes like these should have little American-or Lone Star-flags stuck in them. Furthermore, the dining room could not be more handsome, done up with fine teak furniture and bamboo accents. One of the loveliest historic towns in Texas is Salado, in the rolling hills about an hour from Austin. Its houses date from the 19th century, and in one of them chef Dave Hermann and his wife, Katie, run a charming and quite serious restaurant called, appropriately, The Range. The menu stresses hearty but refined American cooking in the best western tradition, including marinated pork loin chop with roasted corn pudding and melon salsa, quail stuffed with crayfish, and a strip steak with chipotle-laced potatoes. There's also a good wine list with some Texan bottlings. What makes The Range out of the ordinary is its dedication to preparing food that is as good as any in the big cities while still retaining the exuberant spirit of the Texas countryside.
John Mariani, the food correspondent for Esquire, wrote The Italian-American Cookbook (Harvard Common Press) with his wife, Galina. |
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62 Main Street, #200
Colleyville, TX 76034
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