Houston Food Blog

Photos by Katharine Shilcutt

Stir-fried egg noodles with seafood: a crowd pleaser.

​It's been a little over six months since we reviewed Banana Leaf (9889 Bellaire Boulevard, Suite 311) -- the cozy outpost of Malaysian cuisine in New Chinatown -- and it occurred to us over the weekend that we hadn't visited the place since. It just didn't seem right, after all, that we had barely made a dent in its vast and mostly delicious menu on the few times that we visited.

Sad and chagrined, we set out on Saturday afternoon to correct this oversight. It's not as though we hadn't tried to eat at Banana Leaf on other occasions, but as with any other restaurant that gets a write-up in print, the place was jam-packed for months afterwards. We gave up on trying somewhere around the three-month mark, after driving out to Bellaire Boulevard repeatedly only to find an hour to hour-and-a-half wait each time (up from the previous average of 30 to 45 minutes). Surely the crowds would die down somewhat with time, right?

This past Saturday, we arrived at 1:30 p.m. to find a very reasonable 10-minute wait for a table at the busy restaurant. It turns out that this was an excellent time to visit, as the lunch rush had died down and we were able to peruse all of the many dishes on the large menu before finally settling on some new ones that we'd never had before -- at Banana Leaf or anywhere else.

As with previous visits, our afternoon turned into as much of a learning experience as it was a meal.

Oh my dear God, this recipe has vegetables in it. I am deeply ashamed.

​Let's face it, my saucy little aardvarks; these past couple of weeks, I've given you creative goddamn gold. I've been shooting unique, simple dishes at you like it's no big deal. Well, today I've decided to go with something even simpler than normal, something absolutely anyone can throw together from stuff you've probably had sitting in your freezer forever, a nourishing meal that goes down easy and sits satisfyingly even if you're as hungover as I am right now. A helpful tip: Never, ever go shot-for-shot with anyone on the Rocks Off crew. They drink like 60-year-old ex-cops trying to forget a murder.

​"Guacamole bobe" was the name of this item on the appetizer menu at Rustika Café on the Southwest Freeway at Buffalo Speedway. The description listed the ingredients as avocado, caramelized onions and hard-boiled eggs. It came with tortilla chips, and it tasted fabulous. What a great idea for a dip -- or a sandwich spread, with bacon and tomato.

It was a tad bland, so after a few bites, I hit it hard with the Tabasco sauce, and we passed it around the table. It was gone in a flash. Nobody in our lunch group had ever heard of this combo before -- which we all found amazing. It's not very hard to figure out how to make the stuff. Mush some eggs and avocado together with onions and add salt and pepper.

Here's a more elaborate recipe I found on the web:

​For a lazy Saturday night dinner, our family ended up in Pasadena. After some deliberation of where to go -- "Applebees?" "Ew! No!" -- someone suggested that we go to Casa Mariachi (5824 Spencer Highway, 281-998-2272). None of us had been, but it was near our gathering point, so we decided on Tex Mex.

The parking lot was nearly empty. We told the gentleman inside that we needed a table for a large party, and he smiled and hurried off to push some tables together. With the exception of an even larger party of at least 12, there was no one in the restaurant. We were seated fairly quickly and our drink orders were taken (the swirl mango/strawberry margarita was on special). We also ordered a basket of tortillas to snack on, as there was a tortilla maker adjacent to our table. This was at eight.

A little while later, we got baskets of hot chips and salsas. The red salsa was a little mild for our taste, but the green was amazing. It was less citrusy than a normal tomatillo salsa. For the life of us, we could not figure out what was in it, but once people tried it, the red salsas were not touched.

The menu was mostly chicken and beef fajita derivatives. We asked the waitress what was in the fajita salad. She wasn't sure, but agreed to accommodate some diet issues (no cheese for this blogger). A few minutes later, the children in the table next to us got out of their seats and proceeded to run laps around theirs and our table. We were hungry, and we were still was minus a margarita and tortillas.

​Dark chocolate bark with chipotle and almonds marked the beginning of a romantic Valentine's Day season at my house. My wife is wild about chocolate and chile pepper confections, so I try to buy her some every year at this time. I used to mail-order the wonderful chocolate-and-chile pepper bark with pumpkin seeds from Sahagun Chocolate Shop in Portland, Oregon.

But the Sahagun website didn't offer the chile pepper chocolates this year. I tried the Chocolate Bar, but the counterman told me that the owner hated chocolate and chile peppers and refused to carry it. Then I remembered Valerie Gamble. Gamble is a French-style chocolatier who moved here from Austin last fall. I loved her handmade truffles, so I went looking for her shop, Expressions Fine Chocolates.

​We recently read an article in the Wall Street Journal on Alton Brown's top five favorite cookbooks. You remember Brown. He's the quirky chemistry geek on Good Eats and one of the commentators on Iron Chef. If you're one of the few non-Food Network junkies, you might recognize him from Welch's grape juice commercials.

When we started reading the article, we thought his list would be similar to ours. Wrong. We only had one favorite in common, The Joy of Cooking. But that's not the unusual part. We had only heard of one of the cookbooks from his list. How could this be? With our obsessive collecting of cookbooks, we thought we would've come across more than just one of his suggestions. So, what's on Alton's list?

​In Houston, as in Chicago, Los Angeles and Denver, Mexican-style hot dogs have been increasing in popularity. But when the mainstream hot dog chain James Coney Island introduced a Sonoran hot dog last year, you could feel the seismic shift as the tectonic plates of German and Mexican culture banged up against each other.

The frankfurter with mustard was enough for our German forefathers - okay, maybe a little sauerkraut. The hot dog with chile con carne called a "Coney Island" was an early compromise with the reality of biculturalism. But chili con carne wasn't really Mexican; it was Tex-Mex. In those days, tamales were jokingly called "Mexican hot dogs."

​Recently, we found ourselves starving during a tedious day of used-car shopping. Unwilling to make such a big decision on an empty stomach, we were pleased to find ourselves within walking distance of Droubi's Bakery and Deli on Hillcroft in Sharpstown.

After devouring a plate of Middle Eastern goodies including roasted meat skewers, lemony hummus, crisp pickles and fluffy pita, we went to the counter to pay. While counting out our cash, we saw a huge stack of fluffy breads that looked like oversize bagels sprinkled with sesame seeds. Intrigued, we asked the wizened counter clerk what these doughy creations were called. "Cock," she said. We wish we could say an adolescent giggle didn't bubble out, but we cannot. We later Googled it and discovered the bread was called ka'ak.

Fair warning: The remainder of this conversation, while true, might offend the mature among us.

Fabio

​After our interview with Kata Robata's Manabu Horiuchi, he demanded we interview his chef de cuisine, Jean-Philippe Gaston, an integral part of Kata Robata. We sat down with him for a few bonus words.

Eating Our Words: What is your role on the Kata Robata menu?

Jean-Philippe Gaston: If you take a look on the daily-specials menu, the cooked part of the menu is mine. In a couple months we will be rolling out a new menu of cooked food with my cuisine. Hori-san handles all sushi and fusion, and I handle the rest.

EOW: Do you and Hori-san complement each other in the kitchen?

JPG: Like black and white. We spend so much time with each that we can communicate even by looking at each other's plates we are serving. I can tell if he needs foie gras, and he can tell to take care of a plate I sent out specially. It is truly a tag-team match. We do lots of on-the-fly menu work with each other as well.

EOW: Where is your culinary background?

JPG: Well I think we all start out washing dishes, don't we? After moving up positions I landed a gig at Noe with Mr. Gadsby. After he left, I was chef de cuisine and executive interim chef at Soma on Washington. When Hori-san was looking for a partner, he chose my food off a blind panel of eight different chefs.

You may not recognize this place in broad daylight, but you certainly wouldn't be able to miss it at night. Can you guess where we're drinking this week?

​Leave your best guess in the comments section below.