The Players
Amaya owner Coffee: of Catalina A new coffee Coffee concept and Amaya from Roasting Max Gonzalez, Company. The coffee menu will include macchiatos, cortados, flat whites, lattes, cappuccinos, iced coffee, café con leche and affogato (Fat Cat Creamery’s Amaya coffee ice cream with espresso) as well as chai latte and hot tea.
Goode Co. Taqueria: The first expansion of the Goode company’s taqueria brand which opened in 1981. It will serve breakfast, lunch and dinner tacos on housemade flour and corn tortillas, made-to-order guacamole and Goode’s famous campechana and Brazos Bottom Pecan Pie.
Low Tide: Alli Jarrett, the owner of Harold’s Restaurant & Tap Room in the Heights, has created a fresh seafood and raw bar concept that will offer oysters, seafood towers and main dishes such as steamed mussels, shrimp and grits, lump crab cakes, fish and chips, fried shrimp platter, shrimp and oyster po’boys and fish ceviche. The menu also includes breakfast options such as fried chicken and biscuit, fish and grits and bagel with lox.
Dish Society: The Houston-born farm-to-table restaurant opens its fourth location inside the food hall with an abbreviated menu of the same locally sourced dishes found at the restaurants in Houston and Katy (a fifth is set to open in January in the Heights). Breakfast options include chicken and biscuits, breakfast tacos, breakfast sandwich and Nutella French toast. Lunch and dinner options include shrimp and grits, brisketstuffed baked sweet potato, chimichurri steak tacos, citrus-glazed salmon, sandwiches and salads.
Mr. Nice Pie: The partners behind Moon Tower Inn, Voodoo Queen Daiquiri Dive and Love Buzz have pizza concept serving up giant slices (yes, there is breakfast pizza with bacon, eggs and hash browns) and creative pies made throughout the day. The menu also includes cheesy garlic bread, pizza poppers, calzones, stromboli and salads.
Craft Burger: Chef Shannen Tune has traded in his food truck for his first brick-and-mortar restaurant serving as many as 15 different burgers made with locally sourced all-natural Black Angus beef. He also has a buttermilk fried chicken sandwich, beer battered onion rings, loaded sweet potato fries, hand-cut fries and specialty fries such as truffle and parmesan. Milk shakes and root beer floats complete the picture.
Sit up Lo offers its Lo: wheels Another authentic for food a sit-down Vietnamese truck (Bowl’d restaurant dishes Up) such experience, that has as pho, given Sit grilled pork vermicelli, grilled chicken vermicelli, shaken beef, and banh mi sandwiches made with grilled pork, chicken and tofu. Jay Le, who owns the business with his siblings Adrienne Le and Jeff Jacobson, said to think of Sit Lo as comfort food like a Vietnamese mom would make. And they have the mom there to prove it: their mother Suzi Jacobson is the chef. Sit Lo’s name is a takeoff on “xich lo,” the cycle rickshaws of Vietnam.
Oddball Eats: The falafel food truck is now a brickand-mortar restaurant from the brother and sister team of Rani and Rene Francis. Main dishes are a falafel sandwich in pita, chicken shawarma sandwich in pita and falafel sampler and salad. Oddball will offer a weekend brunch that includes an Egyptian breakfast, lamb chorizo hash, shakshuka (eggs poached in stewed tomatoes), falafel bowl and a Egyptian stewed fava beans with market vegetables and egg.
Yong: Daniel Ajtai, former head chef at La Grange and Cottonwood, opens his first restaurant, named for his Korean mother, Yong. He calls the menu Korean comfort food but “decluttered” from the traditional banchan experience. Instead of the many side dishes served with Korean meals, Ajtai is putting them in bowls such as bulgogi bowl (thin-sliced ribeye with kimchee, spinach, mung beans and soft-boiled egg), bibimbap (rice bowl with bulgogi, kimchee, spinach, daikon, mushrooms, pickled cucumber, Asian pear and carrots), kalbi (marinated grilled short ribs) and Korean fried chicken (double-fried strips with sauce, kimchee and pickled cucumber).
Mala Sichuan: The first to sign on, Mala’s stake in Finn is part of the carefully plotted growth of the Chinatown-born brand of spicy Chinese cuisine. Owners Cori Xiong and Heng Chen are planning to open two more Malas in 2019 (in Katy and Sugar Land) but for now they are concentrating on how to edit and serve their traditional family-style dishes as individual dishes at Finn Hall. Lunch options will include Kung Pao chicken with red oil dumplings, Sichuan beef stew, shredded pork in spicy garlic sauce, garlic pork belly with sour and spicy shredded potato, and mapo tofu with wok fried string beans. Dinner options will include braised oxtail with asparagus, lamb shank stew, pork with bok choy and fried rice, chicken with bamboo shoots and spinach, fish and fillets with cabbage.