Top 100 Houston restaurants
Whew. A lot has happened in the year and a half since the first edition of my Top 100 Houston restaurants was published.
The surge of ambitious openings that was underway back then has continued, although at a slightly less rapid clip. Thanks to a healthy economy, the city has even begun to attract operators from other parts of the country. Not just carpetbaggers, either: A couple of these new arrivals have made their way into the top tiers of the list.
But much of the considerable rankings churn springs from seasoned chefs and operators stepping up their game: rethinking old habits or old menus, and infusing their establishments with the vitality that is one of the important things I look for in putting together this list.
Even classic restaurants, which we rely on for certain unchanging verities, can stay relevant by refusing to simply tread water. At the deepest level, there is some compelling energy about each of these 100 establishments that inspires me to care about them and to prize their role in my particular food universe.
So what else makes a “top” restaurant? For me, they’re not necessarily the fanciest places, or even the most ambitious. I value a tightly focused opera-
tion that does a few things superbly over a place that shoots for the moon and falls considerably short.
Still, ambition is a quality I prize and which I am delighted to see flourishing in our restaurant landscape lately. It’s the golden thread running through my entire first tier this year: All top 10 restaurants aim high and deliver.
The food, as always, is the most important ingredient by which I have judged the restaurants on the list. But service, beverage program, setting, cultural importance and a strong sense of place may also factor into a complex cocktail that gives one spot the edge over another.
I have revisited nearly all the top-ranked restaurants from 2012 and most of the lower-tier restaurants as well, in addition to reviewing or visiting all the newcomers to the list.
Where I encountered seri- ously disappointing meals, I eliminated the restaurant from contention. Where flaws seemed less grievous but vex- ing, I adjusted the ranking downward. Some restaurants were crowded out by highflying newcomers. And where improvements over last year were obvious, I bumped the restaurant up — with great glee, I might add.
2013 will be remembered as the year when the rest of the country figured out what Houstonians have known for years: that we have one of the most distinctive and vital food cultures in America. Was there a major food publication in the country that didn’t weigh in praising our dynamic restaurant scene? I’m having trouble thinking of one.
No list can capture all the riches we locals get to savor every day. But this one tries to fashion a vivid mosaic. If it helps you discover something new, better appreciate something old, or think more deeply about our ever-mutating melting pot of a city, it will have done its job.