Big plates compete for attention at State Fare
Review: Restaurateur Lee Ellis’ food aims for a broad audience with deep pockets
“You really need to try the dill pickle dip with your French fries,” Lee Ellis insisted. The extravagantly bearded restaurant impresario had passed by our lunch table at State Fare Kitchen & Bar, his ode to Texas grub in Memorial Gateway. He thought we were missing out.
“It’ll make them taste like a fried dill pickle!” he enthused. Hardly a selling point in my eyes; I’m one of those lost souls who has never understood the appeal of this deep East Texas stunt food. Still, I’ve learned to listen to Ellis and appreciate his quirky enthusiasms. He’s a dedicated archivist, a hunter of regional food curiosities. All you have to do is look at his Instagram feed, @thelifeoflee_ellis, to understand how the chase makes him tick.
So I bit. And became an instant fan of the unlikely, ohso-American dip that posed an electric current of pickle juice against soothing cream cheese (and perhaps a swirl of sour cream?), with a sharp herbal edge of fresh dill to wake it all up. It tasted deeply familiar and curiously new at once — the way the best dishes do at this useful new restaurant.
The frying is excellent here, and crisp, cornmeal-dusted oysters take on new life atop a bed of spicy creamed spinach, with pickled jalapeño and red onion to kick them into higher gear. It’s a little bit of New Orleans Rockefellerdom with a lot of get-down Texican soul. Ray’s Fried Catfish, a tribute to partner Jim Mills’ Beaumont dad, is spectacular stuff, the fillets dipped in white wine and mustard before battering. They emerge satiny inside, with a definitive crunch. Eat them fast — they are best shared with a ravenous friend — because they keep steaming inside that shell, losing some of that thrilling texture.
More than once as I sat in this airy, comfortable room — with white tiles and clatter and dark
wood accents reminiscent of nothing so much as venerable Gulf Coast seafood houses past — it struck me that Ellis has become the Jim Goode for early 21st century Houston. He has something of the late, great restaurateur’s hunger for Texana, both in terms of recipes and evocative, retro décor. I think Goode himself would appreciate State Fare’s long, cool granite bar and century-old corrugated glass room dividers, which shed pewtery glints. And like Goode, Ellis never stops tracking down classic foodstuffs in out-of-the-way eateries.
While Goode’s pop genius recombinations of our native culinary strains tasted revolutionary in their 1980s heyday, Ellis’ notions — nursed into being by executive chef Armando Ramirez and Mills, who for years ran the food program at ritzy private club The Houstonian — seem more like gentle tweaks. This is food that comforts and entertains without challenging, and as such it aims at a broad audience.
That approach fits its affluent suburban location. Memorial and its villages have long been underserved in terms of restaurant variety, and State Fare has been embraced by empty nesters and families with children, many of whom clear out by 8 p.m., when younger folks filter in.
What I admire about the menu is that you could take just about anyone here (perhaps excepting the most dedicated restaurant snob) and they’d find something fun to eat. The menu may seem familiar, but the dishes are put together from scratch, and they never taste industrial or pro forma.
A latterday staple like deviled eggs, served two ways in high-piped peaks, does justice to the classic bacon-laced form and goes a step beyond with a sprightly avocado/lime version. Smoky, tender chicken wings bloom under a delirium of sauces: hot/sweet Sriracha, funky blue cheese and tangy barbecue.
There’s a creditable pale queso with plenty of green chile in the wellstocked “snacks” section of the two-page menu. That dill pickle dip comes with house-made barbecue potato chips. Sprawling onion rings in a crunchy but not overpowering batter arrive with another hard-to-stop-eating dip, a pink mayo based concoction called “Lee’s Burger Sauce.”
None of this comes cheaply, with most of the entree plates priced from the mid twenties to the low thirties. I confess that I gulped at the sight of an $18 fried catfish poboy, and at a $14 huevos rancheros plate on the extensive Saturday and Sunday brunch menu. But you get a lot of food for your money here — something Texans understand — and the execution by and large is solid.
I loved the hot fried chicken plate, not least because the notably juicy chicken wasn’t so spicy it destroyed my palate, as more than a few Nashville-influenced local versions have done. Its non-knee-jerk sides of garlicky roasted butternut squash and Brussels sprouts with bacon marmalade appealed, too.
Just as good is a dark, glossy étouffée of catfish and smoky andouille sausage, bristling with smoke and red pepper heat.
A no-nonsense wedge salad of pristine iceberg and lively blue cheese dressing rampant with chunks was just what the doctor ordered, right down to its scatter of candied pecans. A sublimely messy Dixie Burger cascaded with a lava flow of pimento cheese, stacked high with onion rings, dill pickles and barbecue sauce. There was no way to eat it by hand, like a sandwich. But attacked with a fork, it was a pleasant outrage.
Even better (and less stunty) was an ahi tuna burger griddled rare and layered inside a fine Slow Dough bun with ponzu sauce, pickled ginger, a spry hit of seaweed salad and (just in case that wasn’t enough) a hit of Sriracha mayo. Somehow it all clicked mightily.
A few dishes passed muster without generating any excitement. A workmanlike barbecue shrimp and grits with big, nicely cooked shellfish had none of the sass of its New Orleans models. The wonderfully meaty Jimmy’s Texas Red chili had a rich base of ancho and pasilla chiles that was overshadowed by its salt content.
The only item that bombed was oysters roasted in their half shells with bacon, scallion, lemon-garlic butter and bread crumbs. They emerged dismally overcooked and devoid of their liquor.
I’ve been impressed with the way Ellis has surrounded himself with smart people as he grew his Cherry Pie Hospitality group over the past year. That’s a big reason State Fare whirrs along so nicely, from the welcome at the desk to the wine, beer and cocktail service and beyond. Rob Harvey and Laurie Sheddan Harvey were fine assets in the front of the house at finedining Triniti, and their presence here is a boon.
Sheddan Harvey brings ingenuity to the smart-but-not-too-serious cocktail list, and the couple has gathered a team that can help you navigate the affordably priced wine list, which has some good values. I’ve invariably eaten too-much-to-handle dessert here, but I made a valiant stab at a baroque and splendidly lurid Red Velvet Cheesecake one evening. The one sweet item I would never miss if it’s on the revolving list: Laurie Sheddan Harvey’s Old Fashioned ice cream — a bourbon-laced swoon studded with Luxardo-soaked cherries, based on her recipe for the namesake cocktail.
This ice cream is made under the auspices of yet another of Ellis’ current ventures, which include Lee’s Creamery, Lee’s Fried Chicken and Donuts, Pi Pizza, Petite Sweets and the soon-toopen seafood restaurant, Starfish. So far it’s all very can’t-stop, won’t stop, which is not a bad description of State Fare’s food, come to think of it.