Review: Nobie’s in Montrose a likable new venture
They came wrapped in yesterday’s menu: three fat logs of green garlic, their skins charred to a charcoaly crisp. The pale green cylinders looked and tasted like spring, a little bit garlicky, a little bit oniony, as if they were some offworld species of leek.
For a moment, this bite from Nobie’s transported me from a bungalow on the western fringe of Montrose to a kiosk in Barcelona’s mighty Boqueria market, where just such a seasonal dish might fly off a grill onto your plate. Dabs of aioli and swigs of Txakoli — the sprightly Basque white wine that seems made for Houston’s weather — tied up this unexpected package. I was charmed, and I’ve stayed that way through the thick and thin of my visits to chef Martin Stayer’s enormously likable new venture. A former bartender at Coltivare who has cooked at progressive Chicago spots like Moto and L2O, Stayer hasn’t gone all whiz-bang technicality at his starter restaurant. His constantly mutating menu skews to small plates and seems
geared to thoughtful drinking food, featuring notably skillful frying and lots of smartly deployed cheese — all of it sourced from Houston Dairymaids, one on the chef’s all-star roster of local suppliers.
With its welcome late hours and thoughtful beverage program, Nobie’s is aimed at an industry crowd of chefs, servers, bartenders and liquor reps. You can see them from happy hour onward at the hospitable, doublesided bar that has opened up the spaces at what used to Au Petit Paris.
Gone are the fleamarket oil paintings and staid music. Graphic art and vintage vinyl are the order of the day in the freshened-up room, augmented by a tall, sheltered dining pergola out front.
It took me too long to get to 6-month-old Nobie’s because the restaurant’s name had a dudebro-ish ring that threw me off. How wrong I was: Nobie is the nickname of Stayer’s regally named grandmother, Zenobia, who lives in the Houston area. I’ve been making up for lost time with dishes such as creamy crescenza cheese roasted in a cast-iron skillet and served with piquillo pepper relish and a haunting smoked tomato vinaigrette.
Just add rustic grilled toast. Save some slices to chase around the lilting lemon emulsion that brightens up steamed littleneck clams on the half-shell, with pleasantly bitter leaves of arugula and hunks of grapefruit sharpening the effect. It’s been years since I’ve had clams that good.
Seeking comfort? Puffy, beer-battered sweet potato “tots” are more sophisticated than they sound, dusted with hot harissa spice and bedded down on a wide schmear of goat cheese. Well-bronzed globes of arancini the size of tennis balls hide gooey taleggio cheese beneath their shells of crusty rice. A tomato jam that’s like spicy chutney makes them even better.
Squid fritters come off like playful, oceanic hush puppies that would work even better if they incorporated larger hunks of squid. That’s the kind of slight miscalculation that interfered with my appreciation of a handful of dishes here. Stayer and company are turning out interesting food that may miss an occasional beat in concept or execution, but not by much.
That rambunctiously minty, herbal bowlful of Thai crispy rice salad could do with more crunchy slabs of rice to go with those fish-saucekissed shrimp. A masterfully crisp-crumbed, chicken-fried semi-boneless quail arrives with a one-note mashed potato stuffing that’s too much of a basically good thing, along with in insufficiently leek-y leek gravy.
A couple of basically good ideas lacked only a slight sharpening note or contrast. A pillowy tuffet of spinach and mashed potato centered with an ooze of nutty raclette cheese was one; a bold mountain of roasted cauliflower “piccata” daubed with chicken jus needed more than a scatter of capers and parsley to wake up its flavors.
These are near misses on a promising menu that keeps changing with the market. Only a single dish struck me as unpleasant: a badly named “aguachile” of mealy-textured flaked crab meat over a spicy avocado bed. A current of lime leaf snaking through couldn’t save it.
Yet guess what? The dish’s curious accompaniment was some of the best smashed-plantain tostones I’ve had since dining at the sainted Jose Enrique in San Juan, Puerto Rico. That’s the kind of surprise that lurks around every corner here: in a satin-smooth chicken liver mousse slicked with just enough sweet-tart cherry jelly; in a multitextured bowl of brunch grits bearing a proud raft of chicken-fried maitake, the diminutive shelf mushrooms that grow into their own little log.
Has Stayer gotten in some inexplicably hardtextured red potatoes from Louisiana’s Covey Rise Farm? He’ll take the time to experiment until he’s turned them into a splayed, righteously crisped version of patatas bravas, to be served with slabs of pan-fried pork belly and a frizzled overeasy egg with an intensely orange yolk. It ain’t really “hash,” as the menu claims, but it sure is good.
So are the inventive cocktails under barkeep Sarah Troxell, Houston’s mistress of shrubs. Her vinegar-based elixirs crop up in four weekly cocktails that appear on the bar’s butcher-paper scroll, but she and her staff will make you a custom drink to suit, if you tell them your preferred spirit and flavor profile.
The cocktails are as intelligent as the short wine list put together by sommelier and general manager Dominic Ruiz. I’ve loved everything from that Txacoli to an Erbaluce Italian white to a wonderful, crisp Liguran rosé, Punta Crena, from the by-the-glass list; and a tart-fine-boned Franz Haas Pinot Blanc from the Alto Adige by the $55 bottle.
Best of all, perhaps, is the super-nice staff, who make dining here as much fun as the freewheeling menu. So does the eclectic vinyl repertoire, which ranges from Joe Tex to the Velvet Underground to Creedence Clearwater.
It may have taken me six months to get here, but I already feel like a regular.