Our critic’s favorite holiday treats
When the holidays roll around and I’ve made it through another year, I feel like indulging myself. Especially this year.
So I’ve trekked hither and yon lately in search of my holiday lodestars, the dishes I dream about during this season. I found some at old favorite haunts, some at newer ones. Some were spendier than others. But they all send me into 2022 feeling more contented. Maybe they’ll do the same for you. Oysters on the half shell at Golfstrommen
While I eat our Gulf Coast bivalves with enthusiasm, the cold-water varieties I grew up on, near the St. Lawrence River watershed, are the ones that call to me as a special treat. They’re a ritual splurge in December, best savored with a flinty glass of Muscadet.
Enter Golfstrommen restaurant and seafood market at Post Houston, the spectacular new food hall inside the renovated downtown post office. It’s the first U.S. project by the Norwegian chef Christopher Haatuft, whose Lysverket restaurant in Bergen has garnered much acclaim. Here in Houston, oysters from New England and Canadian waters are arrayed on ice in pristine battalions, cleaned to a polish.
They are opened just as immaculately, without a speck of grit or shell to be seen, with the adductor muscles cleanly severed and the oyster liquor retained in the shells, so that I could tip them and savor the liquid.
I ordered the “chef ’s choice” half dozen, which yielded two East Dennis oysters from Cape Cod, all delicate, creamy salinity; two Cadillac Mountains out of Maine, which offered a briny burst followed by seaweed undertones; and a couple of Chebooktooks from New Brunswick, which were all about the invigorating salt.
On the side came a very lowkey dill/apple mignonette, graceful enough to sip straight; and a cup of the red chili oil Haatuft uses at his Bergen pizzeria, with a surprise tinge of coriander seed.
This is the Bulgari of oyster service, and it’s not cheap, at $21 per half dozen, or $38 per dozen. But they’re in line for East Coast oysters at top-tier halfshell spots like Eunice or State of Grace. To my mind, the perfection is worth it. Post Houston , 401 Franklin, Suite A, 713-999-2550
Frites and Champagne at a’Bouzy
There’s something about the devil-may-care combo of french fries and Champagne that says, “Hey, we’re having fun now!”
Of course, the Champagne must be quality stuff and the fries impeccable. A’Bouzy, the rollicking bubble-centric hangout on the fringe of River Oaks, offers both — in festive, easygoing patio setting that feels right for the moment.
The iPad wine menu invariably yields a good grower champagne that hovers around my self-imposed “ouch” point of $70. It could be anything from a Gaston Chiquet Brut Tradition, to a Champagne Aubry Brut, to a Legras & Haas Chouilly Blanc de Blanc. They’re served in flutes or wine glasses (your choice) out of silvery ice buckets.
And those fries! Well, “frites,” as they are styled here, on the just-French-enough menu. They are skinny, twice fried, with snippets of skin and glazed spots and that all-important unfrozen potato texture within. It’s a sprawling order that comes with a garlicky aioli for dunking. Peak experience all around. A’Bouzy , 2300 Westheimer, 713-722-6899
Beef Wellington at Bludorn
Yuletide is a great excuse for partaking of retrograde luxury classics like Beef Wellington, that extravagance of beef filet coated in mincey mushroom duxelles and snugged in a pastry crust.
Really, anything “en croute” seems apropos in the winter months, the more so when the crust shelters something warming and splurgy. In December, chef Aaron Bludorn used to serve his version of Beef Wellington at New York City’s Cafe Boulud, when he was Daniel Boulud’s executive chef there. So that’s what he’s doing at the Houston restaurant he opened last year with his wife, Houstonian Victoria Pappas.
It’s a memorable version, offered for $58 a plate through New Year’s Eve. Beautiful rare beef meets the umami boost of wild mushroom under a sturdy pastry crust, lit up by a Sauce Perigourdine, a truffled concentration of pan juices that glows garnet red. Batons of salsify, an earthy root vegetable, and a shockingly intense pureed spinach come with it. You can add a scallop of foie gras if you want to go over the top, and, really, maybe you do.
One of the pleasures of Bludorn is its smart wine service. So I ended up with a glass of J.L. Chave Cotes-du-Rhone “Mon Coeur” that made me feel, in conjunction with the Wellington, like I really was living my best holiday-season life, fairy-lit Norfolk pine trees and all. Bludorn , 807 Taft, 713-9990146
Royal Red Shrimp at Eunice
There are Gulf shrimp, and then there are Royal Red Gulf shrimp, those huge deepwater specimens celebrated along the Flora-Bama stretch of the Gulf. They really do have the sweetness and texture of lobster meat. Boiled or steamed in their shells, they turn a distinctive pearly-pink shade that gives them an unearthly beauty.
Eunice is the first Houston restaurant that served Royal Reds to me, and they still list them on the menu at $21 for a half dozen. They’re so big and sumptuous that six is plenty, popped straight out of their shells and dipped in a bit of remoulade or cocktail sauce — the kind with fine shreds of horseradish grated on top.
The Royal Reds smell of the ocean, in the best way. If you enjoy them on Eunice’s big patio, with a glass of Crémant and carols issuing from speakers hidden high in the towering live oaks, well … that has “Houston Christmas” written all over it. Eunice , 3737 Buffalo Speedway, 832-491-1717