Pappas Bros., Killen’s still foremost practitioners of Houston steakhouse arts
It is not every month that two of Houston’s iconic steakhouses reinvent themselves in bold new locations. Yet that’s what occurred in November when Pappas Bros. Steakhouse opened a second, downtown venue while Killen’s Steakhouse moved from its original, cramped Pearland digs to a huge new building a couple of miles west.
Both restaurants are important to the city. I won’t claim that Houston is more fanatical about its steakhouses than other American cities, but our civic mania for fajitas, burgers and barbecue all point toward the fact that beef-eating is a driving force here. It’s news when our homegrown favorites make a big move — and cause for a bit of apprehension, too.
After all, we love our top steakhouses because they’re classics, and the consumption of steakhouse fare is, fundamentally, a conservative undertaking. Change can make a steakhouse devotee nervous.
It’s news when our homegrown favorites make a big move — and cause for a bit of apprehension, too. We needn’t have worried.
A sense of place
Personally, I was scared to visit the new Killen’s location in its hangar-size quarters on Broadway in the older sector of Pearland. I loved the little original’s low-slung, rural roadhouse feel. Plopped out on the coastal prairie with its Western paintings, white napery and snug lines, it felt like a backroads supper club known to a happy few. Not only was the food terrific, the restaurant
had a deep sense of Gulf Coast place.
But after 10 years of success and critical accolades, chef Ronnie Killen and company had outgrown the building. Their kitchen was barely big enough to handle the volume, and the heads of their NFL celebrity clientele grazed the ceiling. There was no dedicated bar, a real deficit once the chef ’s then-wife, Dee Dee Killen, souped up the cocktail program with well-crafted drinks.
So the new facility, which seats three times the 100-diner capacity of the old spot on a normal night (and four times with special events in the adjoining private rooms), is an improvement in the staff ’s quality of life and a boon to fans who once had to vie for bookings. I know this. Nevertheless, I tugged open the ornate metal-and-glass front doors for the first time recently with a sense of dread, afraid I would see a room that could be Anywhere, USA.
That’s exactly what unfolded before me. An ice-blue-lit tower of wine rose up amid a dimly lit dining pit, with tables set on risers to either side, rather like the old Cafe Annie layout. The linens were white; the glassware, cobalt blue, and a bright open kitchen extended across the back, the tall white toques of the line crew (that was new!) bobbing in ceaseless motion.
Some of the Western paintings had made it to the new venue, and they were spotlit around the perimeter. But otherwise the room was a pareddown modern steakhouse that looks comfortable rather than memorable.
It’s the food at the new joint that provides the sense of place, and in the end that is fine by me. The distinctive Texas-flavored sides remain: the smoked brisket on white beans, a barbecue-style cassoulet; the smoked pork and black-eyed pea gumbo; the jalapeño Fontina grits.
The frying so key to a Gulf Coast operation remains solid. Witness the peerless buttermilk-battered onion rings with their two separate coats of flour, so that they fry up with a shatter-prone, shardlike crust, thick rings stacked high and teetery. The very fine chicken-fried prime sirloin is still there, as are fried jumbo Gulf shrimp and a newer fried Springer Mountain chicken that is first cooked sous vide and then graced with porkbelly collard greens. If the room could be anywhere, those dishes could not.
The dining room even smells like home because the wood grill — discontinued for space reasons at the old location, has been reinstated for optional steak-cooking here. A 21-day dry-aged ribeye from Allen Brothers ordered rare with a char arrived at the table woodgrilled first, then seared off with beef tallow in cast iron and finished under the salamander broiler. Seasoned simply with salt and pepper, it was dense, gamy and dead-solid perfect.
New attractions
The kitchen, under the talented triumvirate of executive chef Joe Cervantez, Chris Loftis and veteran Killen’s hand Teddy Lopez, seems to be operating smoothly, with only a few new-dish jitters detracting from the experience of the freshened-up menu.
Sweet accents tend to get out of hand in such dishes as a burrata and heirloom tomato salad doused with too much balsamic and graced with at least one tomato (a green specimen) that was hard and unripened. Similarly, a beautifully seared hunk of foie gras perched on too-buttery toast got a smoked-bacon/ blueberry jam too powerfully sweet for the clever slices of peach garnish pickled in sweet tea.
I wanted to like the new bouillabaisse with its snapper, octopus, clams and Gulf shrimp in fire-roasted shellfish broth, but the nicely springy shellfish and octopus were compro- mised by a sizable slab of overcooked, dispirited snapper.
Yet the new steak tartare glossed with spicy chorizo oil is a marvel, its raw beef chopped into sumptuous little cubes that keep their shape rather than collapsing into a mesh, or a mush. A 62-degree coddled egg, avocado and bright wisps of pickled vegetables keep things fresh.
So do the graceful modern stylings of a few new desserts by Samantha Mendoza, lured here from her successful run at Triniti. Her pristine chocolates, racy sorbets and gently deconstructed stylings have augmented the classic carrot cake, cheesecake and bruléed bread pudding rather than supplanted them. It’s a win-win for the faithful.
Most gratifying of all, there’s the wonderful new option of eating at the bar, where you can drop in solo (or not), grab a counter seat or a small table at the upper front level of the open-plan restaurant, so that a visit to Killen’s no longer has to be a big deal planned well in advance.
Already, the crowd seems to be more democratic. The cocktails, including the pristine Corpse Reviver No. 2, are as fine as ever; and the beer and wine lists have expanded interestingly. (Apart from the totemic new wine tower, there is additional temperaturecontrolled storage in a barrel-vaulted wine room that doubles as a private dining space.)
I revel in the chance to pop in for a cheese-gilded tureen of Killen’s magnificent onion soup, its resonant beef broth tempered with the sweetness of deeply caramelized onion and a surprise current of tart Granny Smith apple. With a meticulously dressed grilled Caesar salad, graced with white anchovies filmed in a delicate batter, this could be dinner.
So could an order of the new beef stroganoff made with shreds of braised beef, gloriously sticky beef demiglace touched with sour cream and broad flaps of housemade noodle. At first, it seemed almost too salty, but it wore well. I could even have grabbed a burger on the spur of the moment: house-ground American Wagyu, no less, and priced at $26.
Service seems as personable and attentive as ever at the new location, despite the increased size of the dinner crowds. I may miss the intimate charms of the old Killen’s, but after two visits I felt well compensated by the attractions of the new.
Star service at Pappas
Downtown, in the big space that once housed The Strip House, the new Pappas Bros. Steakhouse seems less a revamp than a seamless expansion. The look is all seductive dark woods, milky-glass lanterns in vintage style, brass studs on deep-toned
leather. It’s handsome, but like the new Killen’s, with the exception of brassy inlaid five-pointed Texas stars, it feels like it could be anywhere.
This is a more expansive room than the snug rail-car proportions of the original Westheimer restaurant, with an ample bar on one end, a busy open kitchen fronted with a 16-seat counter on the other, and an illuminated cold case of beef cuts at the entrance, where a seemingly impossible number of well-dressed hostesses stand waiting to greet and seat.
The crowd, too, seems dressier and more downtown than the casual Killen’s set. But for some reason, while they pack the bar, they have not figured out that those chef ’s counter seats across the room are the best ones in the house. I always have to fight for one on Westheimer. Here, I sat overlooking the kitchen action in solitary splendor.
There’s an impressive level of service at work, from the welcome onward. If anything, the service seems even better and smoother at the new location, perhaps because of the room’s ease of moment. One evening in late December, snugged into a huge, comfortable leather booth, I watched a trio of servers clustered around a midroom dining table, changing the linens, smoothing them and laying the place settings as fastidiously as if they were courtiers at Buckingham Palace.
I stopped eating just to watch them work. On another, more recent evening, I stopped sipping a glass of silky, herbal Chateauneuf du Pape to talk Cornas (another of my favorite Rhones) with young sommelier Brandon Kerne, a relatively new hire for Pappas’s ever more impressive wine team. From the deep, wide list to the knowledgeable wine service to the chance to order a variety of premium wines by the glass, Pappas Bros. is and remains one of Houston’s classiest wine acts. I’ve always joked than when I win the lottery, this is where I’ll come to celebrate, and the joke still stands.
Cocktails under the auspices of Matt Tanner, an Anvil alum, continue to impress. He’s a talent who can push me beyond my comfort zone into sweet territory — as with a Pear Cobbler in a sweat-beaded silver cup, its Manzanilla sherry so well balanced with pear liqueur, lemon and cinnamon that I finished it with pleasure, rather than quitting after a few sweet sips.
Classics better than ever
The food at the new venue seems solid and relatively changeless. The menu is identical to the one at the Westheimer location and the Dallas location. The classics are still, well, classic: the impeccable shrimp remoulade (one of the few specifically localized touches) with its delightfully feisty remoulade, good enough to eat with a spoon; the definitive beefsteak tomatoes and onion with Roquefort, reputable even in winter; the whole mushrooms roasted with sherry, thyme, rosemary and extravagant amounts of butter, so that they turn into the personification of umami bomblets.
I was shocked to encounter a baked potato so immaculate that it reminded me why one might want to order this humble foodstuff in a restaurant. The garnishes were high quality, from sharp grated cheddar to crunchy bacon, applied in ample but discreet quantity. And the textures blew my mind, from the downy fluff of the interior to the tight skin, brushed with olive oil and seasoned with sea salt.
Then there are the steaks, including those dry-aged in house, which seem better than ever. Both an 18-ounce bonein Prime New York strip and a 22-ounce bone-in Prime ribeye came to the table exactly as requested: rare-plus with a char. The meat was dense and expansively beefy but not walking on the gamy wild side. The steaks were salted and peppered, like the steaks at Killen’s, then finished with a bit of butter that turns them a bit more opulent.
Fabulous, my guest and I agreed. So was a bone-in, dry-aged filet on a recent evening — a cut that’s a lot of trouble to butcher, hard to find on local menus and a revelation for steak snobs who turn their noses up at filet.
The Pappas Bros. menu changes incrementally and at a magisterial pace, but it makes up for the sameness with daily specials. One relatively new menu addition is well worth a try: deviled eggs adorned with meritorious hunks of steamed Maine lobster and crackling hunks of honey bacon. They’re lots of fun to share.
So is the towering hunk of exceptionally creamy, gently tart New York cheesecake — at least if you’re not with me. I want it all to myself. I’ve never warmed to many of the desserts here, which strike me as a trifle stolid, but that cheesecake alone reminds me of the reason we go to steakhouses in the first place, and the second place, and the third.
It also reminds me why we are lucky to count the second-edition Pappas Bros. and the reimagined Killen’s among our foremost practitioners of the steakhouse arts.