The chef has arrived: Tris’ sumptuous fare dazzles
Austin Simmons settles in with triumphs hovering at four-star level
Agreat pleasure of restaurant writing is to see a chef you’ve admired come fully into his or her own. One of those exhilarating moments is happening right now at Tris in The Woodlands, where Austin Simmons is busy making his newly rebranded and remodeled restaurant a regional destination. From opulent menu to intelligent beverage program, from stylishly reconfigured dining room to warm hospitality, Tris is operating tantalizingly close to a four-star level.
You can taste it in something as deceptively modestsounding as a seasonal potato soup that vibrates with the salty tang of Hook’s Five-Year Cheddar, slick little rafts of housecured Iberico pork shoulder and drifts of toasty bread crumbs floating on top. The savor is almost dizzying — it flirts with over-saltiness and somehow darts back to safety.
Just as gripping, if more overtly luxurious, is Simmons’ intense lobster bisque graced with fennel pollen that gives its flavor profile a dusky, golden glow. Soups are one of the best gauges I know of a chef ’s (and a kitchen’s) prowess, and these two prove the rule.
Sauces can be equally revealing, so allow me to direct your attention to the astonishing version of beurre blanc that comes with what may be Simmons’ most compelling new dish:
dewy hunks of butter-poached crab that ride on a devilish little kimchi pancake, its shredded cabbage mimicking the texture of picked crab. It’s a crab cake turned inside out, then graced with a burnished browned-butter sauce that is tart, winey and fascinating to the last drop.
And believe me, you will consume the last stray drop. This poached crab dish is 24 bucks, and it is so rich and satisfying I could eat it solo for lunch or a light supper.
Simmons has become more or less the King of Rich, actually. His new menus give a lunchtime nod to lightness and vegetable options, and starters such as a jumpy Thai-spiced hamachi tostada can have a brisk, saladlike effect. But his stock in trade is browned butter, velvety sauces, sumptuous braised meats, mushrooms and truffles and saffron polenta.
These are luxury touches in which he specializes at his adjoining weekend tasting-menu room, Cureight. Now they hold pride of place on a Tris menu that is much more of a piece than it was during the restaurant’s original Hubbell & Hudson Bistro incarnation, when the bill of fare had a rather disjointed, mix-and-match steakhouse and grill vibe to it.
Simmons is still making an effort to please his exurban audience — which he knows from his days as a sous chef at John Tesar’s Modern Steak and Seafood during its too-brief Woodlands run — but he’s also pleasing himself and cooking up to his abilities.
Braised short-rib ragu with potato gnocchi was cooked down to a marvelous glaze on a recent evening. Crabmeat and black truffle emulsion turned springy, skinny tagliatelle into a sybarite’s dream. There’s something old-school and unapologetic about this impulse that I love. And Simmons tempers those soft, plush flavor curves with little bursts of acid or greenery or heat to keep things lively.
Case in point: He zings the usual Robuchon-esque cloud of buttery mashed potatoes with tart, hottish kimchi that he ferments in house. They’re fabulous.
Shades of softness collide on a salad plate of ripe avocado slices and triangles of gently fried tofu, only to be snapped to attention by glorious local grapefruit segments, plus jots of red chili and soy and crunchy sunflower seeds.
Many of the entrees at Tris are priced in the $30s and $40s, which makes it one of the most expensive restaurants in Greater Houston. The prices are supported by careful execution and the chef’s ingenuity. So slabs of medium-rare duck breast, say, find a memorable match with orange-laced fermented cabbage and pancetta, all smoothed out by a brown-buttered rosemary applesauce.
Venison is easily abused, but here the backstrap is served rosy and tight-textured against a delicate, savory duxelles of mushroom tart, with tones of apple and licoricey Pernod weaving in and out of the roasted carrots. With a suitable red wine — ask beverage director Joshua Olivier for his good advice — it’s a plate worth the drive from Houston.
So are a couple of easy-tomess-up fish dishes. Both smallflaked branzino, the Mediterranean sea bass, and large-flaked, cold water Patagonian toothfish, emerged from the kitchen impeccably cooked. Butterflied over a purée of butternut squash, the branzino had a latewinter escort of sliced fennel bulb, toasted almonds and lovely small potato gnocchi, a more sophisticated take on a dish Simmons served back when Tris was known as Hubbell & Hudson Bistro.
The toothfish outright wowed in its pool of resonant blackgarlic bisque, with charred chicory greens, wasabi-braised rutabaga and radish adding their wintry notes. Try it now, while it’s still on the menu.
There’s a blip here or there that could use refining. Simmons loves to use chiles in his Asian-inflected dishes, and occasionally they come on way too strong. Perfect small cornmeal-fried oysters rolled up in shiso leaves to make “Japanese tacos” had their harmony of flavors and textures disrupted by too many too-hot serrano wheels. (I ended up picking them out.) The dots of red chile sauce on that vegan salad of grapefruit, avocado and tofu were way too hot for the dish’s good.
And, occasionally, Simmons’ brave new ideas just don’t quite work out. I’m still wondering why meaty, singed pork belly is a better addition to a lively, cross-sectioned wedge salad than bacon, and why the grape tomatoes are so tartly marinated they fight with the blue cheese dressing. Or why a promisingsounding lunch dish of chickenfried venison turned out so dreary and dry, with such a one-dimensional cream sauce sitting on top.
I was flummoxed, too, by a costly $19 dessert of mascarpone cheesecake, a rich fluff on a clashy chocolate crumb crust flavored with fleur de sel, its small crown of tart apricot helpless to perk things up. Simmons is doing his own desserts these days, which is tricky, and his deconstructed, discombobulated banana pudding left me scratching my head.
But his vegan strawberry shortcake works surprisingly well, and his towering devil’s food cake sheathed in dark chocolate is stupendous, with its irresistible blobs of sea-salt caramel sauce. Simmons has taught himself to make serious chocolates, too, but I wonder if eventually he will want to hire a pastry chef again, just to even things out.
Otherwise, the staffing is notably good at Tris. Director of operations Chris Perry is a gifted natural host who runs a tight service ship. And everyone — from bartenders working on interesting cocktails to servers bragging on the new menu and more flexible dining-room floor plan — acts excited to be working here. That’s infectious.
Simmons and his team are now running one of the best restaurants in the city, broadly defined. For anyone interested in fine dining, it’s a worthwhile jaunt. I’d do it for the Korean butter-poached crab alone.