Mastrantos makes for a most worldly neighborhood cafe
Pastas, vegetables and more sprinkled with dash of Venezuela, Spain, Italy and beyond
Mastrantos just felt right to me the moment I walked in.
Ancient Bob Dylan sneered over the sound system, nasal and urgent, warning “Watch out, kid, it’s something you did.”
Mari Godoy, the stylish Venezuelan who owns the Heights neighborhood cafe with her Spanish-born husband, Xavier, offered a warm welcome.
My equally cordial waiter, Cesar, gave me a quirky little wine list and got me settled with a glass of Txakolina, the slightly fizzy Basque white that always seems to promise a good time. I took in the rustic-industrial look of the place, the little two-tops and counter seating and open kitchen, and felt like I had wandered into one of the grander dining kiosks in Barcelona’s Boqueria market.
From the mellow glass-sconce lighting to the glass-walled dough room, I was captivated. And I stayed that way: through bouncy, vibrant house-made pastas, unusual baked goods, vivid salads and seasonal vegetable plates brimming with personality. This is not cheap food. The prices may seem on the high side for casual neighborhood fare, but you’re paying for care and quality.
There’s something very 21stcentury Houstonian about this congenial corner restaurant, with its talented immigrant owners and sophisticated global touches
that weave together from Spain to Latin America to Italy and beyond without seeming forced, or too try-hard. Even street corn, that newly inescapable Houston chestnut, has its own inimitable swagger here — thanks to pickled spears of baby corn that ping against sweet fresh corn and mild queso fresco. A sharable plateful tends to disappear fast.
So does a generous bowlful of spaghetti carbonara, Mastrantos style. Forget purism: The wonderfully springy strands of housemade spaghetti are imbued with golden saffron and tossed not with pork jowl but with spicy Mexican chorizo, butter and caramelized onions. It’s rich and gripping and impossible to stop eating.
Just as striking was a “From the Green Garden” pasta that has segued off the fall menu but stands witness to what this kitchen aims for with fresh ingredients. Spinach linguine turned into a field of greens with snow pea pods, pesto butter, mint leaves, broccolini, peas and Brussels sprouts twining together. The vegetables snapped, the herbs sang, the linguine bit back a little. I hope I meet it again when the seasons turn.
In the meantime, I’ll content myself with caramelle-like twists of scarpinocc filled with taleggio cheese, glossed with gorgonzola butter and swizzled with balsamic vinegar deepened by black garlic. Or a bowl of casarecce — long, bifurcated curls — in a beefy, homestyle ragu, one of those comforts that demand a nice glass of red from Mastrantos highly personal wine list, which offers a small slate of mostly European wines, including some offbeat varietals.
Good as the pastas and vegetables can be, I was impressed by the fine crunch of crust on a thin slab of seared Secreto pork steak, a flank or skirt from near the belly. It’s a flavorful cut that grills up fast and juicy; perched atop buttery root vegetables with an energizing tart streak of yogurt underneath, it’s a gratifying plate for cold weather.
A risotto/paella hybrid billed as pae-sotto bristled with shellfish, chorizo and red peppers, and I would have liked it a lot were it not for one no-good-verybad mussel that had made its way into the mix. That was one of the few misfires I encountered.
Another befell me at breakfast, which Mastrantos serves every day it’s open starting at 7 a.m., or 8 a.m. on the weekends. Mornings draw a devoted Heights clientele. I admired my serious cortado espresso drink and rejoiced in the various laminated pastries, of which I will have more to say presently.
But a plate of grilled arepas with scrambled eggs, ham, mozzarella and pale-green cilantro sauce looked disconcertingly pallid — its wan, unbecoming palette a surprise in a restaurant where so many dishes leap with color and form. The flavors never gelled for me either.
Virtually everything else I’ve tried has clicked. I marveled over the striking textures in a tumble of Brussels sprouts prepared grilled, raw and fried, with roasted garbanzos as exclamation points and togarashi maple dressing providing the gleam. On the side? A slash of citrus aioli to deepen the contrasts.
I believe I actually squeaked with joy when the restaurant’s signature Carrots Over Carrots was set before us: slender whole grilled roots in various hues, a bit of their tops still attached, athwart a bed of carrot hummus, with z’aatar and aromatic Australian hojiblanco olive oil for dipping. That was lots of fun to eat.
So was an elemental green salad of arugula, baby spinach and electrifying whole mint leaves in vinaigrette, with pickled red onions for contrast. (It has now been supplanted by a fall salad for which I have high hopes.)
Keep in mind that breakfast and brunch/lunch is semi-service, with orders taken at the counter, and no running tabs. Dinner is full service by a remarkably nice staff. (“We hire on attitude, not experience,” Xavier Godoy told me, and the attitude shows.)
The beauty of the morning hours here is not just the light that pours in, or the activity in the dough lab, or the smell of espresso drinks brewing. It’s the house pastries on offer: the fat croissants, more stretchy and soft than shattery; or their snaillike cousins filled with passionfruit purée that’s a short, sharp shock of the tropics, thrillingly tart.
The fat cylinders known as tequeños in Venezuela come wrapped in Mari’s special, delicate dough that hides a central cache of the softest, meltiest mild white cheese. A couple of these babies, dusted with salt and consumed with a stout cortado, constitutes one of the best breakfasts in the city, by my way of thinking.
On your way out, check for seasonal treats such as the lovely pear tarts that showed up last weekend, semi-crisp fruit slices nested into a high, laminated square; or the memorable ham rolls that are a Venezuelan holiday tradition, here spiked with green olives, raisins and a bit of bacon.
If you’re like me, you’ll wind up plotting your next visit as you drive back home.