Buzbee plans to launch online show on local food
There is a plate of crawfish on the table in front of Tony Buzbee, who has substituted his jeansand-jacket campaign garb for a baby blue sweatshirt and Texas A&M baseball cap.
The setting: Crawfish & Noodles on Bellaire Boulevard, where Buzbee — three weeks removed from an unsuccessful mayoral bid — is facing a camera held by his girlfriend, Frances Moody, and digging into the ample helping of crawfish.
“The reason we know these are fresh is because they’re small, because it’s the very beginning of the season. Beware of large crawfish at this time of year,” Buzbee says, poking a finger at the camera. “Beware of places that freeze their crawfish. You want ’em fresh.”
The 54-second video was posted Sunday to Buzbee’s Facebook page, which until recently pro
moted his campaign for Houston mayor. It since has been converted to a page for his new show, “Uninvited,” which Buzbee says will feature deep-dives into Houston restaurants, their owners and the food they serve.
Each of the 13 episodes will spotlight a different restaurant and likely will be posted online mid-summer, once a week on Facebook and YouTube, Buzbee said.
Five restaurants already have signed on to participate, and a crew is filming a promo for the show Thursday. Buzbee also has launched the rough draft of a website, tonybuzbeeuninvited.com, which still includes some dummy text and a few typos. And he has posted three teaser videos on Facebook, including the crawfish one.
Buzbee, a millionaire businessman and trial lawyer who often cooks for his family, said “Uninvited” will shine a light on hole-inthe-wall eateries instead of Houston’s award-winning restaurants that already are lionized by local foodies.
“It’s not going to be any of that stuff,” Buzbee said. “It’s going to be more like, very specific cuisine, non-corporate, mom-andpop shops that are doing good
work.”
Buzbee said he “religiously” reads Houston Chronicle restaurant critic Alison Cook’s reviews, but would seek to go “deeper” with his own show.
Cook said she welcomes Buzbee’s new venture.
“I am really curious to see what he’ll do with this idea and look forward to watching the show,” Cook said. “Houston is a big city and there’s room for all kinds of commentary.”
Buzbee said the show will not impede on his law practice, to which he has returned full time since embarking on a post-election vacation he documented through a series of posts on Instagram. Buzbee also previously tried his hand at travel blogging, though his blog has remained dormant since he published a handful of posts in 2018.
Though Buzbee said he already had conceptualized the show before launching his mayoral bid in late 2018, he said the more than year-long campaign spurred him to travel throughout the city and gain exposure to “out-of-the-way” restaurants, providing further inspiration for the show.
Asked if he also draws creative cues from Anthony Bourdain, the late celebrity chef who filmed an episode of his culinary TV series in Houston, Buzbee said he has read “everything Anthony Bourdain’s ever written and watched every one of his shows.”
Buzbee said another reporter already had floated the same comparison to Bourdain, one that he welcomes after Mayor Sylvester Turner relentlessly tied him to President Donald Trump during the campaign. In a Fox 26 interview last week, Buzbee admitted the message “stuck” and was “hard to avoid.”
“I thought I was Trump. Now I’m Anthony Bourdain,” he said. “That’s one comparison I would damn well take.”