Blogs

Strict dress code at Otilia's.

Word hit the streets this week that Otilia's, the venerable restaurant on Long Point which has served old-fashioned interior Mexican cuisine for almost twenty years, was on the auction block.  Restaurant, employees and recipes -- all reportedly for sale.  And, predictably, longtime fans and patrons of the restaurant were horrified.

During a recent trip to Otilia's, I was stunned to see how much the old girl has changed in the last five years since I ate there.  The restaurant used to routinely top critic's "best of" lists in Houston, and not just the "best Mexican food" lists.  In 2002, Texas Monthly named Otilia's as one of the ten best restaurants in Houston, while USA Today named it as one of the ten best Mexican restaurants in the entire United States in 2001.  But you don't hear much about Otilia's these days.

Hangover brunch sounds a bit juvenile, come to think of it.  But let's be honest: if you're staying overnight in Galveston on one of the upcoming Mardi Gras weekends, chances are that you aren't going to be feeling 100% the next morning.

If that sounds like you -- or even if you're just in the mood for a healthy breakfast -- then you won't want to miss the Mardi Gras Brunch served at the stately Hotel Galvez every Sunday throughout February.  The gorgeous hotel's beautiful seaside restaurant, Bernardo's, will be serving up a bountiful buffet of Cajun and Creole cuisine alongside regular brunch items, prime rib and fresh seafood each Sunday from 11:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m.

And if you need a little hair of the dog, Bernardo's will also be featuring a Bloody Mary station and complimentary mimosas and champagne.  Frankly, nothing perks you up after a long night (hungover or not) like mimosas and coffee.  And prime rib probably wouldn't hurt, either.

Brunch is $35 per person and reservations are strongly recommended.

The group collective on Twitter, the increasingly popular micro-blogging and social networking platform, has developed a recent tradition called Follow Friday.  Follow Friday is part circle jerk, part honest and helpful advice from your Twitter friends on who to follow if you're new or simply looking to expand your circle of friends and acquaintances.  Every Friday, those who participate in the weekly routine send out a Tweet or two with suggestions of influential, interesting or entertaining people to follow.

Sound good?  Well, instead of combing through endless streams of Tweets looking for relevant followers to add to your stream, check out the list below for a brief compendium of useful food-related people or businesses to follow on Twitter.  Once you've added them as a follower, you can interact with your favorite restaurant, writer or chef in an entirely new way.  Think of it as a fantasti-sized Follow Friday for foodies.

No matter what you may think of the food, there's no denying that the nearly three decade old Las Alamedas -- that familiar pink stucco sight along Katy Freeway -- has one of the most beautiful spaces in town.  With soaring ceilings, intricate wrought iron, a gorgeous antique mahogany bar, expansive paintings hanging on broad walls and achingly beautiful views from its dining room onto the verdant bayou, you can at least rely on the scenery to be divine if you're eating there.

It seems now that the space and the restaurant itself might be in peril.  For several weeks, people have wondered why Las Alamedas suddenly shuttered.  Their dormant website is silent on the topic.  But Swamplot, the popular local real estate blog, and the Houston Business Journal have uncovered most of the dirt around the restaurant's unexpected closure.  So are their big wooden doors closed temporarily or not?

Walking across the Brooklyn Bridge, a New York food writer asked me, "Is the Grimaldi's in Houston as good as the Grimaldi's in Brooklyn, or did they just license the name?" I told her that was the very question we were on our way to answering. It was also a great excuse to go to the original Patsy Grimaldi's for lunch. For the sake of comparison, I'd eat the quintessential New York coal oven pizza and take a few pictures before I sampled the branch of Grimaldi's that just opened in Sugar Land.

I ordered a small pie with sausage. The two unique features of the Brooklyn Grimaldi's pizza are the coal oven crust and fresh mozzarella. In truth, the two work against each other to some extent. The coal oven makes for an extremely cripsy crust with a bit of char on the bottom, But the fresh mozzarella sheds a lot more water than the rubbery kind we are used to. So in order to really enjoy a Grimaldi's pizza, you have to eat it while its piping hot--and risk burning the roof of your mouth. The pizza I got was stellar--even it it got a little soggy in the middle because I took so long taking pictures.

I spent a little time checking out the operation of the coal oven, the dough handling technique and the timing how long each pizza spent in the oven. Stay tuned for a full report and comparison of Brooklyn Grimald's and Sugar Land Grimaldi's next week.

-Robb Walsh

Photos by Jay Francis

Plain as far as looks go, but the ladies sure do seem to like him...

Photo by Robb Walsh

The lime wedge really ties it all together.

Sweet mother of mercy, but we're nuts about oysters today, and with good reason: the recent glut may be your best chance to get plentiful, cheap oysters for years to come. Find out what the weather has to do with great oysters and much, much more in Robb Walsh's featured article. And if you still haven't had enough oyster coverage (and who can blame you?), you can check out our slideshow of raw, wet oysters coming out of their shells. Oh, baby. Is it lunch time yet for Pete's sake?

Finally, Robb is gonna show you some proper shucking technique.

Photos by Jay Francis

Just before Christmas I came across this most amazing book and proceeded to learn more about rum and its relation to our history. Wayne Curtis is a spectacularly good writer. I was originally attracted to the book for its section on Don the Beachcomber and Trader Vic and the invention of the Mai Tai. It's still my favorite chapter.

Walk down the rum aisle and you'll see lots of choices, and lots of labels, but in the background at the corporate level, there are only a few major players. But thanks to Mr. Curtis, I've discovered two that deserve your attention.

Who would have thought that Guatemala would produce one of the finest rums in the world? Mr. Curtis participated in a 2003 International Rum Festival as a judge and the rum that the judges chose as their baseline to compare all other rums in the competition to was Zacapa.

Are the sticks edible?

...it's the Corn Dog Pizza you just horked down.

One of modern society's greatest questions is now succinctly answered in a single website: This Is Why You're Fat.  Included in the website are such favorites as Rochester's world-famous garbage plate (I was not a fan, surprisingly -- and, yes, I tried Nick's), the much ballyhooed bacon explosion, and Scotland's second most disgusting contribution to world cuisine behind haggis, the deep-fried Mars Bar.

Conspicuously absent, however, is the glut of fried foods at the Texas State Fair: chicken-fried bacon, deep-fried S'mores, fried banana split and Texas fried Jelly Bellys.  If you've got a picture of any of the aforementioned abominations, submit it to the website for your chance at eternal (and by eternal, I mean ephemeral) Internet glory and fame.