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Ray's Franks' Freddy Krueger will haunt your dreams. But in a good way.

 Welcome back to the weekly round-up here at Eating Our Words, where we have gravy on tap. To start off with, Mike Giglio out-spent Robb Walsh $13 to $7, because Mike is a fancy man of top-shelf tastes. He seemed impressed by the food, ambience, and air conditioning at Fadi's Mediterranean Grill, but not as impressed as Robb was with his bowl of "Houston's best noodles" from Tan Tan.

Sarah Rufka took in the sad state of affairs that is a non-smoking House of Pies, where there aren't even any douchey scenesters to mock anymore. "What is House of Pies without a sense of irony?" she asks, and the answer seems to be "a low-rent Denny's with goopy pie." Sad. Luckily, Robb has some good news on some more obscure wines (here and here) made from grapes bearing names that sound like members of the French Resistance in a Howard Hawks movie. He also had a recipe for filet mignon drizzled with something called "maitre d' butter," which we'd frankly rather not know about.

It's the Belgian invasion! The news that's been making the rounds this week is that Catherine Duwez has become a permanent fixture at the Broken Spoke (1809 Washington Avenue). While the city waits for Jeannine's Bistro to open, they can get their Belgian beer and mussels fix over at the Broken Spoke with their revamped menu. And, as always, the restaurant remains BYO wine.

Further up Washington, Block 7 Wine Company (720 Shepherd Drive) has opened after months of construction and anticipation. A wholly new concept in Houston, the folks at Block 7 Wine Co. aim to be not only a wine bar or retailer, but also to serve top-notch food and teach consumers all about the wines they're drinking or buying. To that end, they even offer travel courses to places like southern Italy along with one of their wine experts.

And the long-awaited successor to Cafe Annie has finally opened: RDG + Bar Annie (1800 Post Oak Boulevard) hosted a crowd of glittering socialites (naturally) at its grand opening on July 17, most of whom we've never heard of. The restaurant is open daily for dinner and will start serving lunch on July 29. RDG + Bar Annie is also one of the 75 area restaurants participating in the upcoming 2009 Houston Restaurant Week.

Photo by Sarah Rufka

 Since opening in 2002, Mockingbird Bistro Wine Bar (1985 Welch) has garnered props from The New York Times Magazine, Southwest Spirit Magazine, Bon Appetit and Esquire. Mockingbird's French-bistro-inspired menu changes with the seasons to guarantee fresh flavors and also to allow for innovation in the kitchen. Eating Our Words caught up with Mockingbird chef and Houston native John Sheely for a chat about his destination restaurant.

What are your culinary roots?
I started off as a dishwasher at the Steak and Ale on Wilcrest and moved up. I never went to culinary school, but learned by doing. My mother's a great Italian cook; her family came from the port city of La Spezia in the Liguria region of Northern Italy. It was common for her to make homemade ravioli or braised shoulder of lamb.

What was your initial vision for Mockingbird?
I wanted a place inside the Loop. I had opened Riviera Grill at Town and Country Mall; it was inspired by the rustic Italian cuisine I served at L'Ostello in Vail, Colorado. For Mockingbird, I had in mind a casual bistro serving sandwiches and pasta dishes.

That doesn't sound like Mockingbird.
No, the restaurant morphed into something more like fine dining, with white tablecloths. It became more of what I call an elegant creative bistro than the neighborhood restaurant I had planned.

Photo by Robb Walsh

 Personally, I am pretty fond of the under $3 breakfast specials at Houston taquerias like Jesus Maria on Spencer Highway or Kiko's on Fulton. But when I have to entertain visiting grandparents at breakfast time, I head for the stretch of Westheimer just east of Beltway 8 near the Hilton Hotel and the Carillon Shopping Center.

Rio Ranch at 9999 Westheimer may have faded a bit since its glory days in the early 1990s, when Robert Del Grande introduced the new Cowboy cuisine there, but it still puts out one hell of a breakfast buffet. Rashers of thick bacon, great link sausage and a well-stocked omelet station are big attractions; so are the waffles, the pastries, the strong coffee, and the breakfast drinks.

A couple of doors down, the Sabine River Café in the Carillon Shopping Center at 10001 Westheimer is putting out some oversize Tex-Cajun breakfasts with fresh-fried beignets. I recommend the All-Cajun Special Breakfast -- andouille sausage, hash browns, beignets and eggs any style for $7.49.

Photo by Robb Walsh

 According to the "Italian Flavor" website, Forgiarin is one of four native grapevines that have survived in the Northern Italian wine region of Friuli, thanks to the efforts of Emilio Bulfon. (Piculit Neri is one of the others.) I picked this one up along with several other Emilio Bulfon rare varietals for $6.99 a bottle at Phoenicia.

Photo by Sarah Rufka

Emily Grymes

 Ah, the steakhouse: full of red meat, dark wood and, traditionally, men. So upon meeting Emily Grymes, the crackerjack barkeep at Fleming's, we have to ask if she felt like a girl in a boys' club. "In certain restaurants I've worked at, if you were a bartender, you were a man. But here it's different, because I think Maeve [Pesquera, the owner] recognizes there needs to be a balance, particularly in steakhouses, which historically have been sort of male-driven, at least as far as the clientele goes. It's interesting here, because four out of our top six positions are held by women, and we have a female-driven bar," Grymes says.

"Every once in a while we'll get an older gentleman that will come in and tell me very seriously, 'I need to speak to the bartender,' and they'll suggest we get a man back here so they can talk about sports." Grymes laughs and points to J. B., who's working the bar with her. "J. B. is Malaysian, so unless you want to talk about cricket or soccer, you're stuck with me."

It's happy hour, so I request a white "cosmo drop" off the new "5 for $6 until 7" menu. Grymes, ever the seller, is ready to put Fleming's deals up against any others in town. "The place I went this weekend was using well vodka--not even our well, worse than our well--these have Grey Goose, Ciroc, Ketel One, top-shelf stuff," she notes. "It's bringing in a younger working crowd in their twenties and thirties, and more women. Men used to come in and ask where all the women were. Now they complain because there are women here, but they can't get a seat."

Photos by Katharine Shilcutt

 A contentious battle if there ever was one... Chicken fried steak (or CFS, for short) is up there in the great pantheon of Texas foods alongside cheese enchiladas, brisket and chili. But just because a food is inherently Texan doesn't mean you can always find it done well in Houston, and vice versa: Some of the best Mexican food in the world is found right here in the Bayou City. Steve Earle said it best in a recent interview with John Lomax: "Houston was always tough for chicken-frieds."

He elaborated:

The last fucking place you can get a decent chicken fried steak is right over there. There's one little pocket there - Schulenburg, Flatonia and La Grange. That's the last place in Texas you can get a decent chicken-fried-steak. There's nowhere in Austin anymore...Maybe you can at a couple of the steakhouses in the Panhandle, but you have to go to a real steakhouse and they will have a chicken-fried round on the menu. But it's easier to get a good chicken-fried in Oklahoma than it is in Texas nowadays.

Could the hardcore troubador be right? We put two of the best local chicken fried steaks to the test and the results...were troubling.

Here's this week's roundup for restaurants on what is debatably Houston's most iconic thoroughfare.

A pre-opening inspection of the new Aloft (5415 Westheimer), a hotel for the techno-geek that looks like IKEA on steroids, turned up changes in the proposed layout of the kitchen work area not shown in revised plans for the space.

Another new kitchen, Jeannine's Bistro (106 Westheimer), aka "Café Montrose Reborn," violated code by not maintaining walls and/or ceilings in good repair, which is perplexing as the place hasn't even opened yet. (I hope to be one of the first to get my beer and moules-frites on at Chez Jeannine.)

Photo by Robb Walsh

 Cheez Whiz would be redundant on the fajita Philly at Jake's Philly Steaks on Chimney Rock -- the Philly-Tex-Mex sandwich comes with chile con queso. What's the difference between Cheez Whiz and chile con queso? I asked the owner, Robert Ginn. "Cheez Whiz comes in a jar, Velveeta comes in a box," Ginn said.

What kind of fajita meat does Ginn use? "Inside round," he said. And what kind of meat is on the regular Philly cheese steak? "Same cut, different seasonings," he said. Jake's on Chimney Rock, the city's foremost cheese steak emporium, was founded in 1991 by a couple of guys from Philadelphia. Ginn, who grew up a few blocks away, took over Jake's after the guys from Philly went out of business.

Photos by Mike Giglio

On a recent tail-between-legs retreat from a rough weekend in Austin -- sunburnt from a long float down the river, broke and dehydrated -- the Texas Traveler wanted only two things: free water and cheap sustenance.

Luvianos in Kyle had plenty of both. Water-filled bags hung around the comfortable patio, supposedly to keep the flies away, and the glasses were both tall and wide, and constantly refilled despite the Sunday-brunch crowd.

One regular described the fare as "real Mexican food for real Mexican prices," and a cool $7.50 brought a large huevos rancheros plate with a barbacoa taco for good measure (along with the free chips and salsa, which were decidedly not half-assed).