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    Secrets of the TABC Reports

    Secrets of the TABC Reports: Houston hates celebrity chefs, small bars rule and new restaurant surprises

    Eric Sandler
    Sep 8, 2014 | 4:47 pm

    Every month the State Comptroller's Office publishes the Mixed Beverage sales of bars and restaurants across Texas. Known within service industry circles as the "TABC report," insiders use the numbers to gauge how their competition is faring.

    The data is publicly available, but few people have the time or patience to load the report into Excel and start running calculations. CultureMap provides a small glimpse into the way restaurant owners see themselves by crunching the numbers.

    Before diving into the data, a couple of the usual caveats. First, liquor sales don't take into account costs such as rent, ingredients and labor. A bar or restaurant could have low liquor sales and still be doing well financially, or have high liquor sales and still be struggling.

    Second, July is the slowest month of the year for bars and restaurants. Low numbers in one month shouldn't automatically be taken as a sign that a place is about to close, but low sales across several months are never a good sign. As always, support the places you like by eating there or risk losing them forever.

    Revenue per square foot

    One of the criticisms of the first edition of this new regular series was that it looked at gross revenue numbers without accounting for the square footage of the establishment. It's a fair point; after all, physical size limits the number of customers that can be inside a bar or restaurant at any given time, and, thus, how much revenue they can generate. How do three small-ish cocktail bars compare to Midtown's giants?

    The size of a building can be determined by looking it up on the Harris County Appraisal District website (also fun for finding out how much the county thinks your neighbor's house is worth). The difficulty is that the website only lists the total square footage of the building: not the size of the individual units. For example, Bad News Bar's listing for 308 Main shows 6,200 square feet, but this article from the Houston Convention and Visitors' Bureau website describes it as being 1,700 square feet.

    For a small space with almost no parking, people really love Poison Girl. No wonder it recently celebrated its 10th anniversary.

    Anvil and Poison Girl present similar difficulties because their addresses are combined with other business. In the interest of efficiency, we've simply used numbers that are half the size of the HCAD listings.

    How do the smaller bars fare? Pretty well, actually.

    Let's start with the Midtown bars, which, by virtue of residing in stand-alone buildings, are a little easier to calculate. Little Woodrow's tops Midtown area bars with $501,000 in July sales. At only 3,465 square feet, plus a sprawling patio of undetermined size, that represents $145 per square foot, best among the places surveyed. The Dogwood (7,624 square feet/$464,000 in sales) and The Gaslamp (9,762 square feet, $452,000 in sales) come in at $61 per square foot and $46 per square foot.

    Anvil resides in a 3,500 square foot building and reported approximately $181,000 in liquor sales in June. At 1,750 square feet, that represents a whopping $103 per square foot. Bad News Bar reported $78,000 in sales, good for $43 per square foot. Poison Girl sits in a 3,900 square foot building; at 1,950 square feet, it's almost $83,000 in sales are good for $42 per square foot.

    Of course, these numbers would go up or down quite a bit if the bar is bigger or smaller. For example, if Poison Girl is 2,200 square feet, the number drops to $37 per square foot; if it's 1,500, the number jumps to $55. Regardless, for a small space with almost no parking, people really love Poison Girl. No wonder it recently celebrated its 10th anniversary.

    Celebrity Chefs

    "Does Houston hate celebrity chefs," local writer Phaedra Cook asked in a recent Houston Press column that cited the closures of Katsuya and Trenza as evidence that Houstonians are hostile to big name out of towners. While Trenza's troubles were well-documented prior to its closing, every month seems to bring another announcement of a chef or restaurant group that wants to come to Houston. If the numbers are any indication, they may want to think twice.

    Chef Bradley Ogden is a two-time James Beard Award winner, but Bradley's Fine Diner only managed $33,000 in sales. In comparison, nearby Federal Grill serves a similar menu of comfort food and lacks Ogden's star power but still managed $48,000. Liberty Kitchen's location on Studewood, only two miles from BFD, rung up almost $98,000.

    Chef Bradley Ogden is a two-time James Beard Award winner, but Bradley's Fine Dinner only managed $33,000 in sales.

    Cook touts Mexican seafood restaurant La Fisheria as a success story in the Houston Press, but the numbers tell a different tale. Chef Aquiles Chavez is an international reality TV star with an extensive following in Mexico and Latin America, but the restaurant only reported $18,000 in alcohol sales.

    Meanwhile, Caracol, James Beard Award finalist Hugo Ortega's restaurant dedicated to Mexican seafood, reported $242,000. Even giving partial credit to the difference between Caracol's large space in a prime location near the Galleria, it's clear that Houstonians are consistently choosing the homegrown option.

    Celebrity chefs may have trouble using their famous names to attract customers, but out of towners who come to Houston to stay seem to fare better. For example, Etoile chef/owner Philippe Verpiand moved to Houston from San Diego. He and his wife Monica Bui committed to the city, and diners have rewarded them with almost $90,000 in sales during July.

    Similarly, Brian Fasthoff left Atlanta to open Batanga with his brother Hank and their wives Ianne and Maya. While downtown diners may not have embraced food at Goro & Gun, they seem to like the tapas available around the corner. Batanga reported almost $95,000 in July liquor sales.

    Memo to out of town chefs: You're welcome to come, but you better plan to stay.

    Looking at some new (and new-ish) restaurants

    Finally, let's take a look at a few restaurants that have opened in the past year or so.

    July's report holds good news for Table on Post Oak, the restaurant born out of the former Philippe. In its final full month, December 2013, Philippe reported $103,000 in liquor sales. Table reported $116,000 in July. Taking into account how much busier restaurants are at the end of the year with holiday parties then they are in the middle of the summer, chef Manuel Pucha and his team are off to a strong start.

    Over in Rice Village, the report shows a bit of a mixed bag for Clark/Cooper Concepts. Italian-inspired Coppa Osteria is booming with $142,000 in sales, but next door Punk's Simple Southern Food is languishing at just under $54,000. Maybe casual, family-friendly Punk's just isn't the kind of place where people want to have a drink. Or maybe the team needs to tweak the Southern-inspired cocktails and beer selection to be more appealing. What pairs best with biscuits, anyway?

    Up in The Woodlands, Fielding's Wood Grill recently announced it would add a second, more upscale concept called Fielding's Local Kitchen & Bar. Restaurateur Cary Attar should feel bullish about his prospects. His upscale burger joint rang up $57,000 in sales in July. That's a lot of craft beer, boozy milkshakes and Bloody Marys at brunch.

    In contrast, Grub Burger Bar occupies a prime location in CityCentre with similar beverage offerings but only tallied $20,000.

    How will Grub's newly opened Woodlands location fare against the year-old Fielding's? Stay tuned in the coming months, but The Woodlands is expanding so rapidly there's plenty of market for everyone.

    Got a restaurant or segment you want to know more about? Let me know in the comments, and I might examine it in the next Secrets of the TABC Reports.

    Celebrity chef Bradley Ogden has yet to find an audience in Houston.

    Lemon buttermilk souffle hotcakes from Bradley's Fine Diner
      
    Courtesy of Bradley's Fine Diner
    Celebrity chef Bradley Ogden has yet to find an audience in Houston.
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    What's Eric Eating Episodes 471 and 472

    Texas Monthly's BBQ Snob dishes on the magazine's new top 50 list

    CultureMap Staff
    Jun 6, 2025 | 5:41 pm
    Texas Monthly's BBQ Snob dishes on the magazine's new top 50 list
    Texas Monthly's BBQ Snob dishes on the magazine's new top 50 list
    Texas Monthly's BBQ Snob dishes on the magazine's new top 50 list

    On this week’s episode of “What’s Eric Eating,” Texas Monthly barbecue editor Daniel Vaughn joins CultureMap editor Eric Sandler to discuss the magazine’s new list of the 50 best barbecue joints in Texas. Seven Houston-area restaurants made the list, led by Truth BBQ at No. 9.



    What may surprise Houstonians is which barbecue joints made Texas Monthly’s list. Familiar names like Feges BBQ, Blood Bros. BBQ, and Killen’s Barbecue have been relegated from the top 50 to an honorable mentions list. In their place are newer restaurants such as Bar-A BBQ in Montgomery, Rosemeyer Bar-B-Q in Spring, and Brisket & Rice in Cypress.

    The two writers discuss what stood about the new Houston restaurants on the list, as well as the honorable mentions. Vaughn shares that Roegels Barbecue Co. in Briargrove almost made the top 50 based on a strong meal he had there. Sandler asks Vaughn whether the magazine felt compelled to choose between Blood Bros. and Brisket & Rice, since they’re both serving an Asian-influenced take on Texas barbecue.

    “It wasn’t about two different places serving similar cuisines. With Blood Bros., the things I love about them are really not their straight up sliced brisket, pork ribs, and sausage,” Vaughn says. “In comparing those items with others in the area, it didn’t seem fair to our readers to send them there saying it’s one of the 50 best barbecue restaurants. All things considered, it’s one of the 50 restaurants I’d want to go to eat barbecue, but maybe some of the specials — the banh mi, the boudain, the pho-strami, that sandwich was an absolute revelation. Comparing the barbecue with a place like Brisket & Rice, the brisket, ribs, and sausage were just a little better than Blood Bros.”

    After a thorough discussion of the Houston newcomers, Sandler turns to a few statewide questions. Tune in to hear Vaughn’s explanation for why Snow’s BBQ in Lexington and Franklin Barbecue in Austin — arguably the two most famous Texas barbecue joints in the world — moved out of the ranked top 10 and into the alphabetized top 50. They also discuss the restaurants that made the top three: Burnt Bean Co. in Seguin, LeRoy & Lewis Barbecue in Austin, and Goldee’s Barbecue in Fort Worth.

    The conversation concludes with a look ahead to the magazine’s best new list that will be published in 2027 as well as Vaughn’s thoughts on the Houston barbecue pop-up that would have a strong shot at the top 50 if it ever begins serving food at least once per week.

    In this week’s other episode, Sandler and co-host Michael Fulmer discuss the news of the week. Since Fulmer is a co-founder of the Houston BBQ Festival, he has his own thoughts on the Texas Monthly list. He and Sandler also discuss the reopening of Cecil’s Pub.



    In the restaurants of the week segment, Fulmer and Sandler share first impressions of Silk Road, the dim sum restaurant in a West U. hotel that’s generating a lot of buzz. They conclude by talking about Doko, the new sushi restaurant in Autry Park from the chefs behind Handies Douzo and Aiko.

    -----

    Subscribe to "What's Eric Eating" on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hear it Sunday at 9 am on ESPN 97.5.

    Daniel Vaughn Texas Monthly
      

    Courtesy of Texas Monthly

    Daniel Vaughn is this week's guest.

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