The Year in Culture

Food trucks revolutionize Houston dining & there's no stopping this roll

Food trucks got on a big-time roll in Houston in 2010.
Whether it was in an actual truck ...
Ricky Craig
or a Burger bus.

In the old days (circa 2006), the answer to “what’s for lunch?” was whatever you found in the downtown tunnels or the boring turkey sandwich in your brown paper bag. But in 2010 with the help of Twitter and Facebook, the answer comes from following the right accounts.

Fusion Taco Truck opened in Houston last May and changed the way we look for our next meal. Without a standing storefront, founder Julia Sharaby took her food truck to Downtown, Midtown and the Greenway area at lunchtime, and to the Washington and Lower Westheimer areas for late night eats. Fusion announce its location via Facebook and Twitter pages, each with thousands of followers, and stays at each spot for a short time before moving on to the next.

Food trucks have a short menu of gourmet easy-to-eat items like Asian beef fajitas on a corn tortilla with Asian slaw, or a variety of chalupas. Tacos are $3-$5 each. Even with three tacos, you are probably spending less than lunch at Café Express.

Soon after the success of Fusion Taco, the Fusion Pita truck started driving around Houston too. Serving breakfast and lunch, Fusion Pita offers chicken shawarma sandwiches, falafels and a make-your-own breakfast pita, each for $6.

Other food trucks followed suit, like Eatsie Boys, run by three friends who solved their own problem for late night eats and made a business out of it. The Eatsie Boys truck also makes stops around town and at local farmers markets on the weekends. You can try out their Vietnamese sandwich called Da Bomb ($6) or License to Grill Cheese ($5) by following them on Facebook or Twitter to see where they are next.

If 2010 helped us find a more tasty lunch and late night snack just by playing on our iPhone Twitter app, what innovative ideas will 2011 bring to satisfy and enrich our stomachs? I can’t wait to find out.

Editor's note: This is the 20th in a series of articles CultureMap will be running this transition week (the end of '10 and the beginning of '11) on The Year in Culture. The stories in this series will focus on a key point or two, something that struck our reporting team about the year rather than rote Top 10 lists or bests of.

better than blini

Houston pizzeria unveils indulgent caviar pizza for the holiday season

Courtesy of Pizaro's Pizza

Get the Holiday Decadence pizza through the end of December.

One of Houston’s most well-regarded pizzerias is giving diners a way to splurge this holiday season. For a limited time only, Pizaro’s Pizza is topping one of its Neapolitan-style pies with caviar.

Called the Holiday Decadence, it’s a personal-sized, 8-inch, Neapolitan-style pizza topped simply with Pizaro’s housemade mozzarella cheese and seasoned with a little furikake. Alongside, the restaurant provides diners with lemon zest crème fraîche, a small bottle of prosecco, and a one-ounce jar of paddlefish caviar from Houston’s DR Delicacy. Priced at $59, it’s either an indulgent treat for one person or an extravagant appetizer for two.

Pizaro’s co-owner Nicole Bean tells CultureMap she sees the new pizza as an improvement on the caviar special the restaurant tried two years ago, which used its thicker, Detroit-style pizza.

“This year, we simplified things,” she says. “We made it more affordable. We added more caviar. The feature is the caviar, focusing on having a whole, one-ounce container either for yourself or to share with one other person.”

In this configuration, the pizza crust essentially serves as an oversized blini, with the furikake boosting the caviar’s oceanic flavors. Serving the caviar in the jar allows diners to add as much or as little to the pizza as they want. Introduced last week, Bean says the restaurant hasn’t sold that many caviar pizzas yet, but that doesn’t surprise her.

“People are a little hesitant with it being caviar and the $60 price point,” she says. “It’s not for everybody. It’s for people who are curious and want to try it or really love caviar and want to try it every way they can.”

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The restaurant always uses its monthly specials to experiment beyond familiar toppings like pepperoni and mushroom. Next month, Bean and her brother, co-owner Matt Hutchinson, will present dueling pies — his topped with crispy prosciutto, sautéed onions, and balsamic drizzle and hers a simple tomato pie, anchovies optional but strongly encouraged.

“The fun thing about pizza is you can literally do anything with it,” Bean says. “I want people to try different things on pizza. It can be decadent. It can be upscale. It can be fresh and new.”

The Holiday Decadence is available at both Pizaro’s locations through December 31. Find more details at the Pizaro’s Pizza website.

news-you-can-eat pizza caviar