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    Best Foods Bucket List

    Bucket list of world's best foods includes Houston restaurants: What would you choose?

    Marene Gustin
    Feb 10, 2015 | 11:26 am

    Have you ever read a description of a dish, a restaurant or an ingredient and thought, ‘man, I’d love to try that?’ ”

     

    Then 1,000 Foods to Eat Before You Die should be on your winter reading list. Just released, this tome by former New York Times restaurant critic and cookbook author Mimi Sheraton is a compilation of the best things she’s eaten from around the world. It’s an amazing bucket list of foods, restaurants, markets and dishes that will leave you drooling. There are plenty of things in the book that I’ve tried — some I’ve loved, some not so much — things I’d like to try and a few that I think I’ll pass on.

     

     

      Kenny & Ziggy’s New York Delicatessen Restaurant is included in the listings for many Jewish favorites.  

     
     

    And there are some that you can get right here in Houston.

     

     Kenny & Ziggy’s New York Delicatessen Restaurant is included in the listings for many Jewish favorites, including cheese blintzes, gefilte fish, golden yoich, holishkes, latkes, pastrami and corned beef, pickled green peppers, Romanian tenderloin, sable, smoked whitefish and kishke.

     

    Also mentioned is a German dish called gulyassuppe, a type of goulash soup that sounds really good for a cold night and can be found, the book mentions, at Houston’s Rudi Lechner’s.

     

    And there’s mention of D’Artagnan, a food purveyor that just opened a warehouse here, for being a source of Scottish hares as well as other delights.

     

    There are some local dishes I would put on my bucket list like 60 Degrees Mastercrafted’s $200 Bistro Burger with truffles and foie gras or the blue crab and caviar nachos at Brennan’s of Houston. And I’m betting there will be some divine new dishes on the Underbelly menu when James Beard Award-winning chef Chris Shepherd returns from his vacation of eating his way through Vietnam.

     

     New bites

     

    I recently tried a new bite at Urban Eats on Washington Ave. The building boasts an upstairs bar and restaurant (featuring some very good sliders) and a downstairs gourmet market where I picked up some smoked sea salts and some capocollo, a cured pork product made with hot spices. It makes for a biting antipasto with fresh mozzarella.

     
     

      “But I’d really like to spend a week in Paris during Christmas and eat everything in the little bistros. Also I want to dine at The French Laundry.” 

     
     

    While I was there executive chef Jason Grigar pondered the question of a food bucket list.

     

    “Any good food made well and beautiful,” he said. “But I’d really like to spend a week in Paris during Christmas and eat everything in the little bistros. Also I want to dine at The French Laundry (chef Thomas Keller’s flagship California restaurant). And, I really want to go upstairs and dine at our restaurant as a customer.”

     

    Opened only last December, it’s been pretty busy for the Urban Eats’ guys so it makes sense the chef hasn’t had that experience yet.

     

    Owner and culinary director Levi Lucky Rollins also weighed in on the subject.

     

    “I actually had a food bucket list of things I wanted to eat but I ate most of them when I was a corporate vice president and traveling," he recalled. "I had fresh Thai food in Bangkok that was amazing.”

     

     Wish list

     

    As for any local dishes Rollins had nothing specific but does have two places on his wish list.

     

    “I just haven’t had a chance to eat at The Pass & Provisions, I really want to do that soon. And I want to have dinner at Underbelly and meet Chris Shepherd. I went there once for lunch on the way to a meeting before we opened but all I had was soup.”

     

    Looks like we’ll both have to hit up Underbelly when Shepherd returns from his culinary vacation.

    Kenny & Ziggy’s New York Delicatessen Restaurant is included in the listings for many Jewish favorites, including pastrami and corned beef sandwiches.

    Kenny & Ziggy's Fiddler on the Roof of My Mouth sandwich Corned beef, pastrami, slaw & Russian dressing
      
    Kenny & Ziggy's New York Delicatessen Facebook
    Kenny & Ziggy’s New York Delicatessen Restaurant is included in the listings for many Jewish favorites, including pastrami and corned beef sandwiches.
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    roll out

    Self-taught chef slices into Houston with high-quality sushi to go

    Eric Sandler
    Jul 17, 2025 | 5:57 pm
    Kaisen Sushi Houston nigiri
    Courtesy of Kaisen Sushi Houston
    Each order of nigiri comes with a house made sushi sauce.

    The ghost kitchen phenomenon may have diminished somewhat since the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic, but the idea of a delivery and to-go-only restaurant still draws talented chefs who want to focus on food at a lower overhead than a traditional brick-and-mortar. One of those chefs is Sunny Bertsch, whose restaurant Kaisen Sushi Houston is already drawing buzz from inner loopers looking for a more affordable, at-home sushi experience.

    Located at the Blodgett Food Hall in Third Ward, Kaisen Sushi serves typical nigiri, maki, and temaki (hand rolls), along with a steak bowl. Prices are a little lower than what someone would find at a typical sushi restaurant, with an eight-piece nigiri set priced at $18.99 when ordered through the Blodgett Food Hall website (expect to pay more if ordering via a third-party delivery service such as Uber Eats or DoorDash).

    While Bertsch’s food may be familiar, his story is not. The diners who’ve rated Kaisen with 4.9 stars on Google may be surprised to learn that he’s only been cooking professionally for two years. As Bertsch tells CultureMap, prior to becoming a professional chef, he worked in fields as varied as aerospace and dog walking.

    “I’d always been interested in cooking,” he says. “I was blessed to be born into a great Korean American family. My dad and my grandparents always cooked great food. I learned by osmosis.”

    Bertsch began his career as a private chef by working for friends. He built his business by catering lunches to powerhouse law firm Vinson & Elkins. Eventually, his clients asked for private sushi dinners, and he had to figure things out.

    “I got an opportunity to do a sushi omakase. It was brutal. It was messy. But I knew once I did that, I wanted to dedicate my life to sushi,” he says. “Since then, I have studied and practiced. I threw a lot of money and time and fish at it.”

    Bertsch improved his speed and knife skills by taking a $13-per-hour job at Japanese grocery store Seiwa Market. While there, he says he made thousands of pieces of nigiri, rolls, and sushi bowls. That experience, along with meals from similar to-go-only concepts in New York and San Francisco, convinced him to open Kaisen as a ghost kitchen.

    “So far, I’ve spent $90,000. That’s more than the average investment for a food hall kitchen,” Bertsch explains. “I’m a clean freak. I’m a technology freak. I’m an authenticity freak. I outfitted my kitchen in the way I thought was necessary for long-term success.”

    Just as he spared no expense in specing out his kitchen, Bertsch puts thoughtful touches into his food, too. For example, every order of nigiri comes with a dipping sauce Bertsch makes himself from low sodium soy sauce, kombu, vinegar, and sake.

    “It’s a complex sauce that’s less salty and tastes good,” he says. “You know when you don’t have it and you’re given cheap soy sauce.”

    Similarly, his California rolls use imitation crab (as do most restaurants), but it’s seasoned with a housemade, Japanese-style kewpie mayo, freshly squeezed lemon juice, and sesame oil for more umami and less sweetness. Since the chef uses more crab mix than other restaurants do in their rolls, Kaisen’s California roll not only tastes better — at $11.99, it’s a better value, too.

    The chef showcases Japanese techniques and Korean influences with his $25 steak bowl. A USDA Choice ribeye or strip is cooked sous vide with a marinade made from garlic, tamari, and seasoning salt. Once a diner orders the entree, the steak is seared in a pan, basted with Kerrygold butter, seasoned with furikake and sesame oil, and served with short-grain sushi rice and microgreens from local farm Zero Point Organics.

    Word of mouth has been building. Even though it’s only been open for a month, Kaisen already has over 2,000 followers on Instagram. Once he’s able to hire a full roster of cooks, Bertsch plans to expand the menu and offer lunch service. Despite some challenges, he’s pleased with the restaurant’s progress.

    “The support I've gotten on social media has blown me away,” he says. “It’s been amazing. I could not have done it without Instagram. It blows my mind.”

    Kaisen Sushi Houston nigiri
      

    Courtesy of Kaisen Sushi Houston

    Each order of nigiri comes with a house made sushi sauce.

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