rodeo best bites 2022

Houston favorites lasso top honors at rodeo's Best Bites competition

Troy Guard, left, of Guard and Grace.

Photo by Eric Sandler

Houstonians are ready to Rodeo. More than 4,000 food and wine lovers turned out for the annual Rodeo Uncorked! Roundup & Best Bites Competition that pairs award-winning wines from the 2022 Rodeo Uncorked! International Wine Competition with food prepared by almost 100 Houston restaurants, bakeries, and food trucks.

As always, Ronnie Killen fared well with the panel of media judges, scoring first place in the Lone Star Entrée Award with a dish from Killen's TMX. The Tex-Mex restaurant's brisket suadero taco with black garlic salsa, guacamole, and queso fresco also drew long lines of attendees, keeping veteran Killen's chef Teddy Lopez and his team busy all night.

As for the coveted people's choice belt buckle, Cotton Culinary won with its "Figgy Piggy," while downtown steakhouse Guard & Grace took second for its flavorful oak-grilled New York strip with loaded baked potato cracker. See the full list of winners below.

Highlights from the non-winning dishes included smoked enchiladas from Brett's BBQ Shop, classic Louisiana gumbo from Eunice, seafood empanadas from Pier 6 Seafood, and truffle salmon nigiri from Memorial-area Japanese restaurant Kuu. Overall, the participants range from Houston classics like Brennan's and Taste of Texas to relative newcomers like Palace Social and Click Virtual Food Hall.

The annual event — unofficially the kick-off of Rodeo season ahead of the trail rides and barbecue cook-off — draws thousands to NRG Center. In addition to food from some of the city's top restaurants, attendees may sample some of the almost 500 wines that earned medals in the annual International Wine Competition. Thankfully, those who missed the festivities have the opportunity to sample some of the vintages in the Rodeo's wine garden, and many of the bottles will be auctioned off at the Rodeo Uncorked! Champion Wine Auction & Dinner on Sunday, February 27.

Here's the full list of winners:

People’s Choice Award
First Place: Cotton Culinary: Figgy Piggy
Second Place: Guard & Grace, A Modern Steakhouse: Oak grilled Creekstone Farms Prime New York Strip with loaded baked potato

Tasty Tradition Award
First Place: Joyce’s Seafood & Steaks: White chocolate bread pudding
Second Place: Taste of Texas Restaurant: Certified Angus Beef tenderloin and Megan’s mac & cheese

Trailblazer Appetizer Award
First Place: Omni Houston: Pork belly skewer, Moroccan BBQ, Carrot Puree, Chicharrone
Second Place: Songkran Thai Kitchen: Thai Steak Salad (Neu Nam Tok)
Third Place: Revival Market: Cauliflower Crositini – cauliflower hummus, homemade giardiniera, za’atar, chives

Lone Star Entrée Award
First Place: Killen’s TMX: Brisket suadero taco with black garlic salsa guacamole and queso fresco, and charro beans with jalapeno sausage
Second Place: Gus’ Fried Chicken: Fried Chicken Wing
Third Place: Russo’s Italian Kitchen: Lobster maestro – lobster essence, bianco, talegio, capelietti, maine lobster, smoked pecan

Two-Steppin’ Dessert Award
First Place: Egghaus Gourmet: Texas Pecan Croissant
Second Place: Ragin Cajun: Bread pudding with rum sauce
Third Place: Ashley Cakes: Carrot Cake

Rookie Award
Craft Creamery: R-C Ranch Wagyu Brisket Ice Cream Sandwich

Trail Boss Food Truck Award
Cruisin Sushi: Cruisin Special Roll – fried roll inside chicken, zucchini, carrots, Monterrey cheese, Tampico, cream cheese and avocado, drizzled with homemade spicy mayo and eel sauce (homemade soy and jalapeno sauce on the side)

Outstanding Showmanship Award
First Place: Eculent
Second Place: Texas Harvest

Troy Guard, left, of Guard and Grace.

Rodeo Best Bites 2022 Troy Guard Guard & Grace

Photo by Eric Sandler

Troy Guard, left, of Guard and Grace.

What's Eric Eating Episodes 523 and 524

Acclaimed Austin duo dish on their wine-obsessed neighborhood restaurant

Birdie's Arjav Ezekiel Tracy Malechek-Ezekiel

Photo by Mackenzie Smith Kelly

Birdie's owners Arjav Ezekiel and chef Tracy Malechek-Ezekiel are this week's guests.

On this week’s episode of “What’s Eric Eating,” chef Tracy Malechek-Ezekiel and beverage director Arjav Ezekiel join CultureMap Houston editor Eric Sandler to discuss their Austin restaurant Birdie’s.

Widely considered one of Austin’s top restaurants, Birdie’s has earned local, regional, and national acclaim, including a place of the 2025 Time100 Next list, Food & Wine magazine’s 2023 Restaurant of the Year, and a 2025 James Beard Award for Outstanding Professional in Beverage Service to Ezekiel. In a 2024 column, James Beard Award winner Chris Shepherd recommended that Houstonians visit Birdie’s the next time they’re in Austin.

Sandler’s conversation with the duo begins with a little bit about how they met while working together in New York and their decision to move to Austin. From there, it turns to Birdie’s counter service model that’s unusual for a restaurant of its quality. Sandler asks whether not offering traditional table service has lowered the restaurant’s profits.

“It’s the opposite. Because we have a leaner labor force in the dining room, our margins are probably double what they would be if we were a traditional restaurant,” Ezekiel explains. “What we’re able to do is take a portion of that margin and invest it back into our team. We talk about ‘Conscious Capitalism’ a lot. That extra margin pays for paid family leave that we offer to everybody on our team, the month of paid and planned vacation every year, the subsidized health insurance, the subsidized mental therapy we offer. We needed to find more change under the cushions, so we could invest it back into our team.”

Initially, Birdie’s opened with an a la carte menu. In 2025, it switched to a prix fixe format that offers diners six courses for $80. The switch means the restaurant serves fewer diners per night, which has shortened the wait to order from up to an hour to 20 minutes or less. Chef Malechek-Ezekiel explains that this change has also expanded the range of dishes she’s able to serve and broadened the techniques she uses to create them.

“We can cook fish confit. We can use the Japanese robata grill to cook on charcoal. We can hot smoke fish to order. Now, I feel like, wow, look what we can do now. Before, we had the skills, but we couldn’t physically do it with how tiny our space is.”

Listen to the full episode to hear more about how Birdie’s guides diners through its wine list, which of the monthly prix fixe menus has been the most successful, and the couple’s thoughts on potentially opening a new restaurant.

In this week’s other episode, Craft Pita chef-owner Raffi Nasr joins Sandler to discuss some recent news in the world of Houston restaurants. Their topics include Tex-Mex restaurant Superica transforming into a casual steakhouse; the imminent opening of delivery-focused Shredders Pizza; and a change in operations at Weights + Measures.

In the restaurant of the week segment, Nasr and Sandler describe their recent meal at Oru, a new sushi restaurant in the Heights from the team behind Michelin-recognized omakase counter Neo and Upper Kirby hand roll concept Kira. Listen to hear their favorite dishes as well as Sandler’s quibbles with a couple of aspects of the experience.

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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.

Photo by Mackenzie Smith Kelly

Birdie's owners Arjav Ezekiel and chef Tracy Malechek-Ezekiel are this week's guests.

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