can't stop dave's

Celebrity-backed hot chicken restaurant adds fourth Houston-area location

Dave's Hot Chicken's fourth location opens on Friday.

Photo courtesy of Dave's

California-based hot chicken sensation Dave's Hot Chicken will open its fourth Houston-area location in Rice Village (2525 Rice Blvd.) this Friday, February 25. It shares the former Buffalo Wild Wings space with a Velvet Taco location that opened last year.

Founded in 2017 by Dave Kopushyan — a classically trained chef and veteran of Thomas Keller’s Bouchon restaurant — Dave’s serves halal chicken tenders and sandwiches at seven difference spice levels. The menu also includes sides such as kale slaw, mac & cheese, crispy fries, and cheese fries. Milkshakes help ease the burn.

Initially opened as a parking lot pop-up by Kopushyan and three friends, Dave’s has grown to multiple brick and mortar locations across Southern California and three Houston locations: west Houston, Midtown, and Missouri City. Local franchisee Dos Niños Enterprises, LLC has plans to bring Dave's to Spring and Webster in the near future.

The company counts a number of celebrities among its investors including Boston Red Sox chairman Tom Werner, actor Samuel L. Jackson, NFL Hall of Famer and broadcaster Michael Strahan, and journalist/former First Lady of California Maria Shriver.

“Dave’s Hot Chicken will blow your mind! Every Tender is hot, juicy, and spicy,” CEO Bill Phelps said in a statement. “Our founders started Dave’s as a parking lot pop-up restaurant in Hollywood with a portable fryer and picnic tables from their backyards just four short years ago. We are ecstatic to be opening our newest restaurant in Houston!”

The Rice Village location will open at 11 am daily. It closes at 11 pm Monday-Thursday and midnight Friday-Sunday.

news-you-can-eat openings

best new tacos

4 Houston spots make Texas Monthly's 25 best new taquerias list

Photo by Julie Soefer

Maximo is now open for lunch and dinner daily.

Texas Monthly taco editor José Ralat has released his list of The 25 Best New(ish) Texas Taquerias in 2026. Published Monday, May 18, the list serves as an mid-cycle update to the James Beard Award-winning writer’s 2024 list of the 50 Best Tacos in Texas, which is published every four years.

Houston and San Antonio take the lead with four spots on the list. The Bayou City’s representatives are:

Alturas Mexican Cafe, a family-owned restaurant near the Heights
Bar Xolo, a Mexico City-inspired dining bar in Montrose
Huncho’s Tacos, a halal taqueria in Southwest Houston
Maximo, an upscale Mexican restaurant in West University Place

At Alturas, Ralat praises the house made flour tortillas and shredded chicken mole enmoladas. At Bar Xolo, he recommends the Tacos Oscar, which are made with potato, house made cheese, and caviar. The ribeye taco is must-order at Huncho’s, while Maximo earns its spot for a $45, five-course tasting menu that includes a “wild mushroom taco with white-capped bunapi, a crunchy lilliputian fungus that eats like popcorn with a woodsy flavor.”

Zaranda, the California-inspired restaurant from James Beard Award-winning chef Hugo Ortega, earns an honorable mention.

Elsewhere in Texas, the Dallas area, including suburbs such as Arlington and Plano, has four representatives on the list. Austin restaurants take two spots, and Fort Worth gets one.

Austin and San Antonio receive one honorable mention each. Dallas and its Farmers Branch suburb are also recognized with honorable mentions.

Ralat writes that he visited almost 200 taquerias to assemble the list, which is made up of restaurants that “opened, reopened, or expanded their menus between August 2024 and this past March.”

While Ralat finds that restaurateurs have faced challenges that include rising prices and aggressive immigration enforcement efforts, the overall states of tacos in Texas is strong.

“But nothing gets in the way of ganas — guts, desire, determination, and hard work. The 25 best new taquerias — revealed in alphabetical order by location (alongside ten honorable mentions) — all have that quality,” he writes.

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