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New Houston restaurant with James Beard cred looks to break Galleria area jinx: Tempting fate with Italian?

The last couple of months haven't been kind to Italian restaurants near the Galleria. Osteria Mazzantini finally closed in January, and Arturo's Uptown Italiano will give way to upscale Tex-Mex restaurant Añejo after March 1.

But Sam Fox isn't worried.

Fox, the James Beard Award restaurateur of the year semifinalist, is in town this week to supervise the final steps in the opening of the newest outpost of North Italia, the Italian restaurant that's part of his company Fox Restaurant Concepts. After all, healthy-oriented True Food Kitchen is already a hit in the same BLVD Place development that North will call home.

"We have an organization that's good at figuring it out," Fox tells CultureMap. "Texas has been a great place for us to do business."

All pizza dough and pasta is made fresh daily — the pizza dough also turns into bread for the meatball sandwich.

Fox notes that the North's Austin location is the best-performing restaurant per seat in the entire company, which is why he's confident that Houston will be a good fit for North's first new location since 2011. North will also add two locations in California this year and expand to Dallas in 2016.

Fueling North's growth is its reputation for providing high-quality, from scratch Italian-American comfort food. All pizza dough and pasta is made fresh daily — the pizza dough also turns into bread for the meatball sandwich. North even makes it own ricotta cheese, which finds a use as ricotta dumplings in a gnocchi dish with braised short ribs.

According to executive chef Jonathan Willis, who joined the company last year after a 10-year stint in the Marriott organization, the only things North doesn't make itself are the ladyfinger cookies for its tiramisu, its gelato and the bread for the bruschetta, which is made by local artisan baker Kraftsmen using North's recipe.

Willis cites North's bolognese sauce as one of the prime examples of the approach. In addition to the usual beef, the sauce, which takes six hours to make, also gets a hit of extra flavor from leftover charcuterie trimmings. After all, prosciutto should never go to waste.

Other dishes to try include the meatball sandwich, which arrives extra gooey thanks to scamorza cheese, and classic arancini, which are made with mushroom risotto. The brunch menu features Italian egg dishes like a frittata and the nonna (fried eggs, red sauce, Italian sausage).

Beverage offering include a selection of reasonably-priced wines, five local craft beers and a dozen cocktails that range from a classic sangria to a Manhattan riff called the Quiet Italian Gentleman that mixes Bulleit rye, Carpano antica, Campari and Disaronno amaretto. Select bottles of wine get really cheap during happy hour, when they can be paired with a pizza, bruschetta or meat and cheese board for only $20.

Taken together, North's offerings should help it find an audience and break the recent string of ill fortune that's struck a couple of nearby Italian restaurants. It opens on Tuesday.

North's bolognese takes six hours to make.

North Italia bolognese

Photo by Eric Sandler

North's bolognese takes six hours to make.

the more things change

Houston's essential Jewish diner looks better than ever after refresh

New York Deli interior changes

Photo by Sergio Trevino

The dining room has more light than ever.

It’s tricky to renovate a restaurant that’s as essential to its community as New York Deli. A staple of Houston’s Jewish community for almost 50 years, the tiny restaurant near Meyerland will serve as many as 400 people during a busy Sunday brunch.

Still, the time had come, as the tape on the deteriorating banquettes and peeling wallpaper illustrated. With the restaurant’s lease up for renewal, co-owner Michael Saghian saw an opportunity for some updates.

“I couldn’t be the new guy who ruined the place by moving it,” he tells CultureMap. “We worked out a deal with the landlord [to stay] and did a big refresh.”

The most noticeable change is the removal of the restaurant’s front door and vestibule. Instead, diners enter through the restaurant’s companion bagel shop. Separate entrances made sense when the bagel shop was certified kosher by local religious authorities, but now that designation only applies to the Bellaire location that opened in 2020. Not only is the new setup easier for people with mobility issues to navigate, it allows more light into the dining room, brightening the place considerably..

Saghian and co-owner Riana Sherman worked with interior designer Erin Hicks on the refresh. Tables, chairs, and banquettes are all new, but the color scheme remains the same. The process yielded 10 more seats, and the furniture is a little more durable, too.

“People have flipped chairs because they’re so lightweight,” Sherman says. “We got a sturdier chair.”

Behind the scenes, an expanded kitchen allows for the restaurant’s cooks to work faster and more efficiently. An additional egg cooker should cut down the amount of time people wait for their food to arrive.

“The kitchen had one of everything. Now we have two of everything. We can pump out a lot more food,” Saghian says.

Photographs on the walls honor longtime customers such as the “bagel girls,” a group of woman who’ve eaten breakfast at the restaurant since the ‘80s. A piece of old wallpaper has been framed and hung on the wall, too, as a nod to the space’s history.

New York Deli interior changes Photographs on the walls honor longtime customers.Photo by Sergio Trevino

New York Deli interior changes

Photo by Sergio Trevino

The dining room has more light than ever.

Saghian says he suffered from sleepless nights as he worried about people’s reactions to the changes, but so far his customers have been effusive.

“It still feels like an old school diner,” Saghian says. “It has pieces you remember. Even the new stuff is old school.”

While the physical environment is new, the staff remains the same. To ensure he kept the same team of cooks and servers, Saghian paid their wages for the two weeks the restaurant was closed for renovations.

Even more importantly, the prices are the same. That’s something that will make even the oldest regulars happy.

news-you-can-eat openings

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