No Beard for Hou

Houston shockingly shut out of prestigious Oscars of food awards

Hugo Ortega Beard Foundation press conference

Hugo Ortega joined Beard Foundation CEO Clare Reichenbach on stage at Wednesday's press conference.

Photo by Eric Sandler

A morning that began with optimism at Houston’s prospects in the James Beard Awards ended in disappointment. None of the city’s record-breaking 11 semifinalists moved on to the finalist status for the awards, which are widely considered the Oscars of the culinary world.

That disappointment is exacerbated by the James Beard Foundation’s decision to come to Houston to announce the finalists live from Hugo’s in Montrose. Not earning any finalist nominations undermined the optimism spurred by Tuesday night’s sold out dinner at Caracol, where all of the city’s James Beard winners — Irma Galvan (Irma's), Robert Del Grande (Cafe Annie), Chris Shepherd (Underbelly Hospitality), Justin Yu (Theodore Rex), and Hugo Ortega (H-Town Restaurant Group) — served delicious dishes that highlighted the city’s culinary star power.

Still, the message from Foundation officials is that the city should feel proud of what it has accomplished — three of the Best Chef: Southwest winners since 2014 hail from Houston — and what is to come in the future.

“This is an amazing, dynamic, gracious food city,” Beard Foundation chief stategy officer Mitchell Davis tells CultureMap. “The reality is the voting is done by independent volunteers, it’s a national body [with] lots of judges. I can’t explain the results. All I can say is there’s a tremendous amount of integrity.”

Certainly no one is questioning the integrity of the results or even the worthiness of the chefs selected as finalists for Best Chef: Southwest: Charleen Badman of FnB in Scottsdale, Kevin Fink of Emmer and Rye in Austin, Michael Fojtasek of Olamie in Austin, Bryce Gilmore of Barley Swine in Austin, and Steven McHugh of Cured in San Antonio. Still, it does highlight a problem of a region that includes six states competing for a very limited number of spots: Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas, and Utah. It’s an issue the foundation is aware of.

“We review the regions constantly, because our goal is to make everyone who cooks, no matter where he or she is cooking, have as fair a chance to win an award,” Davis says. “With that directive, the committees have been asked to review the restaurant statistics, the population statistics. I think, in the coming months, there will be some changes that will try to make good on that directive.”

Houston isn’t the only city that suffers under the current organization, which has been in place since 2012. All of the finalists in the Great Lakes region come from Chicago. Florida, which occupies the South region, didn’t earn any finalists, but New Orleans, which is in the same region, had three.

“It’s not for Houston’s sake, it’s not for Chicago’s sake, it’s not for Miami’s sake. It’s about this dynamic country,” Davis says. “New York was originally its own region because there was so many activity there vis-a-vis the rest of the country. That’s not true either. You can’t keep up. Our committees are constantly reviewing, looking at data, trying to figure it out. I think come next year there will be some changes to help recognize some of the challenges in recognizing chefs from across the country.”

If nothing else, the city proved to be a gracious host that raised an epic amount of money for the Foundation’s scholarship program. To channel the spirit of legendary Houston Oilers coach Bum Phillips, if the city’s chefs keep banging on the door, eventually they’ll kick the son of a bitch in.

awards chefs

Chris Cusack explains

Houston bar owner speaks out about surprise arrest for health code violations

Photo by Sergio Trevino

Chris Cusack owns two locations of Betelgeuse Betelgeuse.

Certainly one of the most unusual interactions between a restaurant and City of Houston officials took place on Wednesday, May 6 when Betelgeuse Betelgeuse owner Chris Cusack was arrested for health code violations at his location on Washington Avenue.

News of the arrest spread quickly across social media over the weekend. Now, Cusack is ready to tell his side of the story.

Cusack, whose time operating restaurants in Houston goes back more than 15 years to Down House and its affiliated restaurants such as Hunky Dory and D&T Drive Inn, tells CultureMap the problem began on Monday, May 4 when a health department inspector came to Betelgeuse Betelgeuse and asked to see the restaurant’s grease trap.

The only problem is that location has never had a grease trap. Prior to becoming Betelgeuse Betelgeuse, it was Liberty Station, a pioneering bar in Houston’s craft beer and craft cocktail scenes. In the early days, Betelgeuse served food from a food truck. More recently, it prepares its food next door at The Bell and Crane. Cusack acknowledges he didn’t share this information with the inspector.

“Usually I’m a charmer with the health department, but I was a little defensive. She kept asking me. I said, ‘ma’am, we don’t make food here,’” he explains. “The tone wasn’t my finest moment, but there was no name calling or anything like that. She said, ‘where does the food come from?’ I said, ‘it doesn’t matter where it comes from. It’s produced in a commercial kitchen.’”

Cusack says he knew there would be a follow up, but he was shocked when the inspector returned two days later with more colleagues from the health department, TABC inspectors, and Houston Police Department officers.

“I got somewhere between 21 and 25 citations,” Cusack says about the return visit. He got dinged for everything from graffiti in the bathroom to a missing Harris County tax stamp on the photo booth he leases from a vendor (it has both State of Texas and City of Houston stamps, Cusack says).

One inspector told Cusack he needed a food dealer’s permit. He showed the inspector that a food dealer’s permit had been issued for the restaurant's address under the former food truck’s LLC but not to the LLC that operates Betelgeuse Betelgeuse. Cusack says he had renewed the food truck’s permit in March, but that wasn’t good enough for the inspector. In Cusack’s telling, he was arrested for not having the permit, since it was also flagged as missing in an inspection from October 2025. He's the only person he knows who has ever been arrested for a misdemeanor violation of the health code.

Cusack says he spent 21 hours in the Harris County Jail. When he got out, he says he was contacted by a more senior official within the Health Department. Once Cusack confirmed he owned both LLCs, he was told he could reopen. Both locations of Betelgeuse Betelgeuse have been operating normally since Friday, May 8.

Cusack maintains he never knew about the October 2025 inspection, which is why he renewed the food dealer’s permit for the food truck’s LLC rather than applying for one under Betelgeuse Betelgeuse’s LLC. “There’s no paper trail that shows I was given this information,” he says. “I did not get the email [from the Health Department].”

As for why things got so out of hand, Cusack theorizes he was a victim of Houston Mayor John Whitemire’s crack down on “reckless behavior” on Washington Avenue and stepped up enforcement on bars generally that led to the temporary closure of near northside cocktail bar Rabbit’s Got the Gun.

Cusack says he’s a “huge supporter” of efforts to reduce crimes like street racing, drug dealing, and sex trafficking along Washington and in its surrounding neighborhoods. Still, he feels targeting by the city for being impolite to a health inspector.

He plans to fight both the arrest and the citations in court. “I want the charges dropped, and I want it expunged completely from my record. That’s the first thing, and I’m going to try very hard to do it,” he says.

“That’s going to end up costing thousands of dollars just to deal with the sheer volume,” he adds.

CultureMap contacted Mayor Whitmire’s office. A representative said the mayor was not aware of the situation and has no comment on an open investigation.

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