Houston's Ice Queen

Houston's own Ice Queen: Frozen bar wiz aims to change the way you drink forever

The Ice Queen cometh.

Hope Clarke, the ice chef at Chicago's James Beard Award-winning cocktail bar The Aviary, will move to Houston to open a high-end ice business in conjunction with The Hospitable Viking, the new bar and restaurant group that recently opened The Commoner and The Boulevardier in downtown Houston.

Clarke tells CultureMap that she worked at a variety of front of house positions in both Louisville and Chicago before finding her calling at The Aviary. She explains that the position has been difficult for the bar to fill, because it takes a certain kind of person with an appropriately "nerdy" disposition for ice.

As the ice chef, she's responsible for creating 25 to 35 different kinds of ice, including the bar's signature hollow ice ball.

"Chefs didn’t want to take it because they weren’t working with food. Bartenders didn’t want to take it because they weren’t working with people," Clarke says over a margarita at El Big Bad. "I staged, loved it. Just loved the job. I’ve done nothing but go in and make ice in a basement for the last 10 months."

As the ice chef, she's responsible for creating 25 to 35 different kinds of ice, including the bar's signature hollow ice ball and hand carved cubes and spheres. Her tools include a variety of ice picks, knives and saws (this article shows her at work). She's embraced the title of "Ice Queen" as an indication of her skill in her medium — it also beats being dubbed "Elsa."

"We call it ice chef because a lot of people are working with Clinebell and Clear Ice (two kinds of ice machines) but it’s not for consumption in drinks. The reason we call it a chef is because all we do is think about ice and the way it can be consumed. That’s the culinary aspect of it," Clarke explains. (This video documents The Aviary's ice program.)

Although some Houston bars already devote attention to ice and downtown cocktail bar Moving Sidewalk has introduced hand-cut, crystal-clear spheres, the skills Clarke learned from Aviary beverage director Micah Melton represent the next level of attention to detail in this area.

"When I think about creating a piece of ice for a drink or a cocktail, just as a bartender, there’s definitely a culinary aspect," Clarke says. "I don’t want to do it just to cool the drink down or just to look pretty. It had to contribute something as well. Flavor, the dilution rate, you have to think about the way it’s interacting with the guest. I personally really enjoy creating an interactive type drink.

"A drink that changes or evolves over a period of time that the guests can interact with."

Clarke says she always knew her stay at The Aviary would only last for a year or so and began to plan her next move. After meeting Treadsack bar director Leslie Ross during Ross's weeklong stage at The Aviary last year and an Aviary regular from Houston with a passion for ice, she began to consider the Bayou City. Originally, she thought she would divide her time between Houston and Chicago, but that changed when she met Hospitality Viking beverage director Joe Stark and owner Carson Hager.

She's embraced the title of "Ice Queen" as an indication of her skill in her medium — it also beats being dubbed "Elsa."

"We had plans for an ice company from the beginning," Hager says. "There really isn’t a great source for it here. We knew it was going to be critical to our success and having a quality product . . . . Joe catches wind that Hope, the Aviary ice queen, is possibly coming to Houston. He asked me if he should get in touch. Absolutely, feel her out. See what she’s up to. He did. She had a great conversation with Joe first. I talked to her. Actually, she talked to me for about an hour on the phone; I don’t think I got a word in edgewise."

Clarke quickly chimes in. "I just wanted to make sure it was right. If it wasn’t going to be mine, I wanted to make sure it was going to be right."

Finding they had similar ideas, Clarke and Hager agreed to form a business that would supply ice commercially to The Hospitable Viking's concepts as well as other bars and restaurants in Houston. Their plan also calls for what Clarke thinks will be the world's first retail ice shop. Hager says he has a space for the business and will begin building it out to Clarke's specifications prior to her relocating to Houston in May.

"I’m not sure there’s a demand today," Hager concedes. "People don’t think of it. But I think once you offer something at this level of quality there’s a certain demographic it will certainly appeal to. It’s our job to find them, market to them and make it easy for them to buy it."

Some of The Aviary's signature elements, including the hollow ice ball, will remain in Chicago, but Clarke plans to develop new shapes and flavors that she thinks will appeal to Houstonians. As for her soon-to-be former employers, she says they're happy for her.

"They’re very excited for me. I’m blown away by their support."

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Rising Star

Houston restaurateur dishes on swapping Tex-Mex for new retro steakhouse

Photo by Eric Sandler

Star Rover is now open in the Heights.

Restaurateur Ford Fry surprised Houston diners when he announced in January that he was closing his Tex-Mex restaurant Superica and replacing it with Star Rover, a casual, family-friendly steakhouse. With Star Rover now open for dinner and weekend brunch, Fry — who also owns Star Rover's neighbor La Lucha, casual taqueria Little Rey, and River Oaks fine dining restaurant State of Grace — explains that the decision came down to both economics and his own desire to provide the Heights with something he thought was lacking.

“This was our smallest Superica. Superica for us takes so much — every day you’re making salsas, tortillas, it’s so prep heavy,” Fry says. “We weren’t big enough to be that successful. We didn’t have enough seats to make the labor make sense.”

Rather than compete against Houston’s seemingly limitless roster of Tex-Mex restaurants, Fry saw an opportunity for a steakhouse that occupied a space somewhere between chains like Texas Roadhouse and Outback and fine dining staples like Pappas Bros. Enter Star Rover, which already has a popular location in Nashville.

Just as La Lucha channels Fry’s childhood memories of the San Jacinto Inn, Star Rover takes some inspiration from iconic Houston restaurant Hofbrau. Diners of a certain age will see places like Hofbrau in the restaurant’s design. The walls are adorned with framed pictures, taxidermy, vintage advertising, and more.

“The inspiration is if you were some old Texas dude who wanted to start a steakhouse you’d find a bunch of crap and put it on the walls,” Fry says. “We want to make it cool, but it’s got to take you away from what it was. Did we achieve that? I hope so.”

Fry tasked chef Bobby Matos with updating the Star Rover menu for Houston. It starts with a selection of steaks — chopped, filet, T-bone, ribeye, or skirt — along with a half-chicken, blackened redfish, and chicken fried chicken. All of them come with milk rolls, salad, fries, and onion rings. Diners who want a little surf and turf can add either a crab cake or a fried lobster tail.

The appetizer menu is similarly tidy, consisting of shrimp cocktail, oysters (raw or fried), potato skins, and vegetable crudités. Desserts include a selection of pies as well as soft serve ice cream.

Since the steaks are thinner than those served at upscale steakhouses, they’re cooked hot and fast on a plancha and basted in butter.

“We control the costs by the size of the meat,” Fry explains. “Meat is so expensive, how do you do a family-friendly steakhouse? It’s a 12-ounce ribeye and it’s choice. We put the right amount of age on it.”

Tucked away in the corner of the menu is text that reads “Cheeseburger?! Just ask!” People should, because it’s a hearty half-pound, New York tavern-style burger that sits on grilled onions, is topped with cheese and mayonnaise, and is served on a classic potato bun. Think of it as the thick-patty counterpart to La Lucha’s thin-patty Pharmacy Burger.

“I call it a lowbrow steakhouse burger,” Fry says. “It’s not a Peter Luger, but it may be better and it won’t cost as much.”

Star Rover’s weekend brunch menu features the same pancakes that had been a staple at Superica. They’re joined by some new items, including baked-to-order cinnamon rolls, breakfast tacos, and kolaches that use sausage from Houston’s Roegels Barbecue Co.

Photo by Eric Sandler

Star Rover is now open in the Heights.

The restaurant has one other old-school touch in the form of an eating challenge called the “I Ate the 76er.” Available with 24 hours notice, diners who finish a 76-ounce steak, milk rolls, salad, onion rings, and fries in under an hour will receive the meal for free, plus a t-shirt and the opportunity to sign a winners’ wall. The challenge reflects the spirit Fry is bringing to Star Rover.

“A lot of it is scratching that itch of something fun I want to do versus what I think the neighborhood will like,” he says. “We did a version of this in Nashville with a stage. It’s where I eat when I’m in Nashville, because it’s what I want to eat when I’m there.”

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