The national media spotlight is once again shining on a Houston restaurant. Food & Wine magazine has named Better Luck Tomorrow as one of its Restaurants of the Year for 2018.

BLT is one of 10 establishments on the list and one of only two from Texas. Kemuri Tatsu-ya, Austin's acclaimed izakaya from the owners of Ramen Tatsu-ya, is the other. At a time when prominent men in the restaurant industry have been called to account for sexual harassment by the #MeToo movement, the magazine says it opted to include restaurants "led by women and men with a sense of integrity" rather those that only serve delicious food.

"In the end, the restaurants we fell in love with this year were the ones that offer a rich portrait of the people who made them," Food & Wine restaurant editor Jordana Rothman writes. "They remind us that a good meal can capture the spirit of a place as sharply as a postcard. And while any road warrior will tell you the pleasures of travel are wrapped up in the journey, these 10 restaurants make a compelling case that sometimes, really, it’s all about the destination." 


BLT inclusion might seem a little strange, considering it is at least as much a bar as a restaurant — it did just win the CultureMap Tastemaker Award for Bar of the Year — but serving a food menu created by a former Food & Wine Best New Chef winner, co-owner Justin Yu (Theodore Rex), makes it enough of a restaurant for Food & Wine's purposes.

The magazine praises a number of BLT's dishes, including "gnarled lamb belly bites that eat like the world’s best chicharrónes [and] chilled shrimp dotted with Tunisian hot sauce," as well as the signature "party melt" and a chicken salad that's "interesting and delicious." Cocktails overseen by co-owner Bobby Heugel don't hurt, either.

Ultimately, whether Better Luck Tomorrow is more of a bar or more of a restaurant doesn't really matter. When the food is this good, it's worthy of national attention.