This weekend in dining

These are the 6 best food and drink events in Houston this weekend

Learn to make these three dishes from chef Anita Jaisinghani.

Courtesy of Tasting Collective

This weekend's roster of to-go food events provides diners with different opportunities to support local restaurants. Most feature curbside pickup to promote social distancing.

Thursday, April 16

Food truck pop-up at The Annie Café & Bar
Get a taste of chef Robert Del Grande’s elegant cuisine, as prepared on The Annie’s food truck, at this pop-up taking place Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. Thursday’s menu includes crab tostadas, tortilla soup, and Del Grande’s signature coffee-crusted filet mignon. On Friday, get prime rib, chicken and dumplings, or Scottish salmon with lentils. Saturday’s lunch menu features barbecue ribs, a fried chicken sandwich, and Gulf crab dip. Hours are 3:30 - 7:30 pm Thursday and Friday and 11 am - 3 pm on Saturday.

Friday, April 17

National Crawfish Day
Generally speaking, we take a dim view of national food holidays, but crawfish are undeniably delicious and eating some might make quarantining a little more pleasant. Phat Eatery in Katy will serve its signature Malaysian curry crawfish beginning Friday at 4 pm for $5.99 per pound. OMG Seafood, a to-go only restaurant with locations in Third Ward and Southwest Houston, will offer crawfish at 5.99 per pound for orders of fewer than 10 pounds, $4.99 for 10-19 pounds, $3.99 for 20-29 pounds, and $2.99 for 30 pounds or more. Don’t forget about all the usual places to get crawfish, such as BB’s Tex-Orleans, Boil House, and Crawfish Cafe in Chinatown.

Fish Fryday and weekend crawfish boil at Goode Company Seafood
Lent may be over, but both locations of the Gulf Coast-inspired seafood restaurant are still serving fried seafood platters on Friday. Get a single serving combo plate of catfish, shrimp, oysters, hush puppies, and more for $20 or a family meal that serves four to six for $80. Pickup between 12 pm and 8 pm. Must be preordered online (Westpark or Memorial) by Thursday at 5 pm.

On Saturday and Sunday, the restaurant will be selling boiled crawfish with corn and potatoes at 2.5-pounds for $20 or 10-pounds for $75. Pre-order by Friday at 5 pm strongly encouraged, but some will be available on a first-come, first-serve basis, 12 - 5 pm.

Cooking class with Anita Jaisinghani
Join the James Beard Award-nominated chef behind Pondicheri for a virtual cooking class produced in conjunction with The Tasting Collective, the New York-based company that hosts pop-up dinners at restaurants. Participants will learn to prepare three dishes: yogurt raisin dip, lentil kofta curry, and apple crumble. The 90-minute class also includes a Q&A, and the $30 fee covers the class, a PDF with instructions, and access to the video after the class is over, 5:30 pm.

Saturday, April 18

I’ll Have What She’s Shaking cooking class
Join CultureMap Tastemaker Awards Bartender of the Year, Sarah Troxell (Nobie’s, The Toasted Coconut), and chef Keisha Griggs (Ate Kitchen & Bocage Catering) for a tropical-themed class focused on tiki cocktails and Caribbean tapas. A $75 tickets comes with all of the ingredients necessary to make two cocktails and three dishes plus access to the Zoom webinar. Watch the webinar without the ingredients for $10, 4:45 - 6 pm.

Sunday, April 19

Jodycakes pop-up at Dandelion Cafe
Pastry chef Jody Stevens will be selling her gluten-free, vegan, and organic cakes and cupcakes at the popular Bellaire coffee shop and cafe. Those who want a specific flavor or style (we recommend the gluten-free red velvet) may order in advance via the Jodycakes website, 9 am - 2 pm or sold out.

news-you-can-eat

What's Eric Eating Episodes 523 and 524

Acclaimed Austin duo dish on their wine-obsessed neighborhood restaurant

Birdie's Arjav Ezekiel Tracy Malechek-Ezekiel

Photo by Mackenzie Smith Kelly

Birdie's owners Arjav Ezekiel and chef Tracy Malechek-Ezekiel are this week's guests.

On this week’s episode of “What’s Eric Eating,” chef Tracy Malechek-Ezekiel and beverage director Arjav Ezekiel join CultureMap Houston editor Eric Sandler to discuss their Austin restaurant Birdie’s.

Widely considered one of Austin’s top restaurants, Birdie’s has earned local, regional, and national acclaim, including a place of the 2025 Time100 Next list, Food & Wine magazine’s 2023 Restaurant of the Year, and a 2025 James Beard Award for Outstanding Professional in Beverage Service to Ezekiel. In a 2024 column, James Beard Award winner Chris Shepherd recommended that Houstonians visit Birdie’s the next time they’re in Austin.

Sandler’s conversation with the duo begins with a little bit about how they met while working together in New York and their decision to move to Austin. From there, it turns to Birdie’s counter service model that’s unusual for a restaurant of its quality. Sandler asks whether not offering traditional table service has lowered the restaurant’s profits.

“It’s the opposite. Because we have a leaner labor force in the dining room, our margins are probably double what they would be if we were a traditional restaurant,” Ezekiel explains. “What we’re able to do is take a portion of that margin and invest it back into our team. We talk about ‘Conscious Capitalism’ a lot. That extra margin pays for paid family leave that we offer to everybody on our team, the month of paid and planned vacation every year, the subsidized health insurance, the subsidized mental therapy we offer. We needed to find more change under the cushions, so we could invest it back into our team.”

Initially, Birdie’s opened with an a la carte menu. In 2025, it switched to a prix fixe format that offers diners six courses for $80. The switch means the restaurant serves fewer diners per night, which has shortened the wait to order from up to an hour to 20 minutes or less. Chef Malechek-Ezekiel explains that this change has also expanded the range of dishes she’s able to serve and broadened the techniques she uses to create them.

“We can cook fish confit. We can use the Japanese robata grill to cook on charcoal. We can hot smoke fish to order. Now, I feel like, wow, look what we can do now. Before, we had the skills, but we couldn’t physically do it with how tiny our space is.”

Listen to the full episode to hear more about how Birdie’s guides diners through its wine list, which of the monthly prix fixe menus has been the most successful, and the couple’s thoughts on potentially opening a new restaurant.

In this week’s other episode, Craft Pita chef-owner Raffi Nasr joins Sandler to discuss some recent news in the world of Houston restaurants. Their topics include Tex-Mex restaurant Superica transforming into a casual steakhouse; the imminent opening of delivery-focused Shredders Pizza; and a change in operations at Weights + Measures.

In the restaurant of the week segment, Nasr and Sandler describe their recent meal at Oru, a new sushi restaurant in the Heights from the team behind Michelin-recognized omakase counter Neo and Upper Kirby hand roll concept Kira. Listen to hear their favorite dishes as well as Sandler’s quibbles with a couple of aspects of the experience.

-----

Subscribe to "What's Eric Eating" on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hear it Sunday at 9 am on ESPN 97.5.

Photo by Mackenzie Smith Kelly

Birdie's owners Arjav Ezekiel and chef Tracy Malechek-Ezekiel are this week's guests.

news-you-can-eat interview podcast chefs