The hummus is back

Chris Shepherd fires up the pita for his comforting One Fifth revival

One Fifth Mediterranean returns Friday.

Photo by Julie Soefer

Chris Shepherd has good news and bad news about the future of his One Fifth, his Montrose restaurant that annually changes concepts.

The bad news is that he’s scrapped plans to reboot the restaurant as One Fifth Lightning Round. Announced in February, the ambitious project would have seen the restaurant cycle through a number of different concepts — Vietnamese, Russian, Italian, etc. — every few months.

Instead, Shepherd and One Fifth chef de cuisine Matt Staph have decided to revive the restaurant’s Mediterranean concept that ran from September 2018 to July 2019. Beginning Friday, May 8, Staph will start serving OFM signatures like Turkish hummus, taboon-roasted tomatoes with whipped feta, and kebabs.

Shepherd tells CultureMap that the restaurant’s menu is well-suited to a time when restaurants are serving customers to-go due to the coronavirus.

“We don’t know what’s going to happen. We’ve got 18 months [left on the building’s lease],” he says. “We could still be doing this for 18 months, who knows? It’s the perfect food for to-go. The staff love it, and I miss it.”

Additionally, the restaurant’s physical setup includes a door in the kitchen that leads directly to the parking lot, which will make curbside service easy. A relatively affordable price point and the food’s ability to reheat well as leftovers also influenced the decision.

“I want some kibbeh nayeh, I want some hummus, I want some kebabs. And I want it in my refrigerator,” Shepherd says. “When you get takeout food, you get it and you may eat it the next day, too. I think coffee-roasted beets, it’s still as good tomorrow as it was when you got it. Even kebabs and pita warm up nice.”

Last week, Staph held a little trial run by offering hummus and pita through Georgia James’ online marketplace. It sold out in minutes. “It was, like, ok, the people have spoken,” he says. That impulse fits the chef’s own cravings, too.

“I want to jam hummus and pita in my face everyday, especially that stuff,” Shepherd says. “Matt has that dialed in so good. To be able to take that Turkish hummus as a take-and-bake, let’s go.”

Intrigued? The restaurant is offering a three-course, Mother’s Day feast for four that includes hummus, vegetable dishes like coffee-roasted beets and roasted tomatoes, lamb merguez with cucumber labneh, yogurt-marinated half chicken, and katafi cheesecake. It costs $160 and can be ordered via One Fifth’s website.

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New York Times critic awards Houston restaurant 2 stars in glowing review

Courtesy of ChòpnBlọk

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Let’s just call 2025 the year of ChòpnBlọk. In a review published Tuesday, December 16, the New York Times has awarded the Houston restaurant two stars (“very good”).

Written by chief restaurant critic Tejal Rao, the review touts many of the same qualities that the Times already praised when it included ChòpnBlọk on its list of America’s 50 best restaurants.

Rao writes that she usually avoids restaurants that serve food in bowls, but she’s impressed by the way that chef-owner Ope Amosu has put a West African spin on the concept.

“For inspiration, Ope Amosu looked to the kind of chain restaurants that were built to scale, where flavors are often subdued to appeal to the broadest possible audience, focus-grouped to death. But the delight of ChòpnBlok is in its sure sense of self, its lively, multidimensional cooking and clear, delicious vision for modern food from the Black diaspora,” Rao writes.

She singles out specific dishes, including the Nigerian red stew with short rib, the Black Star bowl with shrimp, and the signature Motherland, made with chicken, greens, and plantains. “It’s utterly simple, but draws you in for more with the mouthwatering twang of not-too-much MSG — an international shortcut to building umami that tends to be used carefully, and layered with other forms,” she writes.

The review also touches on the way Amosu switched the restaurant from counter service to full service — described as “warm, informal, and quick with the jokes” — and his time working at Chipotle to learn the basics of the restaurant operations.

A two-star review is only the latest instance of ChòpnBlọk receiving national attention. In addition to the Times 50 best list, Esquire recently named it one of America’s best new restaurants. The Michelin Guide awarded it a Bib Gourmand designation for 2025. Amosu earned a semifinalist nomination for Best Chef: Texas in the 2025 James Beard Awards.

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