Sugar Hooker's Sweet Treats

The Sugar Hooker arrives with sweet treats, late hours and a few new tricks up her sleeve

The Sugar Fairy has found her castle.

It's been about a year-and-a-half since pastry chef Rebecca Masson, known as both the Sugar Fairy and the Sugar Hooker (depending on who you ask), raised over $53,000 to open a brick and mortar location of Fluff Bake Bar. On Thursday, the dream became reality when Masson opened the doors for the first time at her new shop in Midtown.

Fluff will stay open until 10 p.m. during the week and until midnight Thursday through Saturday to serve diners who want a pastry to wrap up their evenings.

Masson is known for her kicked-up version of classic treats like Moon Pies, cookies and Fluffernutters — all of which are available at the shop — but it's the "bar" part of the name that Masson is most excited about exploring in the form of charcuterie plates and plated desserts with wine pairings.

Fluff will stay open until 10 p.m. during the week and until midnight Thursday through Saturday to serve diners who want a pastry to wrap up their evenings. Masson gets a gleam in her eyes when asked about why she's offering plated desserts at the shop.

"My entire career has been, from the minute I got out of culinary school and started working in New York, in restaurants. I’ve always done plated desserts as someone’s pastry assistant or being the pastry chef," Masson tells CultureMap. "I have a lot more tricks up my sleeve, you know? I’ve got more than Fluffernutters and Moon Pies."

Plated desserts

Fluff opens with four plated desserts priced at $12 each, or diners can opt for a three-course tasting of smaller desserts for $21 with a $12 wine pairing. Options include the "cup of tea," lemon ricotta pound cake with lemon curd, English tea ice cream and "milk paper," a blackberry bakewell tart with blackberry jam and lemon verbena ice cream and Italian-style zeppole donuts with risotto and honey semifredo.

"I figure out the taste first and then the aesthetics. I put (the zeppole) in a brown paper bag, because that’s how you get them in Little Italy."

"I did pick the opening menu of things I know work," Masson explains. "The risotto zeppole, that got me the job in New York at the Red Cat in 2005. It never went out of style. It’s freaking delicious. It doesn’t have to be all frou-frou.

"Sometimes you see desserts that are gorgeously plated but they just don’t deliver. I figure out the taste first and then the aesthetics. I put (the zeppole) in a brown paper bag, because that’s how you get them in Little Italy."

Serving plated desserts late with beer or wine is what sets Fluff Bake Bar apart from a relative newcomer like Common Bond (closes at 7 p.m.) and traditional favorites like Dessert Gallery and The Chocolate Bar that don't serve alcohol.

It also gives Fluff a niche in Midtown's suddenly booming restaurant scene that includes recent additions like Oporto and The Republic Smokehouse and an exciting newcomer in soon-to-open Izakaya.

Not alone

Masson won't be alone on this new adventure. She's joined by her longtime assistant Kimberly Margioni (affectionately known as "The Ninja") and pastry cook Russell van Kraayenburg. The chef says she see Fluff as an opportunity for both them and some new hires to grow as chefs.

Every single one of these people can come to me with a cake, a cookie, a plated dessert and be, like, ‘here it is.’ We’ll work on it. We’ll figure out what works, what doesn’t work. If it’s good, throw it up on the specials board. If it flies, I’ll throw it on the menu," Masson says.

"I want people to learn. We’ve made Ninja a little celebrity in her own right. Now everybody’s going to be able to see what she looks like," she adds. "I want it to be a place where people want to come to work everyday, and I want it to be a place where everyone’s happy. Yeah, you might have to scoop 300 cookies, but, at the end of the day, you get to work on something you want to learn."

Coffee skills

Masson may be ready to guide her team while they adapt to restaurant-style service, and she's certainly ready to serve as a mentor who helps her assistants grow creatively as chefs. So, what is she most nervous about?

"Somebody asked me for coffee. That’s the thing that’s going to scare me. It’s that freaking coffee machine. That thing is a beast. I was, like, ‘Really, Avi? Really?’," she says with a laugh. "I was a barista in college before being a barista was cool. It wasn’t like this. I didn’t have a freaking timer timing my shots. I was exerting 40-pounds of pressure on the thing."

Regardless of her skill with latte art, Masson is certainly gifted when it comes to pastries. Now that it's open, Fluff Bake Bar becomes an immediate must-visit destination for Houstonians with a sweet tooth.

Rebecca Masson, center, with assistants Russell van Kraayenburg and Kimberly Margioni (aka, The Ninja).

Photo by Eric Sandler

Rebecca Masson, center, with assistants Russell van Kraayenburg and Kimberly Margioni (aka, The Ninja).

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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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