What-a-concept

Texas' favorite fast-food chain offers delivery for first time ever

Love Whataburger but hate leaving your house? Now you can order it from your couch.

Courtesy of Whataburger

Good news stay-at-home diners: Whataburger will deliver directly to your door. That's right — Double Meat Whataburgers, Texas Toast, Dr Pepper shakes, etc. — can all be ordered up without leaving the couch.

Whataburger's new perk is a first for the 70-year-old chain, and it's offering delivery in San Antonio, Texas, and the other nine states it services. Keeping with current safety precautions, the delivery is contactless and orders are packaged in sealed bags.

For delivery, users must place an order using the Whataburger app, select "delivery" at checkout, and input an address. Users may also include special delivery instructions and provide a tip. (Seriously — add a tip.)

Diners can also schedule orders up to 24 hours in advance, a particularly useful feature if one is, say, imbibing during quarantine and wants to plan a little post-party snack.

As an incentive to get people to use the Whataburger app (the company really, really wants you to download the app), Whataburger is rolling out incentives and freebies. The current one runs now through June 7 and is a buy one, get one Dr Pepper shake at participating locations.

The chain's new app is among the first innovations made following the Dobson family selling the majority share of their San Antonio-based company to the Chicago-based BDT Capital Partners. The deal, finalized in June 2019, came amid major expansion plans for the Texas chain.

For the purists among us, never fear; Whataburger is still offering drive-thru and curbside delivery.

burgers

Houston's smallest restaurant?

Michelin-recognized Houston sushi chef fires up 4-seat Japanese skewer spot

Courtesy of Sip & Skewer

Diners sit in front of chefs cooking on a grill.

The team behind one of Houston’s Michelin-recognized sushi restaurants is opening an intimate new izakaya. Sip & Skewer is the newest concept from Hidden Omakase owner Tuan Tran and chef Marcos Juarez.

Opening Friday, February 13, Sip & Skewer is a four-seat restaurant devoted to skewered meats that’s located within Sushi by Hidden, the group’s affordable omakase restaurant in Rice Village. At Sip & Skewer, diners sit across from the chefs as they cook a 10-course, $90 meal on a Japanese binchotan grill.

“Sip & Skewer is small, loud, and intentional. The kind of hidden experience you’d find in Tokyo,” Tran said. “And with Chef Marcos guiding the team at Sushi by Hidden, this space is getting new energy from every angle.”

A four-seat restaurant within a 10-seat restaurant might seem kind of superfluous, but Tran explains that it’s part of a larger plan for his group of restaurants, which also includes West U. hand roll restaurant Norigami. It also builds on the success of Hidden Omakase, the Galleria-area sushi counter that earned a Recommended designation in the Michelin Guide.

“Sip & Skewer is part of a larger vision. It’s designed as a stepping stone toward our next concept, Kōri, a new hand roll and craft cocktail bar opening in the Heights. Our plan is to open Sip & Skewer directly next to our hand roll spot, creating a small alley of Japanese concepts that feed into one another,” Tran explains.

“This allows us to build awareness, train our team in a new format, and introduce guests to Japanese charcoal grilling in a very personal way before we scale the idea into a larger setting with Kōri. The four-seat format keeps overhead extremely low while serving as a live test kitchen and brand builder for what’s coming next,” he adds.

On a related note, Juarez and the other chefs at Hidden Omakase are dividing their time between all three restaurants. Tuam explains that it’s a deliberate strategy to ensure a consistent customer experience.

“The same team that works Michelin-recognized omakase service also runs the grill here, which keeps quality and execution consistent while allowing the chefs a creative outlet in a very different format,” Tran said. “Because Sip & Skewer is only four seats and reservations only, it does not require a dedicated full-time staff. It’s an extension of the team rather than a separate operation.”