A taste of the Philippines

Hip Austin Filipino restaurant picks The Heights for first Houston location

Be More Pacific will bring Filipino food to the Heights.

Photo by Ashlyn Allison

So many Austin restaurants have made their way to Houston over the years that it’s hard to list them all. That success continues to lure a diverse crop of restaurateurs to try their luck in the Bayou City.

Add Giovan Cuchapin and Mark Pascual to the ever-growing trend. The duo, along with Houston hospitality veteran Roveen Abante (Lincoln Bar, Pour Behavior, Understory Bar in Capitol Tower) are bringing Be More Pacific Filipino Kitchen and Bar, their popular Filipino food truck-turned-restaurant, to the Heights. Slated to open this fall, the restaurant will join La Vibra in the Heights Village shopping center at the corner of 5th and Yale. It’s a homecoming for Cuchapin and Pascual, both of whom grew up in Houston.

“We feel that the Heights seems to be where all the other restaurants are going,” Pascual tells CultureMap. “It seems to be a hotspot for Houston ... The first one in Houston we wanted to be central, so that everyone has access to it.”

In terms of food, expect an expanded version of the menu that helped the restaurant earn a Best New Restaurant award in the 2018 CultureMap Austin Tastemaker Awards. Food editor Brandon Watson notes a number of highlights on the menu, including lumpia Shanghai (pork and shrimp egg rolls served with a house sweet chili sauce); sweet and tangy barbecue ribs with a pickled papaya salad and sautéed green beans; spicy coconut lime bacon fried rice topped with a fried egg; and adobo (chicken, pork, or tofu cooked in vinegar, soy sauce, and garlic).

“Our version of adobo is the best I’ve had,” Pascaul says. “Our filipino barbecue and our sisig [stand out]. I don’t think anyone in Houston does sisig as good as we do.”

Creative cocktails pair with the restaurant’s cuisine. Consider the Banana Mary (a Bloody Mary with muddled basil and spicy ketchup) or the Lou Diamond (a complex blend of passionfruit, agave, muddled jalapeños, and tequila served with a skewer of salty feta). San Miguel, a beer popular in the Philippines, joins a selection of craft brews on the beer list.

To help fund the restaurant’s buildout, the partners are seeking to raise at least $100,000 on the NextSeed crowdfunding platform. In addition to earning a 1.4x return on their money, investors will receive acknowledgement on a wall in the restaurant, an invite to a pre-opening party, and other perks. Pascaul says they’re hoping to open in October.

Most Filipino restaurants in Houston cater primarily to people who are already familiar with the cuisine. Be More Pacific has crossed over in Austin, winning new fans to Filipino food’s intriguing mix of Chinese, Indian, Japanese, and Spanish influences. With a prime location, look for the Houston location to be one of the fall’s most intriguing new arrivals.

news-you-can-eat openings the-heights

Kirby Ice House 5

Houston's modern ice house plans fall opening for new Clear Lake outpost

Courtesy of Kirby Ice House

A rendering previews Kirby Ice House's Clear Lake location.

Houston’s growing chain of modern ice houses is heading to the Bay Area. Kirby Ice House will open a Clear Lake outpost in September.

Located near the Johnson Space Center and Space Center Houston at open at 530 Bay Area Boulevard, the new Kirby Ice House will build on the brand’s winning formula — a huge indoor-outdoor bar with an extensive selection of beer and cocktails, lawn games, space for food trucks, and plenty of TVs for watching sports. The Clear Lake location will also offer Kirby Ice House’s daily specials and happy hour discounts.

The bar is customing its interior for Clear Lake. For example, the design will nod to NASA with a neon sign that depicts its signature cowgirl riding a rocket.

“One of the things we enjoy most is creating spaces that reflect the communities they serve,” co-owner Danny Evans said in a statement. “We never want our locations to feel copied and pasted. We want them to have their own personality, and we hope guests feel that from the moment they walk in.”

While the construction team is building the bar, Kirby Ice House has already begun recruiting the 100 or so employees who will be necessary at opening by setting up a hiring facility adjacent to the construction site.

Those employees will be pouring beers from dozens of taps alongside wines by-the-glass or bottle. Kirby Ice House also serves cocktails such as a cucumber-lime Moscow Mule, blood orange paloma, and lemonade Old Fashioned. A rotating roster of food trucks serves customers who want a bite with their beers. Taken together, the extensive selection and massive footprint have helped each location of Kirby Ice House rank among the highest’s grossing bars in Texas.

Over time, the concept has grown to four Houston-area locations in Upper Kirby, Memorial City, The Woodlands, and a Heights-adjacent location that opened last year.

“The Kirby Ice House team is excited to become part of Clear Lake’s vibrant, historic culture,” added vice president of operations Margo Axton. “We’re looking forward to being a neighborhood gathering place that supports local businesses, welcomes casual groups, and gives the community an easy place to meet up before, during, or after whatever the day has planned.”