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

a CultureMap Exclusive

Houston's 'Chinese takeout bar from the future' touches down in Webster

Courtesy of The Rice Box

A rendering previews The Rice Box's new location in Webster.

Houston’s Chinese takeout bar from the future is coming to the Bay Area. The sixth location of The Rice Box will open in Webster later this summer.

Located at 114 El Dorado Blvd, the new location will be called Rice Box Space Center after NASA’s headquarters at the nearby Johnson Space Center. Founder John Peterson tells CultureMap that it’s a bit of a homecoming for him and his wife/business partner, Jenny Vo, as they grew up in the area. As with every new location, the restaurant created a movie-style poster to announce its opening.

Rice Box Webster movie poster The Rice Box Space Center is expected to open later this summer.Courtesy of The Rice Box

For its first truly suburban location, Peterson plans to offer a more efficient pickup system for to-go orders. Dubbed The Rice Box Pickup Reactors, the system applies Rice Box’s sci-fi aesthetic to curbside ordering. As seen in the rendering above, the building will have six slots that drivers will pull into to get their orders.

“The goal is to have guests in and out with food in hand in around 90 seconds,” Peterson writes in an email. “It’s still pickup, but we’re trying to make that moment feel more intentional and more connected to the digital side of Rice Box instead of treating it like an afterthought. We’re looking at this opening as both a new store and a prototype for how Rice Box can work in more suburban markets without losing the part of the brand that makes it feel like us.”

Bay Area-area diners can expect the same menu as the Rice Box’s other locations. That includes staples such as General Tso’s chicken, sesame chicken, beef with broccoli, and orange peel beef. The restaurant also serves traditional Chinese-inspired fare such as Chongqing chicken, cumin beef, mapo tofu, and chow fun noodles.

Recently, Peterson rolled out a new version of Rice Box’s dumplings. Available in chicken, pork, or vegetable, each style of dumpling comes with a different wrapper that enhances the filling’s flavor. They’re also available either steamed or fried.

The Rice Box started as a food truck in the early 2010s. After moving to a permanent location in the Greenway Plaza food court, it has opened brick-and-mortar locations in the Heights, River Oaks, Rice Village, and Memorial.

openings news-you-can-eat the rice box

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a CultureMap Exclusive

Houston's 'Chinese takeout bar from the future' touches down in Webster