Foodie News

Where the wild chefs are: Les Sauvages summer dinners set to showcase Houstontalent

The Hofheinz House
Photo via Culinaire Catering
Chef Justin Bayse

Les sauvages: It means "the savages" (or "the wild ones") and it sounds like sausage.

And while the "sausage" thing may be just us, we imagine there will be a fair bit of charcuterie in play when chef Justin Basye, formerly of Stella Sola, launches the Les Sauvages summer dinner series.

The brainchild of Basye and Peter Jahnke (last spotted bartending at Anvil and in a mad race with Bobby Heugel around Houston), it's a series of dinners presided over by the duo, with guest stars including Chris Shepherd, 13 Celcius' Mike Sammons, Michael Kramer and Jackie Blanchard of John Besh's August restaurant in New Orleans.

Basye writes that he envisioned the project "out of the desire to be able to cook the food he has wanted to cook without any boundaries."

"It began as a small project between me and Peter, but when I started touching base with all my chef friends about the idea, they were so enthusiastic about a chance to collaborate on a menu without parameters, just using what’s fresh and in season, that the list of dinners grew pretty quickly,” Basye says in a press release.

It's also a way to show off some of Houston's out-of work culinary talent — like Shepherd, Kramer and Ryan Hildebrand, who are in different stages of opening new restaurants — along with friends including Blanchard, Randy Rucker, Grant Gordon of Tony's, Ned Elliott and Nathan Lemley of Austin's Foreign & Domestic, and the guys behind popular food truck Eatsie Boys.

Each dinner will be held at the Hofheinz House and seat 40 to 50 people only. Reservations to the early dinners, the first of which will be held on Monday, are available at the Les Sauvages website.

unspecified

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