Foodie News

With French cowboy's help, couple brings touch of Paris to Houston bakery, where everything's made from scratch

Two doors down from a Subway seems like a pretty unlikely place to find a taste of Paris, but a new cafe aims to change that.

Meet Florelle and Rabih Salibi. The couple moved from Paris to Houston 14 months ago so that their children could play basketball. As they watched their son Gabriel, a 6-ft, 6-in. shooting guard, win a state championship at Westbury Christian, they began to contemplate a business built around Rabih's 26 years of experience in the restaurant business.

"We make it from the scratch, everything," Salibi explains. "I think this is the difference between us and other French bakeries. What I serve to people is the same as what I eat."

Rabih tells CultureMap he began to study the Houston market. "For me, there is many French bakery, and it works. But when you go inside and start tasting a French specialty, I’m sorry, but it’s not authentic."

Seeing an opportunity, he and Florelle began to develop their casual cafe, which Rabih named Flo Paris after his wife. When it opens this week (either Monday or Tuesday), Flo will serve crepes, sandwiches, salads, quiche, breads and pastries during breakfast and lunch to Galleria-area office workers and nearby residents.

"We make it from the scratch, everything," Salibi explains. "I think this is the difference between us and other French bakeries. What I serve to people is the same as what I eat."

For example, Salibi uses a 48-hour process for the cured salmon in a simple salad. He then slices it thinly and serves it over a bed of arugula and fennel and garnishes it with cherry tomatoes that are infused with a little olive oil.

A vegetarian crepe is filled with feta, onion, tomato and lettuce. Similarly, Flo will roast the turkey for a turkey pesto sandwich, which is served on multi grain bread that's baked in-house. As seen in the pictures above, Flo focuses on presentation as much as flavor.

"We are working not only on taste but even on the shape, the design," Salibi says. "This is very important for me. Food, first of all, you must see. Second, you must smell. Third, you have to taste."

Modern look

Flo has a modern look with bright white tables, red and white chairs and a marble serving counter. The wall contains images of Paris, and shelves along the serving line will feature French products for sale.

Srour may be the real hidden gem. Schmit rates his chocolate mousse cake, which features three kinds of chocolate on a almond dough cake, "three star Michelin."

The Salibis also have some additional help in the form of pastry chef Dany Srour and Houston's famous French cowboy Philippe Schmit. The chef says a mutual friend approached him about helping with Flo's opening. He's been helping Salibi tweak recipes and will be working on the line while the restaurant's staff completes its training.

"I’m still at Drexel in the evening, but an opening takes a lot of organization," Schmit tells CultureMap about his decision to assist with Flo. "They’re nice people from France. I was just finishing the Master Chef. It was good timing for me."

Srour may be the real hidden gem. A childhood friend of Salibi's, he moved to Houston after spending the last several years in Virginia. Schmit rates his chocolate mousse cake, which features three kinds of chocolate on a almond dough cake, "three star Michelin." Similarly, another cake that blends the familiar combination of chocolate and orange gets some unexpected crunch.

Ultimately, Flo will produce fresh baguettes throughout the day and a variety of sweet and savory croissants.

With a relative dearth of places that make French pastries for a city of its size, Flo is well-positioned to become a destination for diners who crave authenticity. Salibi feels confident enough about his products that he's already has his sights on Common Bond, the city's most well-regarded bakery.

"I think he will be my competitor. That’s it," Salibi says. "Don’t tell me about another bakery. I will tell you. Common Bond, I respect him."

If all goes according to plan, Common Bond will have to respect Flo, too.

Breton biscuit with chocolate mousse, orange and caramel.

Photo by Eric Sandler

Breton biscuit with chocolate mousse, orange and caramel.

unspecified

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.

crime interview