HRW 2021

Houston Restaurant Weeks 2021 heats up with 10 exciting new options

Happy reservation day, Houston. The Houston Restaurant Weeks website has officially gone live, which means people across the city are scoping out menus and making their plans for August.

To refresh, Houston Restaurant Weeks is a month-long charity dining event that takes places from August 1-September 6 (Labor Day). Participating restaurants serve prix fixe menus at set price points — $35 or $49 for dinner, $20 for lunch or brunch — and donate a corresponding amount of money per meal sold to the Houston Food Bank. As with last year, many participants are also offering to-go options.

The event has been wildly successfully, raising over $16 million for the charity since 2003, and turning August from a restaurant’s slowest month into one of its busiest. Participants run the gamut from Houston institutions like Brennan’s of Houston and Tony’s to top steakhouses like B&B Butchers and Vic & Anthony’s to more humble, family-owned operations aiming for attention from the HRW crowds.

Ultimately, over 250 individual locations will participate in the event, but today’s website launch doesn’t have the full roster; expect more to be added through August 1. For today, let’s look at some of the restaurants participating in the event for the first time.

Casa do Brasil
At dinner, the Galleria-area restaurant’s full menu of unlimited rodizio meats —including picanha, bottom sirloin, leg of lamb, and South American-style sausage — and expansive salad bar are available for $49. The three-course lunch gives diners access to the salad bar, side dishes, and choice of dessert.

Craft Pita
The Yelp favorite has both lunch and a $35, three-course dinner menu available. Both offer many of the restaurant’s signature items, including hummus, labneh, pita sandwiches, bowls, and a half rotisserie chicken. Dinner adds a choice of dessert.

Fegen’s
Chef Lance Fegen’s restaurant in the Heights has opened to raves from the neighborhood. At lunch, choose from dishes such as clam chowder, deviled eggs, grilled salmon, and a meatball and sausage sandwich. The $35 dinner menu includes beef carpaccio, chicken parmesan, chicken and portobello mushroom ravioli, and choice of dessert.

King Ranch Texas Cuisine
This casual steakhouse from Landry’s Restaurants has two things that are always good to see on a HRW menu: three courses at lunch and a steak option on a $35 dinner menu. Choices on the lunch menu include brisket queso, beef taquitos, a two-meat barbecue plates, and, of course, King Ranch chicken. At dinner, Kingsville chicken recreates the casserole’s signature components, but the eight-ounce sirloin will be hard to resist.

KP’s Kitchen
HRW provides an opportunity for more diners to learn why Kerry Pauly’s neighborhood restaurant has been earning raves on the Memorial Area Eats Facebook group. Lunch options include crispy Brussels sprouts, roasted barbecue chicken, crab cake salad, and bistro filet with salsa verde. At dinner, entree choices includes roasted chicken, baby back ribs, and the restaurant’s signature crab cake.

The Nash
This downtown restaurant's $49, threee-course dinner menu begins with choices such as French lentil soup, wild mushroom toast, and yellowfin tuna crudo. Choose from five entrees, including seared snapper with parsnip puree, bucatini with shrimp, and an eight ounce filet with mashed potatoes ($10 supplement). Finish the meal with lemon olive oil cake, cheesecake, or chocolate banana cake.

NoPo Cafe, Market & Bar
As with its sister concepts such as B&B Butchers and B.B. Lemon, this new all-day cafe from Berg Hospitality Group offers diners an extensive selection of dishes on its HRW menu. Lunch options include six different starters as well as eight entrees such as Cobb salad, a cheeseburger, and four different pizzas. At dinner, choose from 10 different starters (soup, salad, pizza, and raw oysters all available) as well as 10 entrees that range from salads to pasta to steak frites ($5 supplement) and a choice of dessert.

White Elm Cafe
The West Houston restaurant’s three-course, $35 dinner menu starts with a choice of cheese fritters, sweet corn bisque, or heirloom tomato and watermelon salad. Pork ribeye, salmon with coconut rice, or an intriguing vegetarian dish make for appealing entree choices. Finish the meal with strawberry shortcake, lemon tart, or chocolate cake.

Xin Chào
The Vietnamese restaurant’s three-course, $35 dinner menu includes some of the most popular dishes. Start with soft shell crab with tamarind gastrique reduction, “Not Our Ma’s Eggrolls,” or a salad. Entree choices include the restaurant’s take on classic bo luc lac, braised pork belly with crispy rice, and five mushroom congi. Xin Chào offers three desserts, but choose chef-owner Christine Ha’s signature “rubbish” apple pie that charmed Masterchef judge Gordon Ramsay.

Yi Peng Thai Dining
Located in CityCentre, this sophisticated Thai restaurant will serve a three-course, $35 dinner menu. Start with open-faced shrimp dumplings, chicken and vermicelli wraps, or crispy soft shell crab. Entree options consist of Bangkok-style grilled chicken, panang curry with sizzling shrimp, and baked garlic scallops. For dessert, choose from sticky rice with taro and coconut syrup, a chocolate mousse pyramid, or a baked apple crumble.

Get baby back ribs at KP's Kitchen.

Photo by Emily Loving

Get baby back ribs at KP's Kitchen.

news-you-can-eat fundraisers

eat real food

Houston DJ-turned-TikTok star cooks up a cult following one recipe at a time

Courtesy of Uncle Dibbz

Uncle Dibbz, a.k.a. A.H. Bowden, has built a devoted following for his viral recipes.

For the past month, Uncle Dibbz has been, shall we say, going ham on social media with the myriad videos of alternative Thanksgiving dishes. He’s dropped how-to clips for such recipes as Cajun-roasted turkey, honey-baked ham/hens, oven-bag turkey, and six-piece fried turkey (to go). Basically, if you don’t want to cook a bland ol’ Butterball this Turkey Day, Dibbz has you covered.

Who is Dibbz, you say? Well, he’s a North Jersey-born, Georgia-bred, Houston-based chef who’s been building quite the foodie rep online. Several videos across his TikTok, Instagram and YouTube pages, from his Cajun-boiled fried chicken (2 million on IG) to his “Propose to Me Pasta” (12.3 million on TikTok), has amassed millions of views. But Dibbz (government name: A.H. Bowden) wasn’t always a culinary content creator. He used to spin music back in Atlanta as DJ DiBiase, named after retired wrestler Ted “The Million Dollar Man” DiBiase. “DiBiase is a mouthful to say, so people just always call me ‘D’ or ‘Dibbz’ for short,” says Bowden, 37, during a Zoom interview.

@uncledibbz PROPOSE To Me PASTA 💍 🍝 Trust your Uncle! This SEAFOOD Pasta will seal the deal 👌🏽 Get my recipe below ⬇️ or on uncledibbz.com [@uncledibbz Link in Bio] 🌐 **Ingredients:** - 8 ounces spaghetti - 1 lb mixed seafood (shrimp, scallops, crab meat, etc.) - 2 tablespoons olive oil - Fresh chopped basil - 2 cloves garlic, minced - 1/2 cup white wine - 1/4 cup heavy cream - 2 tablespoons unsalted butter - Salt and pepper to taste - Uncle Dibbz Delta Dust [link in bio] - Fresh parsley, chopped (for garnish) - Grated Parmesan cheese (for garnish) **Instructions:** 1. Cook the spaghetti pasta according to the package instructions until al dente. Drain and set aside. 2. In a large skillet, heat the olive oil over medium heat. Add the minced garlic, chopped basil and sauté for about 1 minute until fragrant. 3. Add the mixed seafood to the skillet. Season with Uncle Dibbz Delta Dust to taste and cook for 2-3 minutes until cooked through. Remove the seafood from the skillet and set aside. 4. Pour in the white wine to the skillet and let it simmer for 2 minutes, allowing the alcohol to cook off. 5. Stir in the heavy cream, butter, Uncle Dibbz Delta Dust seasoning, salt, and pepper. Cook for another 2-3 minutes until the sauce thickens slightly. 6. Add the cooked spaghetti and cooked mixed seafood to the skillet. Toss everything together until well coated with the sauce. 7. Remove from heat and garnish with fresh parsley and grated Parmesan cheese. 8. Serve hot and enjoy the flavorful Seafood Spaghetti. That's good Shawty! #UncleDibbz #ThatsGoodShawty #Pasta #marryme #proposal #bride #wife #husband #relationshipgoals #datenight #easyrecipe #seafood #cajun #cooking #fyp #foryou #viral #houston ♬ original sound - Uncle Dibbz 🍴

He was making a nice living as a DJ, even serving as rapper Big K.R.I.T.’s touring DJ for a while. But when the pandemic hit, the gigs obviously dried up.

“I was living in Miami at the time,” he says. “And, you know, when you have a lot of time on your hands to think – but also need to figure out a way to, you know, sustain an income and everything like that – the ideas start coming,”

Like most DJs at that time, he was doing live mixes on Instagram. But his days throwing cookout parties in Atlanta inspired him to start doing his cooking videos, where he used his very own seasoning. Of course, he had a lemon pepper blend, which he used in a lemon pepper hot wings video that currently has over a half-million views on TikTok.

“I'm about to go live to DJ later that night, and my phone was just going off with orders,” he recalls. “So I'm like, where are these orders coming from? And it's not from my friends. I'm seeing the cities and the states. I don't know these people.”

Thanks to his videos, which usually end with him saying his signature line “That’s good shawty!” (that’s also the name of his cookbook he released last year), Dibbz went into the seasoning business full time. He eventually hired another person to help send out the piles of orders he was receiving.

He even got an order from former Dallas Cowboy Emmitt Smith, one of his favorite athletes. “I remember doing a book report on him when I was in fourth grade,” he boasts.

Although Dibbz has a flair for making meals that border on decadent, he’s an ardent practitioner of cooking with natural ingredients, especially in his seasoning. He has several low-sodium seasoning, including Bebe’s Salt Free – named after his mother, who had open-heart surgery a few weeks before the pandemic started.

“I don't think a lot of people understand the amount of toxins and chemicals that go into a lot of these seasonings,” he says. “You're starting to see it in the news now. A lot of the foods with certain dyes are being taken off the shelves and things like that.’

Soon, Dibbz moved himself and his new business to Houston, a favorite place to perform as well as a town whose hip-hop got him into music. He cites local chopped-and-screwed gods DJ Screw, Michael 5000 Watts, and OG Ron C as his holy trinity of influences. To give props to the music of his new home, he created a hot sauce – called HXT Sauce – whose uncharacteristically large bottle resembles Promethazine cough syrup (aka the key ingredient in lean, the preferred purple cocktail for the city’s rap community).

“It's not necessarily about promoting that usage,” he says. “But, at the same time, it’s just a homage to one of the factors and influences of screwed-and-chopped music.”

Dibbz still indulges in spinning records from time to time. The Waxaholics’ DJ Big Reeks has gotten him to break out the vinyl a few times during his Thursday-night sets at Alley Kat Bar & Lounge in Midtown. But creating new recipes, dropping delicious content and proving you can eat and live in a hearty, healthy fashion still remains his full-time mission.

“I’m not just talking about eating cauliflower rice all day and every day, but just eat real food,” he says. “We're eating fake food. That's the bottom line. We're eating fake food and my whole purpose is to inspire people to eat real food and that starts with real ingredients, real herbs, you know – real natural seasonings.”

news-you-can-eat chefs celebrities