feelin' the love

Texas celebrity chef Tim Love debuts trendy new Tex-Mex 'ghost kitchen' in Houston

Some burritos, some tacos, some 'ritas is all you need.

Photo by BFT

Always on trend, Fort Worth's favorite celebrity chef Tim Love has launched a new "ghost restaurant" concept dedicated to Mexican food.

Called Burritos, Fajitas and 'Ritas, it'll be in step with the hot ghost kitchen trend right now in which restaurants are doing takeout and delivery only, with no dining rooms.

"It was time for us to get into delivery," Love says. "So many people aren't dining out right now. This is a great way for them to keep enjoying our food and a great way for us to keep doing what we do best."

The concept lives up to its name, offering these three important food groups:

fajitas, in three varieties, including a veggie option
burritos stuffed with choice of nearly a dozen ingredients
margaritas

Love says he's stressing the quality of the food over the quantity.

"It's a small menu but the quality sets us apart," he says. "We use fresh flour tortillas for both the fajitas and burritos. We use prime outside skirt steak and my own rub for the beef. We use all organic chicken and our own poultry rub. And our vegetable fajitas are made with squash from the Gemelle garden. And we do an amazing creamy jalapeño salsa that is dairy-free."

For dessert there are warm chocolate chip and snickerdoodle cookies, plus "boozy" popsicles.

Love is launching the concept in four cities across Texas: Fort Worth, followed by Houston, Denton, and Austin, debuting on July 21. With the exception of Fort Worth, pick-up locations will be at other Love restaurants, where the food will also be prepared.

"We’re doing this in every city where we have a restaurant," Love says. "We've put in secondary kitchens to cook the meals and restaurant employees will make the deliveries."

Locations are as follows:

Houston: at Woodshed Smokehouse, at 3728 Wakeforest Ave.
Austin: at Lonesome Dove, 419 Colorado St.
Fort Worth: at Love's catering kitchen, at 917 North Main St.
Denton: at Queenie’s Steakhouse at 115 E. Hickory St.

A fifth location in Knoxville will launch later in July, out of the Knoxville location of Lonesome Dove.

Place your order online, for pick-up or delivery only, from 11:30 am-7:30 pm Tuesday-Saturday. For delivery, there's a $5 fee and a $40 minimum for each order (there's no minimum for takeout). Deliveries will be available to those within a five-mile radius of each restaurant. That radius may expand, Love says.

"If this takes off and there's a big demand for it, we'll definitely take another look at the delivery radius," he says. "But right now, with a small staff, I want to start out small and make it as easy on my team as I can for deliveries."

Love says the concept grew out Bring Love Home, a family meal initiative he started in the spring after his restaurants closed due to COVID.

"When the restaurants reopened in May, we thought things were getting better," he says. "But now that we're back to 50 percent capacity, I knew we had to come up with another plan. When we were doing Bring Love Home, the meals with the fajitas and chile rellenos always went first, so I knew we wanted to apply that toward a new concept."

tex-mex chefs

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