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    Le Colonial Arrives

    Elegant new Le Colonial restaurant aims to lift Vietnamese cuisine to a fine-dining level

    Eric Sandler
    Aug 10, 2016 | 12:15 pm

    If anything sets Houston’s culinary scene apart from those in other cities, it’s the incredible diversity of the restaurants, especially the wealth of Vietnamese options. Houstonians are as likely to argue over where to find the best pho or banh mi as they are the best burgers or barbecue.

    Despite all of those options — everything from the innumerable crawfish joints on Bellaire to slightly more obscure options like beef seven ways at Saigon Pagolac — the city lacks a restaurant that merges a contemporary concern for ingredients, fine dining-style service, and traditional Vietnamese flavors. Essentially, what’s the Vietnamese equivalent of what restaurants like Kiran’s and Indika represent for Indian cuisine or what Hugo’s did to broaden people’s awareness of the different between regional Mexican cuisine and Tex-Mex?

    Le Colonial attempts to fill that gap. Officially open since Monday in River Oaks District, the restaurant started in New York 20 years ago before expanding to Chicago and San Francisco. Set in an elegant, two-story space that features dining downstairs and a bar and lounge upstairs, the restaurant aims to deliver locally-sourced ingredients, refined techniques and plating, and high-quality service that will elevate people’s expectations for what Vietnamese food is capable of.

    Owner Rick Wahlstedt worked with cooking instructor and cookbook author Nicole Routhier to craft a new menu for the Houston location. Routhier worked on Le Colonial’s opening menu in New York but has lived in Houston for almost 20 years. She acknowledges that selling $13 orders of spring rolls and $29 orders of bo luc lac to people who typically pay half that may be a challenge, but notes that Houstonians haven’t been exposed to many of the dishes she’s created with executive chef Dan Nguyen.

    “Wherever I go, (most Vietnamese restaurants) offer the same menus. It gets tiring sometimes. This is my chance to take Vietnamese cuisine a notch up. Presentation doesn’t have to be everything slumped on a plate in huge portions,” she says. “What we try to do here is offer the whole package. Not only great food, but also great service, great atmosphere. There’s a lot more than ‘let’s have Vietnamese food, stuff our face, and go home.’”

    Le Colonial also aims to change the perception that Vietnamese food can only be inexpensive and served at small, family-owned restaurants.

    “To my chagrin, I’m a little bad sad to see that people, whenever they think about ethnic cuisine, they think it has to be dirt cheap and have huge portions for very little money. I could not disagree more, because it takes a huge amount of effort to make these dishes. Vietnamese cuisine is based on 2,000 years of tradition like the Chinese. Therefore, there’s a lot of prep involved, and a lot of labor-intensive work,” Routhier says. “I think there’s a huge disconnect right there. We are trying to step away from that. It can be delicate and elegant and it doesn’t have to be dirt cheap for people to enjoy it.”

    Helping up the value proposition is the restaurant’s luxurious decor that’s inspired by 1920s French Indochina. The intricate designs on the wall aren’t wallpaper; they’re hand painted murals. Imported tile floors, extensive wood panels, and comfortable furniture further set the stage. Upstairs, diners will find the lounge, patio seating that looks out over River Oaks District, and a 14-person private dining room. Dubbed the Lotus Room after the Vietnam’s national flower, the space will feature a special menu of four, five, or six course dinners.

    Patrons will also recognize some familiar faces in the dining room. Director of operations Martin Theis and sommelier Sebastien Laval are industry veterans who most recently worked at La Table.

    If the reaction to last week’s invite-only preview meals is any indication, Le Colonial is already winning fans. Friends who dined there are already making plans for repeat visits. In particular, the canh chua (shrimp and pineapple in a spicy tamarind broth) and ca nuong (grilled salmon and asparagus with minted mango sauce) are drawing raves.

    Factor in the crowds that are already flocking to River Oaks District restaurants like Steak 48, Toulouse, and Hopdoddy and the appeal of Le Colonial’s dedicated bar that will stay open until 2 am on Friday and Saturday, and it seems like Wahlstedt and Routhier have the potential for a real hotspot.

    Ca Nuong: grilled salmon and asparagus with mesclun greens and minted mango sauce.

    Le Colonial Ca Nuong
      
    Photo by Julie Soefer
    Ca Nuong: grilled salmon and asparagus with mesclun greens and minted mango sauce.
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    he finished the job

    Houston chef Tristen Epps dishes on his Top Chef victory — and what's next

    Eric Sandler
    Jun 13, 2025 | 9:05 am
    Top Chef Tristen Epps
    Photo by David Moir/Bravo
    Kristen Kish, Tristen Epps, Gail Simmons, and Tom Colicchio.

    Houston has played a leading role in America’s culinary scene, but the city has never been home to a Top Chef winner — until last night. In the final episode of season 22, chef Tristen Epps earned the title and a $250,000 cash prize.

    Epps secured his victory by remaining true to the Afro-Caribbean cuisine that helped him secured an impressive four Elimination Challenge wins and $35,000 in additional prize money from two Quickfire wins and as a member of the team that won the show’s signature Restaurant Wars challenge. His four-course menu took a panel of celebrity judges on a journey that also referenced the finale location of Milan, Italy.

    In particular, Epps wowed the panel with his second course — Chicken “Durango” with injera shrimp toast and shellfish jus — that referenced both the Ethiopian chicken stew doro wat and the Italian dish pollo durango, a sly nod to the history of imperialism between the two countries. He finished his savory offerings with Oxtail Milanese Crepinette with Carolina Gold rice grits, curry butter, and bone marrow gremolata, which earned praised from the panel.

    “Historically, we’ve been underserved oxtail,” Top Chef alum and James Beard Award winner Gregory Gourdet said during the episode. “Tristen took the time to pull it, create that beautiful, huge, maybe too big, portion of oxtail. And cover it with that gremolata. He did not forget the bone marrow. That’s very, very smart.”

    Throughout Top Chef’s run, Epps has been holding a series of pop-ups devoted to everything from hot dogs to steakhouses. Now, he can turn his attention to Buboy, a tasting menu concept that will celebrate the Afro-Caribbean cuisine he championed throughout his time on the show.

    CultureMap caught up with Epps on Friday morning for a brief chat about his victory and what’s next.

    CultureMap: What do you remember from the day you cooked that final dinner?
    Tristen Epps: It was an extreme amount of focus. A lot of writing in my notebook. I didn’t want to laugh. I didn’t want to cry or do anything except finish the job, regardless of whatever the outcome would have been. I remember wanting to call my mom. I really wanted to talk things out so I could calm myself down and stay within my focus. Once I got into cooking, I felt so much at ease. It’s my happy place. It’s my serenity.

    CM: How did you feel when you saw Gregory Gourdet on the panel? Did you feel like you had an advocate in the room?
    TE: I’ve cooked with gregory before, a long time ago. It was really fun. I loved what he was doing.

    I felt like I had kind of an advocate. I was worried my food wold be too spicy or too overpowering [for the European chefs]. Seeing Gregory was really good, especially with what I was doing.

    CM: Other chefs, including Gregory Gourdet and Houston chef Dawn Burrell, have done well on the show with Afro-Caribbean cuisine but they didn’t win. How important was it to you to finish the job and use those flavors to win the title?
    TE: To me that was super important. There’s adventurous people who make phenomenal food. They’ll go once because it’s interesting, bu they’re usually skeptical. When you don’t nail it, they say, that’s why I go to the regular places that are familiar.

    Finishing the job was really important to me. People have come up short on this. I wanted to get this right for everyone who’s made that step forward and created the ladder.

    CM: What have your last 12 hours been like since the episode aired? Have any celebrities reached out to you?
    TE: A lot of calls, a lot of good luck. A lot of everything. It’s been amazing.

    A lot of past Top Chef winners reached out to me, giving me a lot of support and telling me what they did after they won.

    [ESPN football commentator] Mina Kimes did, which was really cool.

    CM: What are your plans for the prize money?
    TE: It’s going to go to Buboy. Now that the cat’s out of the bag, it can go a little faster.

    CM: You’ve been holding a series of pop-ups that range from tasting menus to hot dogs? What’s next?
    TE: Part of getting the restaurant open has been introducing myself to all of Houston. These pop-ups represent my interests and my fun. They’re the things that Buboy is going to represent. It can be fun, it can be a conversation, it can be educational, it can push the limits of cuisines we know. It’s an expression of culture in whatever way I see fit that day.

    The hot dog concept will probably be a separate venture, but who’s to say there’s not a hot dog at the end of that meal?

    Top Chef Tristen Epps
      

    Photo by David Moir/Bravo

    Kristen Kish, Tristen Epps, Gail Simmons, and Tom Colicchio.

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