Foodie News
Get more out of Houston Restaurant Weeks: 10 spots that provide an extra fourthcourse
A three-course dinner menu for $35 is great — especially when $5 of that goes to the Houston Food Bank. But out of nearly 175 restaurants participating in Houston Restaurant Weeks, only a handful are telling Houston that they love us more by offering a full four courses.
Want to maximize your HRW experience? Here are 10 great places to do that.
The restaurant inside Saks Fifth Avenue is the ultimate gathering space for ladies who lunch (and those who like to watch them). The four-course meal includes a mix of lighter faves — vodka-cured smoked salmon, an organic mixed greens salad, watermelon sorbet — as well as homemade lobster-stuffed ravioli, coconut shrimp, grilled pork tenderloin and bananas foster.
At this comfortable Tuscan-American outpost, the soups and salads are held to the second course, with openers like Bufala mozzarella caprese, thinly sliced bresaola and chicken-stuffed ravioli before a quartet of rich Italian classic entrees — saltimbocca! — and desserts.
Not only are there four courses here, but there are also four options in each course, which feels like an endless amount of both food and options.
Careful, though: The options that come with a small upcharge, like the mussels Aiello, a grilled peach and burrata salad, a center-cut filet mignon and the signature Elizabeth's cheesecake, are difficult to resist.
Coppa's four-course menu is barely hanging on, with a first course of chickpeas, olives, or breadsticks. But oh, those breadsticks. And those meatballs, and the chicken under a brick . . . the menu may be more like three-plus courses, but it's no less worth it.
It seems like half of owner Lynette Hawkins' menu is available over four courses for restaurant weeks — don't miss the gamberi al diavolo (shrimp in a spicy harissa sauce).
More is always more here, so it comes as no surprise that the restaurant is maxing out Houston Restaurant Weeks with a four-course menu that includes some of its signature dishes, like the Max 'n' Cheese, Southern fried chicken and its superlative grilled cheese sandwich.
I'm not sure how a restaurant can serve four courses — plus an intermezzo! — for $30 (after donating $5 to the Houston Food Bank) and also offer surf and turf as an entree. Luckily I don't make the rules at Post Oak Grill.
In addition to offering three courses for both lunch and brunch, RDG's four-course dinner includes chef Robert Del Grande's famous beef short rib as well as a number of vegetarian-friendly options.
In the Azuma family, Kata Robata gets most of the foodie cred, but Soma is holding its own during HRW with a four-course menu that shows off its fusion point of view, including miso mac & cheese, BLT bites with sous vide pork belly, hamachi ceviche, Korean barbecue and the Stir Crazy Pork "Donburi."
The Tasting Room — City Centre
Sadly this menu does not include wine. It does, however, include seafood campechana, grilled swordfish and the pistachio pound cake that a Bon Appetit editor named a favorite.
