line up at lyric

Downtown's newest food hall serves up 9 exciting destinations, from modern Mexican to Indian street food

Lyric Market will open this fall.

Courtesy of Lyric Market

Downtown's newest food hall is finally taking shape. Lyric Market announced the nine vendors that will serve diners when it opens this fall.

Located in the Theater District at 411 Smith St., the 14,000-square-foot space will be open for breakfast, lunch, and dinner during the week with lunch and dinner available on the weekends. The facility includes a 7,500-square-foot deck, a private event space, and a mural by artist Alex Arzu. An adjacent parking garage offers hundreds of spaces, which is sure to appeal to downtown visitors.

Hospitality HQ will manage the facility. Described as a consulting and management group, the company is participating in the opening and management of 10 food halls in states. It has assembled a mix of local and national names to occupy the food hall.

They are:

Sushi Muse: a sushi restaurant from chef Hiroki Odo, who holds a Michelin star at his New York City restaurant Odo.
Mexology: a modern Mexican restaurant from chef Ivy Stark, a New York City chef known for her restaurant Dos Caminos.
Alenbi Falafel + Hummus: a plant-based Middle Eastern street food restaurant from Sof Hospitality, the company behind Doris Metropolitan, Hamsa, and Badolina Bakery.
Lottie’s Smokehouse: a food hall version of pitmaster Scott Lottie's food truck that serve Texas barbecue.
BAD CHX: a food hall version of a food truck that serves both Southern fried chicken and Nashville-style hot chicken.
1929 Po-Boy Kitchen: chef Monica Landry's Cajun restaurant serving po'boys and other dishes.
Press Waffle Co.: the sweet-and-savory Belgian waffle concept with a sister location in The Woodlands.
Kati Roll Wala: an Indian street food concept that serves kati rolls (kebabs wrapped in paratha) and rice bowls.

“We are thrilled to announce the opening of this innovative food hall in downtown Houston,” Hospitality HQ co-founder Akhtar Nawab said in a statement. “Our number one goal is to provide support for best-in-class restauranteurs and truly invest in the surrounding community. We are looking forward to becoming a part of the culturally diverse tapestry that is Houston.”

It's worth nothing that plans for Lyric Market have been scaled down significantly since it was first announced in 2018. Back then, the plans called for between 20 and 30 vendors in 31,000-square-feet. Since then, a number of new food halls have opened, including Bravery Chef Hall, Finn Hall, and Post Market.

openings news-you-can-eat downtown

BY THE NUMBERS

Houston maintains its top 3 position on ranking of cities that best attract biz

Photo via Getty Images

For the third year in a row, Houston ranked high on the list of major metros attracting new business.

According to a recent report, Houston is still one of the top cities in the United States for attracting new companies.

The ranking, which was researched and published by Site Selection Magazine, found that the Houston-The Woodlands-Sugar Land region attracted 255 business projects last year. This put the metro in the third place of the list that analyzed larger regions.

It's the third year in third place for Houston, and the city had a year over year improvement in number of deals; 2021 reported 213 new business projects in Houston. In fact, the top three cities – Chicago, Dallas, and Houston, respectively — has remained the same for all three years. For 2022, the Chicago metro garnered 448 projects, while Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington reportedly had 426 projects.

The report also called out a recent statistic from Kastle Systems, which was based on building access control data. The stat found that among 10 major cities analyzed based on the week of February, Houston was one of three metros that had a returned-worker percentages higher than 50 percent.

According to the Greater Houston Partnership data, new business accounted for more than 50 percent of business announcements in 2022. GHP's data varied from Site Selection's due to a difference in reporting methods, but the organization's research identified 199 new business announcements in the Houston area in 2022.

The NBAs included new businesses, HQ announcements, and expansions. The GHP data included information about these deals' industry verticals — and the manufacturing sector accounted for almost a third of the total NBAs in 2022.

The GHP also rounded up a few of the most prominent deals reported in their data. According to the Partnership, more details about these NBAs include:

Orsted — an offshore wind developer from Denmark is expanding its presence in Texas by establishing a new office in The Woodlands. The move is expected to create up to 100 jobs in the region.
Syzygy Plasmonics — a Houston-based energy 2.0 company is expanding its operations to Pearland. The new location will serve as HQ, R&D, and manufacturing for its deep-decarbonization platform, creating up to 120 jobs.
Alfred Talke Logistic Services — a German logistics firm is establishing a new facility in the region, serving as its U.S. headquarters. This project represents a $25 million investment and will create 240 jobs.

Trevor Best, co-founder and CEO of Syzygy, first discussed the company's expansion last year on the Houston Innovators Podcast.

"What we're seeing is the market's appetite for our kind of technology — deep tech for decarbonization in energy and chemicals — is really high. If we want to meet global demand for our product, we need to get ready to scale," he says on the show.

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