Welcome Rachel DelRocco

Houston's geekiest wine bar picks up a major talent from Austin

Camerata partner David Keck with newly hired bartender/sommelier Rachel DelRocco.

Photo by Eric Sandler

Wine lovers already flock to Camerata for its combination of personal service, chic design and an ever-evolving wine list, but patrons who haven't been by in awhile may want to schedule a visit to meet head sommelier David Keck's newest hire. To replace Ryan Cooper, who left to assume the general manager position at Down House, Keck has brought on board Rachel DelRocco.

While DelRocco may not be familiar to Houstonians, she's well-known in Austin for her work as the beverage director at Qui, the restaurant opened by Top Chef winner Paul Qui that's widely considered to be one of Austin's finest dining experiences. DelRocco earned a prestigious Eater Young Gun Award for the way she blended her knowledge of spirits with wine to shape Qui's beverage options.

DelRocco tells CultureMap that, once she decided to move to Houston for personal reasons, she sought out Camerata as the place where she could grow the most professionally. "It was time to move on. The only place in Houston I wanted to work was here," she says. "I learned a lot of buying, managing and wine list maintenance at Qui. I really wanted to take a step back and dig into all the other things . . . I bugged (Keck) until he hired me."

For his part, Keck explains that, even more than DelRocco's wine knowledge, her customer service experience from working at Qui with Master Sommelier June Rodil made her a fit for Camerata.

"It’s much harder to teach customer service than it is to teach wine," Keck explains. "Intellectual curiosity and the ability to provide your guests with a high level of service with their interests in mind is something I can’t really teach, so that’s what I look for. Wine knowledge is a secondary thing."

Once DelRocco spent a couple days staging, she knew she'd found a new home. "It's a really nice work environment. Every body is on the same page and is really excited about their education and wants to learn more," DelRocco says. "It's a good place to be."

Bartender/sommeliers at Camerata have the difficult challenge of relating to both the numerous restaurant industry professionals who want to dive into Keck's carefully selected list and weekend patrons who are less knowledgeable about wine. "I think it’s important for wine professionals to be able to speak to everybody," Keck says. "Selling this list to our Friday, Saturday night clientele is 10 times harder than selling a more pedestrian list to people who know wine."

With the addition of DelRocco, Camerata is equipped to continue delivering excellent service to both its geeky regulars and weekend patrons.

"That's very exciting for me as a seller and a buyer is to find wines that people can relate to, but you can still promote something really exciting in the wine world like small producers or female winemakers," DelRocco says. "It's really exciting for me to find that bridge wine to get people to try something new."

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New York Times critic awards Houston restaurant 2 stars in glowing review

Courtesy of ChòpnBlọk

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Let’s just call 2025 the year of ChòpnBlọk. In a review published Tuesday, December 16, the New York Times has awarded the Houston restaurant two stars (“very good”).

Written by chief restaurant critic Tejal Rao, the review touts many of the same qualities that the Times already praised when it included ChòpnBlọk on its list of America’s 50 best restaurants.

Rao writes that she usually avoids restaurants that serve food in bowls, but she’s impressed by the way that chef-owner Ope Amosu has put a West African spin on the concept.

“For inspiration, Ope Amosu looked to the kind of chain restaurants that were built to scale, where flavors are often subdued to appeal to the broadest possible audience, focus-grouped to death. But the delight of ChòpnBlok is in its sure sense of self, its lively, multidimensional cooking and clear, delicious vision for modern food from the Black diaspora,” Rao writes.

She singles out specific dishes, including the Nigerian red stew with short rib, the Black Star bowl with shrimp, and the signature Motherland, made with chicken, greens, and plantains. “It’s utterly simple, but draws you in for more with the mouthwatering twang of not-too-much MSG — an international shortcut to building umami that tends to be used carefully, and layered with other forms,” she writes.

The review also touches on the way Amosu switched the restaurant from counter service to full service — described as “warm, informal, and quick with the jokes” — and his time working at Chipotle to learn the basics of the restaurant operations.

A two-star review is only the latest instance of ChòpnBlọk receiving national attention. In addition to the Times 50 best list, Esquire recently named it one of America’s best new restaurants. The Michelin Guide awarded it a Bib Gourmand designation for 2025. Amosu earned a semifinalist nomination for Best Chef: Texas in the 2025 James Beard Awards.

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