Chris Shepherd's Southern Salad

Chris Shepherd cooks up some southern flavor for buzzy new salad spot

Sweetgreen Chris Shepherd Southern Chop Bowl

Yes, that's pimento cheese.

Courtesy of Sweetgreen

One thing that separates Sweetgreen from other healthy-eating restaurants is its popularity with high profile chefs. The California-based restaurant has collaborated with a number of famous names, including Dan Barber (New York’s Blue Hill at Stone Barns), David Chang (Momofuku), and Jessica Koslow (Sqirl in Los Angeles), Michael Solomonov (Zahav in Philadelphia), Danny Bowien (Mission Chinese in San Francisco), and Nancy Silverton (Osteria Mozza in Los Angeles).

“The chef collaborations for us have been an amazing way that we’ve been able to tell really cool stories and have some fun with our menu,” Nicolas Jammet, co-founder and chief concept officer, said in a recent episode of CultureMap’s “What’s Eric Eating” podcast. “It’s a great opportunity for us to tell a really cool story around our food.”

In Houston, the restaurant enlisted James Beard Award winner Chris Shepherd to create the Southern Chop Bowl. Shepherd tells CultureMap he considered several possibilities for his creation — such as a Mediterranean option from the most recent version of One Fifth or something in the steakhouse style of Georgia James — before developing something that utilized some of Sweetgreen’s signature ingredients with a Southern twist.

“I wanted something they could produce every day,” Shepherd says. “Overall, we want something that will speak to people here and be very familiar with the ingredients and the flavor combinations.”

A riff on the classic Caesar, the salad includes blackened chicken thighs, apples, raw corn, tomatoes, shredded cabbage, red onions, organic arugula, and chopped romaine. Then Shepherd adds some Southern flavors with pimento cheese, pecans, and a vinaigrette made with Steen's Cane syrup. Priced at $11.95, Sweetgreen will donate $1 from every bowl sold to the Southern Smoke Foundation’s Emergency Relief Fund, which provides financial assistance to people in the food and beverage industry.

“At the end, it was what do I want to eat,” he says. “It’s exactly what I wanted it to be. I’ll walk across the street to get it all the time.”

Shepherd's creation will be available at both Houston locations beginning October 10 or one day earlier via the restaurant's app.

The Montrose location will celebrate its grand opening Saturday, September 21, from 12:30-3:30 pm with music, a live mural painting by Ohni Lisle, “customizable swag,” and more. RSVP online. [Update: The event has been postponed.]

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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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