Where to Eat Right Now

Where to eat right now: 10 cool, must-try restaurants for October

October is here! Need a lunch or dinner recommendation? Here’s where you should eat right now in Houston.

Coppa Osteria
Newly open in Rice Village is Coppa Osteria, the casual sister of Coppa Ristorante. Fans of the talented chef Brandi Key will be thrilled that the Osteria’s menu features many of the same exceptional dishes you can get at the Washington Avenue location, along with some newbies like sandwiches and salads. We love the Scamorza pizza (a supped-up version of the classic margherita), house-made pastas, and spicy fennel sausage.

The Dosa Factory
The Dosa Factory takes Indian food into fast-casual. Entirely vegetarian, the menu concentrates on dosas, idlis, and vadas. Order at the counter, grab some soup and chutney from the self-service bar, and moments later your steamy dishes arrive. Big thumbs-up go to the palak paneer dosa and the manchurian idlis. This one is on Richmond at Fountain View — but look out: the team has big expansion plans.

Cloud 10 Creamery
Pastry chef Chris Leung’s much anticipated ice cream shop is now open in Rice Village. If you’ve enjoyed his creative Cloud 10 desserts at places like Hay Merchant and the Sundance Cinema, you’ll be glad to know you can now get a wider variety. Stop by for a waffle cone of ice cream in flavors like toasted rice, nutella marshmallow, café sua da, and PB&J. Or try the five-star banana split.

Big & Juicy Juice Bar
Great news: Big & Juicy Juice Bar opens at the end of this week inside Big Yoga on Allen Parkway and Waugh. Big & Juicy offers fresh-made juices and smoothies, plus a small menu of light bites (like a kale-avocado salad, beet ravioli, and pumpkin-kuzu pudding) — all vegan, raw, and gluten-free. Juices are made almost entirely with organic, local produce, and there’s a creative combination to satisfy any taste bud. Staying for yoga? Pre-order your juice for a post-yoga high.

La Balance
Katy's La Balance bills itself as a French restaurant with modern twists. While the strictly French menu items are truly top notch — we love the escargot and the prosciutto-tomato tarte — the twists come in the form of things like paninis, pastas, and salads that are given a French makeover. Thus, it has a sort of universal feel to it. Even still, if you're not into it, there's always l'hamburger.

City Oven
New to the White Oak restaurant row (in the Heights) is City Oven. Pizzas are the restaurant’s staple — and while those are OK for a try, our favorite is the menu’s selection of giant meatballs with various stuffings and flavors. Gimmicky? A little. But also good. With a full bar, a nice selection of craft beers, and an upbeat atmosphere, City Oven is a great spot for happy hour, game watching, or a casual dinner with friends.

Osteria Mazzantini
A holdover from last month, Osteria Mazzantini remains a place to see, be seen, and eat. The sister restaurant to Mockingbird Bistro has added lunch, brunch, happy hour, and late-night service (along with dinner, of course) in its Galleria-area home. The Italian menu concentrates on pizzas, pastas, and paninis at lunchtime, with more elegant options appearing later in the day.

Restaurant Cinq
We’re thrilled to see creative chef German Mosquera doing so well at Restaurant Cinq (inside La Colombe d’Or). If the positive detailed reviews from both the Chronicle and Houston Press haven’t gotten you over there yet, perhaps this short one will: the food is awesome. It is pricey, though, so save it for a date night or special occasion meal.

Relish Fine Foods
Relish (on San Felipe near Willowick) has quietly become a go-to spot for a consistently nice casual bite. Stop by at lunch for a made-to-order sandwich, or pick up an order of salmon and a side of quinoa for dinner. Relish also offers various market items (like Nisha’s Indian dishes, Caphin Vietnamese iced coffee, Fat Cat ice cream, and more) and is now open for breakfast as well — think tacos, yogurt parfaits, and the like.

Maine-ly Sandwiches
Weren’t able to make it to the Cape — or Greenspoint — this summer? You’re in luck. Maine-ly Sandwiches has expanded to a second location on Shepherd near Richmond. After some opening struggles, the sandwich shop is now going strong, offering that same deli menu with the buttery lobster roll. And if you haven’t had one of their signature Whoopie Pies yet, you best hurry on over.

Need more recs? Try our where to eat right now lists from previous months:

March
April
May
June
August
September

The giant meatballs at City Oven. Gimmicky? Sure. But also delicious.

Ruthie where to eat right now October 2013 City Oven giant meatballs

Photo by Ruthie Miller

The giant meatballs at City Oven. Gimmicky? Sure. But also delicious.

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visiting popup bagels

A highly opinionated take on Houston's venture-backed new bagel shop

Courtesy of PopUp Bagels

Houstonians are lining up to try PopUp Bagels.

It’s hard to remember the last restaurant opening with as much fanfare as PopUp Bagels. Houstonians lined up in the heat for the bakery’s grand opening on Saturday, June 13.

Shawn the Food Sheep included a glimpse of the line in his review below.

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A post shared by Shawn Singh (@shawnthefoodsheep)

Eager to see what the fuss is all about, I stopped by around 10 am on Thursday, June 18. Thankfully, only about a dozen people stood in line ahead of me, and I had a bag of six bagels in less than 20 minutes.

The frequency with which it boils and bakes it bagels sets PopUp Bagels apart from Houston’s traditional, mostly family-owned bagel shops. Instead of making large batches early in the morning that may get refreshed once or twice per day, PopUp Bagels is constantly boiling and baking smaller batches of a couple dozen bagels at a time throughout its operating hours. That's why customers will hear the cry of “hot bagels” echoing through the small, counter-service space every time more emerge from the oven.

PopUp is different from traditional bagel shops in a couple of other important ways. First, the menu only list five varieties — plain, poppy, salt, sesame, and everything, which is topped with poppy seeds, salt, and sesame seeds. And, it only serves whole bagels — no slicing or toasting. The store’s motto of “grip, rip, and dip” explains how it expects customers to consume their bagels. Packaged lox are available, but diners have to assemble the sandwich themselves — either off-site or at one of the couple of cafe tables outside.

PopUp Bagels also doesn’t sell individual bagels. Instead, diners must order a minimum of three bagels and a schmear — various cream cheese and butters are available — for $15. Six bagels and a schmear costs $24. A dozen bagels and two schmears is $46. As a point of comparison, the Bagel Shop Bakery in Bellaire charges $25 for 13 bagels and two, 8-ounce schmears.

So, how is it?

Fresh, hot bagels are inherently superior to hours-old bagels. That’s a real advantage for PopUp Bagels. On my visit, the fresh-from-the-oven plain bagels were so hot that they needed a couple of minutes before we could "grip and rip" them.

As for the bagels themselves, they certainly look the part. The outside is deeply caramelized with an even distribution of toppings that adhere well to the exterior.

But the biggest shortcoming is texture. Bagels, obviously, are supposed to be chewy, but all six of the bagels that an ex-pat New Yorker friend and I ordered walked the line between chewy and underbaked. That may be deliberate, as softer bagels are easier to “grip and rip.”

It's also possible that the bakery’s new employees are still dialing in procedures, and that a different day would yield bagels with a crispier texture. Colloquially, friends who have also visited the shop — both in Houston and other cities — disagreed with my assessment of the texture.

The plain is just that, with a very mild flavor. Both the scallion cream cheese and salted butter had a pleasantly creamy texture and boosted the dining experience.

Overall, PopUp is competitive with Houston’s best bagels. That’s promising, since Stripes — the equity growth firm that bought PopUp Bagels in 2023 — has announced plans to open more than 300 locations nationwide.

But you won’t see me driving half an hour or standing in a long line to get another taste. Houston’s locally-owned bagel shops are more convenient, less expensive, and just as good.

Courtesy of PopUp Bagels

Houstonians are lining up to try PopUp Bagels.

openings news-you-can-eat breakfast popup bagels