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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Chris Cusack explains

Houston bar owner speaks out about surprise arrest for health code violations

Photo by Sergio Trevino

Chris Cusack owns two locations of Betelgeuse Betelgeuse.

Certainly one of the most unusual interactions between a restaurant and City of Houston officials took place on Wednesday, May 6 when Betelgeuse Betelgeuse owner Chris Cusack was arrested for health code violations at his location on Washington Avenue.

News of the arrest spread quickly across social media over the weekend. Now, Cusack is ready to tell his side of the story.

Cusack, whose time operating restaurants in Houston goes back more than 15 years to Down House and its affiliated restaurants such as Hunky Dory and D&T Drive Inn, tells CultureMap the problem began on Monday, May 4 when a health department inspector came to Betelgeuse Betelgeuse and asked to see the restaurant’s grease trap.

The only problem is that location has never had a grease trap. Prior to becoming Betelgeuse Betelgeuse, it was Liberty Station, a pioneering bar in Houston’s craft beer and craft cocktail scenes. In the early days, Betelgeuse served food from a food truck. More recently, it prepares its food next door at The Bell and Crane. Cusack acknowledges he didn’t share this information with the inspector.

“Usually I’m a charmer with the health department, but I was a little defensive. She kept asking me. I said, ‘ma’am, we don’t make food here,’” he explains. “The tone wasn’t my finest moment, but there was no name calling or anything like that. She said, ‘where does the food come from?’ I said, ‘it doesn’t matter where it comes from. It’s produced in a commercial kitchen.’”

Cusack says he knew there would be a follow up, but he was shocked when the inspector returned two days later with more colleagues from the health department, TABC inspectors, and Houston Police Department officers.

“I got somewhere between 21 and 25 citations,” Cusack says about the return visit. He got dinged for everything from graffiti in the bathroom to a missing Harris County tax stamp on the photo booth he leases from a vendor (it has both State of Texas and City of Houston stamps, Cusack says).

One inspector told Cusack he needed a food dealer’s permit. He showed the inspector that a food dealer’s permit had been issued for the restaurant's address under the former food truck’s LLC but not to the LLC that operates Betelgeuse Betelgeuse. Cusack says he had renewed the food truck’s permit in March, but that wasn’t good enough for the inspector. In Cusack’s telling, he was arrested for not having the permit, since it was also flagged as missing in an inspection from October 2025. He's the only person he knows who has ever been arrested for a misdemeanor violation of the health code.

Cusack says he spent 21 hours in the Harris County Jail. When he got out, he says he was contacted by a more senior official within the Health Department. Once Cusack confirmed he owned both LLCs, he was told he could reopen. Both locations of Betelgeuse Betelgeuse have been operating normally since Friday, May 8.

Cusack maintains he never knew about the October 2025 inspection, which is why he renewed the food dealer’s permit for the food truck’s LLC rather than applying for one under Betelgeuse Betelgeuse’s LLC. “There’s no paper trail that shows I was given this information,” he says. “I did not get the email [from the Health Department].”

As for why things got so out of hand, Cusack theorizes he was a victim of Houston Mayor John Whitemire’s crack down on “reckless behavior” on Washington Avenue and stepped up enforcement on bars generally that led to the temporary closure of near northside cocktail bar Rabbit’s Got the Gun.

Cusack says he’s a “huge supporter” of efforts to reduce crimes like street racing, drug dealing, and sex trafficking along Washington and in its surrounding neighborhoods. Still, he feels targeting by the city for being impolite to a health inspector.

He plans to fight both the arrest and the citations in court. “I want the charges dropped, and I want it expunged completely from my record. That’s the first thing, and I’m going to try very hard to do it,” he says.

“That’s going to end up costing thousands of dollars just to deal with the sheer volume,” he adds.

CultureMap contacted Mayor Whitmire’s office. A representative said the mayor was not aware of the situation and has no comment on an open investigation.

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