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    From Feast To Beast

    Behind the scenes with Hunky Dory chef: From Feast to beast at Houston's hot new restaurant

    Eric Sandler
    Oct 8, 2015 | 9:48 am

    It's 4:30 pm on a recent weekday, and Hunky Dory is buzzing. The two-year build out has been completed, and the property that was once the site for a used car lot and a couple of dilapidated houses now contains two of Houston's most eagerly anticipated restaurants.

    Soon, 100 or so invited guests will dine at the restaurant for a friends and family service. The staff sets tables with napkins and flatware while sous chef Daniel Blue tosses another log onto the wood-burning hearth — sending sparks flying. While the audience of significant others, fellow Treadsack employees and family members will be sympathetic to any stumbles, the staff wants to put its best foot forward before the public arrives the next night.

    For executive chef Richard Knight, Hunky Dory's opening marks his first return to a full-time restaurant since Feast shuttered in 2013. Although he would probably rather be in the kitchen with his cooks, he graciously agrees to sit down and answer a few questions about the restaurant's development, how Hunky Dory compares to Feast and whether he's planning on getting a new tattoo.

    CultureMap: How does it feel to be here now that the restaurant is almost open?

    Richard Knight: Like a strange dream . . . Now that it’s actually here it’s not really exactly as I imagined it in my head — even though I saw all the drawings and designed the kitchen. When you actually see life in it and the finishing touches like the lighting and the bottles behind the bar, it’s become this thing that’s alive. It was just this dead shell for so many months, but now it’s full of smells and hubbub and chefs running around. It’s got a life of its own. It’s just going to organically grow into this beautiful thing.

    CM: Are you ready?

    RK: I think so. I’ve got an amazing crew. Daniel Blue, who worked with me at Feast and then went to John Besh and worked in Germany, came back at just the right time a year ago. We know each other really well, which has helped things move along. We just got a new sous chef Matthew Boson who’s originally from Houston and done some work in really cool places in San Francisco. We’ve also got another guy coming down from New York. We all seem to be on the same page and we all seem to be wanting this thing to be so beautiful and so magical and such a good experience for people.

    CM: How many items from Feast are on the menu?

    RK: Actual Feast recipes there’s probably one or two: sticky toffee pudding and something else. It’s going to be a little bit of Feast coming through once we get established. The menu, especially when we’re starting out, is just going to be about getting things right. There will be a little more Feast stuff creeping in. It was be more sort of blackboard stuff where we get to play a little more and have things for the more adventurous people and the Feast diehards.

    CM: I saw some chatter on Twitter that people are hoping for Exmoor toasts.

    RK: That'll be back. Everybody loves that.

    CM: What's the biggest difference between the experience of opening Hunky Dory versus Feast?

    RK: It’s just going into a slightly different world and doing steaks and more mainline stuff, which I’ve been out of that world for quite a time. The thing about having staff is another. At Feast it was two of us and on weekends there was three of us. Literally, Santiago, our garde manager, did most of his own stuff. The rest of the stuff me and James did everyday.

    At Feast, we got a couple of credit cards, signed the lease, bought some food and some wine, met some people and off we went. Here it’s been literally a year into testing and putting that in books and extrapolating that into stations.

    It’s a beast in a lot of respects. Feast we just toodled along everyday. We created stuff, and we just did it. Here I’ve got to tell all these people what to do.

    I did corporate work. I had a very big kitchen at the old Enron building. Just getting back into that world of having this army of people around you and being hands-off. I’m just wanting to get into everything. I just need to step back and teach them how to do it and let them roll. That’s been the hardest part so far is letting other people cook.

    CM: Some of the media accounts have referred to Hunky Dory as a steakhouse. Do you think of it that way?

    RK: It started out a little more in that direction in the early days, and we kept tweaking the idea and realized that’s not what we’re going for. Just because we have a big, wood-burning hearth grill doesn’t mean we’re a steakhouse. We can be so much more. We are doing a couple of steaks, and we’re doing a monster steak from hell, a giant porterhouse to share. It’s going to be at least 32-ounces, I think.

    Benjy (Mason, Treadsack director of restaurant operations) had this great idea from a restaurant he went to in Vermont that did mashed potatoes and fries with all the steaks, like, both. That’s the best idea ever. If I got that in a restaurant, I would be ecstatic. We’re going to do that. Our hearth items, everything comes with mashed and fries.

    Steakhouse, no, not really. Restaurant and tavern is a good kind of direction for it. I didn’t want to call it a pub or a gastropub, because there’s so many god awful people who have that in front of their restaurant name. It’s been so abused, one of those trend things that’s gone by.

    I suppose we’re New American. Perhaps we’re New English. That’s what we’re doing here. 'New English,' I don’t know if anyone’s coined that phrase, but perhaps I should. Taking from my roots, I am still using a lot of the old recipes from the old cookbooks which I love and melding it with the local stuff here.

    It’ll be interesting to see from the public and you guys what we get labeled as. But, 'New English,' I’m liking this word.

    CM: You have a pig tattoo from the Feast days. Will you add a Hunky Dory rabbit?

    RK: I know Chris (Cusack) will. I think we should. You should, too. Absolutely, I’m going to. Damn right, sir.

    Hunky Dory is open for dinner seven days a week and brunch on the weekends. Lunch will follow in a month. Reservations available via Open Table.

    Portions of this interview have been edited for length and clarity.

    Richard Knight is ready for diners at Hunky Dory.

    Houston, Hunky Dory restaurant, October 2015, Richard Knight
      
    Photo by Justin Calhoun
    Richard Knight is ready for diners at Hunky Dory.
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    he finished the job

    Houston chef Tristen Epps dishes on his Top Chef victory — and what's next

    Eric Sandler
    Jun 13, 2025 | 9:05 am
    Top Chef Tristen Epps
    Photo by David Moir/Bravo
    Kristen Kish, Tristen Epps, Gail Simmons, and Tom Colicchio.

    Houston has played a leading role in America’s culinary scene, but the city has never been home to a Top Chef winner — until last night. In the final episode of season 22, chef Tristen Epps earned the title and a $250,000 cash prize.

    Epps secured his victory by remaining true to the Afro-Caribbean cuisine that helped him secured an impressive four Elimination Challenge wins and $35,000 in additional prize money from two Quickfire wins and as a member of the team that won the show’s signature Restaurant Wars challenge. His four-course menu took a panel of celebrity judges on a journey that also referenced the finale location of Milan, Italy.

    In particular, Epps wowed the panel with his second course — Chicken “Durango” with injera shrimp toast and shellfish jus — that referenced both the Ethiopian chicken stew doro wat and the Italian dish pollo durango, a sly nod to the history of imperialism between the two countries. He finished his savory offerings with Oxtail Milanese Crepinette with Carolina Gold rice grits, curry butter, and bone marrow gremolata, which earned praised from the panel.

    “Historically, we’ve been underserved oxtail,” Top Chef alum and James Beard Award winner Gregory Gourdet said during the episode. “Tristen took the time to pull it, create that beautiful, huge, maybe too big, portion of oxtail. And cover it with that gremolata. He did not forget the bone marrow. That’s very, very smart.”

    Throughout Top Chef’s run, Epps has been holding a series of pop-ups devoted to everything from hot dogs to steakhouses. Now, he can turn his attention to Buboy, a tasting menu concept that will celebrate the Afro-Caribbean cuisine he championed throughout his time on the show.

    CultureMap caught up with Epps on Friday morning for a brief chat about his victory and what’s next.

    CultureMap: What do you remember from the day you cooked that final dinner?
    Tristen Epps: It was an extreme amount of focus. A lot of writing in my notebook. I didn’t want to laugh. I didn’t want to cry or do anything except finish the job, regardless of whatever the outcome would have been. I remember wanting to call my mom. I really wanted to talk things out so I could calm myself down and stay within my focus. Once I got into cooking, I felt so much at ease. It’s my happy place. It’s my serenity.

    CM: How did you feel when you saw Gregory Gourdet on the panel? Did you feel like you had an advocate in the room?
    TE: I’ve cooked with gregory before, a long time ago. It was really fun. I loved what he was doing.

    I felt like I had kind of an advocate. I was worried my food wold be too spicy or too overpowering [for the European chefs]. Seeing Gregory was really good, especially with what I was doing.

    CM: Other chefs, including Gregory Gourdet and Houston chef Dawn Burrell, have done well on the show with Afro-Caribbean cuisine but they didn’t win. How important was it to you to finish the job and use those flavors to win the title?
    TE: To me that was super important. There’s adventurous people who make phenomenal food. They’ll go once because it’s interesting, bu they’re usually skeptical. When you don’t nail it, they say, that’s why I go to the regular places that are familiar.

    Finishing the job was really important to me. People have come up short on this. I wanted to get this right for everyone who’s made that step forward and created the ladder.

    CM: What have your last 12 hours been like since the episode aired? Have any celebrities reached out to you?
    TE: A lot of calls, a lot of good luck. A lot of everything. It’s been amazing.

    A lot of past Top Chef winners reached out to me, giving me a lot of support and telling me what they did after they won.

    [ESPN football commentator] Mina Kimes did, which was really cool.

    CM: What are your plans for the prize money?
    TE: It’s going to go to Buboy. Now that the cat’s out of the bag, it can go a little faster.

    CM: You’ve been holding a series of pop-ups that range from tasting menus to hot dogs? What’s next?
    TE: Part of getting the restaurant open has been introducing myself to all of Houston. These pop-ups represent my interests and my fun. They’re the things that Buboy is going to represent. It can be fun, it can be a conversation, it can be educational, it can push the limits of cuisines we know. It’s an expression of culture in whatever way I see fit that day.

    The hot dog concept will probably be a separate venture, but who’s to say there’s not a hot dog at the end of that meal?

    Top Chef Tristen Epps
      

    Photo by David Moir/Bravo

    Kristen Kish, Tristen Epps, Gail Simmons, and Tom Colicchio.

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