Better bagels in bellaire

Beloved bagel shop and deli expands with a massive second location in Bellaire

Bellaire residents won’t have to drive very far to get fresh bagels in 2020. New York Deli & Coffee Shop and its companion bagel shop, the 44-year old staple of Houston’s Jewish community, will add a second location near the Bellaire Triangle, partner Michael Saghian tells CultureMap.

Saghian and his partners, Shaun Leva and bagel shop co-founder Ed Gavrila, have purchased a former drug store/pawn shop at 5422 Bellaire Blvd that will allow them to expand all of their current businesses: Houston Catering Concepts, New York Deli & Coffee Shop, and the Bagel Shop Bakery. Currently, the partners expect to move the catering business from its current home on lower Westheimer to the new facility some time in the second quarter of 2020; the retail spaces will open in the third quarter.

The approximately 12,000-square-foot building offers enough room for HCC, a business that Saghian says delivers 45 to 50 corporate catering jobs every weekday, to expand its operations as well as provide a 5,000-square foot, 200-seat second location of the popular diner. The space will also have a private events room capable of seating 120 people.

In addition to housing a catering kitchen and the restaurant, the new space will also offer a second location for the bagel shop. Just as the current bakery carries a kosher certification from the Houston Kashruth Association, the new location will, too, which will allow it to provide challah and other products to area synagogues, schools, and other Jewish institutions.

Although the locations are only about three miles apart, the new restaurant and catering facility has a number of advantages beyond its expanded footprint. For the catering company, it’s closer to freeways, which aids in speedy deliveries. The new location is also closer to offices and a growing residential neighborhood. Owning the property also held appeal for the partners.

“If we were getting a second location, we had to own it. I don’t want to be at the mercy of a landlord again,” Saghian says. “Bellaire is my area. My dad has his restaurant, Brisket Bar-BQ, there. Bellaire is growing, a lot of new development; we want to be part of it.”

For Saghian, one of the biggest advantages of the new location will be that it’s more kid and family-friendly. In its current location, the deli struggles to seat the sort of multi-generational families who want to have breakfast together on the weekends. At the new location, seating a party of 12 or 15 will be relatively easy.

Having access to a large catering kitchen that serves six different styles of cuisine will allow the deli to offer dinner service for the first time. Expect an eclectic menu that suits a number of different cravings.

“Obviously, breakfast for dinner is a huge thing,” Saghian says. “Seafood is lacking in Bellaire. We want to hit that a little, too. You’ll also get Jewish-style food . . . We’ll have a diverse menu where there’s something for everybody.”

Saghian has made a number of changes to the bagel shop and deli since he became a partner earlier this year, including adding contemporary ingredients like avocado and upgrading the coffee. Overall, he and Gavrila say the restaurant has new life, and they want to bring that spirit to the new location.

“People grab my hand and shake it every day,” Saghian says. “The craziest thing I’ve learned is adding something as simple as avocado, the smiles you see on people’s faces”

However, Saghian knows he can’t change the bagel recipe. They’ll be made the same way they have been for almost 45 years. Checking on the quality every day is an added perk.

“I eat a bagel right out of that oven every single day,” Saghian says. “I can’t stop. I love it.”

The new location will be open for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

Courtesy of NY Deli & Coffee Shop

The new location will be open for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

news-you-can-eat openings

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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