ben berg's best food yet

Midas-touch restaurateur Ben Berg serves up opening date for new NYC-inspired Chinese restaurant on WashAve

Ben Berg never lacks confidence, but the restaurateur is feeling particularly excited for Benny Chows, his new Chinese restaurant that’s opening Wednesday, June 28 at 1818 Washington Ave. His company Berg Hospitality already operates popular restaurants such as The Annie Cafe, B&B Butchers, and Trattoria Sofia, but Benny Chows, an homage to Berg’s favorite New York City Cantonese restaurants, has a special place in his heart.

“I gotta tell you I think this is probably the best food we’ve put out in the whole company,” Berg tells CultureMap.

Brian Sutton, Berg Hospitality’s vice president of culinary, worked with consulting chef Doron Wong to develop a menu that covers Cantonese classics, Chinese American favorites, and dim sum. Wong helped recruit executive chef Shirong Mei, who worked in Hong Kong before coming to Houston as the executive chef of upscale dim sum restaurant Yauatcha. Mei also ran the kitchen at One Dim Sum in Midtown (recently rebranded as Taste of Mulan).

“I love him. Everything he does is great,” Berg says about chef Mei. “He’s worked for some great places all over. He opened Yauatcha in London and Hawaii. He knows what he’s doing. Good guy, too.”

The menu contains a few nods to Houston, such as serving moo shu pork on a sizzling platter in a presentation that’s similar to fajitas. Benny Chows’ egg rolls are loaded with brisket from Truth Barbeque, the Washington Avenue restaurant ranked third in the state by Texas Monthly.

“You can take a tiny bit of credit for that, because I asked you awhile ago who makes the best brisket in Houston. I went to Leonard [Botello IV, Truth’s owner and pitmaster]. He was cool about it,” Berg says. “The crunch outside, the smoke in his brisket. It’s really yummy.”

As Berg acknowledged on a recent episode of CultureMap’s “What’s Eric Eating” podcast, he wanted Benny Chows to serve cold sesame noodles, a dish that’s an East Coast staple but rarely served in Houston’s Chinese American restaurants. Benny Chows’ version uses udon noodles tossed in peanut sauce that gets some heat from chili oil. The restaurateur says his chef “nailed” the recipe.

“I love that peanut flavor. It’s got that nice spice that hits you in the end,” he says. “They’re fantastic. We nailed them. I’m very happy.”

Mei’s experience with dim sum is reflected in Benny Chows’ menu, which includes three different soup dumplings preparations — classic pork, pork and crab, and truffled chicken — along with potstickers made with Berkshire pork, rangoons made with jumbo lump crab, and scallion pancakes that can be topped with caviar. Mapo Tofu stays vegan thanks to the use of Impossible meat, and beef with broccoli gets a luxurious glow up courtesy of filet mignon.

Peking duck will be a focal point of Benny Chows menu. The restaurant is sourcing seven-pound Jurgielewicz ducks from Pennsylvania. Available in limited quantities, they’re served with hoisin sauce, cranberry sauce, and housemade pancakes.

“It’s a three-day process,” Berg says about preparing the duck. “They’re doing it the old school way, drying it for two days. Cooking them, the skin is so beautifully crisp. The meat is just awesome.”

A similar effort has gone into the restaurant’s design. Sam Governale, Berg’s vice president of design & experience, worked with Gail McCleese of Sensitori to source Chinese antiques that decorate the restaurant. The main dining room features hand-painted red and gold wallpaper that tells a story. A gold bouquet of cherry blossoms serves as a visual focal point.

“It’s a complete landscape scene that goes around the dining room. The most I’ve ever spent on something like that,” Berg says. “The red and the gold in these Chinese landscape scenes kind of takes your breath away, I feel.”

An alley between the two buildings serves as Benny Chows’ patio. It’s decorated with paper lanterns an an homage to New York’s Chinatown.

Similarly, the cocktail menu nods to many of the legendary New York Chinese restaurants that inspired Benny Chows. While Houstonians may not recognize names like Wo Hop or China Club, they will recognize Mama’s China Garden, an homage to the downtown restaurant that’s served Houston’s best egg rolls since 1969. Many of the house cocktails are infused with teas sourced from Tealeaves, a luxury tea purveyor. “It creates visually stunning drinks with some great colors,” Berg adds.

Benny Chows will open for dinner service Wednesday night with lunch service beginning the next day. The restaurant opens daily at 11 am.

Benny Chows is one of several restaurants Berg Hospitality plans to open this year. In approximately two months, Tavola, a new Italian restaurant that’s been created by renovations to the La Table space next to The Annie Cafe, will begin service. Next up will be Annabelle Brasserie, a new restaurant in the Autry Park mixed-use development. Luxurious steakhouse Turner’s Cut will follow approximately a month after Annabelle. Then comes the all-new La Table, an updated version of the French fine dining restaurant. At some point in the middle of those openings, Buttermilk Baby, a retro-style diner centered around burgers, biscuits, and Carvel ice cream, will debut in the M-K-T development in the Heights.

Photo by Norton Creative

Peking duck will be a signature of Benny Chows.

openings news-you-can-eat

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.

crime interview