Houston's newest food festival

Houston's newest food festival celebrates West African culture with day of food, dance, music, and more

The man behind Houston’s smash hit West African restaurant has big plans for celebrating the culture of the African diaspora and Nigerian Independence Day. ChòpnBlọk owner Ope Amosu will hold the Chopd & Stewd Festival on September 30.

Held at downtown's Post Houston mixed-use development — the same facility where ChòpnBlọk occupies a prime spot in the food hall — Chopd & Stewd is an all-day celebration of West African culture that includes four pillars: Eats, Speaks, Trade, and Beats. It builds on the success Amosu has had with the restaurant, which has been featured on shows such as Top Chef, Marcus Samuelsson’s PBS series No Passport Required, and Padma Lakshmi’s Hulu series Taste of the Nation.

Courtesy of Chopd & Stewd

The day begins with Afro Vibes yoga.

As Amosu explains, expanding beyond the walls of his restaurant has always been part of the plan, and that includes a day-long celebration in Houston, which is home to America’s largest Nigerian and West Africa communities. He’s learned some lessons from attending other festivals that he’s applied to Chopd & Stewd.

“Truthfully, although we’ve had a lot of advancement, I feel like there’s more ground to cover when it comes to telling the story of the Black and African diaspora as well as having those people in the room representing the food and culture that’s important to me,” he tells CultureMap. “A lot of festivals I've been to that hasn’t necessarily been the case. It’s time we’re able to really bring together other storytellers and culinary creatives from this space and build our own platform where we can tell the story the way we want and invite everyone to hear directly from us.”

Food is at the heart of the festival’s programming. The Culinary Village, held throughout Saturday morning and afternoon in the Post’s rooftop garden, will feature nine different chef stations. Participants include local chefs such as Greg Gatlin (Gatlin’s BBQ, Gatlin’s Fins & Feathers), Keisha Griggs (Kuji Kitchen), Oxtail Mash-up winner Reginald Scott (The Smoke), and Joseph Boudreaux (Boo’s Burgers).

In the evening, Amosu has gathered some culinary heavy hitters for the Chop Nation brunch. He’ll be joined by Top Chef alums Eric Adjepong and Dawn Burrell as well as Tolu Eros, a Nigerian chef with restaurants in Los Angeles and Lagos.

“It’s like the Avengers coming together,” Amosu says about the lineup. “People I’ve admired or learned from or studied.”

The festival has other components as well. The day starts with Afro Vibes yoga, a wellness session featuring Thrive Juices, and an Afro Beats dance class. Throughout the day, the Òrêké Market will offer goods from by West Africa or produced by people with West African heritage. In the afternoon, masterclasses and lectures provide educational opportunities.

At night, the Sounds of the Motherland concert will take the festival right to October 1, Nigerian Independence Day. Amosu is still finalizing the concert lineup, but promises it will be a memorable evening.

“It’s all about celebrating the popular influences of the West African diaspora,” Amosu explains. “It’s all centered around enabling communities from all walks of life to retrace their West African ancestral connections.”

Tickets for the festival are on sale now. Prices start at $45 for a “Vibez” ticket that provides access to the morning wellness sessions and the evening concert. A “Tribe” ticket, $85, adds access to the Culinary Village, and a “Chief” ticket ($175) comes with VIP Culinary Village passes and the ability to attend two classes. All access “ChopNation” tickets ($395) include VIP seating for the brunch and a special viewing area for the concert.

The market will be free to attend for anyone who passes through the Post that day. Amosu notes the facility typically sees between 8-10,000 visitors on a Saturday. He’s hoping that as many 2-5,000 of them will engage with some aspect of Chopd & Stewd. Of course, he’s already thinking about year two.

“I’m an ambitious guy. I’m going through sleepless nights telling myself it’s year one you gotta work on the kinks,” Amosu says. “We’re doing our part to satiate the need. The vision is to build year after year.”

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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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