a love letter to Brennan's

Chris Shepherd salutes his favorite Houston restaurant — and its new hot dog tower

those that don’t know, it’s a place where I had the opportunity to hone my skills as a young cook and is absolutely a place that I still call home.

It was the restaurant that I wanted to work at so badly after graduating culinary school. I had applied once before, but did not get the job. I was disappointed, but now that I look back I am really happy I didn’t get the job. I wasn’t ready and I know that now. I took a job at a country club at the time and thought that I was going in the right direction in my career. I worked hard at that job, was promoted to sous chef and made some really amazing friends but something was missing.

Becoming a Chef at Brennan’s

My friend Randy Evans was working at Brennan’s, which is why I wanted to work there. I wanted to continue the push for knowledge and skills. Randy stopped by my apartment on his way home after work to have a drink and a chat, and I asked him how his night was. He told me that they did 400+ covers for service and it was exhilarating. He then asked how my night was, my answer was that I put out the taco buffet and was home early.

That moment is when my head started to spin. I questioned a lot of the things I was doing. Please don’t get me wrong, the job I had was a really great one, and I know it’s the right fit for a lot of people. It just wasn’t for me, and that night changed a lot for me.

Randy and his wife Melanie invited me to dinner at Brennan’s for my birthday. That night I met Mark Holley, Jose Arévalo, and chef Carl Walker. Mark asked me what I was doing and where I wanted my career to go. I started working at Brennan’s two weeks later.

I worked there for nine years, because I was given the ability to learn as much as I could. I was able to work my way through the kitchen, while Randy and I pushed each other as hard as we could to learn as much as our brains could hold, and we had great mentors that helped us with that. I learned how to cook like a good cook, practiced technique, repetition, creativity, and leadership — I was being trained to be a chef and not just a cook.

I was questioned about every new dish I would create by Alex Brennan-Martin, chef Carl, chef Jose, chef Mark, and my friend Randy about the thought process, the flavors, the techniques, and, most importantly, “the whys” behind the dish. They believed in me and taught me to believe in myself. Randy and I studied everything that had to do with food and wine. I mean, there is literally a magazine named Food & Wine and years later, I now get to work for that publication. How cool is that????

I had the opportunity to take that passion into the dining room and become “The Wine Guy” aka the sommelier because I wanted to know how the dining room worked as well. At the same time Randy was promoted to executive chef, and it was a great feeling for both of us. We will be out in Sonoma next month as we celebrate 30 years of working in this industry together, and we owe a lot of this to this restaurant and the people that work there. So when I say it’s a special place to me, now you have some context to why. But enough about me — let’s talk about what’s really exciting me at Brennan’s right now.

Brennan’s New Bar

I have seen the bar at Brennan’s remodeled a couple of times over the years but nothing like what was unveiled recently. They nailed it. With this remodel they made the bar bigger and more exciting. The restaurant has always been a fine dining restaurant — a special occasion restaurant where you celebrate birthdays, anniversaries, and other momentous life occasions. This restaurant has more regulars (people that are there literally all the time) than any other place I’ve worked — multiple generations of those regulars!

When they looked at the bar, they knew they wanted a fine casual bar. But what does that mean, exactly? They built basically a restaurant inside a restaurant that gives you a place to go watch an Astros game while having a delicious cocktail, an amazing bottle of wine, and shrimp po boy or a hot dog and slider tower. Yeah, you read that right. I’ll talk more about that in a bit.

As part of the renovation, Alex Brennan-Martin installed black and white tile floors and zinc bar and table tops, just like you’d find in any cafe in Paris. The light fixtures are made of whiskey decanters. If you spend some time looking around, you will notice there are nods to the almost 60 years of history of Brennan’s of Houston. It’s beautiful and relaxing at the same time as you either look into the bar or out into the beautiful and iconic courtyard that is just so reminiscent of New Orleans.

Now let’s talk about the important stuff: cocktails, food, and wine! The cocktail program has really taken a shift to fun, thoughtful but still tipping a hat to the classics. Let’s start with two styles of the Old Fashioned. There is the “Old” Old Fashioned which is the classic bourbon, bitters, muddled brandy, cherry, orange and a sugar cube — classic, right? Then we have the “New” Old Fashioned which is bourbon run through a Yama Still, a still that is traditionally used to make the best cold brew coffee where water slowly drips through coffee beans extracting the the best flavor of the beans. In this case instead of the beans, the middle infusion chamber is filled with the oranges and cherries. The bourbon slowly drips through the chamber infusing all of those delicious flavors and ends up on the other side. It’s outstanding.

The Parisian Gas Lamp is a cocktail that pays tribute to the iconic glass lamps in the restaurant and is made from Cognac, Cointreau Noir, and flambéed orange peel. They have also added some frozen cocktails like the Bananas Faster (not Foster but Faster), which made from rum, banana purée and vanilla soft serve, perfect if you are too full for the classic dessert.

I also want to remind you that you can get those infamous 25 cent martinis at lunch Monday through Friday with the purchase of an entree. The wines by the glass are fantastic, but the whole wine list is deep and one of the best around. It is filled with true gems from all over the world, don’t sleep on it because it’s a well put together novel!

This is not just your regular food menu. As I said before, they have literally developed a restaurant inside of a restaurant for you to enjoy. When I first sat down, I was really surprised to see the menu. Traditionally a bar menu has four or five items on it but not this one — this one has more than 25 items, and most are designed specifically for the bar.

Yes, you can get the famous snapping turtle soup, the seafood gumbo, and a Jill Jackson Salad, but that’s just the beginning. Raw and roasted oysters, seafood towers, flatbreads, and snacks like pimento cheese and deviled ham with fire’crackers, muffuletta sliders, and even New Orleans-style po’ boys. That’s just where the madness begins! The team has added some really amazing items like some over-the-top seafood nachos with fried oysters, shrimp, crabmeat — if you’d like to add caviar, they sure as hell will let you!

Then we get to the piece de resistance, the tower of power, the all-gas-no-brakes kind of dish that I am in love with: The Hot Dog and Slider Tower. Full Tilt Hot Dogs, prime brisket sliders, all fries (house made fries, sweet potato fries, tater tots) with Creole chow chow, comeback sauce, and Andouille sausage queso for dipping! Even writing this I’m overwhelmed with joy.

Full Tilt Foods is a company that my wife and I started, and we now make the official hot dog of the Houston Texans and The Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo. Brennan’s is the first place outside of NRG stadium to carry them, and they are meaty hot dog heaven. The sliders are rich and delicious from that prime brisket, and this is one of the best shareable, show stopping dishes out there and absolutely worth a try.

It's nice to see a bar that is open all day, not just to have a fantastic beverage but to enjoy some delicious food with friends and loved ones in a fine casual atmosphere. I have been in love with this restaurant for most of my life, and I think what they have done gives folks an option to either come in and have an amazing dinner or relax with friends, have a hot dog tower with some great cocktails, and watch a game on the TV.

Thanks team for reading along on my love story to a restaurant. We all have our special places that hold those memories to us. What’s yours? Let me know your story.

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Share your favorite Houston restaurants with Chris via email at chris@chrisshepherd.is.

Chris Shepherd won a James Beard Award for Best Chef: Southwest in 2014. The Southern Smoke Foundation, a nonprofit he co-founded with his wife Lindsey Brown, has distributed more than $12 million to hospitality workers in crisis through its Emergency Relief Fund. Catch his TV show, Eat Like a Local, every Saturday at 10 am on KPRC Channel 2 or on YouTube.

Photo by Andrew Hemingway

The zinc bar tops are an ode to Parisian restaurants.

chris shepherd cocktails news-you-can-eat openings

Notes from a chef

Globe-trotting Houston chef reviews Noma's $1,500 Los Angeles pop-up

Courtesy of David Skinner

Pink pepper Dungeness crab.

[Editor’s note: When David Skinner, chef and owner of Kemah’s celebrated eculent and Ishtia restaurants, offered to share his experience eating at one of the world’s best restaurants, we said, of course. Read on for his experience at Copenhagen restaurant Noma’s pop-up in Los Angeles that took place this summer. Take it away, David.]

The crab was alive a few minutes before I ate it.

Just before service, the kitchen broke down a Dungeness crab and set it over open charcoal, the downtown Los Angeles skyline behind the smoke. It came to the table wreathed in dried pink pepper branches, with a butter sauce built on the same pepper. I've eaten crab all over the world — this was maybe the best crab ever.

That was the first of 17 courses at Noma LA, and the best bite of the afternoon. Leading with your best shot is either confidence or a statement. By the end of lunch, I'd decided it was both.

The residency had begun in turmoil. Founder René Redzepi stepped away from the residency the day it opened, following a news investigation into allegations of demeaning treatment of staff — conduct that had been discussed in industry circles for years. Protesters gathered at the gate that day. The kitchen, led by Pablo Soto, carried on through the residency's close on June 26.

I went for lunch at the Paramour Estate, the 1920s Mediterranean mansion in Silver Lake that Noma called home for 16 weeks. For more than 30 years, I've traveled the world in search of culture, a little mystery, and always food, eating everywhere from strangers' kitchen tables to three-Michelin-star dining rooms.

As the chef behind eculent and Ishtia in Kemah, I also eat with a cook's eye — which means I'll tell you what was brilliant and what was oversalted. Noma LA had a little of both, but after a half dozen meals at Noma over the past 10 years, I can say this one was a standout.

The setup

The logistics alone are remarkable. Noma relocated roughly 130 staff members and their families to Los Angeles and built a pantry sourced within 300 miles of the mansion. Lunch ran 17 courses over about four hours at $1,500 per person, including beverages and gratuity.

Chef Soto greeted us at the entrance with the full kitchen staff, a Noma tradition. By the time I arrived, the protesters were long gone, and the brigade seemed to be cooking with a sense of relief.

Rather than choose between the wine pairing and the nonalcoholic program, we asked our server, Mara, to mix the two course by course. She nailed it, moving from a sparkling rose-and-pink-pepper drink to a bright cherimoya lemonade to a 25-year-old Tony Coturri zinfandel from Glen Ellen that became the table's favorite pour.

The standouts

The crab. It opened the meal, and nothing that followed topped it. The pink pepper did double duty with the dried branches perfuming the shell, the butter sauce carrying a gentle heat — the sweet, smoky meat needed nothing else. Alongside came a 2022 Phelan Farm chardonnay from Rajat Parr's Cambria operation: white Burgundy in spirit, California in its bones.

The cactus. Pickled tacinga cactus, marinated in Oaxacan mezcal and citrus and crowned with honeypot ants, arrived beneath a live cactus paddle with a eucalyptus handle.

The acorn. A single braised acorn, glazed with black pepper, sat atop an uni custard made with Santa Barbara sea urchin and caviar in hoja santa oil. The server described it as a nod to California's Indigenous peoples. As a Choctaw, whose ancestors relied on acorns for thousands of years, I felt that one. It was also the most technically accomplished savory course of the meal.

The seaweed and clams. Six varieties of Southern California seaweed with butter-kissed clams tasted like the coast itself. This is Noma at its best: not interpreting California so much as listening to it.

The tuna eye. I've eaten cod eye at Noma in Copenhagen, but this version was way better. The kitchen removed the tough cornea, replaced it with a thin disk of kumquat, and served the eye chilled inside a ruby-red banana flower bract. Rich and gelatinous, it's eaten in one bite. When our table wondered aloud where the rest of all that tuna goes, Mara had the answer: family meal for the staff.

The kelp mole. Grilled greens, a squash blossom stuffed with huitlacoche, and an artichoke on its stalk arrived with tortillas from Komal, one of Los Angeles's top heirloom molinos, paired with a mole built on kelp.

Between the acorn, the cactus, and the mole, a question kept surfacing: what does it mean for a Danish kitchen to arrive in someone else's pantry and cook as though it has always been there? Some of these ingredients have fed Indigenous and Mexican cooks for centuries. Noma handled them with obvious respect and real curiosity. Sometimes, though, the line between homage and borrowing comes down to whether you're willing to say the name out loud.

Dessert kept the surprises coming, including a macadamia custard served in a sunflower whose base turned out to be beeswax. The finale arrived as a bundle of ferns tied with string. Diners snip it open with tiny scissors to find a chocolate cookie and a fortune inside. Mine quoted Nietzsche: You must have chaos within you to give birth to a dancing star.

Nietzsche, at $1,500 a head, in a Silver Lake mansion, from a kitchen whose founder walked away on opening day while protesters stood at the gate. The kitchen knew exactly what it was doing.

The full menu, course by course

For those keeping score, here's the complete lineup.

Pink pepper Dungeness crab
Daylily crab dumpling — The rest of the crab, tucked inside a trumpet-shaped daylily with buds plumped in crustacean liquor. The flower dominated; the crab was the reason to eat it.
Chilled lobster broth — Spiny lobster stock, dashi, and elderflower oil served chilled in the lobster's own coral-colored shell. A palate reset dressed as a course.
Spot prawn with matcha — Served in real seaweed, the head filled with smoked pumpkin paste for sucking, the tail painted with matcha. Paired with the 2024 Verso from Caleb Leisure in Sebastopol.
Sea urchin custard and braised acorn
Cactus with mezcal
Ragout of California botanicals — Seasonal greens, peas, and herbs in a warm, quiet preparation, tied together by a hint of horseradish.
SoCal seaweed and clam
Tuna neck — Minced tuna neck in a koji-inoculated steamed bun with the texture of suede, topped with translucent shards of dried chicken-stock skin. Paired with the 2000 Estate Zinfandel from Tony Coturri.
Tuna eye
Black pearl rice steamed in avocado leaf — Ringed with pistachio oil and scattered with dime-sized macadamia slices. Humble ingredients in the spirit of California great Jeremiah Tower.
Morels with habanero and yuzu — Sierra Nevada morels on turkey-tail mushrooms over hot stones. Bright and spicy, but heavy on the salt.
Greens and grilled artichoke in spiced kelp mole
Cherimoya and lemongrass — A green cocoa butter shell shaped like a cactus, hiding a smooth cherimoya ice cream. A California fruit most California menus ignore.
Macadamia milk custard and pistachio — Topped with heirloom Hong Kong kumquats from a handful of research trees that fruit four weeks a year, served in a beeswax-lined sunflower.
Silver Lake fortune cookie — A Chiapas chocolate mousse cookie garnished with insects, hidden in a bundle of ferns you cut open with tiny scissors. Fortune included.

The misses

Not every course landed. Morels with habanero and yuzu were oversalted, and some presentations were delivered too quietly to catch the full story. At $1,500 a seat, the storytelling should be as confident as the cooking.

The verdict

Having now eaten Noma's traveling editions in Tulum and Los Angeles, I'll offer an opinion that may be unpopular in certain circles: the pop-ups are better than Copenhagen. Maybe it's the hunt for new ingredients, or the urgency of a 16-week run in a borrowed house. Whatever the reason, the results are hard to argue with. I put that theory to the test in August, when I returned to Noma on my birthday, three days after it reopened with Soto at the helm. More on that meal soon.

Noma LA wasn't really a restaurant. It was an argument about a place, made in food, by people who flew 6,000 miles to make it. The argument was frequently brilliant, occasionally presumptuous, and closed with Nietzsche in a fortune cookie. On balance, it won.

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David Skinner is a James Beard Award semifinalist for Best Chef: Texas and the owner of eculent and Ishtia in Kemah. He also writes the culinary travel journal Destination Eater on Substack.

Courtesy of David Skinner

Pink pepper Dungeness crab.

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