another heights shutter

Heights Vietnamese restaurant lauded for inventive fare set to shutter

Dinette will close on Sunday.

Dinette/Facebook

An innovative Vietnamese restaurant will soon serve its last meals. Dinette announced it will close after service on Sunday, February 4.

Located in the Heights, Dinette opened in 2022 to some acclaim, including a nomination for Best New Restaurant in the 2023 CultureMap Tastemaker Awards. Opening chef Cole Hoang crafted a menu of North Vietnamese-inspired dishes that also drew on his experiences working for James Beard Award finalist Christine Ha at both The Blind Goat and Xin Chao. It included updated takes on Vietnamese staples such as egg rolls, banh xeo, and bo luc lac.

Last year, the restaurant added a bakery serving sweet and savory Vietnamese pastries, which its also closing.

Owners Raymond Chan and Jason Andaya also operate Hando and Kanpai Club, the sushi hand roll concept and cocktail bar with locations in the Heights and Spring Branch. They plan to replace with Dinette with something more similar to those establishments. Details on the new restaurant will be released at a later date.

“We recognized a need to focus on growing the Hando and Kanpai Club brands, and we believe that closing Dinette will help us accomplish our expansion goals,” Andaya said in a response to CultureMap’s request for comment about the decision to close Dinette. “That being said, there are plans to reconcept the Shepherd Row space into something that feels like an organic progression, building on what people already love about Hando and Kanpai Club.”

“Despite today’s announcement and the closing of this chapter, we are extremely proud of all that we have accomplished with Dinette, and we look forward to developing a new concept to open in the current space,” Chan added in a statement. “We invite everyone to come in and enjoy their favorite meals one last time this week.”

Although Dinette’s time is coming to an end, the Heights and its nearby neighborhoods offer a number of options for contemporary Vietnamese cuisine. They include Moon Rabbit, Les Ba’get, and Xin Chao

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What's Eric Eating Episodes 516 and 517

Food experts draft the best dishes at Vietnamese restaurants in Houston

Moon Rabbit/Facebook

Two panelists selected dishes from Moon Rabbit in the Heights.

On this week’s episode of “What’s Eric Eating,” CultureMap editor Eric Sandler recruited five of his friends and colleagues to select their favorite dishes at Vietnamese restaurants in Houston via a fantasy football-style draft.

The panelists — Stevie Vu of the Chowdown in Chinatown Facebook group and Asia Society, Texas; Chelsea Thomas of Local Foods Group; Heights Grocer and Montrose Grocer owner Mary Clarkson; Have A Nice Day AAPI pop-up market co-founder Isabel Protomartir; Houston BBQ Festival co-founder Michael Fulmer — joined Sandler to draft Vietnamese dishes and restaurants in six categories. They are:

Appetizer/Salad
Entree
Sandwich
Soup
Viet-Cajun
Wildcard

In the first round, Vu kicked things off by selecting the sandwiches from Chinatown institution Nguyen Ngo. Thomas followed with the duck salad at Thien An. Clarkson took the mango-papaya salad from Old Saigon Cafe, and Sandler scored the Beef 7 Ways at Chinatown favorite Saigon Pagolac. Protomartir took the Duck House’s crispy egg rolls, and Fulmer closed round one with the beef rolls at Nam Giao, which holds a Bib Gourmand designation in the Michelin Guide.

Sandler shared the full results on Instagram.

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A post shared by Eric Sandler (@ericsandler)

As he noted, the draft results include some of Houston’s most prominent Vietnamese restaurant as well as a few under-the-radar choices that will give listeners some new options to try. Listen to the full episode on any podcast platform to hear the panelists explain the choices and recommend a few places that they could have drafted instead.

In this week’s second episode, chef Christine Ha and her husband John Suh join Sandler to review the results and pick a winner. Since no one selected their restaurant The Blind Goat, each drafter is on an equal footing.

Listen to the full episode to hear who won. Ha and Suh also share thoughts on their favorite selections by each panelist. They also catch us up on the latest happenings at both The Blind Goat and Stuffed Belly, their sandwich shop, including the recent addition of a gumbo pot pie to The Blind Goat’s menu.

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A post shared by The Blind Goat (@theblindgoathtx)

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