stay frosty

Burger Joint duo's new Hawaiian shaved ice spot chills out the Heights

The team behind The Burger Joint has a new way to make summer in Houston a little cooler. Restaurateur Shawn Bermudez and chef Matthew Pak will unveil Happy Go Lucky, their new shaved ice and frozen cocktails concepts, this Friday, June 6.

Located next to The Taco Stand at 2102 N. Shepherd Drive in the Heights, Happy Go Lucky will served Hawaiian-style shaved ice, frozen cocktails, and desserts that combine the shaved ice and frozen cocktails. It evolved out of Bermudez’s desire to find a use for a building on the property he acquired to provide additional parking for The Burger Joint, The Taco Stand, and The Pizza Place, the duo’s new concept that will open in summer 2026 (more on that below).

Bermudez tells CultureMap that both he and Pak had interest in a dessert concept. When Pak sampled shaved ice during a trip to Hawaii with his family, Happy Go Lucky’s direction became clear.

“I wasn't a huge shaved ice fan, until I started trying them, but it set off a light bulb in my head. In Houston, there’s not a lot of that out here,” Pak says. “There’s shaved ice that’s less detailed — that you see at festivals and stuff.”

Pak created eight flavors of shaved ice that diners may order. They include the Coco Loco (blue coconut and lime syrup, sweetened condensed milk, mochi, toasted coconut flakes, and coconut milk ice cream), the Bomb Pop (blue raspberry, cherry, and lemon syrups over vanilla ice cream), the Mangoada (mango syrup, mango puree, chamoy drizzle, chili powder, mango popping boba, vanilla ice cream), and the Strawberry Delight (strawberry syrup, strawberry puree, fresh strawberries, etc.). Diners can also build-their-own from a roster of 17 flavored syrups (everything from watermelon and lime to passion fruit and dill pickle), two ice creams that are made for Happy Go Lucky by Amy’s Ice Creams (vanilla and dairy-free coconut), eight toppings, and five drizzles.

Realizing that the necessary equipment for making shaved ice wouldn’t take up that much space, Bermudez made the decision to add frozen cocktails. He sees Happy Go Lucky as fundamentally different from some of the drive-thru daiquiri bars that have popped up around Houston. His menu includes staples such as a margarita, strawberry daiquiri, pina colada, and frosé. It’s also possible to mix two together when they’re made in the same machine, such as the Miami Vice (strawberry daiquiri and pina colada), the Cherry Berry Bomb (blue raspberry lemonade and cherry limeade) or any three flavors of frozen margarita (lime watermelon, mango, strawberry, blood orange, wild berry, and pineapple).

“What I’ve noticed is frozen cocktail concepts like drive-thru daiquiri places, it’s all sugar. I didn’t want to do that at this concept,” Bermudez says. “I wanted to elevate it and be on par with our local bar scene. I used more premium spirits and fresh purees for the fruit element as opposed to syrups. We’re using spirits as opposed to wine base that a lot of daiquiri places use.”

Bermudez and Pak teamed up to create six drinks that combined a frozen cocktail base with a shaved ice topping. For example, the Very Pina Colada is a frozen pina colada topped with blue raspberry and pineapple shaved iced. The Island Dream takes the Miami Vice and tops it with passion fruit and pineapple shaved ice.

“What I’ve been practicing the past month is making sure the ice’s texture is soft like it’s supposed to be,” Pak says. “That’s the big difference between real Hawaiian shaved ice and normal shaved ice.”

Once Pak has Happy Go Lucky dialed in, he’ll turn his attention to opening the Montrose location of The Taco Stand. With employees already hired and training at the restaurant’s locations in the Heights and Webster, it should be ready in July. From there, Bermudez and Pak will turn their attention to opening The Burger Joint’s new location on Kirby Drive and the twin Burger Joint/Taco Stand coming to Gessner Road in Spring Branch. All of that growth of the two existing restaurants pushed back The Pizza Place to next year.

“When we started the [Pizza Place], we did not have the Burger Joint on Kirby or the Burger Joint and Taco Stand on Gessner,” Bermudez says. “When we signed those deals, we had to shift. We’re going to focus on getting those open. When we have time, we’ll come back around to Pizza Place. It’s a new concept that Matt wants to take his time on.”

Happy Go Lucky’s hour of operations are 12-10 pm daily. It offers dine-in, to-go, and drive-thru service.

Photo by Becca Wright

Happy Go Lucky offers eight frozen cocktails.

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Rising Star

Houston restaurateur dishes on swapping Tex-Mex for new retro steakhouse

Photo by Eric Sandler

Star Rover is now open in the Heights.

Restaurateur Ford Fry surprised Houston diners when he announced in January that he was closing his Tex-Mex restaurant Superica and replacing it with Star Rover, a casual, family-friendly steakhouse. With Star Rover now open for dinner and weekend brunch, Fry — who also owns Star Rover's neighbor La Lucha, casual taqueria Little Rey, and River Oaks fine dining restaurant State of Grace — explains that the decision came down to both economics and his own desire to provide the Heights with something he thought was lacking.

“This was our smallest Superica. Superica for us takes so much — every day you’re making salsas, tortillas, it’s so prep heavy,” Fry says. “We weren’t big enough to be that successful. We didn’t have enough seats to make the labor make sense.”

Rather than compete against Houston’s seemingly limitless roster of Tex-Mex restaurants, Fry saw an opportunity for a steakhouse that occupied a space somewhere between chains like Texas Roadhouse and Outback and fine dining staples like Pappas Bros. Enter Star Rover, which already has a popular location in Nashville.

Just as La Lucha channels Fry’s childhood memories of the San Jacinto Inn, Star Rover takes some inspiration from iconic Houston restaurant Hofbrau. Diners of a certain age will see places like Hofbrau in the restaurant’s design. The walls are adorned with framed pictures, taxidermy, vintage advertising, and more.

“The inspiration is if you were some old Texas dude who wanted to start a steakhouse you’d find a bunch of crap and put it on the walls,” Fry says. “We want to make it cool, but it’s got to take you away from what it was. Did we achieve that? I hope so.”

Fry tasked chef Bobby Matos with updating the Star Rover menu for Houston. It starts with a selection of steaks — chopped, filet, T-bone, ribeye, or skirt — along with a half-chicken, blackened redfish, and chicken fried chicken. All of them come with milk rolls, salad, fries, and onion rings. Diners who want a little surf and turf can add either a crab cake or a fried lobster tail.

The appetizer menu is similarly tidy, consisting of shrimp cocktail, oysters (raw or fried), potato skins, and vegetable crudités. Desserts include a selection of pies as well as soft serve ice cream.

Since the steaks are thinner than those served at upscale steakhouses, they’re cooked hot and fast on a plancha and basted in butter.

“We control the costs by the size of the meat,” Fry explains. “Meat is so expensive, how do you do a family-friendly steakhouse? It’s a 12-ounce ribeye and it’s choice. We put the right amount of age on it.”

Tucked away in the corner of the menu is text that reads “Cheeseburger?! Just ask!” People should, because it’s a hearty half-pound, New York tavern-style burger that sits on grilled onions, is topped with cheese and mayonnaise, and is served on a classic potato bun. Think of it as the thick-patty counterpart to La Lucha’s thin-patty Pharmacy Burger.

“I call it a lowbrow steakhouse burger,” Fry says. “It’s not a Peter Luger, but it may be better and it won’t cost as much.”

Star Rover’s weekend brunch menu features the same pancakes that had been a staple at Superica. They’re joined by some new items, including baked-to-order cinnamon rolls, breakfast tacos, and kolaches that use sausage from Houston’s Roegels Barbecue Co.

Photo by Eric Sandler

Star Rover is now open in the Heights.

The restaurant has one other old-school touch in the form of an eating challenge called the “I Ate the 76er.” Available with 24 hours notice, diners who finish a 76-ounce steak, milk rolls, salad, onion rings, and fries in under an hour will receive the meal for free, plus a t-shirt and the opportunity to sign a winners’ wall. The challenge reflects the spirit Fry is bringing to Star Rover.

“A lot of it is scratching that itch of something fun I want to do versus what I think the neighborhood will like,” he says. “We did a version of this in Nashville with a stage. It’s where I eat when I’m in Nashville, because it’s what I want to eat when I’m there.”

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