HRW Menu Day 2025

10 eateries participating in Houston Restaurant Weeks for the first time

One of the most eagerly anticipated days of the year for people who love Houston restaurants has arrived. Houston Restaurant Weeks has released the first wave of menus for its 2025 event.

Held from August 1 until Labor Day (Monday, September 1), the charity dining event recruits as many as 400 Houston restaurants to serve two, three, or four-course, prix-fixe menus at set prices — $25 for lunch and brunch and $39 or $55 for dinner. HRW organizer The Cleverley Stone Foundation collects a $1 donation for every $25 menu sold, $3 for every $39 menu sold, and $5 for every $55 menu sold. It uses that money to make a substantial donation to the Houston Food Bank — just over $2 million from the 2024 event alone and over $22 million in the event’s 22-year history.

Prior to her death in 2020, HRW founder Cleverley Stone described the event as a “win-win-win.” That is, a win for the restaurants who turned the traditionally slow month of August into a busy time. A win for diners who got good deals on meals at some of the city’s top restaurants. And a win for the Houston Food Bank, which turns every dollar raised into three meals for Houstonians in need.

Now under the direction of her daughter, Katie Stone Cappuccio, Houston Restaurant Weeks maintains its status as the city’s premier charity dining event. Participating restaurants include all four restaurants in Bludorn Hospitality — Bludorn, Navy Blue, Bar Bludorn, and Perseid — all four of James Beard Award winner Hugo Ortega’s restaurants — Hugo’s, Caracol, Xochi, and Urbe — and two of the five Houston restaurants that hold one Michelin star — BCN and Le Jardinier.

For diners, one of the most exciting aspects of the event is the opportunity to try a new restaurant with the certainty of a fixed price (plus beverages, tax, and tip). Towards that end, CultureMap has compiled a list of many of the first-time participants to help guide people’s selections. Diners are encouraged to keep checking the HRW website, because more establishments will be added between now and August 1.

Bar Bludorn
Aaron Bludorn’s Memorial-area tavern is serving a three-course, $55 dinner menu. Starter choices consist of shrimp tartine, chilled corn soup, or arugula salad with watermelon. For an entree, select ricotta gnocchi, branzino, or pork loin. Finish with blueberry cake, chocolate mousse, or ice cream.

Barbacana
Chef Christian Hernandez’s downtown restaurant that celebrates Houston’s diversity will serve both a two-course lunch and a three-course, $55 dinner. Choices include jicama salad, wagyu carpaccio, mushroom donburi, and grilled vermillion snapper. Supplements include octopus with mole poblano and a Texas wagyu Denver cut steak.

Derby
Located at a storage facility for collector cars, this restaurant is serving a three-course, $39 dinner menu. Choices include bacon with maple glaze and cayenne, apple walnut salad, fried green tomatoes, blackened chicken pasta, and a wagyu burger.

Doko
Part of Duckstache Hospitality (Handies Douzo, Aiko, etc.), this sushi restaurant in Autry Park is serving a four-course, $55 menu. Start with scallop aquachile, scallop ceviche, or a tomato salad. Choices for the second and third course include yakitori-style skewers with proteins such as short rib, chicken meatball, and wagyu ribeye as well as one of three sushi rolls — wagyu beef, avocado, or fried shrimp. Finish with one of three desserts.

Kitchen Rumors
This inventive, Indian-inspired restaurant from the team behind acclaimed Woodlands restaurants Amrina is serving a three-course, $55 menu. The first course offers five regular choices and two supplements, including lamb keema infladita, blue cheese chicken kebabs, scallop ceviche, and lobster dumplings. Choose from seven different entrees such as pan fried paneer, goat biryani, prawn curry, and bison short rib nihari.

Maven Coffee & Cocktails
This neighborhood restaurant that touts Astros pitcher Lance McCullers Jr as one of its owners will serve a four-course, $55 menu. Choices include a gazpacho shooter, bread and butter, “Caesar cups,” deviled eggs, steak au poivre, spicy rigatoni pasta, and a cheeseburger.

Okto
Part of Sof Hospitality (Doris Metropolitan, Hamsa), this Mediterranean restaurant in the Montrose Collective mixed-use development is serving a two-course brunch and a three-course, $55 dinner. At brunch, look for dishes such as ricotta toast, frena bread with pistacchio butter, beet-cured lox, and shakshuka. At dinner, the choices include hamachi tartare, octopus carpaccio, squid ink linguini with crab, and steak frites.

Perseid
Bludorn Hospitality’s French restaurant at the Hotel Saint Augustine is serving both a two-course lunch and a three-course, $55 dinner. Both menus include options such as white gazpacho, smoked salmon dip, tomato risotto, and the signature chicken paillard with fingerling potatoes and arugula salad. Dinner adds three desserts, including a chocolate entremet with salted caramel and coffee ice cream.

Pizzana
The Los Angeles-based, neo-Neopolitan pizzeria is serving a three-course, $39 menu that includes one of three pizzas — margherita, pepperoni, or the signature cacio e pepe — paired with a choice of three salads and three desserts. We recommend the little gem Caesar and the tiramisu, but that’s entirely up to you.

Solarium
Lance McCullers’ pickle ball bar in Midtown is also participating in HRW with a two-course brunch and a three-course, $39 dinner. Both meals include choices such as a chicken skewer with jalapeno-dill yogurt, Caesar salad, and cheeseburger. Brunch adds breakfast options such as pancakes or an egg sandwich, while dinner adds chicken tenders, a pulled pork sandwich, and choice of dessert.

Kitchen Rumors restaurant lobster dumplings

Photo by Chris Furia

These lobster dumplings are available as a supplement at Kitchen Rumors.

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Destination-worthy baked goods

Texas influencer's monthly bakery pop-ups are road trip worthy

Joy the Baker Joy Wilson Popup Bellville

Photo by Alexander Irwin

Houston resident and cookbook author Joy Wilson has opened a bakery pop-up in Bellville, just an hour's drive from the city.

It sounds like a Hallmark movie plotline: a big-city girl moves to a small town, buys a rambling Victorian house, and opens a bakery.

But in this version, the heroine is cookbook author, food blogger, and social media star Joy Wilson — better known as Joy the Baker. And the bakery is Texas Bakehouse, a monthly pop-up hosted behind her 1800s home in Bellville, just about an hour’s drive from Houston.

Photo by Alexander Irwin

Houston resident and cookbook author Joy Wilson has opened a bakery pop-up in Bellville, just an hour's drive from the city.

Wilson relocated to Houston in 2023 after closing the original Bakehouse in New Orleans, making the move to be closer to her now-husband. The pair settled in Rice Military and dedicated weekends to riding their motorcycles west, with Bellville quickly capturing Wilson’s imagination.

“One day we were having lunch out there and I said, ‘I'm going to move here. I think I'm going to buy a house and move here,’” Wilson recalls. “My husband was like, ‘Let's do it.’ And it was just as simple as that decision.”

Once a month, Wilson opens the doors to her backyard bakeshop for pre-ordered bakery box pickups. Each box includes four items anchored by a signature giant chocolate chip cookie, with the remaining pastries rotating seasonally.

The soft opening in November featured sweet potato pie, lemon poppy seed kolaches, and chai-spiced apple fritters. December followed with cranberry crumble galettes, cheddar and chive scones, and oversized Linzer cookies.

After taking January off to recover from the holidays, Texas Bakehouse is back in February with pre-orders open for pickup on Saturday, February 7.

This month’s Galentine’s Day offering is an eight-inch, heart-shaped chocolate cake filled with fresh raspberries and whipped cream, finished with Swiss meringue buttercream and a piped Drake lyric — a nod to Wilson’s viral Drake on Cake era. Buyers can choose between “No new friends” or “Nice for what,” with each cake accompanied by a locally made floral arrangement from Wanderlust and Wild.

Lemon blueberry biscuits and the bakery’s signature chocolate chip cookies will also be available for walk-up purchase from 9 a.m. to noon, served with a complimentary cup of Bellville’s own Interstellar Coffee.

For Wilson, the Bakehouse was always part of the plan.

“I knew that if I was moving out here, I wanted a house with a story, a place people would want to visit and experience,” she says. “I’ve been here about a year and a half, and it just took time to get a grip on the nuts and bolts of the house. But I always intended to have a little bakery pop-up here.”

The location also makes it an easy day trip for Houstonians looking to get out of the city. Texas Bakehouse sits just blocks from Bellville’s downtown square, where visitors can wander antique shops and explore the small-town charm before heading home.

“People can come here, pick up baked goods, have a visit, and then go experience the town and community, too, all on foot,” Wilson says. “That feels very special.”

Looking ahead, Wilson plans to expand the Bakehouse with intimate cooking classes, likely beginning in fall 2026, inspired by the small-group classes she once hosted in New Orleans.

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Texas Bakehouse is located at 310 E Palm Street in Bellville, Texas, about an hour west of Houston. Pre-orders and pickup details are available at shop.joythebaker.com.

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