Toasting the Tastemakers

Houston foodies help crown big winners at 2025 Tastemaker Awards

Photo by Daniel Ortiz Photography

More than 1,000 Houston foodies packed Silver Street Studios on April 3 for the 2025 CultureMap Tastemaker Awards, our annual celebration of the city's best food and drink. Trophies were presented, toasts were made, and many (many) samples were eaten — all to shine a light on Houston's top restaurant and bar talent.

The lively evening revealed the big winners and honored all nominees, which a judges' panel of industry experts had spent months analyzing and voting on, and which readers had gotten to know through a special editorial series.

The signature tasting event allowed guests gathered to rub elbows with Houston's best chefs, bartenders, restaurateurs, all to celebrate H-Town's culinary stars.

This year’s Tastemaker Awards benefited the Southern Smoke Foundation, which was founded in 2015 to offer emergency relief funding and access to mental health services to members of the food and beverage industry.

Of course, the event would not have been possible without the support of our 2025 sponsors. A big thanks goes to Stella Artois, Chardon, Jim Beam Black, Ritual Zero Proof, Seedlip, Valencia's Tex-Mex Garage, Hornitos, Ghost Hill Organic Vodka, and PicMe Events.

VIP ticket-holders got to arrive an hour early to enjoy sips from their own bar and a giant charcuterie spread in the VIP Lounge, courtesy of sponsor Chardon.

Nominated chefs and restaurants dished out their favorite plates, including:

Short rib Reuben sliders from Bar Bludorn
Smoked picanha with Swamp Sauce from Bayou Butchers
Cuban pork belly bahn mi from Brass Tacks
Smoked pork belly with Colima-style mole from Deckle and Hide
Spicy rigatoni Pasta Zaza from Drake's Hollywood
Hamachi tacos from Lee's
Short rib burnt end lollies from Leo's River Oaks
Smoked chicken flautas, Rico-style, from Little Rey
Spanish octopus with smoked potato salad from Little's Oyster Bar
Lychee ceviche from Musaafer
Octopus skewers from Októ
Mussel escabeche crostini from Ostia
Corned beef brisket and rice from Subo
Tuna tostadas from Tatemó
Vietnamese betel leaf beef from Traveler's Cart

And to satisfy the sweet tooth, pastry chefs offered these indulgent bites:

Peanut gianduja tart from Berg Hospitality
Caramel Couch O'Stick from Fluff Bake Bar
Purple Rain iced latte and The Slowpoke iced latte from Slowpokes
Affogato and fermented Mexican coffee from Tenfold Coffee Company
The Bay Fog and The Magic Johnson Macchiato from Xela Coffee Roasters

Guests mingled in the Stella Artois Beer Garden and lifted their bartender-crafted cocktails high as they honored the winners and sampled delicious dishes. The drinks included:

Meticulously Made Daiquiri from Ishtia and Meticulous Spirits
Appleteeny and Spice Melange from Lee's
Tepache Mezcalita and Southside from Melrose

Local chef, entrepreneur, and James Beard Award winner Chris Shepherd emceed the awards ceremony and handed out prizes for Bar, Chef, Bartender, and Restaurant of the Year; Rising Star Chef and Pastry Chef of the Year; Neighborhood Restaurant of the Year; Best Start-up/Pop-up; and Best Coffee Shop, this year’s wildcard category. One of the most anticipated announcements of the night was the winner of Best New Restaurant, which had been voted on by CultureMap readers.

Winners graciously accepted their beautiful glass trophies onstage and proudly smiled for the camera. See the full list of winners here.

The Tastemaker Awards program began in 2014 and has become the city’s defining food event, letting local top local chefs mix and mingle with passionate foodies.

This year, we raise a glass to the winners, plus all of the sponsors, participants, and attendees who made the evening a huge hit. Scroll through the photos above to relive all the highlights of the night. We’ll see you next year!

Photo by Daniel Ortiz

Hornitos kept guests in high spirits.

tastemaker awards Tastemaker Awards

What's Eric Eating Episodes 523 and 524

Acclaimed Austin duo dish on their wine-obsessed neighborhood restaurant

Birdie's Arjav Ezekiel Tracy Malechek-Ezekiel

Photo by Mackenzie Smith Kelly

Birdie's owners Arjav Ezekiel and chef Tracy Malechek-Ezekiel are this week's guests.

On this week’s episode of “What’s Eric Eating,” chef Tracy Malechek-Ezekiel and beverage director Arjav Ezekiel join CultureMap Houston editor Eric Sandler to discuss their Austin restaurant Birdie’s.

Widely considered one of Austin’s top restaurants, Birdie’s has earned local, regional, and national acclaim, including a place of the 2025 Time100 Next list, Food & Wine magazine’s 2023 Restaurant of the Year, and a 2025 James Beard Award for Outstanding Professional in Beverage Service to Ezekiel. In a 2024 column, James Beard Award winner Chris Shepherd recommended that Houstonians visit Birdie’s the next time they’re in Austin.

Sandler’s conversation with the duo begins with a little bit about how they met while working together in New York and their decision to move to Austin. From there, it turns to Birdie’s counter service model that’s unusual for a restaurant of its quality. Sandler asks whether not offering traditional table service has lowered the restaurant’s profits.

“It’s the opposite. Because we have a leaner labor force in the dining room, our margins are probably double what they would be if we were a traditional restaurant,” Ezekiel explains. “What we’re able to do is take a portion of that margin and invest it back into our team. We talk about ‘Conscious Capitalism’ a lot. That extra margin pays for paid family leave that we offer to everybody on our team, the month of paid and planned vacation every year, the subsidized health insurance, the subsidized mental therapy we offer. We needed to find more change under the cushions, so we could invest it back into our team.”

Initially, Birdie’s opened with an a la carte menu. In 2025, it switched to a prix fixe format that offers diners six courses for $80. The switch means the restaurant serves fewer diners per night, which has shortened the wait to order from up to an hour to 20 minutes or less. Chef Malechek-Ezekiel explains that this change has also expanded the range of dishes she’s able to serve and broadened the techniques she uses to create them.

“We can cook fish confit. We can use the Japanese robata grill to cook on charcoal. We can hot smoke fish to order. Now, I feel like, wow, look what we can do now. Before, we had the skills, but we couldn’t physically do it with how tiny our space is.”

Listen to the full episode to hear more about how Birdie’s guides diners through its wine list, which of the monthly prix fixe menus has been the most successful, and the couple’s thoughts on potentially opening a new restaurant.

In this week’s other episode, Craft Pita chef-owner Raffi Nasr joins Sandler to discuss some recent news in the world of Houston restaurants. Their topics include Tex-Mex restaurant Superica transforming into a casual steakhouse; the imminent opening of delivery-focused Shredders Pizza; and a change in operations at Weights + Measures.

In the restaurant of the week segment, Nasr and Sandler describe their recent meal at Oru, a new sushi restaurant in the Heights from the team behind Michelin-recognized omakase counter Neo and Upper Kirby hand roll concept Kira. Listen to hear their favorite dishes as well as Sandler’s quibbles with a couple of aspects of the experience.

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Subscribe to "What's Eric Eating" on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hear it Sunday at 9 am on ESPN 97.5.

Photo by Mackenzie Smith Kelly

Birdie's owners Arjav Ezekiel and chef Tracy Malechek-Ezekiel are this week's guests.

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