a good start

7 hot takes on Houston's 30 restaurants in the Texas Michelin Guide

Houston has done well in the inaugural Texas edition of the Michelin Guide. The global dining review network included 31 Houston-area establishments, good for second-place statewide.

They are as follows:

Recommended - For quality restaurants that don’t qualify for either a Bib Gourmand or a Michelin star

Baso
Bludorn
Brisket & Rice
Candente
Hidden Omakase
Late August
Pappas Bros. Steakhouse

Bib Gourmand - Awarded to “restaurants that offer good quality food for a good value”

Belly of the Beast (Spring)
Blood Bros. BBQ (Bellaire)
Ema
Kau Ba (currently closed)
Killen’s
Killen’s Barbecue
Mala Sichuan Bistro
Nam Giao
Nancy’s Hustle
Nobie’s
Pinkerton’s Barbecue
The Pit Room
Rosemeyer Bar-B-Q
Rosie Cannonball
Street to Kitchen
Tejas Chocolate + Barbecue (Tomball)
Theodore Rex
Truth BBQ

One Star awarded to “establishments serving exceptional cuisine that’s rich in flavor, remarkably executed, and infused with the personality of a talented chef.”

BCN Taste & Tradition
Corkscrew BBQ (Spring)
Le Jardinier
March
Musaafer
Tatemó

Austin led the way with 47 selections, followed by Houston (31), Dallas (22), San Antonio (13), and Fort Worth (three). Austin restaurants also earned the most one-star designations (seven) and the only two green stars, which are awarded for restaurants committed to sustainability.

Here are seven first impressions based on the results.

1. It was a good night for Texas barbecue. Of the state’s 117 total selections, 26 are barbecue joints — including nine in greater Houston. Michelin’s decision to award one star status to four barbecue restaurants — the first ever for American-style barbecue, the guide notes — indicates that it considers smoked meat to be Texas’ biggest contribution to world gastronomy.

2. Theodore Rex being included in the Bib Gourmand rather than either of the other two designations may be the night’s single biggest surprise. Even a carefully chosen meal at the fine dining restaurant could easily cost more than $100 per person, which makes it a strange fit among the considerably more affordable spots included among the Bibs.

3. The guide showed its willingness to extend beyond the Houston city limits. Spring restaurants earned three spots, including a star for CorkScrew BBQ. Tomball, Bellaire, and Pearland also earned spots.

4. Still, with only two Chinatown selections and none from the South Asian restaurants on Hillcroft, it’s clear that Michelin still has more exploring to do. We’ll hope for a major update to both the Recommended and Bib Gourmand categories in 2025 that show more depth in both categories.

5. While most people think of Michelin as predominantly interested in fine dining, some of the Bib Gourmand and recommended choices are extremely casual. Brisket & Rice occupies a gas station in Southwest Houston, while Rosemeyer Bar-B-Q is a trailer on the Grand Parkway feeder road. Let’s all be delighted by the idea of Michelin inspectors feasting on slow smoked brisket at one of Rosemeyer’s picnic tables.

6. Houston’s other signature cuisines didn’t fare nearly as well. The guide only included one Indian restaurant and only two Vietnamese restaurants (one of which is currently closed. Candente is the city’s only Tex-Mex restaurant, even though Superica earned a Bib for its original location in Atlanta. None of our Cajun or Creole establishments made the list.

Hidden Omakase is the city’s only Japanese restaurant, which excludes big names such as Neo, MF Sushi, and Uchi. Many chefs in town consider Manabu Horiuchi of Katami and Kata Robata to be one of the city’s most talented culinarians, making his omission particularly perplexing.

7. It was a rough night for old school institutions. Fans of restaurants like Tony’s, Da Marco, Brennan’s of Houston, or any of Hugo Ortega’s establishments will be scouring the list wondering about their omissions.

Quibbles aside, the crowd that gathered at Houston’s 713 Music Hall for the awards had an unmistakable buzz around it. Most of the chefs who took the stage to accept their awards did so with other members of their team, whether they be managers, sous chefs, or business partners. While the chefs donned special jackets to honor their achievements, the presence of so many others on stage demonstrated that restaurants are truly a team effort.

Photo by Eric Sandler

Mala Sichuan owners Heng Chen and Cori Xiong.

For Tatemó chef Emmanuel Chavez, who got his start selling tortillas at the Urban Harvest farmers market, earning a star tonight served as the next step in a career that also includes a Food & Wine Best New Chef award and two James Beard Award finalist nominations.

“I’m good with one,” he tells CultureMap. “We don’t need more stress. This is stressful as it is.”

Belly of the Beast owner Thomas Bille had a similar reaction to be included in the Bib Gourmand list. “This was never anything I ever wanted to chase, but once it was announced, we said, let’s do the best we can. Let’s stay true to ourselves,” he tells CultureMap.

Don’t expect the restaurant to change in ways that might elevate it to one-star status. “We’ll keep doing what we do. There’s always room for improvement, but I don’t want to change what we’re doing,” he says.

Aaron Bludorn says he’s relieved by receiving a Recommended designation for Bludorn, his Montrose-area, French-inspired fine dining restaurant. Having had the responsibility of holding a star as the executive chef of New York’s Cafe Boulud, he’s content with his current status.

“We’re happy to be recommended. It’s exactly where we want to be,” he says.

michelin guide awards news-you-can-eat

A CultureMap exclusive

Cult favorite Houston burger joint adds new co-owner to power future growth

Photo by Eric Sandler

Ryan Stewart, Willet Feng, and Diane Feng.

A major change has come to one of Houston’s most well-regarded burger restaurants, but the owners assure fans that the restaurant they love will stay (mostly) the same.

Burger Chan owners Diane and Willet Feng tell CultureMap that they’ve partnered with chef Ryan Stewart and his Silver Linings Hospitality company to take over day-to-day operations of the restaurant. Stewart, a native of South Africa who previously served as a chef and partner of shuttered South African restaurant Peli Peli, has spent five months learning the restaurant’s operations to prepare for the switchover.

First opened as Kuma Burger in 2016, Burger Chan opened its current location near the Galleria in 2022. Chef Willet Feng brings his fine dining background to the restaurant’s burgers, which get an umami boost from a tare glaze on the patties. The build-your-own format allows diners to create their perfect combo from two patty sizes, four buns, three cheese, and more than a dozen vegetables and sauces, including favorites like charred jalapenos, sambal mayo, and scallion aioli. In a 2023 clip that’s been viewed more than 300,000 times, YouTube food tourist Mike Chen created a burger topped with 17 ingredients.

burger-chan burger Burger Chan offers a wide range of toppings. Photo by Terence Tang

But all of the acclaim has come with a downside. Willet Feng explains that the restaurant has struggled to find a roster of employees who can perform to his admittedly high standards.

“It’s never been more tiring. You’re successful, then you have people call out,” he says. “That’s a lot more stress and work for everyone who shows up. As the owners, most of the extra work gets dumped on us.”

Feng thinks that Stewart, who has experience operating multiple locations, will be able to implement systems that allow Burger Chan to maintain its high quality while utilizing employees who might struggle to replicate the chef’s exact method for perfectly slicing tomatoes by hand.

“What makes this a good partnership is that I’ve worked perpetually in kitchens like Oxheart where a lot of things are done manually. It doesn’t matter how long it takes or how painful it is. That’s not scalable,” Feng says.

“What Ryan and his team can do is they have systems. They have ways of training people that I can’t do cause I get really f—ing mad, or they provide tools so people f— up less,” he adds.

Where Feng sees frustration, Stewart sees opportunity. He says he took about a year away from the restaurant business after Peli Peli (then operating as Mozambik) closed. A few visits to Burger Chan sparked his interest in returning to restaurant life.

“I came to Burger Chan and fell in love with the flavors. I thought it was a great opportunity to help expand it,” he says.

Stewart plans to start small by adding Monday lunch service and Burger Chan’s first dinner hours on Fridays and Saturdays. Next up is adding weeknight dinner service. If everything goes smoothly, Silver Linings would begin looking for a second location.

“I’ve been here for five months and seen who’s the next [person on the current staff] to step up and run their own location,” Stewart says. “We never want to lose that loving feeling, that quality. The second one we want to open quite quickly. It would be our prep kitchen to make things easier to control.”

As Diane Feng notes, she and Willet aren’t walking away from the restaurant. They’ll still be involved but not the daily presence they have been. Over the past month, they’ve been less present physically to allow Stewart and his team the opportunity to learn how to operate the restaurant on their own, but Feng promises diners will still see her at the restaurant.

“I enjoy my interactions with our customers. I want to make sure that everyone is taken care of,” she says.

“We’ve been pretty hands-off for over a month now,” Willet adds. “I don’t think people have noticed from a quality perspective. We go in to check and improve things.”

Taking a step back from day-to-day involvement in Burger Chan frees up the Fengs to devote more time to Borrowed Goods, the Singaporean-inspired pop-up series they launched in March. Next up is dinner service on April 27 at Narwhal Jousting Club, the ghost kitchen owned by Ninja Ramen’s Christopher Huang.

“It will most likely stay as a pop-up for a really long time,” Willet Feng says. “Having just gotten out of the responsibilities of one brick and mortar, we’re not dying to jump into another one. There is no timeline. It could be years. We don’t know.”

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