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    navy blue-dorn casts off in rice village

    Bludorn team reveals chef and menu details on highly anticipated new Rice Village seafood restaurant

    Eric Sandler
    Sep 26, 2022 | 10:48 am
    Cherif Mbjodi, Victoria Bludorn and Aaron Bludorn navy blue restaurant rice village
    Navy Blue partners Cherif Mbodji, Victoria Pappas Bludorn, and Aaron Bludorn.
    Photo by Michael Anthony

    Aaron Bludorn’s next restaurant is starting to take shape. The chef, along with his wife Victoria Pappas Bludorn and partner/general manager Cherif Mbodji are ready to reveal some details about Navy Blue, the new seafood restaurant they’re opening in Rice Village.

    Scheduled to open in November at the former Politan Row space (2445 Times Blvd.), Navy Blue will be, well, the Bludorn of seafood restaurants. That is, a modern fine dining restaurant with highly polished service and an eclectic menu that pulls from a wide range of influences: everything from classic Gulf coast fare like blackened snapper to East Coast favorites and French-influenced dishes.

    “Here’s the thing about Bludorn. I don’t think we came down here to open a French restaurant,” Aaron Bludorn tells CultureMap. “Fried chicken and prime rib would tell you otherwise, although it’s rooted in French cuisine. At Navy Blue, we’re leaving it open. We’re calling it American seafood.”

    To lead the kitchen, Bludorn and Mbjodi recruited chef Jerrod Zifchak, who worked with them at New York’s Cafe Boulud and took over as executive chef when Bludorn left for Houston. He also brings experience from Le Bernadin, New York’s legendary three-star Michelin seafood restaurant.

    “Rarely in this industry do you find people you really like to work with,” Zifchak explains about his decision to team up with Bludorn and Mbodji. “We meld really well together. When I heard about this opportunity, it was really enticing. The fact that it was going to be seafood, and I wanted to get out of New York and go to a new city. That’s how it all started.”

    Jerrod Zifchak Navy Blue restaurantExecutive chef Jerrod Zifchak.Photo by Michael Anthony

    The trio aren’t quite ready to discuss specific dishes that will be served at Navy Blue, although Bludorn acknowledges he doesn’t want any overlap between his two restaurants. Still, he shared some thoughts about the menu’s approach, which will be built around a la carte proteins that can be paired with a wide array of sides. Another detail he adds is that Bludorn’s ability to let people order oysters three ways — raw, baked, or fried — could be expanded to other ingredients such as shrimp, lobster, clams, or even fish.

    “What I love to see at Bludorn are four people at a round table and it’s just covered: for the appetizers, for the main course,” Bludorn says. “It’s way more food than you need. It feels like a feast. It’s very lively. That’s the kind of dining I enjoy. I think this menu will make that even more accessible to do with seafood.”

    “It’s not going to be limited to Gulf seafood, Zifchak adds. “It’s going to be heavily-inspired with whatever we can get from the Gulf Coast, but we are going to play around with a lot of different things that aren’t necessarily from the Gulf.”

    In terms of service, Mbodji says he will apply the lessons he’s learned over the past two years. For example, he knows that drinks need to arrive quickly and parents who are paying babysitters don’t typically want to allocate three hours to their meal. Valet parking will be available for those who don’t want to search for an open meter or a spot in the nearby garage. Other lessons will reveal themselves once the restaurant opens — such as the best path from the kitchen to the dining room to allow for synchronized delivery.

    “We know it’s going to be very hands-on. It’s going to be very detail-oriented,” Mbodji adds. “There are elements we’ll bring into play to elevate service as much as possible.”

    All the eating will take place in a room with a very different layout than Bludorn. Since it’s essentially a large rectangle, the design began as a blank slate. Expect a private dining room that can also be used for regular service, a bar that’s in the middle of the dining room instead of off to the side, and an open kitchen. At 7,100-square-feet, Navy Blue is slightly smaller than Bludorn, but the shape will allow it to seat approximately the same number of people.

    Having grown up in the Pappas Restaurants family, Victoria Pappas Bludorn knows a little about serving seafood to Houstonians. She sees Navy Blue as being a good fit for the city.

    “Pappadeaux has their finger on Cajun, and I think they do it super well. Navy Blue has the opportunity to define what they do really well,” she says. “My dad would say he didn’t know how popular Pappadeaux was going to be. It’s left up to Houstonians to decide what’s going to be Navy Blue’s most popular item.”

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    he finished the job

    Houston chef Tristen Epps dishes on his Top Chef victory — and what's next

    Eric Sandler
    Jun 13, 2025 | 9:05 am
    Top Chef Tristen Epps
    Photo by David Moir/Bravo
    Kristen Kish, Tristen Epps, Gail Simmons, and Tom Colicchio.

    Houston has played a leading role in America’s culinary scene, but the city has never been home to a Top Chef winner — until last night. In the final episode of season 22, chef Tristen Epps earned the title and a $250,000 cash prize.

    Epps secured his victory by remaining true to the Afro-Caribbean cuisine that helped him secured an impressive four Elimination Challenge wins and $35,000 in additional prize money from two Quickfire wins and as a member of the team that won the show’s signature Restaurant Wars challenge. His four-course menu took a panel of celebrity judges on a journey that also referenced the finale location of Milan, Italy.

    In particular, Epps wowed the panel with his second course — Chicken “Durango” with injera shrimp toast and shellfish jus — that referenced both the Ethiopian chicken stew doro wat and the Italian dish pollo durango, a sly nod to the history of imperialism between the two countries. He finished his savory offerings with Oxtail Milanese Crepinette with Carolina Gold rice grits, curry butter, and bone marrow gremolata, which earned praised from the panel.

    “Historically, we’ve been underserved oxtail,” Top Chef alum and James Beard Award winner Gregory Gourdet said during the episode. “Tristen took the time to pull it, create that beautiful, huge, maybe too big, portion of oxtail. And cover it with that gremolata. He did not forget the bone marrow. That’s very, very smart.”

    Throughout Top Chef’s run, Epps has been holding a series of pop-ups devoted to everything from hot dogs to steakhouses. Now, he can turn his attention to Buboy, a tasting menu concept that will celebrate the Afro-Caribbean cuisine he championed throughout his time on the show.

    CultureMap caught up with Epps on Friday morning for a brief chat about his victory and what’s next.

    CultureMap: What do you remember from the day you cooked that final dinner?
    Tristen Epps: It was an extreme amount of focus. A lot of writing in my notebook. I didn’t want to laugh. I didn’t want to cry or do anything except finish the job, regardless of whatever the outcome would have been. I remember wanting to call my mom. I really wanted to talk things out so I could calm myself down and stay within my focus. Once I got into cooking, I felt so much at ease. It’s my happy place. It’s my serenity.

    CM: How did you feel when you saw Gregory Gourdet on the panel? Did you feel like you had an advocate in the room?
    TE: I’ve cooked with gregory before, a long time ago. It was really fun. I loved what he was doing.

    I felt like I had kind of an advocate. I was worried my food wold be too spicy or too overpowering [for the European chefs]. Seeing Gregory was really good, especially with what I was doing.

    CM: Other chefs, including Gregory Gourdet and Houston chef Dawn Burrell, have done well on the show with Afro-Caribbean cuisine but they didn’t win. How important was it to you to finish the job and use those flavors to win the title?
    TE: To me that was super important. There’s adventurous people who make phenomenal food. They’ll go once because it’s interesting, bu they’re usually skeptical. When you don’t nail it, they say, that’s why I go to the regular places that are familiar.

    Finishing the job was really important to me. People have come up short on this. I wanted to get this right for everyone who’s made that step forward and created the ladder.

    CM: What have your last 12 hours been like since the episode aired? Have any celebrities reached out to you?
    TE: A lot of calls, a lot of good luck. A lot of everything. It’s been amazing.

    A lot of past Top Chef winners reached out to me, giving me a lot of support and telling me what they did after they won.

    [ESPN football commentator] Mina Kimes did, which was really cool.

    CM: What are your plans for the prize money?
    TE: It’s going to go to Buboy. Now that the cat’s out of the bag, it can go a little faster.

    CM: You’ve been holding a series of pop-ups that range from tasting menus to hot dogs? What’s next?
    TE: Part of getting the restaurant open has been introducing myself to all of Houston. These pop-ups represent my interests and my fun. They’re the things that Buboy is going to represent. It can be fun, it can be a conversation, it can be educational, it can push the limits of cuisines we know. It’s an expression of culture in whatever way I see fit that day.

    The hot dog concept will probably be a separate venture, but who’s to say there’s not a hot dog at the end of that meal?

    Top Chef Tristen Epps
      

    Photo by David Moir/Bravo

    Kristen Kish, Tristen Epps, Gail Simmons, and Tom Colicchio.

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