meet the tastemakers

Meet Houston's 12 rising star chefs stirring up our dynamic restaurant scene

The time has come to begin celebrating the nominees in this year’s CultureMap Tastemaker Awards. As always, we begin with Rising Star Chef of the Year.

Our nominees cover a diverse set of backgrounds, professional experiences, and roles in the Houston culinary scene. Some have worked in Michelin-starred restaurants for the world’s best chefs. Others hustled from pop-ups and food halls to James Beard Award semifinalist nominations. Our group also consists of a mix of restaurant owners and chefs who are working for others at former Tastemaker Award winners like MAD and Nobie’s.

They’re united by a commitment to high standards and demonstrating leadership in their kitchens. That’s why our judges’ panel of local restaurant industry experts and former Tastemaker Award winners has selected them. We expect them to guide Houston towards its culinary future.

In the present, they’re serving excellent food at interesting restaurants. Diners who haven’t experienced our nominees’ work should change that. After all, any of these establishments could become someone’s new favorite destination.

Who will win? Find out March 27 at our Tastemaker Awards ceremony. Dine on bites from this year’s nominees, sip cocktails from our sponsors, and witness as we reveal the winners. Buy your tickets now. VIP tickets are selling quickly, and our discounted general admission tickets will sell out soon.

Fernando Recio - MAD
The chef brings experiences working for two of the world’s most celebrated restaurants — Mugaritz in San Sebastian, Spain and Saison in San Francisco — to his role of head chef at the lively Spanish restaurant in River Oaks District. His expertise in working with live fire has brought new vegetable dishes that are slow roasted over the same coals used for cooking MAD’s popular paella. Working closely with executive chef Luis Roger, Recio negotiated new deals with the restaurant’s suppliers that allowed it to reduce prices by 20-percent. Having already introduced new dishes such as truffle toast and kampachi sashimi to the dinner menu, Recio’s next project will be updating the lunch and brunch menus.

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Ope Amosu.

Fernando Rios - Mimo
For years, Rios has worked behind the scenes at restaurants such as Da Marco and Weights + Measures, quietly making pizzas, pastas, and other Italian-inspired fare. Since teaming up with friend and business partner Mike Sammons, Rios has diners flocking to the East End for superbly exected takes on classic Italian fare. Visits to Mimo could include corn and zucchini fritters, salmon crudo, cacio e pepe rigatoni, braised beef cheeks, or surprise specials that utilize whatever is fresh and exciting in the moment. If only we could persuade him to bring back the sandwiches that were part of Mimo’s opening lunch menu.

Jacob Coronado - Nobie's
Credit the chef and his team for setting the upbeat tone at the Montrose restaurant. Those puny menu names — current dishes include Come Quail Away, Will I Lamb, and the Carroty Kid — would just be silly if the kitchen didn’t produce such consistently well-executed, satisfying plates. Coronado’s energetic presence helps keep the team motivated and contributes to Nobie’s status as a favorite place for hospitality workers to gather after their shifts.

Jerrod Zifchak - Navy Blue
A veteran of celebrated New York restaurants Le Bernardin and Cafe Boulud, Zifchak brought serious seafood chops to Aaron Bludorn’s Rice Village restaurant. By blending his French training with an appreciate for Gulf Coast ingredients, he created a range of options that include both French classics like snapper au poivre and a take of every Texan’s favorite blackened snappe. Perhaps the best tribute to Zifchak’s leadership is that Bludorn has tapped his sous chef Allie Pena to lead Bar Bludorn, the new restaurant coming soon to the Memorial area.

Lucas McKinney - Josephine's
The chef has been earning raves for his Gulf Coast-inspired fare at the Midtown restaurant that replaced Izakaya. Credit for the success goes to both his Mississippi roots and a lengthy stint working for Chris Shepherd at restaurants such as Hay Merchant and Georgia James. Those experiences help explain the fish sauce that comes with the crab fingers. Even more importantly, he shares his mentor’s appreciation for local suppliers — just ask him about the appellation oysters Josephine’s serves.

Masaru Fukuda - Pacha Nikkei
Ambitious, chef-driven restaurants aren’t usually associated with the Westchase District, but diners from across West Houston appreciate Fukuda’s decision to open in their part of town. The Peruvian immigrant earned a spot on Texas Monthly’s best new restaurants list for his spin on Nikkei cuisine that includes creative sushi rolls, raw dishes, and cooked items. While seafood is the focus, don’t miss the chef’s lomo saltado mac and cheese that puts a Peruvian twist on the comfort food favorite.

Max Lappe and Jacques Varon - Baso
Drawing on their experiences at various restaurants in Los Angeles and beyond, the two friends teamed up to open this Basque-inspired restaurants in the Heights. The kitchen’s massive hearth gets used in a variety of ways that range from grilling meats and searing fish to slow roasting vegetables — as in the bacon-covered cabbage that’s among the menu’s standouts. Even though the restaurant only opened in December, this nomination demonstrates that word is already out among the chef’s peers that something special is happening on 19th Street.

Ope Amosu - ChópnBlọk
Food halls can be a difficult venue for launching a successful restaurant, but ChópnBlọk has been a star of downtown’s Post Market since it opened in 2021. By blending his Nigerian heritage with American-style service, Amosu is making fans of people who are new to dishes such as jollof rice. In addition, the chef has showcased his engaging personality on a number of TV shows, including Top Chef and Padma Lakshmi’s Taste of the Nation. That outgoing demeanor and crowd-pleasing menu will serve him well when ChópnBlọk opens its first stand-alone location in Montrose later this year. It also earned him a semifinalist nomination in this year’s James Beard Awards.

Thomas Bille - Belly of the Beast
The talented chef earned raves from diners for his work at both Belly of the Beast’s original location in Spring and Chivos, the short-lived Mexican American restaurant in the Heights. Still, he’s stepped things up at this new iteration. Yes, his signature birria tacos are available, but who has time for tacos when the menu also includes handmade pastas, globally-inspired small plates (don’t miss the pozole dumplings), and flavor-packed raw dishes. The creative menu has drawn the attention of restaurant-obsessed inner loopers as well as the James Beard Awards, which recognized Bille with a semifinalist nomination for Best Chef: Texas.

Victoria Elizondo - Cochinita & Co.
Chef, cookbook author, entrepreneur — Elizondo knows how to stay busy. Serving tacos and other Mexican favorites at her East End restaurant would surely be enough for most people, but her ambitions go beyond serving excellent pineapple shrimp and cochinita pibil to hungry Houstonians. Elizondo also operates a thriving retail business that sells totopos, salsas, aguas frescas, and more at markets across the Houston area. She also serves as an advocate for her fellow DACA recipients. Like Bille, she earned a James Beard Award semifinalist nomination for Best Chef: Texas.

Yotam Dolev - Hamsa
The chef brings Israel’s diverse cuisine to Houston at this Rice Village restaurant. Whether presenting vegetarian friendly fare like the restaurant’s signature falafel and hummus or wood-roasted skewers of meat and seafood, Dolev and his team turn out precisely prepared plates that bring the flavors of Dizengoff Street to the Bayou City — even when the dining room fills up on Thursday nights for performances by belly dancers. That consistency earned Hamsa a spot on Texas Monthly’s best new restaurants list and the attention of our judges’ panel.

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The 2024 CultureMap Tastemaker Awards event runs 6-10 pm Wednesday, March 27 at Silver Street Studios (2000 Edwards St.).

The Tastemaker Awards ceremony is brought to you by Stella Artois, Rías Baixas Albariño, Topo Chico Sparkling Mineral Water, 8th Wonder Cannabis, and more to be announced. A portion of proceeds will benefit our nonprofit partner, the Southern Smoke Foundation.

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eat real food

Houston DJ-turned-TikTok star cooks up a cult following one recipe at a time

Courtesy of Uncle Dibbz

Uncle Dibbz, a.k.a. A.H. Bowden, has built a devoted following for his viral recipes.

For the past month, Uncle Dibbz has been, shall we say, going ham on social media with the myriad videos of alternative Thanksgiving dishes. He’s dropped how-to clips for such recipes as Cajun-roasted turkey, honey-baked ham/hens, oven-bag turkey, and six-piece fried turkey (to go). Basically, if you don’t want to cook a bland ol’ Butterball this Turkey Day, Dibbz has you covered.

Who is Dibbz, you say? Well, he’s a North Jersey-born, Georgia-bred, Houston-based chef who’s been building quite the foodie rep online. Several videos across his TikTok, Instagram and YouTube pages, from his Cajun-boiled fried chicken (2 million on IG) to his “Propose to Me Pasta” (12.3 million on TikTok), has amassed millions of views. But Dibbz (government name: A.H. Bowden) wasn’t always a culinary content creator. He used to spin music back in Atlanta as DJ DiBiase, named after retired wrestler Ted “The Million Dollar Man” DiBiase. “DiBiase is a mouthful to say, so people just always call me ‘D’ or ‘Dibbz’ for short,” says Bowden, 37, during a Zoom interview.

@uncledibbz PROPOSE To Me PASTA 💍 🍝 Trust your Uncle! This SEAFOOD Pasta will seal the deal 👌🏽 Get my recipe below ⬇️ or on uncledibbz.com [@uncledibbz Link in Bio] 🌐 **Ingredients:** - 8 ounces spaghetti - 1 lb mixed seafood (shrimp, scallops, crab meat, etc.) - 2 tablespoons olive oil - Fresh chopped basil - 2 cloves garlic, minced - 1/2 cup white wine - 1/4 cup heavy cream - 2 tablespoons unsalted butter - Salt and pepper to taste - Uncle Dibbz Delta Dust [link in bio] - Fresh parsley, chopped (for garnish) - Grated Parmesan cheese (for garnish) **Instructions:** 1. Cook the spaghetti pasta according to the package instructions until al dente. Drain and set aside. 2. In a large skillet, heat the olive oil over medium heat. Add the minced garlic, chopped basil and sauté for about 1 minute until fragrant. 3. Add the mixed seafood to the skillet. Season with Uncle Dibbz Delta Dust to taste and cook for 2-3 minutes until cooked through. Remove the seafood from the skillet and set aside. 4. Pour in the white wine to the skillet and let it simmer for 2 minutes, allowing the alcohol to cook off. 5. Stir in the heavy cream, butter, Uncle Dibbz Delta Dust seasoning, salt, and pepper. Cook for another 2-3 minutes until the sauce thickens slightly. 6. Add the cooked spaghetti and cooked mixed seafood to the skillet. Toss everything together until well coated with the sauce. 7. Remove from heat and garnish with fresh parsley and grated Parmesan cheese. 8. Serve hot and enjoy the flavorful Seafood Spaghetti. That's good Shawty! #UncleDibbz #ThatsGoodShawty #Pasta #marryme #proposal #bride #wife #husband #relationshipgoals #datenight #easyrecipe #seafood #cajun #cooking #fyp #foryou #viral #houston ♬ original sound - Uncle Dibbz 🍴

He was making a nice living as a DJ, even serving as rapper Big K.R.I.T.’s touring DJ for a while. But when the pandemic hit, the gigs obviously dried up.

“I was living in Miami at the time,” he says. “And, you know, when you have a lot of time on your hands to think – but also need to figure out a way to, you know, sustain an income and everything like that – the ideas start coming,”

Like most DJs at that time, he was doing live mixes on Instagram. But his days throwing cookout parties in Atlanta inspired him to start doing his cooking videos, where he used his very own seasoning. Of course, he had a lemon pepper blend, which he used in a lemon pepper hot wings video that currently has over a half-million views on TikTok.

“I'm about to go live to DJ later that night, and my phone was just going off with orders,” he recalls. “So I'm like, where are these orders coming from? And it's not from my friends. I'm seeing the cities and the states. I don't know these people.”

Thanks to his videos, which usually end with him saying his signature line “That’s good shawty!” (that’s also the name of his cookbook he released last year), Dibbz went into the seasoning business full time. He eventually hired another person to help send out the piles of orders he was receiving.

He even got an order from former Dallas Cowboy Emmitt Smith, one of his favorite athletes. “I remember doing a book report on him when I was in fourth grade,” he boasts.

Although Dibbz has a flair for making meals that border on decadent, he’s an ardent practitioner of cooking with natural ingredients, especially in his seasoning. He has several low-sodium seasoning, including Bebe’s Salt Free – named after his mother, who had open-heart surgery a few weeks before the pandemic started.

“I don't think a lot of people understand the amount of toxins and chemicals that go into a lot of these seasonings,” he says. “You're starting to see it in the news now. A lot of the foods with certain dyes are being taken off the shelves and things like that.’

Soon, Dibbz moved himself and his new business to Houston, a favorite place to perform as well as a town whose hip-hop got him into music. He cites local chopped-and-screwed gods DJ Screw, Michael 5000 Watts, and OG Ron C as his holy trinity of influences. To give props to the music of his new home, he created a hot sauce – called HXT Sauce – whose uncharacteristically large bottle resembles Promethazine cough syrup (aka the key ingredient in lean, the preferred purple cocktail for the city’s rap community).

“It's not necessarily about promoting that usage,” he says. “But, at the same time, it’s just a homage to one of the factors and influences of screwed-and-chopped music.”

Dibbz still indulges in spinning records from time to time. The Waxaholics’ DJ Big Reeks has gotten him to break out the vinyl a few times during his Thursday-night sets at Alley Kat Bar & Lounge in Midtown. But creating new recipes, dropping delicious content and proving you can eat and live in a hearty, healthy fashion still remains his full-time mission.

“I’m not just talking about eating cauliflower rice all day and every day, but just eat real food,” he says. “We're eating fake food. That's the bottom line. We're eating fake food and my whole purpose is to inspire people to eat real food and that starts with real ingredients, real herbs, you know – real natural seasonings.”

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