California love

Beard Award-winning Houston chef is California dreaming at new restaurant

Hugo Ortega wants to take Houston to California. When the James Beard Award-winning chef, along with his wife and business partner, Tracy Vaught, opens Zaranda this Saturday, October 18 in downtown Houston’s Norton Rose Fulbright Tower, they’ll reveal their first new project since their street food concept Urbe debuted in 2021.

Named for for the wire basket used to cook seafood over an open flame, Zaranda imagines a world in which all of California — both the state of California (or “Alta California” prior to the Mexican American War) in America and Baja California in Mexico — remained united as one territory. It joins the other restaurants in Ortega and Vaught’s H-Town Restaurant Group: interior Mexican restaurant Hugo’s, seafood restaurant Caracol, Oaxacan restaurant Xochi, street food restaurant Urbe, and Backstreet Cafe, the River Oaks staple that’s currently being rebuilt. Considered one of the chefs most responsible for introducing fine Mexican cuisine to Houstonians, Ortega won a James Beard Award for Best Chef: Southwest in 2017.

Zaranda’s menu features ingredients such as Baja seafood, the state’s legendary produce, and wines from both regions. It also showcases the immigrants who have influenced the region, including Spanish, Chinese, and Japanese elements.

“Why not look to Alta California for its agricultural bounty and ranching heritage and to Baja California for its abundant aquatic life and diverse landscape for inspiration,” Ortega said in a statement. “I wanted to reimagine the region as one vast, natural expanse, without consideration of borders.”

Zaranda restaurant fish Pescado Zarandeado is cooked in a wire basket and served with cucumber salad and tortillas.Photo by Paula Murphy

Photo by Paula Murphy

Find Zaranda near Discovery Green in the Norton Rose Fulbright Tower.

Indeed, the menu begins with a section called Zarandeado that showcases the wire basket that is the restaurant’s namesake. Diners may choose from fish, lobster, octopus, or shrimp, all of which are served with a cucumber salad, flour tortillas, adobo, and three salsas.

Seafood is also featured in sections devoted to shareable starters (conchas), crudos, tacos, and tostadas. For example, roasted oysters are served with a gochujang butter — a variation on the chipotle butter served at Caracol — and tuna crudo showcases its Japanese influence by including soy, sesame, and furikake. The four tostadas are made with smoked fish and scallop escabeche, hamachi, lobster, or tuna.

Spanish-style rice dishes get their own section, with three choices — confit duck and braised rabbit; a seafood take with clams, mussels, shrimp, chorizo, and saffron; or a vegetarian dish made with artichokes, mushrooms, Brussels sprouts, carrots, and more. An olive bread that’s served with herb butter and olive oil also showcases Spanish flavors.

Carnivores can look to the Del Rancho section that includes a braised lamb shank, picanha, filet mignon, ribeye, or porterhouse. Pair them with vegetables such as roasted cabbage with miso butter, roasted carrots, fried Brussels sprouts, or one of three potato preparations — fries, mashed, or roasted.

Pastry chef Ruben Ortega, Hugo’s brother, has made his own contributions to the menu with a couple of eye-catching creations that are sure to show up on social media. The Erizo del Mar is a chocolate dish shaped like a sea urchin that’s served with lemon verbena cream, hibiscus, caramel, passion fruit sponge, and more. Similarly, the Dólar de Arena is made with coconut mousse, almond praline, and candied nori that’s topped with a white chocolate sand dollar. Other dishes include California ingredients such as dates and macadamia nuts.

All that eating and drinking happens in a 7,000-square-foot space with seating for 180 inside and 50 on the patio. Created by Houston’s Gin Design Group (Haii Keii, ChòpnBlọk, etc.), the room features floor-to-ceiling windows that look out onto Discovery Green, a “desert- and sea-inspired color palette” of earthy browns and light blues, and a second-floor dining space called the Ballena Bar with room for 70.

Zaranda restaurant chefs Chefs Paula Guiterrez, Hugo Ortega, and Adrian CaballeroPhoto by Nick de la Torre

The Ortegas have pulled together a talented team from multiple H-Town Restaurant Group concepts to lead Zaranda. They include chefs Adrian Caballero and Paula Gutierrez, pastry chef Roxy Puga, sommelier Elvis Espinoza, and bartender Carlos Serrano.

Initially, Zaranda will open for dinner with lunch service to follow. It will be open Monday through Saturday and is located at 1550 Lamar St.

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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