recipe for romance

Houston celebrity chef and fiancée steal away to New Orleans for intimate wedding

James Beard Award-winning chef Chris Shepherd and local public relations star Lindsey Folger Brown bought a house a few years back. They've been restoring it ever since. In fact, for the last three Christmases, Brown explains, "we've been giving each other the house [as gifts]."

This Christmas, Shepherd had other ideas.

"There was one gift under the tree," he tells CultureMap. "And I told her, 'It's for you.'"

He'd gone out and bought himself a wedding band, which he presented to Brown. "And we hopped on a plane to New Orleans and got married," Brown adds.

When Chris met Lindsey
The couple had been friends for a long time before falling in love. Brown had been working for the Greater Houston Convention and Visitor's Bureau in 2008, when Shepherd was working to get his own restaurant underway. That was right about the time that national media was only just starting to pay attention to what was happening in Houston's culinary arts world. Brown wanted a way to capitalize on that.

"It was four chefs in a room: Randy Evans, Chris, Monica Pope, and Bryan Caswell, and they all talked to each other and ignored me," Brown laughs. "And they were talking about all these places, and I realized I'd never been to any of them."

But what came from those sessions was Where Chefs Eat, a series of chef-led culinary tours around H-Town. Shepherd wound up doing roughly half of them. "We got to know each other by hanging out on a bus and eating food," she says.

What happened next, of course, is the stuff of Houston culinary lore: Shepherd would go on to open Underbelly and all of its offspring, win the 2014 James Beard Best Chef: Southwest award, and Houston would receive the culinary renown everyone in the Bayou City knew it deserved. Out of the glare of the spotlight, Brown and Shepherd were falling in love.

A recipe for romance
Brown and Shepherd soon found their lives "intertwined in multiple ways," Brown says. The transition was surprisingly easy to navigate, and the chemistry between Brown and Shepherd was undeniable.

When Shepherd decided to propose to Brown, he did so at their mutual friend, photographer Julie Soefer's, birthday party. Soefer decided she wanted to do a huge crawfish boil for the occasion and Shepherd said, "I'll do 'em." He also asked her if he could use the occasion to propose to Brown.

"She told me, 'Hell, yes! It's about time!'"

In true chef fashion, Shepherd put Brown's ring on a crawfish and presented it to her. "Julie always does a blow out for her birthday," Brown says. "But that was extra."

Obviously, Brown said yes. "I love that Chris is so generous and so thoughtful," Brown adds.

"Everything she loves about me, she did to me," Shepherd reflects. "She's made me a better human being."

A big day in the Big Easy
The couple originally thought about having their wedding on January 10, 2021. Brown and Shepherd have made it a tradition that they spend four or five days in New Orleans following Christmas. Shepherd's holiday catering and dining business takes a breath then and Brown, who now runs her own PR firm and has a host of hospitality clients, is able to take a break as well.

"And New Orleans is quiet, too," says Shepherd. "Normally, there's the Sugar Bowl, right around New Year's, but if you can get in and out before all that, you have the place to yourself."

It was during one of those visits where they became friends with chef Ryan Prewitt, who took home the 2014 James Beard Best Chef: South award and heads Pêche on New Orleans' famed Magazine Street. Brown and Shepherd thought it would be great to have their wedding ceremony and reception at his restaurant, and Prewitt, totally on board with the idea, wanted to officiate.

But as the COVID-19 pandemic dragged on and people were cautioned against hosting large gatherings indoors, it became obvious that the ceremony wouldn't be able to happen as they planned.

Instead, Shepherd and Brown were married on December 26, 2020, in a tiny private room at Maison de la Luz in New Orleans, where Prewitt, who was ordained as a minister by the Universal Life Church, officiated the ceremony.

"And he opened with a line from Prince," says Shepherd, offering props to his friend: "'Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to celebrate this thing called life.'"

The couple told their families they were eloping, and had everyone tune into the wedding on Zoom. Julie Soefer and her husband, Chris Vandewater, along with Ryan's wife, Camille, were the witnesses. Prior to the ceremony, they had snacks and Champagne at Brennan's. There was a Champagne toast with Krug, Brown's favorite, following the ceremony, which was followed by cocktails at French 75. For their wedding day dinner, the couple went, naturally, to Pêche.

"Of course, we wish our families could have been with us," says Brown. "But we don't know when any of this is going to end. That's why we pulled the trigger."

As the couple looks into 2021, they're hoping not only for an end to the pandemic, but also to having a celebration to mark their marriage. After all, there's the little matter of Brown not having a wedding band.

"When I give her that," says Shepherd, "that's when it will be ok to have a big party."

Bride's dress: Ulla Johnson "A random sale purchase on Goop.com about a month ago," said Brown
Bride's flowers: a prop from one of Julie’s recent photo shoots
Groom's outfit: Hamilton Shirts
Witnesses: Julie Soefer, Chris Vandewater, Camille Prewitt
Venue: Maison de la Luz
Celebrant: Ryan Prewitt
Cocktails and dining: Champagne and snacks at Brennan’s, cocktails at the French 75 Bar, dinner at Peche
New Orleans hotel: Maison de la Luz

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Know of a Houston wedding that should be considered for publication? Email steven@culturemap.com.

Shepherd and Brown, a Houston culinary power couple, opted for New Orleans for their elopement.

Photo by Julie Soefer

Shepherd and Brown, a Houston culinary power couple, opted for New Orleans for their elopement.

weddings chefs

Here's why a top Texas pizza team makes a yearly pilgrimage to New York

Photo courtesy of Missy Davis

In late April, some of the Home Slice team took a field trip to New York to bring authentic NYC flavors and service back to Houston.

There's a saying in the pizza world: "smooth is fast." No yelling, no chaos, no sprinting across a kitchen. Just calm, practiced movement, one pie at a time. It's a philosophy Home Slice Pizza has tried to bottle since its very beginnings. Every year, to make sure this message lands, the team flies to the Big Apple to watch it in action.

In late April this year, 17 Home Slice employees including kitchen managers, front-of-house staff, server trainers, and lead servers boarded flights from Texas to New York for four days of eating, walking, subway rides, and the kind of bonding that only happens when you're crammed around a table at a legendary Brooklyn pizzeria at 9 pm on a Monday. The trip includes employees from the store's Houston location in Midtown, and Home Slice is busily working on its new location in the Heights that will open this fall.

"You can serve New York-style pizza," says Sara Ronder, who has made the trip more than a dozen times. She works as an executive assistant to founding owners Terri Hannifin, Jen Scoville Strickland, and Joseph Strickland. "But there's a whole other level you just soak in when you go."

The tradition dates back to 2006, a year after Home Slice first opened its doors. The restaurant's founders, Hannifin and Strickland, met as roommates at NYU. New York pizza was a way of life for them. They had no idea at the time they'd open a New York-style pizzeria in Austin one day. But after they did it, they knew bringing the team back to where it all began would be important. The team has made the trip every year since — minus a few during the Pandemic.

The itinerary this year was a masterclass in eating: Rubirosa for lunch on arrival day, a sunset Staten Island Ferry ride, then dinner at Lucali in Brooklyn to kick things off. Day two brought a full pizza and sub crawl — Prince Street Pizza, Faicco's, Joe's Pizza, Lucia Pizza of SoHo, L'industrie Pizzeria, Upside Pizza, and Regina's Grocery — before a sit-down dinner at Roscioli.

Wednesday opened with breakfast at the classic Ukrainian diner Veselka, then split the group into teams fanning out across the boroughs: Brooklyn Bridge walks, a Roosevelt Island Tramway ride, Patsy's in Harlem, the Museum of the City of New York, and stops at Juliana's and Angelo's Coal Oven Pizzeria. The trip closed things out with lunch at John's of Bleecker Street, then led back to Austin and Houston.

Dividing up a slice in front of Joe's Pizza. Photo courtesy of Missy Davis

Lucali kept coming up as the runaway favorite. Karen Flores, assistant kitchen manager at the North Loop location, was transfixed watching the pizza maker work the room, stretching dough, stacking pies, drawing little heart shapes in the air for appreciative guests, and never breaking a sweat.

"It didn't matter how busy it was," Flores says. "There was no hecticness. Everybody was just kind of doing their things nice and calmly."

For first-timer Matthew Stoughton, a front-of-house employee at the South Congress location, a highlight came from Lucia Pizza of SoHo, where a server named Maria remembered the group from a visit eight months prior: what they ordered, where they were coming from, how the night went.

"She was amazing," Stoughton says. "There's a group of 17 people in this tiny little bar, and she was just totally crushing it." Or as the Home Slice Ethos puts it, "smooth is fast."

Kelly Ball, a front-of-house server trainer and lead server at the original South Congress location, says the trip recalibrated her relationship to high-volume service.

"It's the comfortability that people have being in close spaces together; the way that they move around each other, and you even find yourself kind of hustling at first, just to match the vibe," she says. "And then you realize that you're the one hustling, because everything is actually just kind of going. So I really enjoyed that part."

Between meals, the group played scavenger hunt bingo around the city, snapping photos of classically New York sights for prizes. They sought out things like rats in the subway, pigeons wrestling with too-large food items, campaign sticker art, and sidewalk cellar doors.

Johns of Bleecker Street The whole group at Johns of Bleecker on their last day in New York.Photo courtesy of Missy Davis

And of course, aside from coming back with inspiration on how to prep and serve the best New York slice in Austin, the team has also come back a whole lot closer.

"That whole saying, a 'New York minute' — I'm so confused about what that actually means now," laughs Ball. "Because in New York there's so much happening in a minute, but also it just flies by. So it's just that general sense that we're all doing this together, we will get there, we're gonna do it as a team, and it's gonna be awesome."

Plus, now that they're back and have tasted the pizza that inspired it all, when a New Yorker comes into Home Slice and gives praise, it means all that much more.

"When somebody says, 'I'm from New York and this pizza is legit,'" Flores says, "we made that happen. I made that dough. And at the end of the day, I think that that is a beautiful thing."

home slice pizza new york pizza

recipe for romance

Houston celebrity chef and fiancée steal away to New Orleans for intimate wedding

Shepherd and Brown, a Houston culinary power couple, opted for New Orleans for their elopement.

Here's why a top Texas pizza team makes a yearly pilgrimage to New York

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