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Fri April 19, 2013 11:54 am
The Pass and Provisions Chefs Talk Austin Food & Wine Festival
By Layne Lynch

Last year's Austin Food & Wine Festival featured well-known chefs from all over the country, but this year's talent primarily focuses on chefs from Texas.

Two of the Houston chefs attending the weekend festivities include Seth Siegel-Gardner (pictured right) and Terrence Gallivan (left) of The Pass and Provisions. These two creative chefs command two separate restaurants in one space: Provisions, a casual eatery featuring pizzas, pastas, and other rustic dishes, and The Pass, an intimate dining experience that features a different tasting menu every day.

Along with Justin Yu of Oxheart and Chris Shepherd of Underbelly, Gallivan and Siegel-Gardner are two of the central players in Houston's recent culinary awakening (we named Provisions one of the best new restaurants of 2012 and featured Pass as the February Pat's Pick).  

We caught up with the Gallivan and Siegel-Gardner to talk about Houston, Austin, and what's to come at The Pass and Provisions. 

Layne Lynch: What will you two be participating in at the Austin Food & Wine Festival?

Terrence Gallivan: We'll be participating in Taste of Texas Kickoff at Republic Square Park on Friday. Right now, we are planning on doing a bone marrow brioche dish that will be served inside the bone with a ramp soup.

LL: Are there any chefs you're looking forward to seeing while you're in town?

Seth Siegel-Gardner: Seeing everyone at the festival will be nice, but drinking with old and new friends [like] Marcus Samuelsson, Chris Shepherd, Ned Elliott, Philip Speer, Sarah Grueneberg, Jodi Elliott, Jamie Zelko, and Josh Watkins will be even better. It's always nice catching up with everyone and talking shit. Talking about what’s going on at each other's restaurants, getting some new ideas, what’s working and what isn’t, talking about collaborations, but mostly just talking shit.

LL: Austin has been gathering a lot of national attention for its culinary scene, but it seems as though Houston is quickly catching up, especially after this year. What do you think Houston can learn from Austin?

TG: Because Houston food scene is seeing so many restaurants and bars from first-time owners, I think the most important thing for us to learn is how to be business-minded. It's nice to learn how first-time owners have succeeded, and how they’ve grown and expanded.

LL: Are there any Austin restaurants or bars you're looking forward to checking out while you're in town?

SSG: We always have to go see Ned Elliott [of Foreign & Domestic].We also really want to hit up Lenoir again and see Todd [Duplechan] and Jessica [Maher]. We also want to check out Ramen Tatsu-Ya and get our ramen fix.

LL: You guys have had a pretty stellar year. What's next for you two and The Pass & Provisions?

TG: Things have been going great, and we feel very fortunate to be where we are and part of this amazing thing that's happening here in Houston. But, we’ve got a lot to learn and a tremendous amount of growth that needs to still happen with the company. A day off would be pretty cool, too.

LL: Both The Pass & Provisions are known for their creative menus. Since this is your first summer at the restaurants, could you give readers a hint at some of the dishes or ingredients you plan to showcase?

 We will have to look at what the local farmers and purveyors have available, of course, but we'll draw from some our past experiences and places we have worked. For instance, we are excited about our lobster roll dish, which is pretty much the epitome of summer. We have a version of it on both menus.

Photograph by Ralph Smith

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Tue April 16, 2013 9:19 am
Larry McGuire's Empire Grows
By Layne Lynch

This week was Rebecca Meeker's last at Congress. The former chef de cuisine has left David Bull's restaurant to become a chef and project manager for Larry McGuire's and Tommy Moorman's growing restaurant enterprise.  

"I'm very excited for the opportunity to work with Larry and his team," Meeker told Texas Monthly. "They're extremely creative and I truly admire the work they've done so far." 

Over the past few years, McGuire and Moorman have opened several notable Austin restaurants, including Perla's, Elizabeth Street Cafe, and Lambert's Downtown Barbecue.

Meeker told Texas Monthly that she would be assisting the team in the opening of Jeffrey's as well as improving the overall quality and creativity of their current restaurants. The chef further revealed that she would be working on various unannounced projects. 

"From what I can say, there are some great things to look forward to," Meeker said.  

Meeker isn't the only new addition to the McGuire-Moorman camp. Jen Jackson, who previously worked at Lenior, has taken over the kitchen at Josephine House. Former Josephine chef Libbey Goldberg left the restaurant to spend more time with her daughter. 

Additionally, Grae Nonas, formerly of Son of a Gun and Animal in Los Angeles, has been hired as a pastry sous chef to assist Alex Manley in the bakery programs at both Jeffrey's and Josephine House. Whole Foods Market global cheese buyer Cathy Strange has also joined the Jeffrey's team and will be assisting with the restaurant's cheese cart program. 

No details on the opening day of Jeffrey's yet. Stay tuned for more news in the weeks to come.

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Mon April 15, 2013 9:54 am
2013 BBQ Fest Gets Real With Announcement of Official Date
By Daniel Vaughn

Today marks my first day as Texas Monthly’s Barbecue Editor. I haven’t actually eaten any meat yet, but it’s only 10 a.m. Give me time. For my first official act, I’m pleased to announce the date of this year’s Barbecue Festival. If you're serious about Texas barbecue then you'll want to be in Austin, Texas, on Sunday, November 3rd. That’s right, Sunday, November 3. Just enough time to get the Halloween candy out of your system to make way for the very large and excellent offerings of smoked meat from the bevy of pitmasters who will be in attendance.

Of course, we can't tell you exactly which pitmasters will be in attendance because, for the first time since Texas Monthly launched the Barbecue Festival three years ago, the event will reflect a brand new Top 50 list. In the June issue, we’ll unveil a new round-up of the state’s top joints, and along with that list comes a whole new group of invitees. So expect a few new faces along with some of the old friends you may have made at past festivals. The Texas Monthly barbecue tasting team has been hard at work for months compiling this list, driving down every country road, kicking up every cow patty, tearing through countless cheap napkins, and sampling more good, bad, and ugly barbecue than ever before. So you’re not going to want to miss this year's festival.

Again, the special date is November 3. Tickets will be available soon (continue to check in here for more information), but we know you'll want to save this date. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go find some barbecue.

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Fri April 12, 2013 12:01 pm
And the Tastemaker Award Winners Are . . .
By Layne Lynch

The 2013 Austin CultureMap Tastemaker Awards were hosted last night at the historical Driskill Hotel, and the winners are as follows:

Best Craft Bartender: Tacy Rowland of Drink.Well

Best Craft Brewery: Jester King Craft Brewery 

Best Pastry Chef: Laura Sawicki of La Condesa and Sway

Best Sommelier: Mark Sayre of TRIO in the Four Seasons 

Best Restaurant: Lenoir 

Best Chef: Todd Duplechan of Lenoir 

The ceremony also announced the winner of the 2013 CultureMap New Restaurant Challenge, which was chosen by online voters on the CultureMap website. Epicerie Cafe & Grocery was named the people's choice among a pool of sixteen other restaurant nominees. [Full disclosure: Texas Monthly's Pat Sharpe was one of the six judges who selected the nominees in each of the categories this year.]

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Thu April 11, 2013 2:45 pm
Oxheart, Underbelly Get Rave Reviews in the New York Times
By Layne Lynch

New York Times restaurant critic Pete Wells (who recently captured lots of attention for his comical review of Guy Fieri's Times Square eatery) featured Houston's Underbelly and Oxheart in his dining column this week.

Calling Houston "one of the country's most exciting places to eat," Wells praised Justin Yu's Oxheart and Chris Shepherd's Underbelly.

Both restaurants have been conjuring up a lot of local, statewide, and national media praise in recent months. Texas Monthly's own Patricia Sharpe included Oxheart  and Underbelly as two of her Pat's Picks last year.

Below are a few of the notable quotes from the review. (To read the whole piece, visit the New York Times dining section.)

Oxheart

Oxheart is one of the growing number of places around the country that are rearranging our notions of what fine dining means. It is also an example of the growing ambition of the Houston dining scene, and one of two places that lured me here to kick off this occasional series of reviews of restaurants outside New York City.

And:

Utility Research Garden supplies the carrots for an Oxheart dish that makes use of several varieties of them at different stages of life. Some are shaved and sprinkled with two kinds of coriander leaf; others are roasted and set in a sauce made with coconut milk, Moroccan spices and even more carrots. From this one humble root, Mr. Yu had extracted fleet, herbaceous flavors; deep, meaty ones; and several others in between that I never knew carrots had in them.

Wells continued:

Some things about Oxheart… reminded me of other new restaurants that emphasize the personal and the handmade. The naturalistic look of Mr. Yu’s dishes, too, is familiar. But every course of my meal showed an instinct for the delicious that is rare in any city. Encountering it, even in a restaurant as often praised as Oxheart, is always a discovery.

Underbelly"

Not all of Mr. Shepherd’s cooking coincides with how outsiders see Houston. He isn’t fixated on enchiladas and steaks. But his tributes to the city’s more recently arrived Asian populations were among the most memorable things I ate at Underbelly. He has an absolute winner in his Korean braised goat with dumplings. He must know it, too, because the dish has not gone off the menu since Underbelly opened a year ago...

And:

I loved some of Underbelly’s 'non-fancy desserts,' like a tender half-moon fried strawberry pie and a wedge of vinegar pie, a relic of a recipe from an age when lemons weren’t sold year-round.

Wells continued:

Most of all, I respected Underbelly’s confidence in deciding which native traditions to champion.

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