Dare We Say It?

See more photos from Mai's rebuilt restaurant and modern, updated interior in our slideshow.

Troy Fields

Regulars love the Vietnamese fajitas.

Location Info

Map

Mai's Restaurant

3403 Milam
Houston, TX 77002

Category: Restaurant > Vietnamese

Region: Downtown/ Midtown

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3 user reviews	Write A Review
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Details

11 a.m. to 3 a.m. Monday through Thursday, 11 a.m. to 4 a.m. Friday through Saturday
Spring rolls: $3.50
Salt-and-pepper wings: $6
Lotus root salad: $9
Caramelized catfish: $8
Combination pho: $7.50
Salt-toasted tofu: $9
Vietnamese combination fajitas: $14
Cornish hen with rice: $7
Saigon rocky road: $6

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READ MORE
SLIDESHOW: Mai's: The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same
BLOG POST: Nostalgia Is a Two-Way Street at Mai's

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More About

• Houston (Texas)
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• Vietnamese Food and Cooking
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Even at 2 p.m. on an otherwise quiet Monday afternoon, Mai's Restaurant's dining room is three-quarters full. Businessmen from downtown hunch over bowls of pho or plates of Vietnamese fajitas, while neighborhood kids from Montrose dunk spring rolls into tiny ramekins of peanut sauce. Retirees lunch leisurely at the table next to me, discussing their latest cruise destination over bowls of bun.

The old Mai's may have burned down in 2010, the new Mai's rising from the ashes over the next year with custom interiors, a slick bar and an expensive glass chandelier hanging above the entrance, but things here are still the same as they ever were.

Whether that's a good thing or not is up for debate.

I was already frustrated with my lunch at Mai's that day before the food even came. At the entrance — which is still located in the same spot as the old one — I'd been refused my request to sit in the dining room proper, which is never a good way to lead off a meal.

"Just one in your party?" asked the host. "Would you like to sit in the bar?"

While I'm not opposed to sitting at the bar on certain occasions (you can often receive better service there, as well as conversation if you're one of those solo diners who likes to pretend they're not really all alone over dinner), I didn't really want to pass my lunch hour at Mai's bar.

"I'd rather sit in the dining room, thanks," I responded with a smile.

The host's response was to ignore me and lead me to a seat in the bar directly next to the swinging doors of the kitchen at a wobbly table, then walk quickly away. Gobsmacked by his complete refusal to seat me in the dining room, I took the table and started to wonder just what other treats like this would lay in store for me along the way.

As it turns out, those "treats" were many: tough spring rolls that felt and tasted as if they'd been pre-made the day before (rice paper doesn't hold up for too long once wet and wrapped); the tiniest possible serving of what turned out to be gritty, dusty-tasting peanut sauce that I didn't want anyway; brown, wilted bean sprouts inside the spring rolls, and still more brown, wilted cilantro and mint leaves for my bowl of pho; pho that tasted oddly sweet and full of schmaltz instead of beef fat; meatballs in the pho that were cartilaginous and disgustingly spongy; and a waiter who dumped dirty dishes on my table while he bussed the table next to me as I sat eating my meal.

Bad food? Indifferent service? Mai's may have a pretty new face, but some things never change.
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If you grew up in Houston around a certain decade, Mai's may have very likely been the very first Vietnamese restaurant you ate at. It was mine, and I've had a contentious relationship with the restaurant ever since.

Mai's opened in 1978 and quickly became the kind of restaurant appreciated chiefly for two things: offering decent food at very late hours (it's open until 4 a.m. on weekend nights) and providing accessible if mediocre Vietnamese food. It seems as if everyone who's lived in Houston long enough has eaten at Mai's once, and everyone has their stories. I'm no exception, although my stories aren't sweetly nostalgic.

The first time I ate at Mai's was in high school, trying pho for the first time at 16 years old. For years afterward, I thought that I hated pho. Trying it again in college, I came to realize that I only hated pho because of how awful the pho had been that first time at Mai's. My recent lunch visit did nothing to disabuse me of this idea.

The second time I ate at Mai's, my boyfriend at the time dumped me over dinner because his therapist had told him to. I don't remember much of the food, other than thinking that it was pretty bland and that at least he'd chosen a restaurant I didn't like in which to break up with me, like: Alas, this fish tank will always be a painful reminder of our discarded emotions!

And the last time I ate at the old Mai's, it burned down a week later. I had nothing to do with that, of course. It was a grease fire in the kitchen.

When that grease fire caused Mai's to burn last February, the news was met with the sort of shocked anguish and fervor from the general public the likes of which hadn't been seen since Eva Peron's death in Argentina. I was sad for the family but didn't quite understand the level of despair over losing a place with such middling food. I could name a dozen other Vietnamese restaurants that are better than Mai's off the top of my head, although each attempt to recite this list to mourners was met with looks of revulsion, as if I were discussing a man's flaws at his funeral.