Not that this is a hard task to accomplish. I feel lucky to live downtown and watch as the city struggles and thrashes in the throes of its ever-present growing pains to reform an urban nucleus that's been glued together and torn apart over centuries.
This most current incarnation, at least, features a light rail with a stop right outside Line & Lariat's front door and a plethora of options nearby to make a night of it: Walk off dinner with a stroll through the adjacent Market Square Park (or catch a movie on the lawn), and then grab a glass of wine at La Carafe or a beer at the newly opened Charity Saloon across Congress.
Troy Fields
Nothing like a wild boar chop paired with a Manhattan.
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Truth be told, though, I'd rather stick around Line & Lariat for my cocktails. Although its wine program is a bit boring considering its well-equipped wine cellar (a private, subterranean room with a view into the kitchen that's perfect for entertaining clients or hosting special events), the bar has consistently made some of the most perfect Manhattans — no pun intended — in town since it opened last year. Its "Iconic Manhattan" series pairs whiskeys and ryes with unusual ingredients such as a vanilla-infused bourbon sporting dashes of peach bitters and Cocchi Americano.
The bar and restaurant also carry a nice selection of local craft beers which Luna incorporates quite successfully into his dishes, such as the Karbach beer-braised pulled pork that he heaps on a tostada along with queso fresco, crema and Cholula hot sauce. And a recent bowl of velvety, intensely Cheddary beer-cheese soup was the best example of the genre (which can too often be gritty, watery or bitter) I've had since the late, great Shanghai Red's.
It's no surprise, of course, to find the chef weaving so much of the Lone Star State into his food so effortlessly. Luna has my own pedigree beat — he's an eighth-generation Texan to my measly seven generations — and counts among his influences people like his fishing buddy, Caswell, and his grandmother, a farm girl from the Valley who sold tamales and made caldos in the winter before passing away in 2009. Luna is well known for his work as head chef at popular Inner Loop staples Shade and Canopy and for opening the successful Flora & Muse in CityCentre before taking over the top chef toque here at Line & Lariat.
And it's here that Luna is at his most Texan, showcasing our state's bountiful surf and turf admirably — whether it be a Gulf-caught cobia with a clever radish salsa or four-footed beasts from South Texas: mighty, thick wild boar chops encrusted with a resonant flare of mustard studded with spicy seeds and Nilgai antelope with more of that lush red cabbage.
This is what strikes me as particularly interesting about the dearth of customers at Line & Lariat: Not only is Luna doing everything "right" as far as offering local products with housemade accoutrements — his pimento cheese made with Redneck Cheddar is better, even, than the Words & Food spread that's sustained me for years, and the housemade pickles, ruddy venison sausage and liver-laced boudin in a casing rendered crisp in a smoker that accompany the pimento cheese make for a truly Texan charcuterie plate — he's doing it out of a clear passion for the products themselves. This is not a restaurant that's hopped on the local farm-to-table bandwagon purely for profit. Line & Lariat showcases the best that Texas has to offer with Luna's smartly updated dishes, and it does so with sincerity.
If we lived in a perfect world, this would be enough for Line & Lariat to overshadow the two restaurants that have preceded it at the Hotel Icon and claim its rightful place as one of the best and most consistent restaurants operating in downtown or elsewhere in Houston. I really do believe that the third time's a charm for Line & Lariat. We'll see if Houston believes it, too.
katharine.shilcutt@houstonpress.com
