Catalina Coffee

Get Your Caffeine Fix Without the Heat

I've always hated the phrase "movers and shakers", but if applied literally, it's an accurate description of our city right now. With locals running around town implacably, outpacing frequent mentions from national publications (which have taken to calling us the new "it" city), it's easy to forget ... More >>

Fat Cat Creamery Opening an Ice Cream Parlor in the Heights

Supplicant prayers to the food gods were answered more quickly than usual this week, as Fat Cat Creamery announced plans to open a full-service ice cream parlor just two days after Joanna O'Leary's plea for an old-fashioned, over-the-top ice cream shop in Houston. For years, the Fat Cat Creamery ha ... More >>

Buffalo Bayou Brewing Co. Celebrates One Year in the Bayou City

Buffalo Bayou Brewing Co., Houston's youngest fully-operational brewery, celebrated its one-year anniversary this past Saturday with a few hundred of its closest friends. The party was held on-site at Buffalo Bayou's warehouse location near Shepherd and I-10, featuring exclusive beers, live music a ... More >>

Sorry Houston, No Farm-Fresh Milk for You

Here's a riddle: why would a dairy choose to stop selling milk to Houston resellers for $5 a gallon and instead sell it all to a giant co-op for a mere $1.62 a gallon? The answer? Unbearable pressure. Local milk producer Way Back When Dairy, run by the Ganskey family, has become a valued resourc ... More >>

Keep Cool and Caffeinated

Houston's ten best iced coffee crinks

Keep Cool and Caffeinated: Houston's Top 10 Iced Coffee Drinks

August is nearly here, and the summer ain't getting any cooler. But at least your coffee can. I'm not the type of person who can make it through a morning without getting caffeinated, but it requires a special kind of fortitude to grimly chug a few cups of hot coffee when beads of sweat are already ... More >>

100 Favorite Dishes 2012: No. 76, Spinach Danish from Angela's Oven

This year leading up to our annual Best of Houston® issue, we're counting down our 100 favorite dishes in Houston. This list comprises our favorite dishes from the last year, dishes that are essential to Houston's cultural landscape and/or dishes that any visitor (or resident) should try at least o ... More >>

Deep Thoughts

Benjamin Wesley follows a gig with the renowned Jandek with his own CD release.

Foodies, Your Photo Show Is Here

Alex Gregg is not only an award-winning bartender at Anvil; he is also a professional photographer, and he recently put his skills to work last October at the very popular Les Sauvages Supper Club dinners. The fruits of his labor are now on display at Catalina Coffee on Washington Avenue.

The Rest of the Best: Houston's Top 10 Coffeehouses

Photo by Kevin O'MaraA reminder of what our No. 3 pick used to look like.​For the next 20 weeks, we'll be rounding up the runners-up to our 2011 Best of Houston® winners. In many categories, picking each year's winner is no easy task. We'll be spotlighting 20 of those categories, in which the ... More >>

“Jackson Potts II: Rock & Roll Portraits”

Upcoming Events: Support Local, Eat Bacon

Coming up next weekend: Gird your pork-loving loins.​At Georgia's Farm to Market, SLGT doesn't just mean "Support Local, Grow Together." It also means "Saturday Local Get Together," when the market hosts its weekly Local Life Saturdays from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. This Saturday, chow down on Georgi ... More >>

Cafe Luz Offers More Than Just Coffee: Handmade Sodas and Fresh Food Head Downtown

Cafe Luz's giant lightbulb was painted by Borrego herself.​Downtown has a new coffee shop as of this morning at 6:30 a.m. That's when Frank Freeman opened the doors of Cafe Luz at 907 Franklin, his new venture with Lucrece Borrego and Jesus Acosta, who also own Kitchen Incubator. Cafe Luz is ... More >>

F*** You, Yelper: Yelp Reviews as Beat-Style Poetry

​Perhaps it wasn't the intention of the person who started Fuck You, Yelper to frame random snippets of sadly hysterical Yelp reviews for comparison to anti-intellectual Beatnik poetry. But I can't help seeing each post -- a few lines plucked, sometimes but not always, from a longer review -- ... More >>

Comment of the Day

​In the comments of Nick Hall's post on a whiskey class at Anvil, Bobby Heugel mentioned that there are plenty of bars and restaurants around town also deserving of acclaim. Asked by another commenter to elaborate, he did, and it's a pretty good list: I'm done after this because I don't usua ... More >>

Comments of the Day: Bloggers Edition

​Today's most interesting comments were actually by Eating Our Words bloggers, and they were on a Where Are We Eating? post. I know. Weird. Anyway, Christine Ha's comment concerned the frustrating service she received at Catalina Coffee, while Nick Hall wrote in with a heartwarming tale about ... More >>

10 Houston Restaurants Every Out-Of-Towner Should Visit

Photos by Katharine ShilcuttTexas barbecue done right at Gatlin's.​On Wednesday afternoon, I mused that some day I hoped for visitors to Houston to feel as excited about our dining scene as I was about New York City's. The sheer breadth and depth of ethnic and regional cuisines present here is ... More >>

Brunch at Cyclone Anaya's in Midtown

Photos by Katharine Shilcutt​I was giddy with the simple pleasure of walking to Cyclone Anaya's last Sunday morning, a brilliant sunshiney morning meant for strolling and patio dining. And even though we passed a dead rat and several homeless people on the way, it was still a lovely walk. Cyc ... More >>

Upcoming Events

​As you may have read and seen around the Internet, this Sunday is Linda's Block Party at 1834 Westheimer, a fundraising event to help defray medical costs for Linda Salinas. Salinas, a local bartender and sommelier, was injured in a scooter accident on Sunday night, and the Houston restaurant ... More >>

Houston Restaurant and Bar Industry Rallies for One of Its Own

FacebookLinda Salinas, before shaving her mustache.​Linda Salinas is a talented sommelier and bartender. She's worked at and with some of Houston's best bars and restaurants: Voice, Anvil, Branch Water Tavern, Bootsie's, Beaver's, 13 Celsius and Kata Robata. She is a fixture within the industr ... More >>

Where to Get Your Caffeine Fix

The Top Ten Coffeehouses in Houston

The Top 10 Coffee Houses in Houston

Photo by Gary R. WiseGreenway Coffee, one of Houston's leading coffee houses.​Last week's First Look at Black Hole Cafe prompted some interesting discussions in the comments section, namely a lively debate about the merits of weighing a just-opened coffee house against other, more established ... More >>

A Cajeta Latte at Antidote

​As I'm sure is the case with most of this city's caffeine-addled coffee addicts, I am a creature of habit. I frequent the same coffee shop, and I order the same thing. It's not without cause, as I've found what I believe to be the perfect coffee creation in the Cortado served at Catalina Coff ... More >>

Searching for the Perfect Muffin

The muffins at Stone Mill Bakers.​We were getting a little tired of mediocrity, okay? We'd been in Houston six months and still hadn't found a muffin that did any better than a B-minus, or maybe a B, depending on how poorly the other idiot pupils graded on the curve. Sure, there are great br ... More >>

Hand Making Coffee at Home

​With the holidays coming up and family and friends coming home and visiting, it's time to pull out your old coffee maker. Or is it? There are some great ways to coffee by hand-brewing it with different devices. The apparatus you choose can alter the way even a single-origin coffee can taste. ... More >>

Steam Punks: Baristas Throw Down at Houston's First Latte Art Competition

Photos by Katharine ShilcuttSilence Huang points out good and bad characteristics on a calibration cup of latte.​Judging a latte art competition is deceptively difficult, as we found out on Friday night. Silence Huang, one of our fellow judges and a master barista from Taiwan, drew careful diagram ... More >>

This Week In Deliciousness

MEATSPLOSION!​ Welcome back to the weekly roundup here at Eating Our Words, where we've finally secured the patent on sourdough incense. This week started off with a bang, when Greenway Barista slammed the Luling City Market on Richmond, which is actually unaffiliated with the actual market in ... More >>

Are You Drinking Stale Coffee?

​Have you been to your local cafe and noticed how the coffee just seems to always taste better? You buy some coffee for the house, and the really pronounced flavors just don't come out the same. It may be stale. Old. Decomposed. You wouldn't purchase bananas that are already past their prime, ... More >>

David Brown: “20/40”

David Brown makes art with his iPhone

Responses to our Best of Houston® Issue

Best Of Show

String-Scraping Rock Stars Two Star Symphony

Classical Gas