Cuba

A Look Inside Batanga Tapas Drinks, Now Open Downtown

There's been a lot of talk about downtown Houston's "revival," sparked by a spate of restaurant and bar openings near Main Street. But the word "revival" seemed grossly inappropriate as I drove to Batanga Tapas Drinks this past Saturday for its media preview party, as the word itself suggests that ... More >>

Free Radicals Examine Both Sides of The Freedom Fence

Free Radicals are, strangely enough, one of Houston's most stable ensembles. Their music may vary wildly from song to song, from jazz and klezmer to ska and rap, but the band drummer Nick Cooper started in 1996 has had a steady core of members for most of those years. Baritone saxophonist Pete Sulli ... More >>

Houston Fine Art Fair

Rest Of The Best: Houston's Top 8 Latin Nights

Note: This article was written by Rolando Rodriguez and Marco Torres. In March of this year, Houston beat the likes of Los Angeles and New York as the most ethnically diverse metropolitan area in the country and that landmark development was mainly due to the growth of Latinos. Back in 1990, Latin ... More >>

Free for All: Art Without a Price Tag

Houston gets a visit from architect Hermes Mallea who is dropping by Brazos Bookstore on Friday to sign his book Great Houses of Havana: A Century of Cuban Style. The book features wonderful photographs of some of the most beautiful homes in Havana. One shows a courtyard, glowing in the evening lig ... More >>

Drinking With Drinkify: Website Concocts Cocktails For You Based On Your Musical Tastes

​The website Drinkify combines your musical tastes with your booze tastes, with sometimes hilarious and dangerous results. The site does what we have been doing since we first took our first sip of the hard stuff, and that's finding the right music for your liver-killing. Though, if you foll ... More >>

Anna in the Tropics

Houston Center for Photography: Fall 2011 Exhibitions

Top Five: Cheap Booze

​After mastering a tartly correct margarita three years ago, I decided to keep going, and make every classic cocktail that doesn't involve weird liquor. Sixty-nine, so far. As I searched bartending sites, mixology blogs, culinary forums, print stuff and liquor reviews, these bottles of gin, v ... More >>

Garden Fresh: Five Hot Weather Plants

​Once the temp hits 96, in the shade, most garden crops won't set fruit. The peppers, tomatoes and cucumbers already growing will continue to do so, but few new ones will appear. That's when I turn my attention to things that grow in pots, which can be easily watered and moved to shadier spo ... More >>

Saturday Night: Erykah Badu At Arena Theatre

Photos by Rizoh​Erykah Badu Arena Theatre May 21, 2011 Even if she never drops another album, Erykah Badu will still go down as one of the most important artists of our generation. Few can massage a neo-soul groove, seduce a jazz tune, and straddle a hip-hop beat the way she can. On the same ... More >>

Five Disastrous Modern-Day Presidential Decisions Not Involving Iraq or Vietnam

Ronald and Nancy Reagan face the consequences.​Making tough decisions is what being a president is all about. But sometimes those decisions backfire. Sometimes the backfire hurts only the president who made the decision; sometimes it hurts a whole lot of other people. Here are five most disas ... More >>

Last Night: Jimmy Buffett At Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion

Photos by Jay Lee​Jimmy Buffett & the Coral Reefer Band Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion May 5, 2011 See more changes in latitudes, changes in attitudes in our slideshow. Blowing through the jasmine of our mind, Aftermath once got it in our head somehow that Jimmy Buffett wrote "Margaritavill ... More >>

Best Broccoli in America

​We know Houston has the best hamburger selection in the nation, and coming soon near you, the best real mojito north of Havana. A bigger surprise is that Houston has the best climate for growing rich and flavorful broccoli, and everyone I've served it to agrees that it's the best they've eve ... More >>

Vintage Cocktails: The Fine Art of the Daiquiri

It's a fine art indeed.​The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks is a hard-to-find but indispensable cocktail manual first published in 1948. My barstained copy (it was stained before I got to it) came from a southside Houston thrift store and was marked down to $9.95. The out-of-print book now goes on A ... More >>

Buena Vista Social Club

The film that jump-started a return to the limelight by Rubén Gonzáles and Compay Segundo left one huge question unanswered: Why weren't they onstage for the last 50 years?

Houston International Festival

Nothing Sets Our Readers Off Like Che Guevara and Rape

Artist of the Week: Daylight Coma

Each Wednesday, Rocks Off arbitrarily appoints one lucky local performer or group "Artist of the Week," bestowing upon them all the fame and grandeur such a lofty title implies. Know a band or artist that isn't awful? Email their particulars to introducingliston@gmail.com. Growing up, we were big fa ... More >>

Cuba, Mexico Look To Block The Texas Entrance To The U.S.

China Restricts Web Access for International Media, NBC Bows to Benevolent New Overlords

Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama in Austin

Vikram Chandra and Mayra Montero

Indian-born Chandra joins Cuban-born Montero for an evening of international storytelling

Iranian Film Festival

Immigration: Luck of the Draw

Some Cubans in Houston find work right away, others languish withoutEnglish skills

Christmas Chaos 2

Pro Wrestling Alliance star Booker T takes on RVD

Mexican-American Culture

Why do Mexicans put their surnames in the back windows of their cars?

A Box of Pig Meat

A Box of Pig Meat

Much Magic

Overdone

Undercover of the Night

Violent shootouts and dangerous love collide in Mann's visceral Vice

Why do Mexicans want to take back California?

The Mexican replies

Our top DVD picks for the week of October 25

This Week's Day-by-Day Picks

This Week's Day-by-Day Picks

This Week's Day-by-Day Picks

This Week's Day-by-Day Picks

Caribbean Vacation

Storyteller Edwin Negrón tells stories from other lands

Modern Vintage

Photo shows at Sicardi Gallery and FotoFest merge the past and the present

Touch of Gray

Audiences tell their stories

Best Theme Restaurant

Floridita

Short Courtship

A whirlwind romance with The Little Havana

Hemingway's Favorite Libation

Bossa's Mojito

Stirred and Shaken

Aries's Ernest Hemingway daiquiri

Foregone Conclusion

Even those who don't remember the Cuban missile crisis will know how it ends, long before Days does

Red Rhythms

Maraca and Otra Vision

Escapism from Houston

Dance has local angles but an unimaginative story

Night & Day

August 13 - 19, 1998

Static

Something Old, Something New

If El Palacio is a dream of the past, Cabo is the cocktail party of the future