The Balkans

Here, Eat This: A Beginner's Guide to Ethiopian Cuisine

People unfamiliar with African cuisines often tend to lump them all in together: East African, West African, North African...what's the difference? We don't lump French and Spanish food together simply because they share a border, however, nor do we regard Indian and Chinese as the same because they ... More >>

Son Volt's Travel Guide to Five Bizarre Tour Stops

Son Volt is heading down the highway with a new album in tow, Honky Tonk, but instead of lamenting still waters and beatnik poets, Jay Farrar and company have gone strictly Bakersfield, even naming a track after the legendary country-music mecca. Yep, Farrar has gone back to his roots mixing steel ... More >>

The Rocks Off 100: Felipe Galvan Of Los Skarnales

Welcome to the Rocks Off 100, our portrait gallery of the most compelling profiles and personalities in the far-flung Houston music community -- a lot more than just musicians, but of course they're in there too. See the entire Rocks Off 100 at this link. Los Skarnales frontman Felipe Galvan is q ... More >>

Raw Materials at Cove

The raw fish and raw meat here are so delicately and deliciously rendered, you might think about giving up on the whole fire thing.

Films of 2012: Getting Better and Better

The end of cinema? Hardly.

Ever Wonder if Your Kid's Teacher Runs a Puppy Mill in Her Spare Time?

A former grade school teacher has been charged with animal cruelty after sheriff's deputies and SPCA workers seized 106 abused and neglected dog from her East Texas home Monday. The dogs were allegedly "forced to live in their own filth inside a feces-filled, urine-soaked home on the property" near ... More >>

Aggies, Texans, LSU: Football! This Weekend's Best Bets, Helping Impoverished Greek Soccer Teams

Ironically, I lead into this weekend's football bets with a story of a poor Greek soccer team trying to stay afloat financially. Courtesy of the Soccernet area on ESPN.com: Players on a cash-strapped Greek soccer team now wear pink practice jerseys with the logos "Villa Erotica" and "Soula's House ... More >>

What Wine for a [California] Veggie Sandwich?

The first time I had a [California] veggie sandwich (in California, they just call it a "veggie sandwich"), it was at the legendary Source on the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles. By the time I got there (an undergrad at UCLA in the late '80s), founder Father Yod and the Source family were long gone (as ... More >>

Does Dallas-Fort Worth Have the Worst Tippers in the State?

Last week, Eater alerted the great foodie masses to a website called Lousy Tippers that contains a pretty scary database of the nation's worst tippers. "There is a consequence," the site preaches ominously from its header. Call it the ultimate form of societal pressure to make sure you leave a grat ... More >>

Petrouchka and Beethoven

Greek Week: 300

Margarett Root Brown Reading Series: Tea Obreht and Gary Shteyngart

Five Great Middle Finger Moments In Music History

Monday morning, the Internet was awash in consternation and jpegs after M.I.A. flashed her middle finger during Madonna's Super Bowl halftime performance Sunday, meaning Janet Jackson is finally off the hook after all these years. To be honest, Rocks Off watched the entire halftime show and must hav ... More >>

Friday Night: Alabama Shakes at Continental Club

Alabama Shakes doesn't like the "retro soul" label that often is attached to their brand of music. But, if their raucous set at Continental Club on Friday night is any indication, they should embrace it because they certainly owned it. "Y'all gon' be alright," singer Brittany Howard told the packed ... More >>

11 Odd & Occasionally Ugly Snow Globes Of Texas

A snow globe that makes sense​When you think "Texas," you don't necessarily think "snow," unless your mind is drawn to fatal and tragic accidents during Super Bowls in cities that should never have them. But snow globes are an important aspect of the souvenir trade, so whether the places in q ... More >>

Top 5 Gifts for Wine Lovers

Photo by Jeremy Parzen.Decanters by Riedel take wine service to a higher level of aesthetic pleasure. ​If you're ever invited to dine in someone's home in France, please don't bring a bottle of wine. Nothing will spur a French host to recoil in abject dishonor and displeasure than the gift of ... More >>

Wine of the Week: The Aegean Sea in a Glass

The first time I tasted Thalassitis by the Gaia winery (Santorini, Greece), it was poured for me by the "best sommelier in the world 2008," Aldo Sohm, at Le Bernardin in New York City in 2010. Aldo paired the wine with raw sea urchin: The "saltiness" and intense acidity of this wine, he noted, was ... More >>

Ten Tunnels Of Texas: Some Pretty, Some Odd, Some Bat-Infested

Love tunnels not included​A while back we presented a dozen of the most beautiful bridges in Texas, a state most people don't normally associate with bridges. They associate it even less with tunnels. Texas isn't exactly a mountainous state, and wherever there's a big outcropping there's gene ... More >>

Ana Popovic

Capsule Art Reviews: "Evergreen: Original Contemporary Prints" "George Gittoes: Witness to War" "Jackie Gendel: Fables in Slang" "Just Press Print!" "Musicians Who Make Art" "Voodoo Pop: Mary Hayslip and Trey Speegle"

Capsule Art Reviews: "George Gittoes: Witness to War" "Jackie Gendel: Fables in Slang" "Musicians Who Make Art" "Nathan Green: Fill the Sky" "Perspectives 174: Re: Generation" "Voodoo Pop: Mary Hayslip and Trey Speegle"

Food Fight: Box Lunch

Matthew DresdenLe Mistral's box lunch, with grilled chicken panini and cream of tomato soup. Perhaps the best deal in Houston.​If you google the phrase "box lunch history," virtually all the results are for lunch boxes and the fascinating history thereof. (Check out the Smithsonian's photo op ... More >>

Blessed

Anderson Fair alumna Lucinda Williams returns to Houston.

Canned Champagne: For All Your Picnic Needs

​Alright, so Sofia Mini isn't technically champagne. It's a sparkling Blanc de Blancs from California made with a blend of Pinot Blanc, Sauvignon Blanc and Muscat grapes. But for the purposes of this post, as well as ease of description, I like to call it champagne in a can. Last year, I did ... More >>

Niko Niko's on Market Square Is the Next Chapter In a Restaurant's Long, Storied History

Photos by Troy FieldsNiko Niko's already draws a healthy lunchtime crowd.​Back in 2001, Wendy Grossman wrote "Elbow Greece," a feature for the Houston Press on the long and fascinating history of what was -- at that time -- already a stalwart Houston favorite: Niko Niko's. Eleni Fetokakis run ... More >>

25 Famous Bands' Less Famous Previous Names

​As promised, here are the answers to Rocks Off's "Original Band Name" quiz from Tuesday. John St. Lee, if you'd care to email us, we'll see what we can do about getting you a prize. Do you like Devo? 1. Chicago: At about 25 or 6 to 4, the Windy City jazz-rockers realized The Big Thing sucked ... More >>

Capsule Art Reviews: "Dynasty and Divinity," "James Drake: A Thousand Tongues Burn and Sing," "Tony Smith: Drawings"

Capsule Art Reviews: "Anthony Thompson Shumate: Cocky," "Dynasty and Divinity," "Eduardo Gil: Extra"

Chances Closing This Saturday; To Become "High-End Restaurant" With a "Superstar Chef"

Craig Hlavaty​Eating Our Words is always happy to welcome new restaurants to town -- especially in our own neighborhood -- but at the expense of the city's few live music venues (see: Numbers) and now its only lesbian bar? Montrose nightlife staple Chances is shutting down this weekend, accor ... More >>

Ingredient of the Week: Pomegranate

​What is it? The word pomegranate was derived from the Latin words "pomum" (apple) and "granatus" (seeded) - and if you've ever seen one opened up, you know this is an apt description. Mostly grown for the U.S. market in Californian orchards for their juice, a few of the intact fruits make it ... More >>

$5 Awesome: Murry Attaway's In Thrall

Rocks Off has picked up some CDs over the years at prices so low we think that it would've been less insulting to the artists if we had stolen them. Some of these have become our favorite albums, and in this column we'll tell you what they are and why! ​Back in the days when Rocks Off's main ... More >>

Capsule Art Reviews: "35 Years: Anniversary Exhibition," "Dante Marioni: Recent Glass Works," "Libby Black: If Nothing Else Matters," "Richard Misrach: After Katrina," "St. Boniface's Last Days"

Capsule Art Reviews: "35 Years: Anniversary Exhibition," "Dante Marioni: Recent Glass Works," "Joe Mancuso: Trace," "Richard Serra: Weight and Level"

Arianna Huffington

The Lady of the Left brings her newest book to Houston

Dimitri Fetokakis on the New Niko Niko's in Market Square

​When I met Dimitri Fetokakis on the patio of his Montrose Greek-American cafe on Labor Day morning he was calm, cool, and as bright as one of the sunny side-up eggs that come nestled in the pitas on his new breakfast menu. He didn't seem at all like a restauranteur on the brink of opening da ... More >>

Wine of the Week: Coppola Sofia Blanc de Blancs

​What does Francis Ford Coppola do well other than direct movies? You guessed it, you little oenophile/movie geek, you. Yes, Coppola makes some damn delicious wines in addition to creating some of the most iconic American movies ever to grace the silver screen. This canned concoction, however, ... More >>

Give Me No Man's Land: 5 Songs For The Fallen

​Today is Memorial Day, and Rocks Off would like to honor our brave and beloved dead as we honor everything - through music. At no time in American history have there not been men and women in life-threatening danger trying to protect us, whether it was a declared war or not. This is a sacrifice w ... More >>

Hazy Shade Of Winter: Are The Vancouver Olympians Listening To These Songs?

Rocks Off has Olympics on the brain. After hearing the theme from Chariots of Fire at the Houston Symphony and watching the bizarro Opening Ceremonies featuring Nelly Furtado, Bryan Adams and Sarah McLachlan, all we want to do when we get home from a long hard day is watch men in Vera Wang one-piec ... More >>

The Ultimate Stuffed Cabbage

​My mother made stuffed cabbage; my grandmother made stuffed cabbage. My earliest food memories involve stuffed cabbage (we Ruthenians call it holupki). And as you might expect, I have always preferred stuffed cabbage made exactly the way my mom and grandma made it -- beef and rice rolls in ca ... More >>

Z

The murder of peace activist Gregoris Lambrakis retold

Jesse Lott and Javier de Villota

Two artists who split their time between Houston and Spain share a vision

The United Nations of Food at Phoenicia Specialty Foods

The Knights of the Quest

The MFAH’s third annual Italian Film Retrospective mixes Greece, France and the Holy Shroud

(Man) Love and War

Stirred and Shaken

Old Heidelberg's Special

Today's Horoscope

You'll meet a creative Aries who will shake up your traditional ideas

News of the Weird

War Story