David Landsel, the travel editor of the New York Post, stopped over in Houston on his way to Mexico City earlier this week. He asked me to take him to a regional Mexican restaurant. So we went to Tampico, where he took photos of his Vuelva a la Vida seafood cocktail for blog posterity. I also took Landsel to the market stalls behind Canino's, where he ate his first guayaba and admired the leafy green herbs. Then we checked out the pan muerto at El Bolillo and the spices at Texas Culinary Center.

It wasn't Landsel's first trip to Houston. He recounted his initial reactions about our city in a long travel piece published in the New York Post last month. My favorite quote in that piece was "the Menil is as Houston as it gets -- laid back, vaguely cuckoo, but always 100 percent serious about its mission."

I was also impressed by Landsel's appreciation of our pastries: "I convinced a local contact to take me up to the historic Heights neighborhood to learn more about Houston's popular Aurora Picture Show, a new media, film and video center housed in an old 1920s Baptist church. It's around the corner from a donut shop, Shipley's, that makes the most insane glazed donut you have ever tasted. Aurora was closed for the day. Shipley's was not. Sometimes, it turns out, donuts are as fun as art."

Amen.