World on the Strings
World musician David Lindley is like the adventurous friend you had in college, the one who always nudged you out of your comfort zone. While others have settled in, Lindley has remained the perpetual student, journeying all over the globe, investigating anything that interests him. Once a year or so,…
Best Ballet
Giselle is one of very few stories that is best told in the language of ballet. It’s based on the legend of the Wilis, the ghosts of young maidens who were jilted by men and died before they could marry. These mysterious creatures haunt the shadowy forests at night, looking…
Best Spectacle
Who doesn’t like songs about poo? Slump banks on the fact that everybody does. Penises too. Also: yeast infections, anal sex and hamsters. Keith Reynolds and Cathy Power have created a cult of personality around their Slump shows, which usually involve three chords on a guitar and lots of words…
Best Civil Court Judge
Sure, this jurist was plenty enthusiastic about assuming the bench. Tad Halbach came equipped with a solid sense of humor and a levelheaded nature that meant that the most voracious of attorneys weren’t going to push him around. But other newcomers also have landed a judicial post with that kind…
Best Gadfly
Performance artist Dr. Alkebu Motapa, legal name Carl Austin, is a dreadlocked dervish who paints, chants and talks up a storm at City Council and anywhere else people will listen. His rhetoric, a mixture of Rastafarian theology and civil rights-era jargon, is not always welcome. When Motapa took to calling…
Best New Downtown Bar
When it comes to drinking, we prefer to imbibe free of industrial dance beats and blinding strobes. Of course, we don’t mind the beautiful people who tend to gather at those high-tech nightclubs. That’s the great thing about Grasshopper/Red Lights: Downstairs, you can sit at the Grasshopper’s long, curved, glass-top…
Best Chicken-Fried Steak
Never underestimate chicken-fried steak. It may seem like a humble dish, but it is a humble dish that is taken very seriously by native Texans. Elouise Cooper, owner of Ouisie’s Table, takes chicken-fried steak very seriously. The golden-brown, Southern-fried crust is so perfect that the cream gravy is served on…
Best Poetry Series That Wouldn’t Die
Reading series come and go, but ever since Robert Clark rescued a dying gathering of beatniks at the Sand Mountain coffee shop back in 1975, First Friday has been plugging along under his direction. The location may have changed over the past 25 years, but loyal scribes have followed Clark…
Best Graffiti Artist
Just look up. On bridges, buildings, trains, the backs of freeway signs, the tag is everywhere. It’s an inspirational call to the “next” generation, a macho throw-up that conveys the adrenaline, irreverence and illegality of its creation. Most of all, it’s cool. But the Houston Police Department’s antigang task force…
Best Club Sandwich
Locals line up at the counter of this retro spot in the heart of West University Place’s original business district — not the strip-center sprawl now lining its perimeter. Edloe St. Deli’s avenue of Americana includes the Little League field, the school, the grocery store, the library, the courthouse and…
Best Dog Whisperer
Got a pampered pooch with persistent problems? We heard about Pete Stewart’s Good Manners Dog Obedience School through a friend who owns three huskies. Figuring someone with a pack of dogs oughta know, we checked it out for ourselves. Like most “parents,” we were a little apprehensive about dropping our…
Best Asian Bakery
For a bakery, St. Honoré is located in a weird place: inside an Asian mall that is perpetually empty, its escalators moving and moving nobody at all. Never mind, though. Just head straight to the bakery on the first floor, with the window display of a huge gingerbread-houselike Chinese palace,…
Best Used CDs
God only knows who would sell their copy of End on End by Rites of Spring, but aren’t you glad somebody did? Because CD Warehouse had this kick-ass Washington, D.C., rock band priced at only $3.99, just one of the many treasures buried in this chain of discount CD stores…
Best Barbecue Restaurant
The old barbecue pit on Dowling Street that is now called Drexler’s has a remarkable pedigree. Part of the current restaurant as well as the original barbecue pit were built by legendary barbecue man Harry Green in 1952. Green sold the place to an old-time pit boss named Tom Prevost…
Best Greasy Spoon
For 25 years Alice Lee and her family members have been running this little diner, which sits across Loop 610 from Meyerland Plaza. It’s a little place, a place that’s easy to miss in its nondescript strip mall. The booths are old and lumpy, the decorations fittingly cheesy. Numerous photos…
Best Taqueria
Just as there are food stalls in the mercados in Mexico, there are taco trucks in the parking lot behind the Farmer’s Market on Airline Drive. The one in the middle is crowded with well-dressed Mexican-Americans at 1:30 p.m. “Taqueria Tacambaro,” it reads in painted letters on the roof. There…
Best Vietnamese/ Mexican Restaurant
New York may have a lock on the Chinese/Cuban restaurant thing, but Houston is leading in the Vietnamese/Mexican category. Well, actually, Matt’s Fast Foods on 43rd Street may be the only Vietnamese/ Mexican restaurant, here or anywhere. There’s a golden Buddha near the front door and a painting of a…
Best Chinese Restaurant
This place is so authentic there’s hardly any English on the menu. Plus, it’s filled with Chinese people — always a good sign when selecting an ethnic restaurant. Here we recommend the pork with snow pea leaves and the chicken and asparagus. We always order too much and say we’ll…
Best Criminal Court Judge
Courthouse regulars were worried a few years ago when longtime judge Doug Shaver announced his retirement from the 262nd bench. He was one of the few Democrats left in any court in the county, and certainly one of the more independent-minded jurists of any affiliation. Concerns about keeping the proverbial…
Best Place to Meet Liberal-Minded Singles
All day long, cars pull into the driveway of the RecycleXpress center; car doors fling open, and conscience-minded citizens separate their colored and clear glass, bimetal cans, paper, cardboard and plastics (nos. 1 and 2 only, please) through square slots into great mounds. Even though some of them drive SUVs…
Best Democrat
This former First Court appellate justice and TV court-show host narrowly lost his post last November, but the defeat did nothing to dim Andell’s luster as one of the most promising figures in the local party. He carried Harris County, did well in traditionally Republican precincts, and is primed to…
Best Hole in the Roof
It looks like a painting, a 12-foot square field of blue, oddly placed on the ceiling of the simple Quaker meeting room. But this painting is alive, deepening in color and drawing you in as the sun sets outside. It’s the sky, you realize. Light artist James Turrell has cut…
Best Club for Local Acts
Toby Blunt, Mary Jane’s manager, is the last of a dying breed. If you are a local band and need a place to play, chances are Toby — an experienced local musician himself — will work something out. He doesn’t book any one genre of band. Over the past seven…
Best Vintage Clothing
Like connoisseurs of fine wine, vintage shoppers have their high standards. While those in search of the perfect merlot might sniff the cork, hold the glass up to the light and sip with discernment, vintage clothing shoppers must know: Are there any noticeable stains? Does the zipper work? Do polyester…
Best Bartender
Legend has it that Fred once threw a couple out of Rudyard’s because they ordered only water. All right, so it sounds a little harsh. Actually, it’s comforting. The world is full of bartenders who are willing to give you free water, listen to your stupid problems and shake their…
Best Houston Astro
When Octavio Dotel came to the Astros from the Mets in 1999, he saw himself as a starter, not a reliever. As he kept getting driven from games by opposing batters last season, he still saw himself as a starter simply going through a rough patch. And when he was…
Best Service
Diners know the regrettable cycle all too well. A restaurant invests a fortune in fancy furnishings, fine food and a gourmet chef. Then an unfocused waitstaff spoils it all. The only spoiling to be found at Resa’s Prime Steakhouse is the pampering of customers. Crowds regularly fill this Champions-area restaurant,…
Best Austin Import
We Houstonians might smirk a bit when we see those “we’re hipper than you are” Austinites struggling to take a breath over the tidal wave of growing traffic and Silicon Valley rejects. But we can’t get too smug. Not when they’ve exported a version of one their city’s finest clubs…
Best Martini
Zimm’s has been a wine bar; it’s been a coffee-and-wine bar; it’s been all but burned out in a fire last year; and it’s been flooded by Tropical Storm Allison. Still, it endures, and it makes a damn good martini. The drinks are helped by the seductive ambience of the…
Best Sushi
Although former owner and executive chef Don Chang has quit the restaurant biz and moved to Austin, his younger brother, Daniel Chang, continues to run this oasis of to-die-for food in west Houston just as his brother did, with artfully prepared dishes and leisurely service. Don was responsible for many…
Best Politician
This professor-on-the-move replaced sleepy Felix Fraga just a year and a half ago and is already developing into the power player of Houston Hispanic politics. Raised in Corpus Christi and Austin, Vasquez came to town as a communications prof at the University of Houston, and quickly began laying the groundwork…
Larry Perdido
“My mom, bless her heart, was an awful cook,” drawls Larry Perdido. His parents emigrated from the Philippines to Houston in the ’50s, and his mom, a nurse, soon learned to mangle American dishes as thoroughly as she wrecked those of the Southeast Asian islands. Out of self-defense, seven-year-old Larry…
Racket
San Francisco attorney Daniel Ray Bacon has made it his life’s work to assist the deserving underdogs of the world in getting their due. Raised in Gary, Indiana (where he learned early to love the blues after catching a Howlin’ Wolf show), and a graduate of Baylor, Harvard Divinity School…
Best Place to Hear Live Tejano
The Tejano scene in Houston is as unpredictable as the Gulf Coast weather. One day a club is hot; the next day it’s shuttered and silent. Hallabaloo’s is the exception. Set in a gritty southeast neighborhood, the club has kept the Tejano fires burning in Houston for nearly ten years…
Best Local Anthology
Yogi, Webmaster and Gynomite founder (and former Houston Press staffer) Liz Belile has since moved to Austin, and Abram Himelstein, whose New Mouth From the Dirty South published the volume, is living in New Orleans now. But this collection of erotic stories by women features more than a half-dozen local…
Best Balcony
Do you remember the ’80s dance song by Yello, the one that had the vocal line that stretched out in a deep bass? That’s the feeling you get on a Friday evening in September when the flaming fist of Queen Bitch Summer has begun to loosen and you stroll out…
Best Public Information Officer
Tropical Storm Allison annihilated the county’s justice system, crippling the criminal courts building for months and mauling the Family Courts Center as well. In the ensuing mayhem, even judges sometimes didn’t know where their temporary courts, salvaged files or trial settings would turn up. But the news media had to…
Best New Construction
Critic Ann Holmes once called Jones Plaza the single most hostile block in Houston. It was stark and forbidding, built so high off the street that passersby couldn’t see its top. It sat essentially unused except for events like Party on the Plaza. That’s all changing now. Architect Mark Wamble,…
Best Dumplings
This hole-in-the-wall Chinese restaurant in a Westheimer strip center has seen better days. The flea-market carving of the Great Wall of China and the other sparse decorations on the walls are almost worse than nothing. You could argue that many other Chinese restaurants have similar, or even better, dumplings. But…
Best Movie Theater
The newly renovated auditorium debuted with the premiere of a redone version of the 1984 Oscar-winning film Amadeus to show off, among other things, its new sound system. (The Oscar-winning sound man, Mark Berger, was even on hand to talk with the audience about the restoration.) The theater has family…
Best Justice of the Peace
Most courts wouldn’t take much time with an 11-year-old troublemaker. But J.P. George Risner did what the Houston school district had refused to do: have the imbalanced youngster checked out by mental health professionals. Now the youth is on medication — and back on track in school. Risner, in his…
Best Condiments
Don’t you hate it when you order a salad and they haven’t sprinkled enough croutons on it, at least not as many as you would like? You’ll never have that problem at Cafe Express. Whoever designed this place was smart enough to leave extra toppings in big jars at a…
Best Combination Pawnshop and Wedding Chapel
A scratchy tape of “The Wedding March” blasts from a boom box in a room in Kipperman’s Pawn Shop, the walls of which are painted pink and gold with a mural of flowers splashed across one wall in hues of Mercurochrome and MD 20-20. Owner Ted Kipperman, dressed in red…
Best Middle Eastern Grocery
Meandering the aisles of Droubi’s with Arabic music in the air, one can imagine wandering through a Lebanese open market, only with air-conditioning. The aroma of constantly baking bread that is sold still warm, a myriad of bulk herbs and spices sold by the pound and the daily lunch specials…
Best Newsstand
Mega-stands may come and go, but Globe is forever. In business since 1961, Globe News is not only the best, it’s also the oldest. And it has the musty smell that a newsstand should have. Its selection covers the waterfront of publishing from newsweeklies and monthlies to sports to photography…
Best Neighborhood Spot in the Village
West U soccer teams, Rice students needing a study break, and preparty revelers all converge at El Meson for top-notch Latin American cuisine. And while the Mexican dishes are solid, the Cuban entrées are the real reason to visit this neon-lit spot along University Boulevard in the Village. Perhaps that’s…
Best Burger/Chinese Food Fusion
It’s nothing short of a stroke of luck to be able to satisfy two strong cravings at once. Lucky Burger’s name makes it clear that it dishes up burgers, and it’s retro root-beer-barrel design offers a hint that these are old-fashioned versions (read: griddle-fried with buttered buns). But who knew…
Best Houston Astro
When Octavio Dotel came to the Astros from the Mets in 1999, he saw himself as a starter, not a reliever. As he kept getting driven from games by opposing batters last season, he still saw himself as a starter simply going through a rough patch. And when he was…
Best Example of Starbucks World Domination
Exhibit one: The Starbucks on the corner of Shepherd and West Gray. Exhibit two: The Starbucks on the corner of Shepherd and West Gray. When the chain built the drive-thru version on the northeast corner, we were sure the version inhabiting the shopping center across the street to the south…
Best Breakfast
Breakfast is not our favorite meal, because it happens to fall in the morning, which is our least favorite time of the day. But whenever we order the huevos rancheros at Baby B’s, we are overcome with joy. Just thinking about this makes our mouths water. A friend of ours…
Best Local Girl Gone Bad
This former gatekeeper for Mayor Lee Brown lost her desk at City Hall after ducking a drug test. A former employee of Brown crony Danny Lawson, Mackey served the former drug czar as secretary and appointments coordinator since he returned to Houston in 1995 to establish credentials for his successful…
Best Radio Commercial
We’re not sure that radio guy John Granato is being completely honest with us when he says that, in addition to a great product line, there are cocktails and girls in bikinis on hand at Trailer, Wheel & Frame, but we like the idea. Where else can you get your…
Best Place to Inline Skate
Asphalt. Beautiful asphalt. This area is jam-packed with it. You can roll from Rice University up to the Southwest Freeway and from Kirby Drive east to Mandell with nary a glimpse of concrete, gravel or potholes. We suggest you start somewhere on North or South Boulevard, where the rich folk…
Best Bathroom
Judging by the interiors of most restaurants, restaurateurs usually don’t care deeply about art. Monica Pope is the exception. Her Boulevard Bistrot has art on the plates, on the walls and even in the bathrooms. In fact, the atmosphere of the lavatory was so important to the owner that she…
Best Production
The 2000-2001 Houston theater season (which ended up being as exciting as a glass of lukewarm water) started out with a great gush of roaring energy. Jane Martin’s explosively funny Anton in Show Business reigned supreme from Stages Repertory Theatre over the entire season. The screamingly funny show focused on…
Best Bakery
A few weeks back we heard a woman walk into the bakery and say she was new to the neighborhood and needed to find a good place to order a cake for her mother’s upcoming birthday celebration. If there were such a thing as the dessert jackpot, this woman had…
Best Wine Store
There is nothing quite like Christopher’s in Houston. The creation of the husband-and-wife team of Christopher and Donna Massie, this 6,000-square-foot, single-venue operation offers rare wines that sometimes are allocated by growers and importers to less than one case for the entire state of Texas. French wines are showcased here,…
Best Place to Hear the Crack of the Bat (and of the Bones)
Beyond the well-manicured youth diamonds of Bayland is the always reliable Field of Dreams: the domain of the Harris County Senior Softball League. These participants, of course, also are kids, ranging from the tender age of 50 upward into the octogenarian ranks. They feature some athletes who could give Triple-A…
Best Comfort Food
When you’re sad and lonely and nothing seems to be going right, you want to eat something that satisfies more than the emptiness inside. Comfort foods have a connection to warmth and safety and days when you had nothing to worry about. Fifth grade, when you came home from school…
Best Book
Houston’s upstart TaylorWilson Publishing may have been a flash in the pan, staying in business less than a year and producing only one book before bellying up to the auction block, but at least that one book was a beauty: a small keepsake edition limited to a run of 3,000…
Best Margarita
These sublime concoctions are undoubtedly best enjoyed alfresco, and to do so there is no place better than the Guatemalan/Mexican surf-and-turf, El Pueblito Place. First, there’s the marg itself, which is tartly delicious as any in town and comes in large, extra large, and call-a-cab sizes. Then there are the…
Best Club Sandwich
Locals line up at the counter of this retro spot in the heart of West University Place’s original business district — not the strip-center sprawl now lining its perimeter. Edloe St. Deli’s avenue of Americana includes the Little League field, the school, the grocery store, the library, the courthouse and…
Best Graffiti Artist
Just look up. On bridges, buildings, trains, the backs of freeway signs, the tag is everywhere. It’s an inspirational call to the “next” generation, a macho throw-up that conveys the adrenaline, irreverence and illegality of its creation. Most of all, it’s cool. But the Houston Police Department’s antigang task force…
Nick Lowe
Fitting that consummate Englishman Nick Lowe has signed with Yep Roc Records of Chapel Hill, North Carolina, as The Convincer continues his trend of making Southern-sounding records. Lowe’s material is set against a moving panorama of Dixie styles, from Muscle Shoals soul to gospel to honky-tonk, with perhaps Geraint Watkins’s…
Best New Effort to Inject Culture into Houston
So Gabrielle Hale’s Winedale Publishing isn’t exactly new (she founded the press in 1996). But at the beginning, it looked like Winedale might be little more than an excuse to bring back into print the scattered remains of husband and Houston Chronicle columnist Leon Hale’s oeuvre (some of which surely…
Best Tejano/ Conjunto Artist
Lisa Torres, the hazel-eyed singer of the eponymous Lisa y Aventura, stands a mere four foot ten. Her moving voice and on-stage charisma make her larger than life. Her notes range from sweet, soaring highs to raspy lows, recalling the soulful cantings of Mexican diva Ana Gabriel. The band combines…
Best Sign War
A little friendly ribbing between competitors never hurt anybody. For more than seven years now, Khyber Grill’s Mickey Kapoor has been using his marquee to taunt the neighboring Pappadeaux’s. When the seafood restaurant wrote, “Hiring today 3 to 5,” Kapoor replied, “My, You Do Start Them Young!” When Pappadeaux posted,…
Best Bureaucrat
Mayor Lee Brown chief of staff Jordy Tollett got his start under mayor Jim McConn and has been accumulating titles and turf ever since. He’s head of the city convention center and entertainment facility complex, the president of the convention and visitors bureau, and currently the little drummer boy who…
Best Martini
Zimm’s has been a wine bar; it’s been a coffee-and-wine bar; it’s been all but burned out in a fire last year; and it’s been flooded by Tropical Storm Allison. Still, it endures, and it makes a damn good martini. The drinks are helped by the seductive ambience of the…
Best Mariscos
This bustling little Mexican seafood shop-turned-restaurant near the Farmer’s Market serves some of the best red snapper in the city. There isn’t any question about whether you’re being served real Gulf snapper or how fresh it is, because here you walk up to the seafood counter and pick out the…
Best Fusion CD by Local Musicians
Fusion is most often associated with jazz, but this CD begs the question. A blend of flamenco, jazz and rock, Spoken Mercy has fused the three in this locally produced compact disc. The band’s debut CD features Gary Norman on guitars and bass, with Tyler Essex doing the percussion and…
Best Restoration Project
Of course, the travesties continue: tearing down the old Gulf Publishing building on Allen Parkway, bulldozing bits and pieces of the precious past, flushing out Houston’s final habitat hideaways for the sake of nothing more than the sameness of another new Rolling-Creek-Timber-Valley-Plantation-Estates subdivision. But the Bayou City shows more indications…
Best Veggie Burger
As more and more converts are discovering every day, ya don’t need a cow to make a delicious burger. And no one knows that better than Hungry’s. Their veggie version can go head-to-head with those patties o’ flesh any day. Hungry’s starts with a toasted whole-wheat bun, dabs a little…
Best Vintage Clothing
Like connoisseurs of fine wine, vintage shoppers have their high standards. While those in search of the perfect merlot might sniff the cork, hold the glass up to the light and sip with discernment, vintage clothing shoppers must know: Are there any noticeable stains? Does the zipper work? Do polyester…
Best Bartender
Legend has it that Fred once threw a couple out of Rudyard’s because they ordered only water. All right, so it sounds a little harsh. Actually, it’s comforting. The world is full of bartenders who are willing to give you free water, listen to your stupid problems and shake their…
Best Auto Repair
On the front end of the Honda Civic, at least a mid-’90s model, there is a splash guard that rides very low to the road. It frequently hits the pavement when being driven out of parking lots or up to concrete parking blocks. After a couple of years of abuse,…
Best Hole-in-the-Wall Burger Joint
This eastside eatery serves up real-deal burgers for the blue-collar crowd that comes for lunch from the surrounding factories and plants, and they’ll do it for you, too. From the basic Champ Burger to the Texas-sized steak sandwich to the double-decker breakfast sandwiches, this Houston landmark will fill you up…
Best Vegetarian Restaurant
In Hindi, the word for cow is aghnaya, which means “not to be killed.” So vegetarians won’t have to worry about cows — or pigs or chickens or fish or even beef stock — showing up on their plates at this new South Indian restaurant. In fact, Udupi’s menu offers…
Best Place to Hear the Crack of the Bat (and of the Bones)
Beyond the well-manicured youth diamonds of Bayland is the always reliable Field of Dreams: the domain of the Harris County Senior Softball League. These participants, of course, also are kids, ranging from the tender age of 50 upward into the octogenarian ranks. They feature some athletes who could give Triple-A…
Best Deli
Houston’s hankering for international status took a subtle stride when the crazy Katz’s crew branched out from Austin. World-class credentials will ever be debated, but one indisputable definition is that a particular urban area must have a full-service, round-the-clock deli to dish up quality cuisine when the yen strikes. The…
Best Authentic Chinese Open Kitchen
From the outside, this tiny Montrose-area counter cafe still looks like a delicious dive. In the dining room, however, recent renovations include dark wood panels of Chinese philosophical writings, track lighting and faux palm trees. Still, purists — looking for dinner and a show — wouldn’t dream of eating in…
Best Loyal Houston Press Reader
Here’s to not letting work interfere with your priorities. On January 11 at the intersection of Milam and Congress, a man who had apparently been hit by an oncoming car and looked to be a minute from his death was being wheeled into the back of an ambulance by three…
Best Fusion Building
Oral satisfaction all in one location. Inside the industrial-looking building you can chow down on a sandwich or chili dog, and then step across the hallway and get your teeth cleaned or cavities filled. But for the dentist’s sake, go easy on the onions…
Best Lobbyists
This preeminent Houston political power couple is in the middle of a slow-motion divorce proceeding, possibly because their business affairs are impossible to untangle. Between them they represent just about anything that could be considered establishment in Houston. Sue raised money for mayor Bob Lanier, handles incumbent Lee Brown’s finances,…
Best Pocket Park
Settle into the wrought-iron chairs. They are spread on the grounds at the base of the seven-story, girder-crossed mural painted by Suzanne Sellers on the adjacent Houston Club Building. And savor this new oasis of what used to be nothing more than an unsightly few asphalt parking spaces wedged between…
Best Place to Watch Totally Nude Men
Theater New West’s production of Key West provided one of the cheapest getaway romps of the summer. All about love and sex and naked men flouncing their privates about the stage, this silly show rippled with breezy laughs and utterly gorgeous flesh. Jack George as the young, lovely and Swedish…
Best African-Mexican Food Store
Here’s an only-in-Houston experience that defies easy explanation. The owner dresses in authentic Nigerian garb, and the music pulses with the beat of big African drums. And the place sells African, Caribbean and Yucatecan cooking ingredients. If you’re wondering what East Mexican and West African foods have in common, check…
Best Russian Grocery
This cheery newcomer, way out west on Memorial at Kirkwood, is targeted at Houston’s 40,000 plus Russophone community. Even if you know less about Russia than, say, a Republican ambassador to Moscow, you can still profitably explore the spiffy, well-lit aisles for unusual goods like Cornelian cherry compote or smoked…
Best Area Team
Being an Astros fan is never easy. If the team breezes to a division title, it gets knocked out in the first round of the playoffs. (If it struggles to a division title, it gets knocked out just as early.) The team seems inherently incapable of taking the big step…
Best Vietnamese Restaurant
Tucked out of the way in a shopping center just off the Southwest Freeway, Vietopia is a haven for lovers of upscale Asian food. The elegant two-story dining room recalls Indochina’s French colonial era with bamboo mechanical fans, tropical greenery and waiters in long white aprons. The food is far…
Best Romance Novelist
Thelma Zirklebach looks like a sweet little lady who would pinch your cheek and ask you about your older brother. She’s a speech pathologist who works a lot with children, is a member of Mensa and is all around a nice lady to talk to. You’d never know she writes…
Best Plantains
When we say plantains, we aren’t talking about those crunchy chips you find in a bag of trail mix. No, we’re talking plantains here, the ones you peel and fry up in a pan. Most restaurants will serve up slabs of fruit from plantain purgatory, soft and pretty yellow on…
Best Condiments
Don’t you hate it when you order a salad and they haven’t sprinkled enough croutons on it, at least not as many as you would like? You’ll never have that problem at Cafe Express. Whoever designed this place was smart enough to leave extra toppings in big jars at a…
Best Justice of the Peace
Most courts wouldn’t take much time with an 11-year-old troublemaker. But J.P. George Risner did what the Houston school district had refused to do: have the imbalanced youngster checked out by mental health professionals. Now the youth is on medication — and back on track in school. Risner, in his…
Goin’ Postal
In selecting the briefly fresh but now commonplace catchphrase as its name, local blues-rock trio Goin’ Postal did right. While this moniker might make the postmaster general cringe, it’s just a limp cliché to everyone else. True enough, the group’s rough-edged sound is bombastic — but only in an overwrought…
Best Open-Mike Comedy
When All D. Freemon was looking for a venue to replace the vacuum in black comedy that followed the demise of the Jus’ Jokin’ club, he turned to the former BYOB discotheque founded by Houston NewsPages publisher Francis Page Sr. in ’71. Though primarily an open mike for comedians of…
Best Up-and-Coming Choreographer
Last October, at the age of 18, Brian Enos presented his first major work for Houston Ballet. Tribal and techno, fast and furious, androgynous and sexy, classic and modern, large but with perfectly executed details, Landing was impossible to categorize. And it clearly overwhelmed the works of the other, more…
Best Nonprofit
Montrose Clinic started as a agency to treat sexually transmitted diseases including syphilis and gonorrhea in Houston’s gay community 20 years ago, but the onset of the AIDS epidemic redefined its mission. Throughout the plague years, Montrose Clinic has served Houston’s HIV-infected patients with compassion and competence, something not always…
Best Democrat
This former First Court appellate justice and TV court-show host narrowly lost his post last November, but the defeat did nothing to dim Andell’s luster as one of the most promising figures in the local party. He carried Harris County, did well in traditionally Republican precincts, and is primed to…
Best Margarita
These sublime concoctions are undoubtedly best enjoyed alfresco, and to do so there is no place better than the Guatemalan/Mexican surf-and-turf, El Pueblito Place. First, there’s the marg itself, which is tartly delicious as any in town and comes in large, extra large, and call-a-cab sizes. Then there are the…
Best Seviche
It’s crystal clear why the seviche is better at Urbana, the hip Montrose spot that’s as cool as the blue ocean itself. The clean, crisp marinade of lime juice — aided by a kick of jalapeos, cilantro, red onions and just a few diced tomatoes — lets the flavor of…
Best Big Idea
New York has the Statue of Liberty; Paris has the Eiffel Tower; St. Louis has the arch; even Huntsville has big old Sam Houston. And what does Houston have? Well, if architect Doug Michels, industrial designer Peter Bollinger and sculptor Cybele Rowe have their way, this car city will have…
Best Smell
The best smell? Coffee, of course. And there’s no bigger coffee smell in town than the odor steaming out of Kraft’s Maxwell House factory, a few blocks (and miles of attitude) east of Enron Field. Most days the prevailing winds blow that smell, ooh that smell, in a northwesterly direction,…
Best Custard
The boardwalks of the Jersey Shore are dotted with Kohr Brothers custard stands, and generations of Garden Staters are grateful. Now the company has moved to Houston, and even if your cone won’t be accompanied by the smell of a nearby stand grilling up a sausage-and-peppers sandwich, you can still…
Best Bakery
A few weeks back we heard a woman walk into the bakery and say she was new to the neighborhood and needed to find a good place to order a cake for her mother’s upcoming birthday celebration. If there were such a thing as the dessert jackpot, this woman had…
Best Exterminator
The founder, owner, operator and sole employee of Bugs & Burglars is Roy Law Elliot, a Houston native who has also been, at one time or another, the owner of Doctor Doom’s Garage of Mystery (a legendary Volkswagen repair facility in Berkeley, California), a counterculture T-shirt silk screener (12 designs…
Best New Restaurant
Late at night, downtown Houston is awash in lights, a nonstop fashion show of men in black and women in too-high heels and drop-dead dresses. For this crowd, only the wildest, most electrifying dining experience will do. And Saba rises to the occasion. The Small Plates menu is a list…
Best Disco Restaurant
Even though the quasi-Southern food threatens to steal the show, Zula’s decor really dances with over-the-top whimsy. The deco design is a sleek palette of shimmery chartreuse, plum and gold that serves as a modest backdrop to the 20-foot torchère lamps lining the long dining room. Throwing off flashes of…
Best Jamaican Restaurant
With a loping reggae beat in the background, barely discernable over boisterous Friday-night clusters of customers in the crowded storefront, Caribbean Cuisine is an easy place to be. The smell of curry cuts through the air, and the swinging door that leads into the kitchen flaps open as a cook…
Best Retro Mexican Food
These are the restaurants where to a native or longtime Houstonian, everybody knows your face, if not your name. Those willing to stomach greasy cheese enchiladas with a heart-unwise dollop of dubious chili con carne aboard are growing fewer by the day, perhaps owing in no small part to their…
Best Italian Restaurant
It is overwhelming to walk in the front door of this dark and clubby old haunt. To your left, there’s the reception stand, where you are offered an uncommonly gracious greeting. Right in front of you, a fabulous array of antipasti plates is spread out on a low table. To…
Best Thai Restaurant
In timid Thai fashion, the owners of Thai Cottage tiptoed onto the Houston restaurant scene four years ago, settled into a nondescript storefront between a sprawling H-E-B and a Domino’s Pizza and quietly started cooking. They concentrated on the food, spending their money on the freshest ingredients rather than extensive…
Best Local Boy Made Good
This former education dean at Texas Southern University rode the Republican express from an HISD trustee post to district superintendent to George Bush’s secretary of education. Paige, whose college doctoral thesis was on the response times of collegiate football linemen, embraced the TAAS testing mania to score glory and hype…
Best Area Team
Being an Astros fan is never easy. If the team breezes to a division title, it gets knocked out in the first round of the playoffs. (If it struggles to a division title, it gets knocked out just as early.) The team seems inherently incapable of taking the big step…
Best Place to Drink Bloody Marys
Forget brunch. We submit that the best time for a Bloody Mary is when you’re bowling. Bowling can make you thirsty (it’s a sport, you know), and Bloody Marys are light and refreshing. But they’re also strong enough to help you take yourself a little less seriously in rented shoes…
Best New Downtown Bar
When it comes to drinking, we prefer to imbibe free of industrial dance beats and blinding strobes. Of course, we don’t mind the beautiful people who tend to gather at those high-tech nightclubs. That’s the great thing about Grasshopper/Red Lights: Downstairs, you can sit at the Grasshopper’s long, curved, glass-top…
Best Actresses
The entire estrogen-laden cast of Stages’ production of Anton in Show Business packed such a cohesive punch of acting chemistry that the award goes to the entire group. There was Singerman, who had the unnerving job of acting from a seat in the audience. Bonasso’s naive Texas character was all…
Best Cheese Selection
If they don’t have the kind of cheese you want, and it’s available in the United States, they’ll find it and order some. That’s one mighty big if, though, with a selection in the neighborhood of something like 500 different cheeses, with 588 (“weighed” and “not weighed”) listed on their…
Best Place to Buy Roses
Before Metro decided to tear up Main and Fannin at the same time, we used to like to run down to the flower district north of the Medical Center to pick up a dozen roses if we were in love, in trouble, or both. But now that the area resembles…
Best Bird-Watching Outside City Limits
Galveston’s Stewart Road is unknown to all but the most curious of island day-trippers. Running parallel to FM 3005 from 61st Street all the way to 13 Mile Road, this scenic byway cuts through the live oak-studded pastures and salt marshes that offer up a hint of what Galveston must…
Best Indian Restaurant
Walls of shimmering glass beads separate intimate booths. A chef kneads dough and fires up the traditional tandoori clay oven right before your eyes. The food makes you love vegetables you used to hate. And the chef- recommended combinations serve up just the right variety of tastes for the novice…
Best Music Series
The Friends of Conroe have hit on something: good music in a good setting. For the past two years, the group has booked a combination of musicians who don’t usually play together — for example, Terry Allen and Guy Clark — and put them into the beautifully restored old theater…
Best Fusion Mussels
Deciding on an appetizer can be a weighty decision with Farrago’s global cuisine, which has included such world-champion contenders as chili-cured tenderloin, Asian barbecue duck and jerk chicken wings. But we’re decidedly mussel-bound, reaching repeatedly for the curried mussels. Chef Todd Stevens has really raised the culinary bar with this…
Best Veggie Burger
As more and more converts are discovering every day, ya don’t need a cow to make a delicious burger. And no one knows that better than Hungry’s. Their veggie version can go head-to-head with those patties o’ flesh any day. Hungry’s starts with a toasted whole-wheat bun, dabs a little…
Best Restoration Project
Of course, the travesties continue: tearing down the old Gulf Publishing building on Allen Parkway, bulldozing bits and pieces of the precious past, flushing out Houston’s final habitat hideaways for the sake of nothing more than the sameness of another new Rolling-Creek-Timber-Valley-Plantation-Estates subdivision. But the Bayou City shows more indications…
Playbill
As it turns out, Tricky’s been making records even he hates — contract-killers, he might call them, if not audience-killers. (Everything since 1995’s Maxinquaye has been one “fuck-off” record after another, he explains, as in the “Fuck off, I’m not giving people what they want” he offers in his new…
Best Local Television Reporter
Mary Benton stands out in the KPRC-TV crowd as a tough, capable, “no frills just the story” reporter. She was omnipresent during the aftermath of the June 9 flood, holding court in knee-deep water clad in galoshes and wielding a cordless mike. A native of Harlingen, Benton earned a journalism…
Best Band Name
Houston’s band names are in a rut. Great swaths of them fail to inspire anything at all. Not a smile, not a chuckle, not an appreciative nod — nada. Instead, all too many bands try to be clever by spelling, capitalizing and punctuating oddly (Soular Slide, dr:op:fr:am+e, 30footFALL). Among our…
Best Name for a Beer Joint
The beer joint or honky-tonk that really had the best name in Houston, Bugeyed Mary’s, sadly went out of business this past year. The runner-up is the Stroker Club. A stroker in car salesman parlance is a customer who does not have the means or the intention to buy an…
Best Lobbyists
This preeminent Houston political power couple is in the middle of a slow-motion divorce proceeding, possibly because their business affairs are impossible to untangle. Between them they represent just about anything that could be considered establishment in Houston. Sue raised money for mayor Bob Lanier, handles incumbent Lee Brown’s finances,…
Best Breakfast Tacos
Houston’s unique brand of spontaneous fusion is in full flower on Telephone Road. Formerly home to the white middle class, now part Asian and part Hispanic, Telephone crosses all the lines. Shipway began its life as a run-of-the-mill doughnut shop, and then it was purchased by a Hispanic family who…
Best Radio Commentary
Speaking up for Texas convicts is a thankless task, but Marta Glass takes it on with a righteousness that more often than not achieves a certain eloquence. Glass was (and is) a volunteer in charge of prison issues for the ACLU’s Houston chapter — she still gets 25 to 30…
Best Local Cable Television Personalities
The unlikely triad of David Jones, Gloria Gonzalez Roemer and Gary Polland presents the only real weekly political talk show in town, Politics Unplugged. Jones is a veteran criminal defense attorney and Democratic activist who used to host his own cable show. Roemer, who produces Politics Unplugged, formerly chaired the…
Best 15 Minutes of Fame
Sure, they love him out in Sugar Land, but to many people across this country, U.S. Representative Tom DeLay is a bombastic, moralistic, self-righteous — you get the idea. So when his adult daughter, who works for him, hit the newspapers in a story about Las Vegas hot tubs, lobbyists,…
Best Lard Nar
Sure, the name doesn’t sound appealing. But there’s nothing but joy to be had in the steaming plate of lard nar prepared for you at Thai Spice. There is no lard in lard nar. Thick rice noodles, softer than an angel’s pillow, are covered in a secret house gravy. Broccoli…
Best African-Mexican Food Store
Here’s an only-in-Houston experience that defies easy explanation. The owner dresses in authentic Nigerian garb, and the music pulses with the beat of big African drums. And the place sells African, Caribbean and Yucatecan cooking ingredients. If you’re wondering what East Mexican and West African foods have in common, check…
Best Wine Store
There is nothing quite like Christopher’s in Houston. The creation of the husband-and-wife team of Christopher and Donna Massie, this 6,000-square-foot, single-venue operation offers rare wines that sometimes are allocated by growers and importers to less than one case for the entire state of Texas. French wines are showcased here,…
Best Service
Diners know the regrettable cycle all too well. A restaurant invests a fortune in fancy furnishings, fine food and a gourmet chef. Then an unfocused waitstaff spoils it all. The only spoiling to be found at Resa’s Prime Steakhouse is the pampering of customers. Crowds regularly fill this Champions-area restaurant,…
Best Socio-Anthropological Study
A rare but boisterous black-leathered-biker eruption over by the 50-cent pool tables sends the timid scattering toward the bar, but seasoned Big Easy patrons look up to ensure no bottles are flying in their direction and continue their conversations, which are not always easy to hear over the R&B that…
Best Pizzeria
You don’t need to take the title of this restaurant literally to know that the pizza served here is unique. In actuality, there isn’t much flying going on at all — but there is some of the best-tasting Italian pie in the city. For 30 years Antonio’s has been offering…
Best Family Gathering Restaurant
This is not an illusion. That is your teenager being entertained, even enthralled, while dining out with (gasp!) the family. And yes, there are your own parents, chuckling at the comedian’s risqué double entendres mingled with their polite dinner conversation. The reason for this harmony spanning the generation gap from…
Best Middle Eastern Restaurant
The splashes of different colors in the serving line that greet customers when they open the door of Fadi’s look like an overworked artist’s palette, but it’s a Middle Eastern palate that will appreciate the expansive array of foods served there. Moderation is next to impossible. One could easily fill…
Best Restaurant
The menu at Aries changes daily under the direction of chef-owner Scott Tycer, who improvises with the seasons. To call Tycer an artist doesn’t do him justice. He is something even better. He is a culinary genius who has grown up and gotten over himself. Originally from Houston, Tycer spent…
Best Easter Bunny
From beginning to end, Rick Hurt spent a total of 15 days impersonating the Easter Bunny under a giant Fabergé-like egg at the Galleria this last spring. For a little over a fortnight, Rick gave up his other gigs — impersonating Bette Midler, dressing up as a fairy, or a…
Best Use of Taxpayer Dollars
Buffalo Bayou, the stream that spawned Houston in 1836, is well on its way back from city cesspool to civic asset thanks to a combined public-private $25 million effort. Landscaped hike-and-bike trails now run on both the north and south banks of the bayou from Shepherd on the west under…
Best Republican
This hyper-congenial county tax assessor-collector has burnished his image with consumer-oriented reforms, while at the same time utilizing the office as an attack arm of the local GOP. Bettencourt has churned out studies criticizing Mayor Lee Brown’s tax policies, not so coincidentally the identical position as his political mentor, Harris…
Best New Construction
Critic Ann Holmes once called Jones Plaza the single most hostile block in Houston. It was stark and forbidding, built so high off the street that passersby couldn’t see its top. It sat essentially unused except for events like Party on the Plaza. That’s all changing now. Architect Mark Wamble,…
Best Icehouse Stage
They don’t call it the Shady Tavern for nothing. The “tavern” part is really more of an icehouse, but the “shady” part — an expansive side yard — is blessedly covered with plenty of tall sheltering trees. And nestled among the pines in this low-rent bar west of the Heights…
Best Place to Buy Stuffed Animals
Lions and tigers and bears — oh, my! You’ll find these creatures plus monkeys and turtles and alligators at Animal Creations. All sorts of fuzzy friends await you in this plush menagerie. Like the jungle, Animal Creations is home to a varied and diverse population. Say you’re looking for a…
Best Wash-and-Fold
For decades this Montrose mom-and-pop institution has been doing what everyone hates to do: your laundry. Get your clothes in by 7 a.m. and you can have them back by 5 p.m. Your shirts will be on hangers, and everything else will be neatly folded and packed in a plastic…
Best Gym
All things being fairly equal in the equipment and weights department, what makes a gym stand out? For us, it’s cleanliness. Immaculate describes Fitness Exchange, with personnel making sure it stays that way all throughout the day. A smudge on a mirror lasts less than an hour before someone comes…
Best Taco Stand
This fortifying quick stop, hovering just beyond westbound traffic, has nothing on the menu a healthy handful of quarters can’t buy. Breakfast is offered, but it’s the afternoon tacos we seek. The packaging of our regular pair is impressive, balling up in the palm of our hand as we bite…
Best Self- Assessment Question
In the heat of August, they came to the Westin Galleria — well over a thousand people enduring the heat in order to get a shot at being on the quiz show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. Once inside, they were given a 35-question multiple-choice test and 12 minutes…
Best Bread
As you wind through the maze of Houston’s Central Market, past the exotic fruits, past the clam aquarium, past the 17 kinds of rice, you eventually come to an enormous shopping-cart traffic jam in the store’s right rear corner. This is where the best bread in the city is being…
Best Custard
The boardwalks of the Jersey Shore are dotted with Kohr Brothers custard stands, and generations of Garden Staters are grateful. Now the company has moved to Houston, and even if your cone won’t be accompanied by the smell of a nearby stand grilling up a sausage-and-peppers sandwich, you can still…
Best Smell
The best smell? Coffee, of course. And there’s no bigger coffee smell in town than the odor steaming out of Kraft’s Maxwell House factory, a few blocks (and miles of attitude) east of Enron Field. Most days the prevailing winds blow that smell, ooh that smell, in a northwesterly direction,…
Playbill
Sure, the Tim “Ripper” Owens story is pretty compelling. Going-nowhere dude ekes out a living in Akron, Ohio, fronting a Judas Priest tribute band called British Steel. A world away, Priest parts company with founding vocalist Rob Halford, whose hard partying didn’t sit well with the band, and whose coming…
Best Director
Jon Marans’s Pulitzer Prize finalist, Old Wicked Songs, is an elegant, understated play about art, music and the exquisitely terrible power of history. In it, two Jewish musicians find themselves in Austria, one of the most paradoxical places in all of the Western world, for it gave us Mozart, Schubert…
Best Salsa Dancing
Salsa gets hot in Houston. Almost every club in town these days features “Salsa Night,” where the scene is set and the floor is full. Some are new; others have a past. Downtown has entered the fray, with Prague on Tuesdays and Sambuca on Thursdays. The draw is big, but…
Best Response to a Houston Press Story
Minister Aubrey Vaughan’s literary diatribe against “sodomites,” a response to his being quoted in The Insider advocating shipping gays to an island and leaving them there, appeared in the March 8 issue of the Houston Press. Vaughan took exception to the suggestion that he had been watching too many episodes…
Best Republican
This hyper-congenial county tax assessor-collector has burnished his image with consumer-oriented reforms, while at the same time utilizing the office as an attack arm of the local GOP. Bettencourt has churned out studies criticizing Mayor Lee Brown’s tax policies, not so coincidentally the identical position as his political mentor, Harris…
Best Fried Chicken
Old-timers remember the era when Sunday afternoons meant post-church meals where anything but fried chicken would constitute outright heresy. Now the special repast is almost strictly the domain of fast-food joints. Fox Diner pays due homage to the heritage of fried chicken on Sunday. While the cooks of past eras…
Best Traveling Show
A tiny European troupe of actors who call themselves Spymonkey leaped into Houston this past spring and landed with a hysterical thump at Theater LaB. Their naughty, limber clowning glittered with Monty Python-style absurdity and Addams Family spookiness, but what else would you expect from a show about the burial…
Best Radio Talk Show
Dick is probably the second-most famous of the four golfing Harmon brothers, taking a backseat only to Butch, who is of course the golfing guru to Tiger Woods. Teamed with station regulars Lance Zerlein and John Granato, Harmon is informative and, more important, entertaining — even if you don’t play…
Best Court Ruling
Bradshaw v. Utility Marine Corporation, et al. is no one’s idea of a landmark case, but the Galveston lawsuit has achieved the kind of instant immortality that’s possible only now in the Internet age. Federal judge Sam Kent has long been known for his hair-trigger temper and utter lack of…
Best Jamaican Patties
It’s becoming increasingly hard to find a spot where you can get a decent, tasty Jamaican patty. The cats over at Bluemountain have some beef and chicken patties that are worth the trip all the way out to West Bellfort. Located in the same strip mall as Club Riddims, this…
Best Cheese Selection
If they don’t have the kind of cheese you want, and it’s available in the United States, they’ll find it and order some. That’s one mighty big if, though, with a selection in the neighborhood of something like 500 different cheeses, with 588 (“weighed” and “not weighed”) listed on their…
Best Russian Grocery
This cheery newcomer, way out west on Memorial at Kirkwood, is targeted at Houston’s 40,000 plus Russophone community. Even if you know less about Russia than, say, a Republican ambassador to Moscow, you can still profitably explore the spiffy, well-lit aisles for unusual goods like Cornelian cherry compote or smoked…
Best Comfort Food
When you’re sad and lonely and nothing seems to be going right, you want to eat something that satisfies more than the emptiness inside. Comfort foods have a connection to warmth and safety and days when you had nothing to worry about. Fifth grade, when you came home from school…
Best Tex-Mex Restaurant
Former waitress Geneva Harper was here when Felix’s flagship location at Westheimer and Montrose opened in 1948. “The cheese enchiladas with chili gravy on the Mexican Dinner haven’t changed at all since the place opened,” she says. “Except that a Mexican Dinner went for 50 cents in 1948.” Like a…
Best Neighborhood Spot in Bellaire
The hiss-sizzle of the grill is always in the background. The grill cook stands over his domain holding a spatula in the air like a Victorian detective with a magnifying glass. He wheels around with a finished order to place it on the counter, barely missing a fast-moving waitress, who…
Best Neighborhood Spot in Montrose
Everyone needs a third place to hang out — after home and work — and Brasil fulfills that role for lots of Montrose-area residents. If Brasil had a slogan, it would be “Where the artsy-fartsy folks meet.” Chances of running into a musician, writer, artist or designer of some sort…
Best Cheap Seafood Restaurant
The exterior of Barnacle’s doesn’t even scrape the surface of what’s in store inside. This deceivingly decrepit place is downright cheery, with high ceilings, loads of plants (okay, so they’re fake) and the expected seaside motif of netting and anchors. But the best reason to dive deep into southwest Houston…
Best Value
You want a hot meal served to you, and you want it now, and you’ve only got $5 in your pocket. So get your hungry self over to Andy’s. When? It doesn’t matter. The Houston institution is open 24 hours a day, and the friendly service is fast, fast, fast…
Best Local Girl Made Good
The Diana Ross of Destiny’s Child is the crossover queen of pop at the moment, with platinum albums and a starring role in MTV’s sultry Hip Hopera, Carmen. It’s a Knowles family affair, with father Mathew as Svengali manager, and mother Tina as group costume designer and beautician. Not only…
Best Bird-Watching Outside City Limits
Galveston’s Stewart Road is unknown to all but the most curious of island day-trippers. Running parallel to FM 3005 from 61st Street all the way to 13 Mile Road, this scenic byway cuts through the live oak-studded pastures and salt marshes that offer up a hint of what Galveston must…
Best Bike Path
Would you believe Houston has more than 200 miles of bikeways? Well, it’s true. And the West White Oak Bayou Trail comprises five of the best. Just a year old, the 12-foot-wide concrete path follows its namesake bayou from T.C. Jester at 11th Street in the Heights up to Pinemont,…
Best Place to Buy Pounded Yams
“The world was silent except for the shrill cry of insects, which was part of the night, and the sound of wooden mortar and pestle as Nwayieke pounded her foo-foo,” writes Chinua Achebe in his 1959 novel Things Fall Apart. He is describing a scene as basic to traditional Nigerian…
Best Actor
As usual, John Tyson stole the show when he showed up on the Alley Theatre’s stage during Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream with big blown-up balloon boobs tucked in his shirt. He was Flute, who plays Thisby in Shakespeare’s play inside the play. And it makes delicious sense that Tyson, Houston’s…
Best Yerbería
From an unassuming shopping strip off Bellaire Boulevard, Francisco Garza offers customers “cures” for their heartbreaks and health woes in the best healing tradition of Mexico. His yerbería is chock-full of the teas, herbs, soaps and votive candles that folks believe will win them love, luck and even cures for…
Best Thrift Store
The two most important words when it comes to thrift store shopping are quality and quantity. Value Village is both. Those of you who are pros at this kind of shopping will fall to your knees and thank the thrift gods above that this store exists. Rookies at fossicking have…
Best Sports Bar
Ain’t nuttin’ fancy ’bout Nick’s. And “nuttin'” is definitely the way it’s pronounced around here, where the Up Nawth atmosphere is thick (the Web site offers links to the official team sites for the Rockets, the Astros and the Green Bay Packers). Nick’s ain’t no flashy, Vegas-style establishment with TVs…
Best Greek Restaurant
What’s the best Greek restaurant in Houston? The choice is obvious! Bibas Greek Pizza is one of only a few of Houston’s more than 8,000 eateries to have the word “Greek” in its name. You could look it up. The spot, in a converted fast-food emporium next door to President…
Best Result of a Houston Premiere
Former Houston Oiler Bo Eason workshopped his one-man play, Runt of the Litter, in New York and L.A., but when it came time to premiere the piece, he came back to Houston. The production at Stages Repertory Theatre drew large crowds to watch as Eason’s fictional alter ego laid bare…
Best Pasta
It’s not just noodles anymore, and they don’t all come from Italy, so put that redneck mentality aside and take a look at the rainbow of international pastas that make Houston a regular pasta jungle and their gustation a celebration. Better yet, take a father and son of Armenian descent…
Best Lard Nar
Sure, the name doesn’t sound appealing. But there’s nothing but joy to be had in the steaming plate of lard nar prepared for you at Thai Spice. There is no lard in lard nar. Thick rice noodles, softer than an angel’s pillow, are covered in a secret house gravy. Broccoli…
Best 15 Minutes of Fame
Sure, they love him out in Sugar Land, but to many people across this country, U.S. Representative Tom DeLay is a bombastic, moralistic, self-righteous — you get the idea. So when his adult daughter, who works for him, hit the newspapers in a story about Las Vegas hot tubs, lobbyists,…
Minibill
“Big beat a cappella” is how this multiethnic Austin septet aptly describes itself, before moving on to clarify a little. “Like Stomp! meets Bobby McFerrin” and “Riverdance-Cappella” are but two alternate synopses of the all-male vocal troupe. This Cat purrs along through the modern soul/hip-hop/urban landscape on feet and hands…
Best Radio Sidekick
Try though we may, we don’t always get geek humor. But Peter Hughes has a way of clueing technophobes into the joke. No ordinary straight man, Hughes is a Web developer for J.P. Morgan Chase Bank during the day. At night — or at least Wednesday nights — he is…
Best Place to Be Glad You’re Alive
On Sundays, some people go to church. But who says church has to mean uncomfortable pews, a minister and communion wafers? Couldn’t it also be a back room, Grady Gaines and a cold bottle of Schlitz? We say yes, it can. If you agree, then there is no better place…
Best Local Television Commercial
What with so many different local businesses from which to choose, we avoided the temptation to go with any guy holding up a wad of cash; a man wearing a bean bag chair; two dapper fellows who knock knuckles over clothing prices; a self-described “crazy” man with a double-billed baseball…
Best View
‘Twas the endlessly quotable Townes Van Zandt who sang the line “No prettier sight than looking back on a town you left behind,” and even if that judgment did arrive in a song called, paradoxically, “I’ll Be Here in the Morning,” the sentiment stands. Your life was waterlogged in the…
Best Plantains
When we say plantains, we aren’t talking about those crunchy chips you find in a bag of trail mix. No, we’re talking plantains here, the ones you peel and fry up in a pan. Most restaurants will serve up slabs of fruit from plantain purgatory, soft and pretty yellow on…
Best Club for Local Acts
Toby Blunt, Mary Jane’s manager, is the last of a dying breed. If you are a local band and need a place to play, chances are Toby — an experienced local musician himself — will work something out. He doesn’t book any one genre of band. Over the past seven…
Best Bar Decor
In a city in which most bar owners’ decorative aesthetic runs toward merely plastering the walls and ceilings with garish beer and liquor ads, the 141-year-old La Carafe (which over the decades has been an Indian trading post, a steam bakery and a Pony Express stop) stands out like a…
Best Lost Monument
“Trophy” may be too strong a word for this apparently abandoned behemoth: a concrete block, presumably of Portland cement, standing near seven feet high and about five feet wide, featuring a high relief of some sort of Greco-Roman figures, and the inscription: “Awarded Trinity Portland Cement Company Houston Texas Plant…
Best Nachos
Everyone agrees on the basic ingredients for nachos — and yet no dish seems to be more diverse in interpretation. It ranges from the runny goulash of Enron Field, that stuff that looks more suited for the disposal, to the barren terrain of only token enhancements at too many establishments…
Best Place to Buy Stuffed Animals
Lions and tigers and bears — oh, my! You’ll find these creatures plus monkeys and turtles and alligators at Animal Creations. All sorts of fuzzy friends await you in this plush menagerie. Like the jungle, Animal Creations is home to a varied and diverse population. Say you’re looking for a…
Best Place to Buy Roses
Before Metro decided to tear up Main and Fannin at the same time, we used to like to run down to the flower district north of the Medical Center to pick up a dozen roses if we were in love, in trouble, or both. But now that the area resembles…
Best Vietnamese Restaurant
Tucked out of the way in a shopping center just off the Southwest Freeway, Vietopia is a haven for lovers of upscale Asian food. The elegant two-story dining room recalls Indochina’s French colonial era with bamboo mechanical fans, tropical greenery and waiters in long white aprons. The food is far…
Best Old Downtown Restaurant That’s Still There
Around noon on most days, influential veterans of Houston — judges, top cops, city administrators, elite lawyers and the like — start a quiet southern migration away from the ever-expanding zone of trendy eateries on the north side of downtown. They ease into the boxy, windowless old shell of a…
Best Family Restaurant
Families on a budget may have the best of all worlds: a casual counter cafe with gourmet flair. Soccer moms and dads flock to these cheery, Southwestern-adorned restaurants, both of which sport popular deck seating for adults who long to linger and video games for kids who must fidget with…
Best Nigerian Restaurant
“This is an African restaurant,” Uzo Ebenebe Ibekwe cautions newcomers to Genesis Restaurant. The native Nigerian relaxes into a broad smile when the visitors tell her they are eager for a culinary adventure. The menu is a tour of her country’s favorite dishes, from fufu (pounded yams) to stockfish and…
Best Late-Night Restaurant
So good, you’ve got to say it twice, Tan Tan Fast Food is everything a late-night venue should be: big, cheap and fast fast. This Chinatown diner serves mostly Vietnamese dishes with some Cantonese options, but be forewarned: There are over 400 dishes to choose from (87 in the soups…
Best Fusion of Folk and Food
Housed in a vintage gas station (hence the name), the Food Filling Station should be included among Houston’s funky folk-art environments on the Orange Show’s Eye-Openers tour. Surrounded by colorfully painted wrought-iron fencing, interspersed with wine bottles overturned in cement, its authentic gas pumps stand at attention alongside such collectibles…
Best Civil Court Judge
Sure, this jurist was plenty enthusiastic about assuming the bench. Tad Halbach came equipped with a solid sense of humor and a levelheaded nature that meant that the most voracious of attorneys weren’t going to push him around. But other newcomers also have landed a judicial post with that kind…
Best Fusion Street
You can tell a lot about Houston, past and present, by driving along the in-transition thoroughfare. As in many parts of the city, new upscale condos and town homes are springing forth, even across the street from historic Glenwood Cemetery, where Howard Hughes Jr. and several Texas governors are taking…
Best View
‘Twas the endlessly quotable Townes Van Zandt who sang the line “No prettier sight than looking back on a town you left behind,” and even if that judgment did arrive in a song called, paradoxically, “I’ll Be Here in the Morning,” the sentiment stands. Your life was waterlogged in the…
Best Dog Whisperer
Got a pampered pooch with persistent problems? We heard about Pete Stewart’s Good Manners Dog Obedience School through a friend who owns three huskies. Figuring someone with a pack of dogs oughta know, we checked it out for ourselves. Like most “parents,” we were a little apprehensive about dropping our…
Best Downtown Bar That Deserves to Be There
The explosion of downtown drinking establishments provides crowds with more choices than ever for the forays into the central city: disco, rock, retro, high-dollar, lowbrow, jazz, freak/geek/sleek and so on. And that makes the other option — none of the above — that much more valuable for visitors and regulars…
Best Watch Repair
For more than 30 years the Wheeler Watch Clinic sat near the grubby corner of Wheeler and Main. Now it’s nowhere to be found on Wheeler. Don’t worry. It kept the name, but moved down the street more than a year ago. Now the modest little shop sits at Main…
Best Asian Grocery
You can tell right away that Dynasty Supermarket is an authentic Asian market when you walk in, because of one telltale sign: It stinks like fish. There to the left are the fish swarming in overcrowded tanks, and in another tub crabs crawl over each other, spitlike bubbles forming as…
Best Public Tennis Courts
Not all tennis stars are raised on pristine country club courts under the watchful eye of a sweater-wearing coach named Rex. Some make it through the local communist athletic program. Venus and Serena Williams had neither luxury. Instead, they sweated it out on the public courts of Compton, in California,…
Best Theater Season
Stages set the pace for the entire theatrical season with its boisterous production of Jane Martin’s Anton in Show Business. After that, artistic director Rob Bundy never looked back. Some of the best productions included the strange and disturbing comedy about a group of suits from corporate America in Laura…
Best Local Television News Anchor
Despite a marital breakup and a long-running battle with multiple sclerosis, this daughter of a preacher man remains one of the pillars of stability at Channel 13. As an anchor and reporter, Melanie Cerise Lawson conveys empathy, poise and intelligence. The last is not surprising, given her Princeton undergraduate credentials…
Best Empanadas
An order of empanadas at Café Red Onion is a trip around the world in which fresh medleys of flavors flatter each other in encounters that are interesting even in a place that prides itself on its culinary theme of Latin fusion. The light-crusted, deep-fried pies, served up in a…
Best Jamaican Patties
It’s becoming increasingly hard to find a spot where you can get a decent, tasty Jamaican patty. The cats over at Bluemountain have some beef and chicken patties that are worth the trip all the way out to West Bellfort. Located in the same strip mall as Club Riddims, this…
Best Court Ruling
Bradshaw v. Utility Marine Corporation, et al. is no one’s idea of a landmark case, but the Galveston lawsuit has achieved the kind of instant immortality that’s possible only now in the Internet age. Federal judge Sam Kent has long been known for his hair-trigger temper and utter lack of…
She Will Survive
The Italian film Bread and Tulips is a first cousin once removed of the American comedy Home Alone. A tremendous hit in its home country (it won nine Donatello awards last year, the Italian equivalent of the Oscars), it concerns a woman who, on a bus holiday with her family,…
Best Local Television Personalities
Give the rest of the world Emeril (please!), we’ll keep Houston’s very own Johnny Carrabba and Damian Mandola. We can forgive this Italian restaurant family empire for taping the show in New York, because there is no question when you watch them that these guys call the Bayou City home…
Best New Houston Oddity
This is a city that doesn’t use the term “oddity” lightly. There’s a pretty high hurdle you’ve got to jump before you can be mentioned in the same breath as the Orange Show, the Art Car Museum or the Beer Can House. So when the mind behind “scar art,” Dolan…
Best Support Group
Sure, the Clutterless Recovery Group has its merits, and a good many more of us should be visiting Anger Management, but when it comes to mutual support, the Genesis Ballet is tops in our book. Interestingly enough, the dance company didn’t start out that way. According to the troupe’s founder,…
Best Activist
When tempers flared last summer over an ad hoc day-labor site near Kingwood, one man stepped in to help broker talks between the immigrant workers, aggrieved business owners upset about the massing of men on their property, and Montgomery County sheriff’s officials. That man was Benito Juárez, then-coordinator for the…
Best Fusion Mussels
Deciding on an appetizer can be a weighty decision with Farrago’s global cuisine, which has included such world-champion contenders as chili-cured tenderloin, Asian barbecue duck and jerk chicken wings. But we’re decidedly mussel-bound, reaching repeatedly for the curried mussels. Chef Todd Stevens has really raised the culinary bar with this…
Best Production
The 2000-2001 Houston theater season (which ended up being as exciting as a glass of lukewarm water) started out with a great gush of roaring energy. Jane Martin’s explosively funny Anton in Show Business reigned supreme from Stages Repertory Theatre over the entire season. The screamingly funny show focused on…
Best Bar Mom
Good bars are always established around solid personalities — and the best inevitably become maternal institutions for the patrons. Liz Knox learned early on how to succeed in the often slippery business world of drinking establishments. With more than three decades under her belt, she can finally look back and…
Best Tree
Four mammoth branches dangle to the ground like elephant trunks. They snake along the grass like knee-bound penitents scraping to a pilgrimage’s end, only to rise again to the height of small trees to drink in the sun. The live oak at Elizabeth Baldwin Park is one twisted granddaddy of…
Best Dim Sum
Go for a table in the middle of one of the two gigantic dining rooms. If you sit at the corner of two aisles, you will double your luck. It may sound greedy now, but wait until you’ve had Kim Son’s dim sum! Colorful xiu mai with a fluffy shrimp…
Best YerberÃa
From an unassuming shopping strip off Bellaire Boulevard, Francisco Garza offers customers “cures” for their heartbreaks and health woes in the best healing tradition of Mexico. His yerbería is chock-full of the teas, herbs, soaps and votive candles that folks believe will win them love, luck and even cures for…
Best Wash-and-Fold
For decades this Montrose mom-and-pop institution has been doing what everyone hates to do: your laundry. Get your clothes in by 7 a.m. and you can have them back by 5 p.m. Your shirts will be on hangers, and everything else will be neatly folded and packed in a plastic…
Best Indian Restaurant
Walls of shimmering glass beads separate intimate booths. A chef kneads dough and fires up the traditional tandoori clay oven right before your eyes. The food makes you love vegetables you used to hate. And the chef- recommended combinations serve up just the right variety of tastes for the novice…
Best Vietnamese/ Mexican Restaurant
New York may have a lock on the Chinese/Cuban restaurant thing, but Houston is leading in the Vietnamese/Mexican category. Well, actually, Matt’s Fast Foods on 43rd Street may be the only Vietnamese/ Mexican restaurant, here or anywhere. There’s a golden Buddha near the front door and a painting of a…
Best Chinese Restaurant
This place is so authentic there’s hardly any English on the menu. Plus, it’s filled with Chinese people — always a good sign when selecting an ethnic restaurant. Here we recommend the pork with snow pea leaves and the chicken and asparagus. We always order too much and say we’ll…
Best Salvadoran Restaurant
You will not find iced tea at Variedades. Instead, you can slake your thirst with wonderfully refreshing aguas — tall glasses of melon and other fresh-fruit drinks with bits of pulp. Set in a large room with off-white walls and burgundy tablecloths, Variedades has simple, understated decor. The flavors are…
Best Neighborhood Spot in the Galleria Area
The Friends crowd that inhabits the apartments along Fountainview, as well as their more established neighbors in Tanglewood and Briargrove, pack this tiny sidewalk cafe, which is as casual as a backyard barbecue and about as economical. The gimmick here is BYOB, with a small corking fee, but fortunately a…
Best Place to Skip Dinner and Get to Dessert
The problem with dining at the Epicure Café is that the well-lit case of desserts beckons during your whole meal. Sure, the lemon chicken is in fact quite lemony and generously seasoned, making your taste buds tingle. And the salads are nicely balanced. But these meals are no match for…
Best Balcony
Do you remember the ’80s dance song by Yello, the one that had the vocal line that stretched out in a deep bass? That’s the feeling you get on a Friday evening in September when the flaming fist of Queen Bitch Summer has begun to loosen and you stroll out…
Best Gym
All things being fairly equal in the equipment and weights department, what makes a gym stand out? For us, it’s cleanliness. Immaculate describes Fitness Exchange, with personnel making sure it stays that way all throughout the day. A smudge on a mirror lasts less than an hour before someone comes…
Best Houston Comet
In the first season following Cynthia Cooper’s premature retirement, fans were looking forward to Sheryl Swoopes to carry the team to its fifth WNBA championship. But when a knee injury sidelined Sheryl for the entire season, Tina Thompson took over at forward, with Janeth Arcain as her support at guard…
Best Band Name
Houston’s band names are in a rut. Great swaths of them fail to inspire anything at all. Not a smile, not a chuckle, not an appreciative nod — nada. Instead, all too many bands try to be clever by spelling, capitalizing and punctuating oddly (Soular Slide, dr:op:fr:am+e, 30footFALL). Among our…
Best Designer
Steven K. Barnett’s exquisite set built into the wide-open space at Atomic Cafe for Infernal Bridegroom’s production of Maria Irene Fornes’s The Danube was most charming for all its stunning detail. Painterly and delicate, the minimalist creation started with a stage Barnett built in the middle of the playing space…
Best Place to Buy African Clothing
Vitalis Onu recoils at flowing, overelaborate garments that prompt onlookers to query, “Who’s that prince?” For Onu, the creator of the fashion line Citalis, the key is graceful simplicity. That principle is evident throughout the native Nigerian’s vibrant showroom in an office building on Richmond near Hillcroft. The racks overflow…
Best Bookstore
Sure, we’re the types who would tend to go for the independent bookshop over the big chains, but there’s good reason to praise this subsidiary of Barnes & Noble. Unlike, say, the shopping center housing the River Oaks Borders, which ended up plowing down the century-old Ale House to make…
Best Mall-Walking
When Katy Mills opened in 1999, it sent a press kit out that had all sorts of useless trivia about the gargantuan size of the place, such as “Telephone wire: 2,600,000 feet, enough to go around Loop 610 13 times” and “The amount of dirt used to build the berm…
Best Ballet
Giselle is one of very few stories that is best told in the language of ballet. It’s based on the legend of the Wilis, the ghosts of young maidens who were jilted by men and died before they could marry. These mysterious creatures haunt the shadowy forests at night, looking…
Best Spectacle
Who doesn’t like songs about poo? Slump banks on the fact that everybody does. Penises too. Also: yeast infections, anal sex and hamsters. Keith Reynolds and Cathy Power have created a cult of personality around their Slump shows, which usually involve three chords on a guitar and lots of words…
Best Jerk Chicken
Don’t worry about a thing: White meat or dark, every serving of this jerk chicken’s gonna be all right. The flavorful tryst begins the moment the vibrant Fiestaware plate arrives with its bounty of spicy rice, steamed vegetables and quarter-bird drenched in the Jamaican marinade. The meat is tender and…
Best Nachos
Everyone agrees on the basic ingredients for nachos — and yet no dish seems to be more diverse in interpretation. It ranges from the runny goulash of Enron Field, that stuff that looks more suited for the disposal, to the barren terrain of only token enhancements at too many establishments…
Best Lost Monument
“Trophy” may be too strong a word for this apparently abandoned behemoth: a concrete block, presumably of Portland cement, standing near seven feet high and about five feet wide, featuring a high relief of some sort of Greco-Roman figures, and the inscription: “Awarded Trinity Portland Cement Company Houston Texas Plant…
The Wasteland
Combine teenage angst with suburban emptiness, and you’ve got a movie formula with an appreciable advantage over some other current movie formulas — particularly in the eyes of those who believe the American family has disintegrated and most of us are headed for eternal damnation. This is not to say…
Best Dancers
They grew up together in Florida, sharing ballet teachers, friends, schools and neighborhoods. They even joined Houston Ballet within a few years of each other — Scannell first, because she was older. And they have always looked out for each other. But on stage, the similarities end. Bears is soft…
Best Local CD Cover
A picture may be worth a thousand words, but we don’t have that much space here, and frankly we’re not sure what the words would be (though a few squeamish types have suggested “ick”). Oh, yeah, the music’s pretty great, too…
Best Place to Glimpse Royalty
When the good women from Blue Willow Books on Memorial Drive discovered that Jill Connor Browne, author of The Sweet Potato Queen’s Book of Love, didn’t include Houston in her book tour of her most recent release, God Save the Sweet Potato Queens, they took matters into their own hands…
Best Sighting of a Retired Public Figure
Recently one morning while on our way to work, we were driving along Feagan Street in the West End when we saw what we first thought was a man with a metal detector in the ditch in front of what used to be Zocolo Theater, the alternative outdoor film and…
Best Bread
As you wind through the maze of Houston’s Central Market, past the exotic fruits, past the clam aquarium, past the 17 kinds of rice, you eventually come to an enormous shopping-cart traffic jam in the store’s right rear corner. This is where the best bread in the city is being…
Best Place to Watch Totally Nude Men
Theater New West’s production of Key West provided one of the cheapest getaway romps of the summer. All about love and sex and naked men flouncing their privates about the stage, this silly show rippled with breezy laughs and utterly gorgeous flesh. Jack George as the young, lovely and Swedish…
Best Vietnamese Elvis Impersonator
The white rhinestone-studded jumpsuit never looked better on Elvis himself. His throaty version of “Love Me Tender” is a seductive swooner. And what 26-year-old “Elvis” John Newinn began for fun seven years ago as an Elvis impersonator has taken him to performances in different U.S. cities (including Memphis, of course,…
Best Community Newspaper
Chido Nwangwu decries mainstream news coverage of Africa that depicts “a continent of natives who are sentenced and cursed to face bestial cycles of ethnic wars, genocidal slaughters and more wars.” The eloquent Nigeria native specializes in debunking stereotypes. From an office off the Southwest Freeway, USAfrica crusades against government…
Best Cheeseburger
For an honest, down-home cheeseburger that doesn’t come in a sack with a wind-up toy, where the cheese is real grated cheddar instead of that processed pale yellow slime and where, lacking a microphone, the cook bellows out, “No. 10!” when your order is ready, pull into the unpaved parking…
Best Watch Repair
For more than 30 years the Wheeler Watch Clinic sat near the grubby corner of Wheeler and Main. Now it’s nowhere to be found on Wheeler. Don’t worry. It kept the name, but moved down the street more than a year ago. Now the modest little shop sits at Main…
Best Thrift Store
The two most important words when it comes to thrift store shopping are quality and quantity. Value Village is both. Those of you who are pros at this kind of shopping will fall to your knees and thank the thrift gods above that this store exists. Rookies at fossicking have…
Best Taco Stand
This fortifying quick stop, hovering just beyond westbound traffic, has nothing on the menu a healthy handful of quarters can’t buy. Breakfast is offered, but it’s the afternoon tacos we seek. The packaging of our regular pair is impressive, balling up in the palm of our hand as we bite…
Best Example of Starbucks World Domination
Exhibit one: The Starbucks on the corner of Shepherd and West Gray. Exhibit two: The Starbucks on the corner of Shepherd and West Gray. When the chain built the drive-thru version on the northeast corner, we were sure the version inhabiting the shopping center across the street to the south…
Best Breakfast
Breakfast is not our favorite meal, because it happens to fall in the morning, which is our least favorite time of the day. But whenever we order the huevos rancheros at Baby B’s, we are overcome with joy. Just thinking about this makes our mouths water. A friend of ours…
Best Cajun Restaurant
‘Taint nothing fancy about the cafeteria-style serving line, nothing surprising about the coon-ass doodads hanging on the wall, and nothing progressive about green beans swimming in cream of mushroom soup or fried catfish and stuffed pork chops. But then it’s lunchtime, and you’re not looking for fancy waiters and avant-garde…
Best Atmosphere
Remember when you used to go home for lunch in the middle of the school day, and Mom would greet you with a hot meal and — oh, wait a minute. Few of us, if any, lived that 1950s Leave It to Beaver ideal. But with Lankford Grocery and Market,…
Best Neighborhood Spot in Tanglewood
Our one reservation about picking this place is that once it’s discovered, it might lose some of that tucked-away feel. Its strip center is in the middle of a residential area, anchored by a Hollywood Video. To find it, you have to look for the shaded patio hidden behind a…
Best Sign War
A little friendly ribbing between competitors never hurt anybody. For more than seven years now, Khyber Grill’s Mickey Kapoor has been using his marquee to taunt the neighboring Pappadeaux’s. When the seafood restaurant wrote, “Hiring today 3 to 5,” Kapoor replied, “My, You Do Start Them Young!” When Pappadeaux posted,…
Best Sign
What exactly is meant by “No hostages beyond this point” is hard to discern. That message, posted on the inside of several doors in such fine establishments as Keagans State Jail in downtown Houston, greets anyone about to exit the jail and enter the lobby where visitors must turn in…
Best Activist
When tempers flared last summer over an ad hoc day-labor site near Kingwood, one man stepped in to help broker talks between the immigrant workers, aggrieved business owners upset about the massing of men on their property, and Montgomery County sheriff’s officials. That man was Benito Juárez, then-coordinator for the…
Best Salsa Dancing
Salsa gets hot in Houston. Almost every club in town these days features “Salsa Night,” where the scene is set and the floor is full. Some are new; others have a past. Downtown has entered the fray, with Prague on Tuesdays and Sambuca on Thursdays. The draw is big, but…
Best Cultural Center
Lilting accordion swirls over rhythmic dance steps echoing through the auditorium. The dancers are not professionals, just community members of different ages polishing some basic “folkloric” steps. For 24 years, Talento Bilingue de Houston has fostered and showcased the cultural wealth readily mined in Houston’s East End and beyond. The…
Best Place to Rent Anime
For selection, you just can’t beat Planet Anime. This Rice Village store has more than 2,500 tapes for rent, and many for sale, though approximately 400 were destroyed by the flood. Looking for Cowboy Bebop, BubbleGum Crisis, Martian Successor Nadesico, Ranma 1/2 or Tenchi Muyo? Planet Anime has got them…
Best Tofu/Soy Products
The problem with soy is that it’s kind of boring in its natural state. That’s why you need to get to a place that will take this brilliant source of protein and transform it into countless mouthwatering, delicious edibles. Okay, so Whole Foods doesn’t actually do the transforming. But it…
Best Go-carts
Don’t you just hate it when a go-cart track is so crammed into the available space that the course is little but a series of traffic-jam-inducing hairpin curves? Don’t you hate it when at least one car conks out every time, putting up the yellow caution flag for everyone else?…
Best Place to Hear Live Tejano
The Tejano scene in Houston is as unpredictable as the Gulf Coast weather. One day a club is hot; the next day it’s shuttered and silent. Hallabaloo’s is the exception. Set in a gritty southeast neighborhood, the club has kept the Tejano fires burning in Houston for nearly ten years…
Best Local Anthology
Yogi, Webmaster and Gynomite founder (and former Houston Press staffer) Liz Belile has since moved to Austin, and Abram Himelstein, whose New Mouth From the Dirty South published the volume, is living in New Orleans now. But this collection of erotic stories by women features more than a half-dozen local…
Best Cheap Sandwich
There comes a time in every other week, generally toward the ass end of a paycheck, when budgeters careful and shoddy alike are faced with the dilemma of making $9 stretch just four more days until reinforcements arrive in the old checking account. It’s at times like these that Cali…
Best Dim Sum
Go for a table in the middle of one of the two gigantic dining rooms. If you sit at the corner of two aisles, you will double your luck. It may sound greedy now, but wait until you’ve had Kim Son’s dim sum! Colorful xiu mai with a fluffy shrimp…
Best Tree
Four mammoth branches dangle to the ground like elephant trunks. They snake along the grass like knee-bound penitents scraping to a pilgrimage’s end, only to rise again to the height of small trees to drink in the sun. The live oak at Elizabeth Baldwin Park is one twisted granddaddy of…
Plucked Feathers
In 1984 Jerry Herman and Harvey Fierstein’s funny, feathery musical La Cage aux Folles won six Tonys, including Best Musical. Nearly two decades later, the story about a flamboyant gay couple who own the most talked-about transvestite club in France creaks a bit in the bones. Unfortunately, the rather feeble…
Hollywood Shuffle
Movie studios have postponed the opening dates for several films, some out of respect for the tragedies in New York and Washington, D.C., and some because executives can’t secure airtime on the TV networks to promote their multimillion-dollar cinematic investments. Touchstone’s Big Trouble, about a pair of bungling hit men…
Best Austin Import
We Houstonians might smirk a bit when we see those “we’re hipper than you are” Austinites struggling to take a breath over the tidal wave of growing traffic and Silicon Valley rejects. But we can’t get too smug. Not when they’ve exported a version of one their city’s finest clubs…
Best Black-and-White Soap Opera
Rap-A-Lot Records founder James Prince enjoys the limelight but not the microscope. A 12-year DEA and HPD investigation, which Prince attributes to the fact that cops hate rap music, has resulted in drug seizures as far away as Oklahoma City and in more than 20 convictions against Prince’s associates, including…
Best Place to See Houston’s Cannibal Ducks
It was a sunny spring day. We were killing time before an IMAX movie; we’d already bought a shiny rock from the Museum of Natural Science gift store and grabbed some McDonald’s hot fudge sundaes and wandered outside. We walked along looking at the green, green grass, thinking about what…
Best Place to Take Out-of-Towners
The view from the Fred Hartmann Bridge is hauntingly beautiful, particularly at sunset. From this graceful perch unfolds a landscape straight out of science fiction, an expanse of petrochemical plants fanning out along the snaking Ship Channel as far as the eye can see. As darkness descends, flares lap at…
Best Pasta
It’s not just noodles anymore, and they don’t all come from Italy, so put that redneck mentality aside and take a look at the rainbow of international pastas that make Houston a regular pasta jungle and their gustation a celebration. Better yet, take a father and son of Armenian descent…
Best Actresses
The entire estrogen-laden cast of Stages’ production of Anton in Show Business packed such a cohesive punch of acting chemistry that the award goes to the entire group. There was Singerman, who had the unnerving job of acting from a seat in the audience. Bonasso’s naive Texas character was all…
Roger Cooper
Every now and then, without much hope, a wine drinker drifts into Bert Wheeler’s. It’s a liquor store, not a wine boutique, and you expect the guy behind the counter to make change, not steer you to a great little Pouilly-Fumé. And certainly Roger Cooper doesn’t look or sound anything…
Best Faxes
We don’t know who he (or she) is, but he’s earned the moniker “Mad Faxer” around the Houston Press offices. Over the last two years, he has sent the editorial staff hand-drawn cartoons (a fish eating hippopotamus turds), possible tips (“Ask Ron J. Where is the cave?”), poems riddled with…
Best Onion Rings
French fries aren’t always the best complement to a burger. Don’t get us wrong; pommes frites with some ground beef on a bun deserves a spot in a hall of fame somewhere. But give us the big round rings d’oignon with our order at Prince’s. If you’re not sure you…
Best Place to Buy African Clothing
Vitalis Onu recoils at flowing, overelaborate garments that prompt onlookers to query, “Who’s that prince?” For Onu, the creator of the fashion line Citalis, the key is graceful simplicity. That principle is evident throughout the native Nigerian’s vibrant showroom in an office building on Richmond near Hillcroft. The racks overflow…
Best Asian Grocery
You can tell right away that Dynasty Supermarket is an authentic Asian market when you walk in, because of one telltale sign: It stinks like fish. There to the left are the fish swarming in overcrowded tanks, and in another tub crabs crawl over each other, spitlike bubbles forming as…
Best Retro Mexican Food
These are the restaurants where to a native or longtime Houstonian, everybody knows your face, if not your name. Those willing to stomach greasy cheese enchiladas with a heart-unwise dollop of dubious chili con carne aboard are growing fewer by the day, perhaps owing in no small part to their…
Best Deli
Houston’s hankering for international status took a subtle stride when the crazy Katz’s crew branched out from Austin. World-class credentials will ever be debated, but one indisputable definition is that a particular urban area must have a full-service, round-the-clock deli to dish up quality cuisine when the yen strikes. The…
Best Authentic Chinese Open Kitchen
From the outside, this tiny Montrose-area counter cafe still looks like a delicious dive. In the dining room, however, recent renovations include dark wood panels of Chinese philosophical writings, track lighting and faux palm trees. Still, purists — looking for dinner and a show — wouldn’t dream of eating in…
Best Barbecue Restaurant
The old barbecue pit on Dowling Street that is now called Drexler’s has a remarkable pedigree. Part of the current restaurant as well as the original barbecue pit were built by legendary barbecue man Harry Green in 1952. Green sold the place to an old-time pit boss named Tom Prevost…
Best Greasy Spoon
For 25 years Alice Lee and her family members have been running this little diner, which sits across Loop 610 from Meyerland Plaza. It’s a little place, a place that’s easy to miss in its nondescript strip mall. The booths are old and lumpy, the decorations fittingly cheesy. Numerous photos…
Best Taqueria
Just as there are food stalls in the mercados in Mexico, there are taco trucks in the parking lot behind the Farmer’s Market on Airline Drive. The one in the middle is crowded with well-dressed Mexican-Americans at 1:30 p.m. “Taqueria Tacambaro,” it reads in painted letters on the roof. There…
Best Nonprofit
Montrose Clinic started as a agency to treat sexually transmitted diseases including syphilis and gonorrhea in Houston’s gay community 20 years ago, but the onset of the AIDS epidemic redefined its mission. Throughout the plague years, Montrose Clinic has served Houston’s HIV-infected patients with compassion and competence, something not always…
Best Sports Bar
Ain’t nuttin’ fancy ’bout Nick’s. And “nuttin'” is definitely the way it’s pronounced around here, where the Up Nawth atmosphere is thick (the Web site offers links to the official team sites for the Rockets, the Astros and the Green Bay Packers). Nick’s ain’t no flashy, Vegas-style establishment with TVs…
Best Houston Rocket
The Hakeem era — those glorious days that brought Houston its first major pro championships — is now, officially, history. The Dream is a Toronto Raptor, and he probably has a better chance of making the NBA Finals with new teammate Vince Carter than with the current Rockets. But the…
Best Place to Be Glad You’re Alive
On Sundays, some people go to church. But who says church has to mean uncomfortable pews, a minister and communion wafers? Couldn’t it also be a back room, Grady Gaines and a cold bottle of Schlitz? We say yes, it can. If you agree, then there is no better place…
Best Reading Series
Tony Diaz read science fiction until, at the age of 20, he discovered there were authors out there who had similar experiences and backgrounds. Despite a growing Hispanic population, he found he was one of the few Latinos in the University of Houston Creative Writing Program, in a city bereft…
Best Consumer Advocates
It’s a widely held view that inadequate state funding for the Mental Health and Mental Retardation Authority of Harris County is to blame for the steady collapse of the local public mental health system. That’s certainly how MHMRA incessantly spins the situation, and policy makers and elected officials, out of…
Best Grocery Employee
Her name tag reads “Dawn,” and she’s always there with a smile. This very small Fiesta is in a transitional neighborhood, so the customers cross a wide income range, with a variety of demands. On one busy weekend, Dawn was working all by herself. The line was long, and several…
Best Place to Inline Skate
Asphalt. Beautiful asphalt. This area is jam-packed with it. You can roll from Rice University up to the Southwest Freeway and from Kirby Drive east to Mandell with nary a glimpse of concrete, gravel or potholes. We suggest you start somewhere on North or South Boulevard, where the rich folk…
Best New Effort to Inject Culture into Houston
So Gabrielle Hale’s Winedale Publishing isn’t exactly new (she founded the press in 1996). But at the beginning, it looked like Winedale might be little more than an excuse to bring back into print the scattered remains of husband and Houston Chronicle columnist Leon Hale’s oeuvre (some of which surely…
Best Tejano/ Conjunto Artist
Lisa Torres, the hazel-eyed singer of the eponymous Lisa y Aventura, stands a mere four foot ten. Her moving voice and on-stage charisma make her larger than life. Her notes range from sweet, soaring highs to raspy lows, recalling the soulful cantings of Mexican diva Ana Gabriel. The band combines…
Best Macaroni and Cheese
Talk about a French revolution. Frédéric Perrier, chef-owner of his namesake Cafe Perrier, has developed a delicious French twist on that all-American dish, macaroni and cheese. Befitting the country charm of the bistro, the gratin de macaroni is made of simple, yet sophisticated, penne pasta swimming in a rich, bubbly…
Best Cheeseburger
For an honest, down-home cheeseburger that doesn’t come in a sack with a wind-up toy, where the cheese is real grated cheddar instead of that processed pale yellow slime and where, lacking a microphone, the cook bellows out, “No. 10!” when your order is ready, pull into the unpaved parking…
Best Community Newspaper
Chido Nwangwu decries mainstream news coverage of Africa that depicts “a continent of natives who are sentenced and cursed to face bestial cycles of ethnic wars, genocidal slaughters and more wars.” The eloquent Nigeria native specializes in debunking stereotypes. From an office off the Southwest Freeway, USAfrica crusades against government…
Amused to Death
On September 13, at 11:30 a.m., Bryce Zabel was to have met with USA Network executives about a miniseries he was pitching to the cable outlet. Zabel, creator of such television shows as Dark Skies and The Crow: Stairway to Heaven, had the conference on his calendar for weeks. But,…
Eating It Up
The place is gaudy, glittery, operatic and brimming with busloads of blue-haired ladies from the local retirement home — practically the living definition of America’s 20th-century fascination with continental culture. But that’s just the tip of the veal parmigiana at the deliciously funky Great Caruso Dinner Theater, located on the…
Best Book
Houston’s upstart TaylorWilson Publishing may have been a flash in the pan, staying in business less than a year and producing only one book before bellying up to the auction block, but at least that one book was a beauty: a small keepsake edition limited to a run of 3,000…
Best Band to Break Up/Get Together
Seems like Houston’s finest rockabilly band is always either on the verge of great success or on the brink of dissolving. Neither is ever quite true. The Hollisters’ last album, Sweet Inspiration, could have been a springboard to national prominence, but a series of personnel changes followed its release. However,…
Best Place to Meet Liberal-Minded Singles
All day long, cars pull into the driveway of the RecycleXpress center; car doors fling open, and conscience-minded citizens separate their colored and clear glass, bimetal cans, paper, cardboard and plastics (nos. 1 and 2 only, please) through square slots into great mounds. Even though some of them drive SUVs…
Best Citizen
Eight days before Christmas, Officer Rhule was driving down the Beltway when he saw two women on the side of the road trying to change their tire. Their jack didn’t work, so he took his and changed it for them, but their spare was almost flat. He took them to…
Best Empanadas
An order of empanadas at Café Red Onion is a trip around the world in which fresh medleys of flavors flatter each other in encounters that are interesting even in a place that prides itself on its culinary theme of Latin fusion. The light-crusted, deep-fried pies, served up in a…
Best Icehouse Stage
They don’t call it the Shady Tavern for nothing. The “tavern” part is really more of an icehouse, but the “shady” part — an expansive side yard — is blessedly covered with plenty of tall sheltering trees. And nestled among the pines in this low-rent bar west of the Heights…
Dominic Quijano
Franchisee Dominic Quijano and wife Nelly invented that icon of America’s Hispanicization, the McDonald’s breakfast burrito, under the golden arches on Harrisburg Boulevard in the East End. Rolled up in a nine-inch flour tortilla, the burrito combines scrambled eggs, sausage, green peppers, jalapeos, tomatoes and cheese, most of which were…
Best Place to Smoke a Hookah
For the uninitiated, hookah is not another rap artist term for ho. It is the “fragrant nargile” of Orientalist reveries, the hubble-bubble of General Allenby’s Tommies. It is a device for smoking that passes the scented smoke — a mixture of tobacco and dried fruit such as apples or apricots…
Best Tamales
Cecilia Cuellar would not give us her phone number, address or any way to get in touch with her, so if you’re looking for the best tamales in Houston, it might take a little detective work. If you have patience, though, all you really have to do is drink a…
Best Place to Rent Anime
For selection, you just can’t beat Planet Anime. This Rice Village store has more than 2,500 tapes for rent, and many for sale, though approximately 400 were destroyed by the flood. Looking for Cowboy Bebop, BubbleGum Crisis, Martian Successor Nadesico, Ranma 1/2 or Tenchi Muyo? Planet Anime has got them…
Best Bookstore
Sure, we’re the types who would tend to go for the independent bookshop over the big chains, but there’s good reason to praise this subsidiary of Barnes & Noble. Unlike, say, the shopping center housing the River Oaks Borders, which ended up plowing down the century-old Ale House to make…
Best Greek Restaurant
What’s the best Greek restaurant in Houston? The choice is obvious! Bibas Greek Pizza is one of only a few of Houston’s more than 8,000 eateries to have the word “Greek” in its name. You could look it up. The spot, in a converted fast-food emporium next door to President…
Best Italian Restaurant
It is overwhelming to walk in the front door of this dark and clubby old haunt. To your left, there’s the reception stand, where you are offered an uncommonly gracious greeting. Right in front of you, a fabulous array of antipasti plates is spread out on a low table. To…
Best Thai Restaurant
In timid Thai fashion, the owners of Thai Cottage tiptoed onto the Houston restaurant scene four years ago, settled into a nondescript storefront between a sprawling H-E-B and a Domino’s Pizza and quietly started cooking. They concentrated on the food, spending their money on the freshest ingredients rather than extensive…
Best Neighborhood Spot in the Village
West U soccer teams, Rice students needing a study break, and preparty revelers all converge at El Meson for top-notch Latin American cuisine. And while the Mexican dishes are solid, the Cuban entrées are the real reason to visit this neon-lit spot along University Boulevard in the Village. Perhaps that’s…
Best Burger/Chinese Food Fusion
It’s nothing short of a stroke of luck to be able to satisfy two strong cravings at once. Lucky Burger’s name makes it clear that it dishes up burgers, and it’s retro root-beer-barrel design offers a hint that these are old-fashioned versions (read: griddle-fried with buttered buns). But who knew…
Roger Cooper
Every now and then, without much hope, a wine drinker drifts into Bert Wheeler’s. It’s a liquor store, not a wine boutique, and you expect the guy behind the counter to make change, not steer you to a great little Pouilly-Fumé. And certainly Roger Cooper doesn’t look or sound anything…
Best Name for a Beer Joint
The beer joint or honky-tonk that really had the best name in Houston, Bugeyed Mary’s, sadly went out of business this past year. The runner-up is the Stroker Club. A stroker in car salesman parlance is a customer who does not have the means or the intention to buy an…
Best Gadfly
Performance artist Dr. Alkebu Motapa, legal name Carl Austin, is a dreadlocked dervish who paints, chants and talks up a storm at City Council and anywhere else people will listen. His rhetoric, a mixture of Rastafarian theology and civil rights-era jargon, is not always welcome. When Motapa took to calling…
Best Sighting of a Retired Public Figure
Recently one morning while on our way to work, we were driving along Feagan Street in the West End when we saw what we first thought was a man with a metal detector in the ditch in front of what used to be Zocolo Theater, the alternative outdoor film and…
Best New Houston Oddity
This is a city that doesn’t use the term “oddity” lightly. There’s a pretty high hurdle you’ve got to jump before you can be mentioned in the same breath as the Orange Show, the Art Car Museum or the Beer Can House. So when the mind behind “scar art,” Dolan…
Best Poetry Series That Wouldn’t Die
Reading series come and go, but ever since Robert Clark rescued a dying gathering of beatniks at the Sand Mountain coffee shop back in 1975, First Friday has been plugging along under his direction. The location may have changed over the past 25 years, but loyal scribes have followed Clark…
Best Car Wash
This business has been in operation since 1949, a pivotal year in automotive history. It was the first year Detroit issued brand-new models after the war. Back then, the average family car was almost a decade old, and Americans finally had money to purchase some new wheels. And when they…
Best Bookstore for People Who Don’t Read
All freedom-loving people would be inspired to walk into the Menil Collection Bookstore and see, front and center on the largest display rack, an art-book cover photograph of a very lifelike sculpture of an erect penis — and directly across from the children’s section, too. Perhaps it’s an up-yours salute…
Best Place to Drink Bloody Marys
Forget brunch. We submit that the best time for a Bloody Mary is when you’re bowling. Bowling can make you thirsty (it’s a sport, you know), and Bloody Marys are light and refreshing. But they’re also strong enough to help you take yourself a little less seriously in rented shoes…
Best Open-Mike Comedy
When All D. Freemon was looking for a venue to replace the vacuum in black comedy that followed the demise of the Jus’ Jokin’ club, he turned to the former BYOB discotheque founded by Houston NewsPages publisher Francis Page Sr. in ’71. Though primarily an open mike for comedians of…
Best Up-and-Coming Choreographer
Last October, at the age of 18, Brian Enos presented his first major work for Houston Ballet. Tribal and techno, fast and furious, androgynous and sexy, classic and modern, large but with perfectly executed details, Landing was impossible to categorize. And it clearly overwhelmed the works of the other, more…
Best Cabrito
Cabrito, suckling goat, is hard to find here in the sublime al pastor form popular on the border and in northern Mexico. In those regions, the tradition of roasting kid over a mesquite-fired grill — a practice with deep roots in the region’s ranching past — has acquired the status…
Best Onion Rings
French fries aren’t always the best complement to a burger. Don’t get us wrong; pommes frites with some ground beef on a bun deserves a spot in a hall of fame somewhere. But give us the big round rings d’oignon with our order at Prince’s. If you’re not sure you…
Best Faxes
We don’t know who he (or she) is, but he’s earned the moniker “Mad Faxer” around the Houston Press offices. Over the last two years, he has sent the editorial staff hand-drawn cartoons (a fish eating hippopotamus turds), possible tips (“Ask Ron J. Where is the cave?”), poems riddled with…
Letters
Drug War Rebel Empty claims: Truth be told, the drug warrior politicians, officials, media and civilians secretly don’t list victory as an objective in their expensive and oppressive trillion-dollar war [“Drug Money,” by Steve McVicker and Tim Carman, September 6]. When they spout their “zero tolerance/total victory” rhetoric, how many…
Desperately Seeking Sandwiches
The glass is tinted dark, and the paint above the window is peeling. The Thiem Hung Vietnamese sandwich shop looks pretty shabby from the outside, but Houston Press contributing writer Paul Galvani is determined to eat lunch here. “Banh mi thit, that’s what we’re looking for,” says Paul, pointing to…
Best Romance Novelist
Thelma Zirklebach looks like a sweet little lady who would pinch your cheek and ask you about your older brother. She’s a speech pathologist who works a lot with children, is a member of Mensa and is all around a nice lady to talk to. You’d never know she writes…
Best Local Girl Gone Bad
This former gatekeeper for Mayor Lee Brown lost her desk at City Hall after ducking a drug test. A former employee of Brown crony Danny Lawson, Mackey served the former drug czar as secretary and appointments coordinator since he returned to Houston in 1995 to establish credentials for his successful…
Best Radio Commercial
We’re not sure that radio guy John Granato is being completely honest with us when he says that, in addition to a great product line, there are cocktails and girls in bikinis on hand at Trailer, Wheel & Frame, but we like the idea. Where else can you get your…
Best Quote
During the marathon trial to settle the estate of late Houston millionaire J. Howard Marshall II, Marshall’s widow, former topless dancer Anna Nicole Smith, testified, “it’s expensive to be me.” While that may well be true, the judge in the case eventually ruled against Smith, but we’re confident she’ll do…
Best Jerk Chicken
Don’t worry about a thing: White meat or dark, every serving of this jerk chicken’s gonna be all right. The flavorful tryst begins the moment the vibrant Fiestaware plate arrives with its bounty of spicy rice, steamed vegetables and quarter-bird drenched in the Jamaican marinade. The meat is tender and…
Best Actor
As usual, John Tyson stole the show when he showed up on the Alley Theatre’s stage during Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream with big blown-up balloon boobs tucked in his shirt. He was Flute, who plays Thisby in Shakespeare’s play inside the play. And it makes delicious sense that Tyson, Houston’s…
Gene Green
When Texas legislators used their redistricting clout in 1991 to draw a Houston congressional district that a Hispanic could win, a wily state senator named Gene Green helped in the design. He had ulterior motives. The final shape of the district resembled a praying mantis, with arms snaking out in…
Best Museum for Sinologists
Like its namesake, the Forbidden Gardens is a well-kept secret. However, the spectacular 40-acre spread just off I-10 in Katy rewards those who chance the trip. The outdoor museum carefully reconstructs some of the great design feats of Imperial China, and on a breathtaking scale. The entire Forbidden City, the…
Best Shish Kebab
When this past year saw the opening of George Abdallah’s new all-shish kebab, all-the-time self-serve eatery, it saw something fine and good happen. This spotless, cheerful little operation allows a Houstonian to visit the Levant, dine at a very reasonable cost on a Thousand and One Nights menu, pick up…
Best Consumer Advocates
It’s a widely held view that inadequate state funding for the Mental Health and Mental Retardation Authority of Harris County is to blame for the steady collapse of the local public mental health system. That’s certainly how MHMRA incessantly spins the situation, and policy makers and elected officials, out of…
Best Tofu/Soy Products
The problem with soy is that it’s kind of boring in its natural state. That’s why you need to get to a place that will take this brilliant source of protein and transform it into countless mouthwatering, delicious edibles. Okay, so Whole Foods doesn’t actually do the transforming. But it…
Best Family Gathering Restaurant
This is not an illusion. That is your teenager being entertained, even enthralled, while dining out with (gasp!) the family. And yes, there are your own parents, chuckling at the comedian’s risqué double entendres mingled with their polite dinner conversation. The reason for this harmony spanning the generation gap from…
Best Middle Eastern Restaurant
The splashes of different colors in the serving line that greet customers when they open the door of Fadi’s look like an overworked artist’s palette, but it’s a Middle Eastern palate that will appreciate the expansive array of foods served there. Moderation is next to impossible. One could easily fill…
Best Restaurant
The menu at Aries changes daily under the direction of chef-owner Scott Tycer, who improvises with the seasons. To call Tycer an artist doesn’t do him justice. He is something even better. He is a culinary genius who has grown up and gotten over himself. Originally from Houston, Tycer spent…
Best Hole-in-the-Wall Burger Joint
This eastside eatery serves up real-deal burgers for the blue-collar crowd that comes for lunch from the surrounding factories and plants, and they’ll do it for you, too. From the basic Champ Burger to the Texas-sized steak sandwich to the double-decker breakfast sandwiches, this Houston landmark will fill you up…
Best Vegetarian Restaurant
In Hindi, the word for cow is aghnaya, which means “not to be killed.” So vegetarians won’t have to worry about cows — or pigs or chickens or fish or even beef stock — showing up on their plates at this new South Indian restaurant. In fact, Udupi’s menu offers…
Gene Green
When Texas legislators used their redistricting clout in 1991 to draw a Houston congressional district that a Hispanic could win, a wily state senator named Gene Green helped in the design. He had ulterior motives. The final shape of the district resembled a praying mantis, with arms snaking out in…
Best Response to a Houston Press Story
Minister Aubrey Vaughan’s literary diatribe against “sodomites,” a response to his being quoted in The Insider advocating shipping gays to an island and leaving them there, appeared in the March 8 issue of the Houston Press. Vaughan took exception to the suggestion that he had been watching too many episodes…
Best Public Tennis Courts
Not all tennis stars are raised on pristine country club courts under the watchful eye of a sweater-wearing coach named Rex. Some make it through the local communist athletic program. Venus and Serena Williams had neither luxury. Instead, they sweated it out on the public courts of Compton, in California,…
Best Place to Mountain Bike
Forty-five minutes north of town on I-10 (at least the way we drive) lies Huntsville State Park, nestled among the Piney Woods of the Sam Houston National Forest. Here you can thrash and crash (well, if you’re doing it right, it occasionally happens) more than ten miles of hike-and-bike trails…
Best Local CD Cover
A picture may be worth a thousand words, but we don’t have that much space here, and frankly we’re not sure what the words would be (though a few squeamish types have suggested “ick”). Oh, yeah, the music’s pretty great, too…
Best Movie Theater
The newly renovated auditorium debuted with the premiere of a redone version of the 1984 Oscar-winning film Amadeus to show off, among other things, its new sound system. (The Oscar-winning sound man, Mark Berger, was even on hand to talk with the audience about the restoration.) The theater has family…
Best Mexican Bakery
After spending way too much money on Day of the Dead bread at a bakery inside the Loop last year, a friend-in-the-know pointed us to this bakery, fused to the side of a taqueria near Hobby Airport. Order your Day of the Dead bread early, as this popular panadería gets…
Best African Art Store
Local artist Joan Bristow has works on display at Black Heritage Gallery, a venue she likes for its diversity. Bristow hails from Trinidad and paints images on silk. She is having some framed at the store, which is how we learned about the small space cozied up next to Green’s…
Best Bike Path
Would you believe Houston has more than 200 miles of bikeways? Well, it’s true. And the West White Oak Bayou Trail comprises five of the best. Just a year old, the 12-foot-wide concrete path follows its namesake bayou from T.C. Jester at 11th Street in the Heights up to Pinemont,…
Best Local Television Reporter
Mary Benton stands out in the KPRC-TV crowd as a tough, capable, “no frills just the story” reporter. She was omnipresent during the aftermath of the June 9 flood, holding court in knee-deep water clad in galoshes and wielding a cordless mike. A native of Harlingen, Benton earned a journalism…
Best Exterminator
The founder, owner, operator and sole employee of Bugs & Burglars is Roy Law Elliot, a Houston native who has also been, at one time or another, the owner of Doctor Doom’s Garage of Mystery (a legendary Volkswagen repair facility in Berkeley, California), a counterculture T-shirt silk screener (12 designs…
Best Pupusas
This Central American hangout has a unique Houston/Salvadoran decor. The booths sport custom-crafted vinyl upholstery in metallic candy-flake turquoise with silver candy-flake trim. A namesake deer head hangs from the wall in the dining room with some straw sombreros and other kitschy Central American bric-a-brac. Kind of a tropical hunting…
Best Tamales
Cecilia Cuellar would not give us her phone number, address or any way to get in touch with her, so if you’re looking for the best tamales in Houston, it might take a little detective work. If you have patience, though, all you really have to do is drink a…
Best Place to Smoke a Hookah
For the uninitiated, hookah is not another rap artist term for ho. It is the “fragrant nargile” of Orientalist reveries, the hubble-bubble of General Allenby’s Tommies. It is a device for smoking that passes the scented smoke — a mixture of tobacco and dried fruit such as apples or apricots…
Best Stoner
Though best remembered for his “Goatboy” and his dead-on Joe Pesci imitation during four years on Saturday Night Live, Jim Breuer arguably created his most indelible character with his “heavy metal newscaster.” Delivering stories of the day with histrionic, high-pitched squeals and guttural growlings, he at once celebrated the majesty…
Stirred and Shaken
There I am, at the front bar of South Beach (810 Pacific Street, 713-529-7623), next to an absolutely fabulous hunk of guy-flesh, Alexandre Rosa, the Brazilian “Face of 2002” from the Neal Hamil modeling agency. I ask bartender Morgan Burcham, who is no slouch himself in the hunkiness department, what’s…
Best Music Series
The Friends of Conroe have hit on something: good music in a good setting. For the past two years, the group has booked a combination of musicians who don’t usually play together — for example, Terry Allen and Guy Clark — and put them into the beautifully restored old theater…
Best Loyal Houston Press Reader
Here’s to not letting work interfere with your priorities. On January 11 at the intersection of Milam and Congress, a man who had apparently been hit by an oncoming car and looked to be a minute from his death was being wheeled into the back of an ambulance by three…
Best Fusion Building
Oral satisfaction all in one location. Inside the industrial-looking building you can chow down on a sandwich or chili dog, and then step across the hallway and get your teeth cleaned or cavities filled. But for the dentist’s sake, go easy on the onions…
Best Weathercaster
Yes, we know. Wayne’s not really a weathercaster. This investigative reporter would rather be chasing down unethical pothole fillers than tracking weather patterns. But when Tropical Storm Allison hit Houston hard, Wayne Dolcefino was there. Before it became virtually impossible not to be up to your waist in water, Wayne…
Best Cheap Sandwich
There comes a time in every other week, generally toward the ass end of a paycheck, when budgeters careful and shoddy alike are faced with the dilemma of making $9 stretch just four more days until reinforcements arrive in the old checking account. It’s at times like these that Cali…
Best Downtown Bar That Deserves to Be There
The explosion of downtown drinking establishments provides crowds with more choices than ever for the forays into the central city: disco, rock, retro, high-dollar, lowbrow, jazz, freak/geek/sleek and so on. And that makes the other option — none of the above — that much more valuable for visitors and regulars…
Rick Lee
As you approach the Big Easy’s front door, you can hear from within the concertina-sharp sounds of a wailing guitar shredding the night air. You immediately imagine an old African-American man, or a middle-aged white guy in a fedora and shades, jamming on stage. You open the door. You look…
Best Whistle-Blower
A year ago, historic Oyster Creek was on the verge of extinction. Today, it’s got a chance, thanks to Lisa Rogers. On behalf of Brazoria County ranchers, including her husband, Rogers forced an investigation into the illegal diversion of the Oyster, which had watered her family’s cattle for 175 years…
Best Pork Chops
The first time we had the char-grilled lemon pepper pork chops, we wanted to vault the counter and make out with Dimitri. The chops are thick and juicy, and the meat is so full of flavor you won’t want to wait the five seconds it takes you to cut your…
Best Car Wash
This business has been in operation since 1949, a pivotal year in automotive history. It was the first year Detroit issued brand-new models after the war. Back then, the average family car was almost a decade old, and Americans finally had money to purchase some new wheels. And when they…
Best Grocery Employee
Her name tag reads “Dawn,” and she’s always there with a smile. This very small Fiesta is in a transitional neighborhood, so the customers cross a wide income range, with a variety of demands. On one busy weekend, Dawn was working all by herself. The line was long, and several…
Best Neighborhood Spot in Montrose
Everyone needs a third place to hang out — after home and work — and Brasil fulfills that role for lots of Montrose-area residents. If Brasil had a slogan, it would be “Where the artsy-fartsy folks meet.” Chances of running into a musician, writer, artist or designer of some sort…
Best Cheap Seafood Restaurant
The exterior of Barnacle’s doesn’t even scrape the surface of what’s in store inside. This deceivingly decrepit place is downright cheery, with high ceilings, loads of plants (okay, so they’re fake) and the expected seaside motif of netting and anchors. But the best reason to dive deep into southwest Houston…
Best Value
You want a hot meal served to you, and you want it now, and you’ve only got $5 in your pocket. So get your hungry self over to Andy’s. When? It doesn’t matter. The Houston institution is open 24 hours a day, and the friendly service is fast, fast, fast…
Best Disco Restaurant
Even though the quasi-Southern food threatens to steal the show, Zula’s decor really dances with over-the-top whimsy. The deco design is a sleek palette of shimmery chartreuse, plum and gold that serves as a modest backdrop to the 20-foot torchère lamps lining the long dining room. Throwing off flashes of…
Best Jamaican Restaurant
With a loping reggae beat in the background, barely discernable over boisterous Friday-night clusters of customers in the crowded storefront, Caribbean Cuisine is an easy place to be. The smell of curry cuts through the air, and the swinging door that leads into the kitchen flaps open as a cook…
Rick Lee
As you approach the Big Easy’s front door, you can hear from within the concertina-sharp sounds of a wailing guitar shredding the night air. You immediately imagine an old African-American man, or a middle-aged white guy in a fedora and shades, jamming on stage. You open the door. You look…
Best Local Television Commercial
What with so many different local businesses from which to choose, we avoided the temptation to go with any guy holding up a wad of cash; a man wearing a bean bag chair; two dapper fellows who knock knuckles over clothing prices; a self-described “crazy” man with a double-billed baseball…
Best Public Information Officer
Tropical Storm Allison annihilated the county’s justice system, crippling the criminal courts building for months and mauling the Family Courts Center as well. In the ensuing mayhem, even judges sometimes didn’t know where their temporary courts, salvaged files or trial settings would turn up. But the news media had to…
Best Place to Take Out-of-Towners
The view from the Fred Hartmann Bridge is hauntingly beautiful, particularly at sunset. From this graceful perch unfolds a landscape straight out of science fiction, an expanse of petrochemical plants fanning out along the snaking Ship Channel as far as the eye can see. As darkness descends, flares lap at…
Best Black-and-White Soap Opera
Rap-A-Lot Records founder James Prince enjoys the limelight but not the microscope. A 12-year DEA and HPD investigation, which Prince attributes to the fact that cops hate rap music, has resulted in drug seizures as far away as Oklahoma City and in more than 20 convictions against Prince’s associates, including…
Best Fusion CD by Local Musicians
Fusion is most often associated with jazz, but this CD begs the question. A blend of flamenco, jazz and rock, Spoken Mercy has fused the three in this locally produced compact disc. The band’s debut CD features Gary Norman on guitars and bass, with Tyler Essex doing the percussion and…
Best Boot Repair
“We doctor shoes. We heel them, we save their soles and attend their dyeing.” So goes the motto of Herman Shoe Repair, a mom-and-pop outfit run out of a converted old house in the Heights. The place, owned by veteran boot repairman Herman McCarty, is pungent with the smells of…
Best Tattoo Parlor
So, your boyfriend went back to his wife? Your shrink’s out of the country? Someone else won your Pulitzer Prize? For every reason you have to get a tattoo, there’s a place in town that can do it. But if you wanna get inked right, we suggest you head straight…
Best Houston Comet
In the first season following Cynthia Cooper’s premature retirement, fans were looking forward to Sheryl Swoopes to carry the team to its fifth WNBA championship. But when a knee injury sidelined Sheryl for the entire season, Tina Thompson took over at forward, with Janeth Arcain as her support at guard…
Best Director
Jon Marans’s Pulitzer Prize finalist, Old Wicked Songs, is an elegant, understated play about art, music and the exquisitely terrible power of history. In it, two Jewish musicians find themselves in Austria, one of the most paradoxical places in all of the Western world, for it gave us Mozart, Schubert…
Best Radio Talk Show
Dick is probably the second-most famous of the four golfing Harmon brothers, taking a backseat only to Butch, who is of course the golfing guru to Tiger Woods. Teamed with station regulars Lance Zerlein and John Granato, Harmon is informative and, more important, entertaining — even if you don’t play…
Best Chicken-Fried Steak
Never underestimate chicken-fried steak. It may seem like a humble dish, but it is a humble dish that is taken very seriously by native Texans. Elouise Cooper, owner of Ouisie’s Table, takes chicken-fried steak very seriously. The golden-brown, Southern-fried crust is so perfect that the cream gravy is served on…
Best Shish Kebab
When this past year saw the opening of George Abdallah’s new all-shish kebab, all-the-time self-serve eatery, it saw something fine and good happen. This spotless, cheerful little operation allows a Houstonian to visit the Levant, dine at a very reasonable cost on a Thousand and One Nights menu, pick up…
Best Museum for Sinologists
Like its namesake, the Forbidden Gardens is a well-kept secret. However, the spectacular 40-acre spread just off I-10 in Katy rewards those who chance the trip. The outdoor museum carefully reconstructs some of the great design feats of Imperial China, and on a breathtaking scale. The entire Forbidden City, the…
Best Don
Just as Michael Douglas has his Catherine Zeta-Jones, and Tony Randall has a wife 50 years his junior, Don Pasquale has his Norina. In Gaetano Donizetti’s opera about old men looking for love in all the wrong places, Don Pasquale convinces himself he merits a sexy young woman, despite his…
Fall For It
As the calendar advances, Houstonians can at least pretend that we’ve changed seasons. We can bid adieu to white shoes and chilled soups, and embrace mellow, fruitful autumn, with its special ingredients and dishes. At La Griglia (2002 West Gray, 713-526-4700), Tony Vallone’s tribute to the Milanese style of Italian…
Best Self- Assessment Question
In the heat of August, they came to the Westin Galleria — well over a thousand people enduring the heat in order to get a shot at being on the quiz show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. Once inside, they were given a 35-question multiple-choice test and 12 minutes…
Best Local Boy Made Good
This former education dean at Texas Southern University rode the Republican express from an HISD trustee post to district superintendent to George Bush’s secretary of education. Paige, whose college doctoral thesis was on the response times of collegiate football linemen, embraced the TAAS testing mania to score glory and hype…
Best Use of Taxpayer Dollars
Buffalo Bayou, the stream that spawned Houston in 1836, is well on its way back from city cesspool to civic asset thanks to a combined public-private $25 million effort. Landscaped hike-and-bike trails now run on both the north and south banks of the bayou from Shepherd on the west under…
Best Hole in the Roof
It looks like a painting, a 12-foot square field of blue, oddly placed on the ceiling of the simple Quaker meeting room. But this painting is alive, deepening in color and drawing you in as the sun sets outside. It’s the sky, you realize. Light artist James Turrell has cut…
Best Macaroni and Cheese
Talk about a French revolution. Frédéric Perrier, chef-owner of his namesake Cafe Perrier, has developed a delicious French twist on that all-American dish, macaroni and cheese. Befitting the country charm of the bistro, the gratin de macaroni is made of simple, yet sophisticated, penne pasta swimming in a rich, bubbly…
Best Designer
Steven K. Barnett’s exquisite set built into the wide-open space at Atomic Cafe for Infernal Bridegroom’s production of Maria Irene Fornes’s The Danube was most charming for all its stunning detail. Painterly and delicate, the minimalist creation started with a stage Barnett built in the middle of the playing space…
Janeth Arcain
Although the Houston Comets did not win their fifth straight WNBA championship, there were still reasons to celebrate the team’s season. One reason was the emergence of guard Janeth Arcain, who in the absence of marquee players like Cynthia Cooper (retired) and Sheryl Swoopes (injured) stepped up and became one…
Best Local Boy Gone Bad
Judge Burdette was popped for DWI on Montrose after he tried to leave the scene. Burdette is a good ol’ boy Democrat who managed to hang on as a visiting district judge in Harris County after getting dumped by voters twice. But his days of holding court at local bars…
Best Pho
For the unindoctrinated, tackling a bowl of pho can prove to be an intimidating task. First, the Vietnamese soup is served in rather large bowls, roughly the size of your average mixing bowl. Your only tools for this job: a pair of chopsticks and a ladlelike spoon. Plus, for those…
Best Mexican Bakery
After spending way too much money on Day of the Dead bread at a bakery inside the Loop last year, a friend-in-the-know pointed us to this bakery, fused to the side of a taqueria near Hobby Airport. Order your Day of the Dead bread early, as this popular panadería gets…
Best Bookstore for People Who Don’t Read
All freedom-loving people would be inspired to walk into the Menil Collection Bookstore and see, front and center on the largest display rack, an art-book cover photograph of a very lifelike sculpture of an erect penis — and directly across from the children’s section, too. Perhaps it’s an up-yours salute…
Best Nigerian Restaurant
“This is an African restaurant,” Uzo Ebenebe Ibekwe cautions newcomers to Genesis Restaurant. The native Nigerian relaxes into a broad smile when the visitors tell her they are eager for a culinary adventure. The menu is a tour of her country’s favorite dishes, from fufu (pounded yams) to stockfish and…
Best Late-Night Restaurant
So good, you’ve got to say it twice, Tan Tan Fast Food is everything a late-night venue should be: big, cheap and fast fast. This Chinatown diner serves mostly Vietnamese dishes with some Cantonese options, but be forewarned: There are over 400 dishes to choose from (87 in the soups…
Best Fusion of Folk and Food
Housed in a vintage gas station (hence the name), the Food Filling Station should be included among Houston’s funky folk-art environments on the Orange Show’s Eye-Openers tour. Surrounded by colorfully painted wrought-iron fencing, interspersed with wine bottles overturned in cement, its authentic gas pumps stand at attention alongside such collectibles…
Best Socio-Anthropological Study
A rare but boisterous black-leathered-biker eruption over by the 50-cent pool tables sends the timid scattering toward the bar, but seasoned Big Easy patrons look up to ensure no bottles are flying in their direction and continue their conversations, which are not always easy to hear over the R&B that…
Best Pizzeria
You don’t need to take the title of this restaurant literally to know that the pizza served here is unique. In actuality, there isn’t much flying going on at all — but there is some of the best-tasting Italian pie in the city. For 30 years Antonio’s has been offering…
Janeth Arcain
Although the Houston Comets did not win their fifth straight WNBA championship, there were still reasons to celebrate the team’s season. One reason was the emergence of guard Janeth Arcain, who in the absence of marquee players like Cynthia Cooper (retired) and Sheryl Swoopes (injured) stepped up and became one…
Best Support Group
Sure, the Clutterless Recovery Group has its merits, and a good many more of us should be visiting Anger Management, but when it comes to mutual support, the Genesis Ballet is tops in our book. Interestingly enough, the dance company didn’t start out that way. According to the troupe’s founder,…
Best Mall-Walking
When Katy Mills opened in 1999, it sent a press kit out that had all sorts of useless trivia about the gargantuan size of the place, such as “Telephone wire: 2,600,000 feet, enough to go around Loop 610 13 times” and “The amount of dirt used to build the berm…
Best Citizen
Eight days before Christmas, Officer Rhule was driving down the Beltway when he saw two women on the side of the road trying to change their tire. Their jack didn’t work, so he took his and changed it for them, but their spare was almost flat. He took them to…
Best Band to Break Up/Get Together
Seems like Houston’s finest rockabilly band is always either on the verge of great success or on the brink of dissolving. Neither is ever quite true. The Hollisters’ last album, Sweet Inspiration, could have been a springboard to national prominence, but a series of personnel changes followed its release. However,…
Best Big Idea
New York has the Statue of Liberty; Paris has the Eiffel Tower; St. Louis has the arch; even Huntsville has big old Sam Houston. And what does Houston have? Well, if architect Doug Michels, industrial designer Peter Bollinger and sculptor Cybele Rowe have their way, this car city will have…
Best Pet Pharmacy
We don’t know about your pets, but ours don’t like to take medication. At all. We have the battle scars to prove it. Instead of buying cases of first-aid ointment to heal all the wounds received while trying to administer medication to our asthmatic cat, we discovered it’s cheaper and…
Best Used CDs
God only knows who would sell their copy of End on End by Rites of Spring, but aren’t you glad somebody did? Because CD Warehouse had this kick-ass Washington, D.C., rock band priced at only $3.99, just one of the many treasures buried in this chain of discount CD stores…
Best Houston Rocket
The Hakeem era — those glorious days that brought Houston its first major pro championships — is now, officially, history. The Dream is a Toronto Raptor, and he probably has a better chance of making the NBA Finals with new teammate Vince Carter than with the current Rockets. But the…
Best Radio Sidekick
Try though we may, we don’t always get geek humor. But Peter Hughes has a way of clueing technophobes into the joke. No ordinary straight man, Hughes is a Web developer for J.P. Morgan Chase Bank during the day. At night — or at least Wednesday nights — he is…
Best Bar Decor
In a city in which most bar owners’ decorative aesthetic runs toward merely plastering the walls and ceilings with garish beer and liquor ads, the 141-year-old La Carafe (which over the decades has been an Indian trading post, a steam bakery and a Pony Express stop) stands out like a…
Best Dumplings
This hole-in-the-wall Chinese restaurant in a Westheimer strip center has seen better days. The flea-market carving of the Great Wall of China and the other sparse decorations on the walls are almost worse than nothing. You could argue that many other Chinese restaurants have similar, or even better, dumplings. But…
Best Pork Chops
The first time we had the char-grilled lemon pepper pork chops, we wanted to vault the counter and make out with Dimitri. The chops are thick and juicy, and the meat is so full of flavor you won’t want to wait the five seconds it takes you to cut your…
Best Breakfast Tacos
Houston’s unique brand of spontaneous fusion is in full flower on Telephone Road. Formerly home to the white middle class, now part Asian and part Hispanic, Telephone crosses all the lines. Shipway began its life as a run-of-the-mill doughnut shop, and then it was purchased by a Hispanic family who…
Death & Texas
Casual national observers of the music scene tend to put genres into little geographic boxes. Blues has to hail from either Chicago or Mississippi to be real. True zydeco is only from Louisiana; the stuff out of Texas is perceived as a watered-down imitation. On this principle, it is likewise…
BEST OF HOUSTON® 2001:
Best of Houston 2001 To paraphrase writer and filmmaker Dore Schary, the true portrait of a city is the fusion of what it thinks it is, what others think it is, what it really is and what it tries to be. That set the direction of our experiment. We pulled…
Best Result of a Houston Premiere
Former Houston Oiler Bo Eason workshopped his one-man play, Runt of the Litter, in New York and L.A., but when it came time to premiere the piece, he came back to Houston. The production at Stages Repertory Theatre drew large crowds to watch as Eason’s fictional alter ego laid bare…
Best Easter Bunny
From beginning to end, Rick Hurt spent a total of 15 days impersonating the Easter Bunny under a giant Fabergé-like egg at the Galleria this last spring. For a little over a fortnight, Rick gave up his other gigs — impersonating Bette Midler, dressing up as a fairy, or a…
Best Fusion Street
You can tell a lot about Houston, past and present, by driving along the in-transition thoroughfare. As in many parts of the city, new upscale condos and town homes are springing forth, even across the street from historic Glenwood Cemetery, where Howard Hughes Jr. and several Texas governors are taking…
Best Bathroom
Judging by the interiors of most restaurants, restaurateurs usually don’t care deeply about art. Monica Pope is the exception. Her Boulevard Bistrot has art on the plates, on the walls and even in the bathrooms. In fact, the atmosphere of the lavatory was so important to the owner that she…
Best Cabrito
Cabrito, suckling goat, is hard to find here in the sublime al pastor form popular on the border and in northern Mexico. In those regions, the tradition of roasting kid over a mesquite-fired grill — a practice with deep roots in the region’s ranching past — has acquired the status…
Best Cultural Center
Lilting accordion swirls over rhythmic dance steps echoing through the auditorium. The dancers are not professionals, just community members of different ages polishing some basic “folkloric” steps. For 24 years, Talento Bilingue de Houston has fostered and showcased the cultural wealth readily mined in Houston’s East End and beyond. The…
Larry Perdido
“My mom, bless her heart, was an awful cook,” drawls Larry Perdido. His parents emigrated from the Philippines to Houston in the ’50s, and his mom, a nurse, soon learned to mangle American dishes as thoroughly as she wrecked those of the Southeast Asian islands. Out of self-defense, seven-year-old Larry…
Best Criminal Court Judge
Courthouse regulars were worried a few years ago when longtime judge Doug Shaver announced his retirement from the 262nd bench. He was one of the few Democrats left in any court in the county, and certainly one of the more independent-minded jurists of any affiliation. Concerns about keeping the proverbial…
Best Salsa
A good rule of thumb when measuring how good the salsa is at your favorite Mexican restaurant is the chip-to-meal ratio. If you end up downing a whole basket of chips before your cheese enchiladas even get to the table, chances are that the salsa is superb. So be forewarned:…
Best Boot Repair
“We doctor shoes. We heel them, we save their soles and attend their dyeing.” So goes the motto of Herman Shoe Repair, a mom-and-pop outfit run out of a converted old house in the Heights. The place, owned by veteran boot repairman Herman McCarty, is pungent with the smells of…
Best African Art Store
Local artist Joan Bristow has works on display at Black Heritage Gallery, a venue she likes for its diversity. Bristow hails from Trinidad and paints images on silk. She is having some framed at the store, which is how we learned about the small space cozied up next to Green’s…
Best Salvadoran Restaurant
You will not find iced tea at Variedades. Instead, you can slake your thirst with wonderfully refreshing aguas — tall glasses of melon and other fresh-fruit drinks with bits of pulp. Set in a large room with off-white walls and burgundy tablecloths, Variedades has simple, understated decor. The flavors are…
Best Neighborhood Spot in the Galleria Area
The Friends crowd that inhabits the apartments along Fountainview, as well as their more established neighbors in Tanglewood and Briargrove, pack this tiny sidewalk cafe, which is as casual as a backyard barbecue and about as economical. The gimmick here is BYOB, with a small corking fee, but fortunately a…
Best Place to Skip Dinner and Get to Dessert
The problem with dining at the Epicure Café is that the well-lit case of desserts beckons during your whole meal. Sure, the lemon chicken is in fact quite lemony and generously seasoned, making your taste buds tingle. And the salads are nicely balanced. But these meals are no match for…
Best Tex-Mex Restaurant
Former waitress Geneva Harper was here when Felix’s flagship location at Westheimer and Montrose opened in 1948. “The cheese enchiladas with chili gravy on the Mexican Dinner haven’t changed at all since the place opened,” she says. “Except that a Mexican Dinner went for 50 cents in 1948.” Like a…
Best Neighborhood Spot in Bellaire
The hiss-sizzle of the grill is always in the background. The grill cook stands over his domain holding a spatula in the air like a Victorian detective with a magnifying glass. He wheels around with a finished order to place it on the counter, barely missing a fast-moving waitress, who…
Best Whistle-Blower
A year ago, historic Oyster Creek was on the verge of extinction. Today, it’s got a chance, thanks to Lisa Rogers. On behalf of Brazoria County ranchers, including her husband, Rogers forced an investigation into the illegal diversion of the Oyster, which had watered her family’s cattle for 175 years…
Best Place to Glimpse Royalty
When the good women from Blue Willow Books on Memorial Drive discovered that Jill Connor Browne, author of The Sweet Potato Queen’s Book of Love, didn’t include Houston in her book tour of her most recent release, God Save the Sweet Potato Queens, they took matters into their own hands…
Best Bureaucrat
Mayor Lee Brown chief of staff Jordy Tollett got his start under mayor Jim McConn and has been accumulating titles and turf ever since. He’s head of the city convention center and entertainment facility complex, the president of the convention and visitors bureau, and currently the little drummer boy who…
Best Quote
During the marathon trial to settle the estate of late Houston millionaire J. Howard Marshall II, Marshall’s widow, former topless dancer Anna Nicole Smith, testified, “it’s expensive to be me.” While that may well be true, the judge in the case eventually ruled against Smith, but we’re confident she’ll do…
Best Radio Commentary
Speaking up for Texas convicts is a thankless task, but Marta Glass takes it on with a righteousness that more often than not achieves a certain eloquence. Glass was (and is) a volunteer in charge of prison issues for the ACLU’s Houston chapter — she still gets 25 to 30…
Best Local Cable Television Personalities
The unlikely triad of David Jones, Gloria Gonzalez Roemer and Gary Polland presents the only real weekly political talk show in town, Politics Unplugged. Jones is a veteran criminal defense attorney and Democratic activist who used to host his own cable show. Roemer, who produces Politics Unplugged, formerly chaired the…
Best Asian Bakery
For a bakery, St. Honoré is located in a weird place: inside an Asian mall that is perpetually empty, its escalators moving and moving nobody at all. Never mind, though. Just head straight to the bakery on the first floor, with the window display of a huge gingerbread-houselike Chinese palace,…
Best Newsstand
Mega-stands may come and go, but Globe is forever. In business since 1961, Globe News is not only the best, it’s also the oldest. And it has the musty smell that a newsstand should have. Its selection covers the waterfront of publishing from newsweeklies and monthlies to sports to photography…
Best Place to Mountain Bike
Forty-five minutes north of town on I-10 (at least the way we drive) lies Huntsville State Park, nestled among the Piney Woods of the Sam Houston National Forest. Here you can thrash and crash (well, if you’re doing it right, it occasionally happens) more than ten miles of hike-and-bike trails…
Best Local Television Personalities
Give the rest of the world Emeril (please!), we’ll keep Houston’s very own Johnny Carrabba and Damian Mandola. We can forgive this Italian restaurant family empire for taping the show in New York, because there is no question when you watch them that these guys call the Bayou City home…
Best Bar Mom
Good bars are always established around solid personalities — and the best inevitably become maternal institutions for the patrons. Liz Knox learned early on how to succeed in the often slippery business world of drinking establishments. With more than three decades under her belt, she can finally look back and…
Best Mariscos
This bustling little Mexican seafood shop-turned-restaurant near the Farmer’s Market serves some of the best red snapper in the city. There isn’t any question about whether you’re being served real Gulf snapper or how fresh it is, because here you walk up to the seafood counter and pick out the…
Best Pho
For the unindoctrinated, tackling a bowl of pho can prove to be an intimidating task. First, the Vietnamese soup is served in rather large bowls, roughly the size of your average mixing bowl. Your only tools for this job: a pair of chopsticks and a ladlelike spoon. Plus, for those…
Best Fried Chicken
Old-timers remember the era when Sunday afternoons meant post-church meals where anything but fried chicken would constitute outright heresy. Now the special repast is almost strictly the domain of fast-food joints. Fox Diner pays due homage to the heritage of fried chicken on Sunday. While the cooks of past eras…
A Polished Razor Keen
I first heard Robert Earl Keen right after I moved to Texas in 1989. A few weeks before, back in New York City (git a rope), I enjoyed the ideal send-off for my migration to the Lone Star State at a songwriters show featuring Guy Clark, Joe Ely and Lyle…
Best Theater Season
Stages set the pace for the entire theatrical season with its boisterous production of Jane Martin’s Anton in Show Business. After that, artistic director Rob Bundy never looked back. Some of the best productions included the strange and disturbing comedy about a group of suits from corporate America in Laura…
Best Local Television News Anchor
Despite a marital breakup and a long-running battle with multiple sclerosis, this daughter of a preacher man remains one of the pillars of stability at Channel 13. As an anchor and reporter, Melanie Cerise Lawson conveys empathy, poise and intelligence. The last is not surprising, given her Princeton undergraduate credentials…
Best Local Girl Made Good
The Diana Ross of Destiny’s Child is the crossover queen of pop at the moment, with platinum albums and a starring role in MTV’s sultry Hip Hopera, Carmen. It’s a Knowles family affair, with father Mathew as Svengali manager, and mother Tina as group costume designer and beautician. Not only…
Best Sign
What exactly is meant by “No hostages beyond this point” is hard to discern. That message, posted on the inside of several doors in such fine establishments as Keagans State Jail in downtown Houston, greets anyone about to exit the jail and enter the lobby where visitors must turn in…
Best Pocket Park
Settle into the wrought-iron chairs. They are spread on the grounds at the base of the seven-story, girder-crossed mural painted by Suzanne Sellers on the adjacent Houston Club Building. And savor this new oasis of what used to be nothing more than an unsightly few asphalt parking spaces wedged between…
Best Pupusas
This Central American hangout has a unique Houston/Salvadoran decor. The booths sport custom-crafted vinyl upholstery in metallic candy-flake turquoise with silver candy-flake trim. A namesake deer head hangs from the wall in the dining room with some straw sombreros and other kitschy Central American bric-a-brac. Kind of a tropical hunting…
Best Reading Series
Tony Diaz read science fiction until, at the age of 20, he discovered there were authors out there who had similar experiences and backgrounds. Despite a growing Hispanic population, he found he was one of the few Latinos in the University of Houston Creative Writing Program, in a city bereft…
Best Politician
This professor-on-the-move replaced sleepy Felix Fraga just a year and a half ago and is already developing into the power player of Houston Hispanic politics. Raised in Corpus Christi and Austin, Vasquez came to town as a communications prof at the University of Houston, and quickly began laying the groundwork…
Best Sushi
Although former owner and executive chef Don Chang has quit the restaurant biz and moved to Austin, his younger brother, Daniel Chang, continues to run this oasis of to-die-for food in west Houston just as his brother did, with artfully prepared dishes and leisurely service. Don was responsible for many…
Best Place to Buy Pounded Yams
“The world was silent except for the shrill cry of insects, which was part of the night, and the sound of wooden mortar and pestle as Nwayieke pounded her foo-foo,” writes Chinua Achebe in his 1959 novel Things Fall Apart. He is describing a scene as basic to traditional Nigerian…
Best Pet Pharmacy
We don’t know about your pets, but ours don’t like to take medication. At all. We have the battle scars to prove it. Instead of buying cases of first-aid ointment to heal all the wounds received while trying to administer medication to our asthmatic cat, we discovered it’s cheaper and…
Best Tattoo Parlor
So, your boyfriend went back to his wife? Your shrink’s out of the country? Someone else won your Pulitzer Prize? For every reason you have to get a tattoo, there’s a place in town that can do it. But if you wanna get inked right, we suggest you head straight…
Best Cajun Restaurant
‘Taint nothing fancy about the cafeteria-style serving line, nothing surprising about the coon-ass doodads hanging on the wall, and nothing progressive about green beans swimming in cream of mushroom soup or fried catfish and stuffed pork chops. But then it’s lunchtime, and you’re not looking for fancy waiters and avant-garde…
Best Atmosphere
Remember when you used to go home for lunch in the middle of the school day, and Mom would greet you with a hot meal and — oh, wait a minute. Few of us, if any, lived that 1950s Leave It to Beaver ideal. But with Lankford Grocery and Market,…
Best Neighborhood Spot in Tanglewood
Our one reservation about picking this place is that once it’s discovered, it might lose some of that tucked-away feel. Its strip center is in the middle of a residential area, anchored by a Hollywood Video. To find it, you have to look for the shaded patio hidden behind a…
Best Old Downtown Restaurant That’s Still There
Around noon on most days, influential veterans of Houston — judges, top cops, city administrators, elite lawyers and the like — start a quiet southern migration away from the ever-expanding zone of trendy eateries on the north side of downtown. They ease into the boxy, windowless old shell of a…
Best Family Restaurant
Families on a budget may have the best of all worlds: a casual counter cafe with gourmet flair. Soccer moms and dads flock to these cheery, Southwestern-adorned restaurants, both of which sport popular deck seating for adults who long to linger and video games for kids who must fidget with…
Best Local Boy Gone Bad
Judge Burdette was popped for DWI on Montrose after he tried to leave the scene. Burdette is a good ol’ boy Democrat who managed to hang on as a visiting district judge in Harris County after getting dumped by voters twice. But his days of holding court at local bars…
Best Place to See Houston’s Cannibal Ducks
It was a sunny spring day. We were killing time before an IMAX movie; we’d already bought a shiny rock from the Museum of Natural Science gift store and grabbed some McDonald’s hot fudge sundaes and wandered outside. We walked along looking at the green, green grass, thinking about what…
Best Go-carts
Don’t you just hate it when a go-cart track is so crammed into the available space that the course is little but a series of traffic-jam-inducing hairpin curves? Don’t you hate it when at least one car conks out every time, putting up the yellow caution flag for everyone else?…
Best Weathercaster
Yes, we know. Wayne’s not really a weathercaster. This investigative reporter would rather be chasing down unethical pothole fillers than tracking weather patterns. But when Tropical Storm Allison hit Houston hard, Wayne Dolcefino was there. Before it became virtually impossible not to be up to your waist in water, Wayne…
Best Traveling Show
A tiny European troupe of actors who call themselves Spymonkey leaped into Houston this past spring and landed with a hysterical thump at Theater LaB. Their naughty, limber clowning glittered with Monty Python-style absurdity and Addams Family spookiness, but what else would you expect from a show about the burial…
Best Combination Pawnshop and Wedding Chapel
A scratchy tape of “The Wedding March” blasts from a boom box in a room in Kipperman’s Pawn Shop, the walls of which are painted pink and gold with a mural of flowers splashed across one wall in hues of Mercurochrome and MD 20-20. Owner Ted Kipperman, dressed in red…
Best Middle Eastern Grocery
Meandering the aisles of Droubi’s with Arabic music in the air, one can imagine wandering through a Lebanese open market, only with air-conditioning. The aroma of constantly baking bread that is sold still warm, a myriad of bulk herbs and spices sold by the pound and the daily lunch specials…
Best Auto Repair
On the front end of the Honda Civic, at least a mid-’90s model, there is a splash guard that rides very low to the road. It frequently hits the pavement when being driven out of parking lots or up to concrete parking blocks. After a couple of years of abuse,…
Best New Restaurant
Late at night, downtown Houston is awash in lights, a nonstop fashion show of men in black and women in too-high heels and drop-dead dresses. For this crowd, only the wildest, most electrifying dining experience will do. And Saba rises to the occasion. The Small Plates menu is a list…
Best Dancers
They grew up together in Florida, sharing ballet teachers, friends, schools and neighborhoods. They even joined Houston Ballet within a few years of each other — Scannell first, because she was older. And they have always looked out for each other. But on stage, the similarities end. Bears is soft…
Best Vietnamese Elvis Impersonator
The white rhinestone-studded jumpsuit never looked better on Elvis himself. His throaty version of “Love Me Tender” is a seductive swooner. And what 26-year-old “Elvis” John Newinn began for fun seven years ago as an Elvis impersonator has taken him to performances in different U.S. cities (including Memphis, of course,…
Best Seviche
It’s crystal clear why the seviche is better at Urbana, the hip Montrose spot that’s as cool as the blue ocean itself. The clean, crisp marinade of lime juice — aided by a kick of jalapeños, cilantro, red onions and just a few diced tomatoes — lets the flavor of…
Best Salsa
A good rule of thumb when measuring how good the salsa is at your favorite Mexican restaurant is the chip-to-meal ratio. If you end up downing a whole basket of chips before your cheese enchiladas even get to the table, chances are that the salsa is superb. So be forewarned:…
Dominic Quijano
Franchisee Dominic Quijano and wife Nelly invented that icon of America’s Hispanicization, the McDonald’s breakfast burrito, under the golden arches on Harrisburg Boulevard in the East End. Rolled up in a nine-inch flour tortilla, the burrito combines scrambled eggs, sausage, green peppers, jalapeÒos, tomatoes and cheese, most of which were…
