Devil Made Him Do It
In the 1998 documentary The Fear of God: The Making of The Exorcist, made for the BBC and available on The Exorcist 25th-anniversary DVD, director William Friedkin spends a great deal of time explaining why he excised certain scenes from his film, scenes that author and screenwriter William Peter Blatty…
Best Choreographer
Trey McIntyre is a modern dancemaker whose ideas are as evocative as the movements that express them. His White Noise dealt with a fear of death; Speak pitted soft ballet against violent rap; and Aliss in Wonderland cast the storybook characters in modern celebrity culture. McIntyre’s latest creation, Bound, choreographed…
Best New Black Novelist
African-American literary circles around this country may be singing the praises of such contemporary authors as E. Lynn Harris, Eric Jerome Dickey and Omar Tyree, but black Houstonians have their own Sensitive Brotha educating the men and satisfying the women with his dead-on words. This year author and local boy…
Best Unsigned Band
It’s just too damn bad major record labels haven’t figured out a way to bottle live energy and the hundreds of bodies that figure into that force and package it. If they could, the work of ska giants Los Skarnales would be worth more than a Los Alamos hard drive…
Best Guitarist Who Never Plays in Public
Cherie Craze is one of Houston’s unrecognized wonders. Like lots of shy teenagers, the self-taught guitarist spent a good deal of her childhood hiding out in her room, wrapped around her guitar, teaching herself to play. What sets Craze apart from most pimply-faced, angst-ridden adolescents is the fire in her…
Best Patio
Houston boosters are fond of reminding the uninitiated that Bob Hope once said the view from the Warwick penthouse was the most beautiful he had ever seen. If only the Main Street Coalition had as juicy a celebrity quote about the hotel at street level. Light rail or no light…
Best Bar Decor
Sure, we were sad to see the well-preserved grit and grime of the old Dean’s go. But let’s face it: The couches smelled like pee, and the dark, cluttered room was a minefield of opportunities to fall on your ass. Besides, the new yuppified version of Dean’s makes a few…
Best Time and Place to See Low-Riders
Yes, there are other cruising routes — out on Airline or Irvington, say — but this western stretch of Richmond club land is the oldest and biggest and most reliable. If the weather’s good and the cops aren’t swarming, car-watchers will be rewarded with a combination parade and dance competition…
Best Local Girls Gone Bad
The long arm of the law has permanently broken up that old gang of Kingwood High School convenience-store banditas whose rampage for cash and cigarettes earned them face time on such national news shows as 20-20 and 48 Hours. The trio most involved in the series of five robberies –…
Best Whistle-Blower
Like a hand-hewn beam, Charles Max Jennings is both rough-cut and a commodity. He may come off as a crude old fart with an attitude (“You’re goddamn right” is one of his favorite phrases), but Jennings is the worst nightmare of a corrupt bureaucracy. In his case, it’s the City…
Best Nachos
If you ask the owner of Ciro’s Italian Grill, Ciro Lampasas, how the delightful Italian nachos came into thankful existence, he’ll tell you it’s what you get when an Italian restaurant owner and his Mexican kitchen manager cross culinary wits. This appetizing amalgam of ingredients is one of the finest…
Best Margarita
Life is complicated enough. Don’t let your liquor be that way. Unhappily, Houston has hundreds of bars and restaurants trying to hook consumers with ever-evolving concoctions. By all means, let them audition. Encourage them to pour all kinds of fruity and frothy mixtures to be zapped into life by 220-volt…
Best Place to Pick Up a Slightly Worn Copy of the Marquis de Sade’s The 120 Days of Sodom
Okay, maybe you won’t find that precise title, but this place is about as highbrow a used bookstore as you’ll find in this city that doesn’t market exclusively rare and collectible editions — though there are plenty of those on the shelves. This is not a source for light reading;…
Best Music Store
To be the best, a music store has to carry a vast selection. For those whose tastes run all over the board, you can find everything from your favorite Jello Biafra or Henry Rollins spoken-word CD to Peter Allen’s At His Best. You also will find everything in the middle…
Best Asian Grocery
Say good-bye to the cramped, dirty Asian grocery store with its persistent fishy stench, and hello to brightly lit aisles upon aisles of groceries. True to the very Texas notion that bigger is better, the newest Hong Kong Market location on Bellaire at Boone Road is bigger than a Randalls…
Best Bloody Mary
So it’s a chichi hotel — the Four Seasons still makes a mean Bloody, equally adept at killing a hangover as slaking a fierce thirst on a hot day. The house vodka, though a little too carefully measured for our taste, is Smirnoff — not some generic brand. Made from…
Best Mobile Barbecue Pit
The Houston makers of this device tout it as “the ultimate tailgate barbecue pit.” What you have is your basic steel drum-style cooker that you can use in your backyard or attach to the back of your car or truck and haul to the beach, park or ball game. Apparently…
Best Store in the Galleria
The Galleria is filled with stores trying to sell you stuff that you never knew you needed, but at least there’s one whose merchandise can help you learn a thing or two. The Discovery Channel store is, not surprisingly, an offshoot of cable’s Discovery group of networks (which includes The…
Best Un-Diner
If you’re looking for a chicken-fried steak covered in cream gravy with a strawberry shake on the side to wash it down, this is not the place for you. And you won’t find the sparkly blue vinyl booths or garish neon signs that good old Americans have come to expect…
Best Kids’ Meal Toys
Day care has left you broke, but still you have your pride. You hate the fluorescent-lit, Formica-table fast-food experience. You don’t want the kids to eat rubbery deep-fried poultry by-products. And please, no more of those offensive, licensed-character-du-jour Happy Meal toys. What you need is Mission Burritos on Alabama. Grab…
Best Taqueria
There are so many fabulous little taco places in Houston, it is difficult to single one out. And so we picked a fabulous big taco place instead. Gorditas Aguascalientes makes antojitos of all kinds, not just tacos. The fresh masa huaraches and gorditas are real stand-outs. And the soups are…
Best Water Park
When it comes to adventures in baby-sitting, water parks are a no-brainer. But don’t let the big guys drown out Houston’s best-kept secret: Adventure Bay. On just 12 acres in far west Houston, it’s intimate enough to let older kids roam free (though we suggest the buddy system) through the…
Best Name for Houston’s New Football Team
Bob McNair, the man who returned professional football to Houston, has dubbed his new team the Texans. Forgive us if we don’t immediately share the jingoistic joy of the moniker. Last time we looked, much of the city had little to do with Texas (aside from obvious geography): Haven’t seen…
Best Driving Range
Summers in Houston — especially this summer, when temperatures were pushing 110 degrees into September — are a detriment to your golf game. It’s hot and sticky, the fairways are parched and burned, and the greens are baked to the unforgiving consistency of a parking lot. Not exactly conducive to…
Best New York Deli Sandwich
Weighing in at slightly less than a pound, the Reuben ($6.99) at Kahn’s Deli is a delicious way to exercise jaw muscles. It’s a jungle of pungent sauerkraut, piles of corned beef and a thick layer of melted Swiss cheese that makes one wonder if any human can open their…
Best Hole-in-the-Wall Burger Joint
This is a no-frills experience all the way. These two little Heights-area huts have been around forever and, despite occasional turnover in staff, continue to serve up the best greasy burgers in town. You can either walk up or phone in your order. Most people get their food to go,…
Best Store in the Galleria
The Galleria is filled with stores trying to sell you stuff that you never knew you needed, but at least there’s one whose merchandise can help you learn a thing or two. The Discovery Channel store is, not surprisingly, an offshoot of cable’s Discovery group of networks (which includes The…
Best Dot-com Ad Campaign
Some folks think they’re creepy, but we like the various foods that have taken on the personae of animals in the company’s billboard campaign around the city. They have a banana that looks like an octopus, cherries made to resemble an ant, a watermelon as a turtle, and several other…
Best Franchise Owner
After only two games in its inaugural season, the four-team Spring Football League suspended its operations, owing largely to microscopic attendance. But you have to admire Houston investment banker and restaurateur Mark Rice, who owns the league’s Houston Marshals franchise (which went a heady 2-0) as well as the three…
Best Middle Eastern Restaurant
We’re always happy to walk into Cedars, see that splendid buffet line and remember how very little it’s going to cost us to dine royally. For meat lovers, there’s terrific roast lamb served up simply with just its natural juices, or a nice piece of red snapper with tahini sauce…
Best Execution of a Business Plan
The late Dickie Rosenfeld, who died in July, was a giant in Houston radio. He brought the Beatles to town in the 1960s and was the creator of the original Hudson and Harrigan show. He spent most of his 50 years in radio as general manager of KILT. But even…
Best Sports Columnist
No one is ever going to pick up the Houston Chronicle’s sports pages for the sheer joy of reading; the best you can hope for is to get the basic information efficiently, unfettered by clunky current-events references (“The Astros fell to their knees faster than Monica Lewinsky”) and free from…
Best Neighborhood Sculpture Garden
Three years ago, the square block of land surrounded by Shepherd, Durham, Blossom and Floyd was a debris-filled mess that did little more than depress the few drivers who bothered to notice it. Richard Roederer, owner of the Blossom Street Gallery, cleaned the place up and used it to display…
Best Revolution
Democracy reared its not-so-ugly head in Seabrook this year when residents got mightily pissed off that their elected officials were determined to bring a mammoth billion (with a “B”)-dollar container port to the doorstep of their small town. Visions of a huge rail yard and 7,000 trucks a day rumbling…
Best Houston Astro
Best Astro? Of this godforsaken season? Isn’t that like having a category for Best Police Academy Sequel? Let’s be blunt: Good Astros are few and far between this year. But why not offer up some applause for local-boy-made-good Lance Berkman, the pride of Rice University and slugger of the future?…
Best Service
It should come as no surprise that a Vallone Group restaurant would claim the coveted prize of best service. Tony Vallone, the patriarch of Houston’s most elite dining dynasty, has instilled this work ethic in all his progeny, who provide a horde of servers, from captains to busboys, to surround…
Best Place to Eat When You Can’t Decide What You Want
When you’re with a large number of people, or have the kids in tow, and nobody can decide exactly what they feel like eating, our suggestion is Super Steak & More. Sure, there are steaks on the menu, but where else in Houston can you get (all at the same…
Best Place to Buy an Action Figure
Stop rummaging through the local comic-book stores in town looking for that rare orange-carded TIE Fighter Pilot with the “Warning!” sticker on the box. When a store catering to obsessive SF fans (which means sci-fi, for the uninitiated [which stands for science fiction, for the very uninitiated]) is locked away…
Best Place to Buy Used CDs
It kills us to let this secret out, but Houstonians with good taste already know it: Not only does Wherehouse Music have the most impressive collection of used, mostly pop CDs, arranged nicely and in a customer-friendly way (in alphabetical order and by artist) along a handful of 20-foot-long display…
Best Body Piercing
Black-haired, pale-skinned and soft-spoken Byriah Dailey has earned a reputation as a clean, safe and super-professional piercer at his seven-year-old shop, Taurian. But with the addition of piercer Steve Joyner, who relocated to Houston earlier this spring from Obscurities Precision Piercing in Dallas, some of the best Texas piercers now…
Best Developer
In Houston, real estate development is a business dominated by stereotypes: the good ol’ boy, the profit-at-all-costs mentality, the belief that any structure more than 25 years old needs to be torn down and replaced with something shiny and new, not to mention exorbitantly expensive. Tamra Pierce and Mimi Scarpulla…
Best (Pile of) Junk
From beyond the corrugated tin walls, copper light posts topped with bulbous white globes protrude, and wilted chandeliers lie on top of the impossibly piled pile of junk. Sandwiched between La Maison and Value Village in the Heights, this nameless junk shop is easy to miss, especially when it’s closed…
Best Local Television Show Causing a Commotion
Ever since Channel 39’s Straight from the Streetz, hosted by the KBXX-FM’s omnipresent Madd Hatta, sadly disappeared from television airwaves a while back, rap-video enthusiasts who can’t afford cable for BET or public access have had to get their weekly fix from KUHT’s Saturday-night video fest. But not all folks…
Best Production
Margaret Edson just might be the only kindergarten teacher in the country who can list the Pulitzer Prize on her résumé. But Edson is no ordinary teacher — or writer, for that matter. It was just a couple of years ago that the unassuming teacher won the award for her…
Best Radio Sidekick
You gotta give some much-deserved credit to the man they call Jay Mack. How many brothas out there you know who are as suave as a Julio Iglesias song and can still not take themselves too seriously? There seems to be a shortage these days. Thankfully, the cat who co-commands…
Best Explanation of a Traffic Accident
On a Thursday morning last December, two automobiles collided at the T intersection of Hillcroft and Skyline. One car, traveling south on Hillcroft, was attempting a left turn onto Skyline when it slammed into a northbound vehicle. It’s impossible to tell, by virtue of the police report, which driver was…
Letters 09-21-2000
Listen to the Music Director’s cut: Bravo, Houston Press! At least one Houston newspaper realizes that the Houston Symphony deserves a cover story [“Can the Band Play On?” by Marene Gustin, September 7]. The orchestra is important not only to the concertgoers but also to the community at large. The…
Alice in Wonderland
At the age of ten, young Martin (Jeremy Kreikenmayer) is forced by his single mother finally to meet the father he has put off seeing every year. Nothing wrong with that, at least on the surface; boys heading into adolescence need their fathers. Dad (Pierre Maguelon), as is often the…
Best One-Man Show
Writer/actor Rob Nash has lots of fans. No wonder. His one-man shows, including Junior Blues and Senioritis, which ran this year at the Bienvenue Theater, are pure theatrical magic. Built around his teenage years at Houston’s own Strake Jesuit high school, the scripts are hysterically funny. But a lot of…
Best Dollar Movie Theater
Squish-squish, go your shoes as you enter the darkened theater. Squish-squish-squish, they continue, as you make your way down the aisle, eyes scanning for that perfect middle seat. To prevent anyone from blocking your line of sight to the screen, you might rest your legs over the chair in front…
Best New Effort to Inject Culture into Houston
Last year Brazos Bookstore, the most civilized shop in town, gave birth to a nonprofit arm, Brazos Projects, which sponsors the kind of artistic and literary events that make thinking people swoon. So far it has brought to town Robert Pinsky, the U.S. poet laureate, and has shown furniture (furniture?!)…
Best Club for Local Acts
Though being able to sit on a musician’s lap as he plays does not necessarily a great live local-music venue make, fantastic sound and a hospitable atmosphere do (we’re talking about a city that is not Los Angeles or New York and where local musicians need that friendly face to…
Best Community Newspaper
If Houston’s Spanish-speaking community has a paper of record, El Día is it. More than simply recap police blotter sagas, this daily diligently covers news affecting the city’s diverse Hispanic community that otherwise wouldn’t get covered. El Día has kept a watchful eye on police brutality, the fire department’s handling…
Best Mystery
Freshly elected in 1998, Mayor Lee Brown had a chance to add substance to his well-padded résumé by doing what predecessor Bob Lanier had only pretended to do: shore up the city’s sagging infrastructure with an aggressive public works program. Lanier’s program had been aggressive, at least in terms of…
Best Bus Stop
A bus stop is pretty much a bus stop here in Houston. But there is one location that offers a little variety, not to mention style. Outside the Sears in the Garden Oaks neighborhood, north of the Heights, is a 1950s gem, with a space-age roof featuring the curves of…
Best Landlord
Brian Copeland is definitely the nicest landlord in town. He owns five area properties, but he has scaled down and sold a few apartment houses so that he and his partner, Tyler, can spend more time with their adorable son. Most landlords are just people who collect your rent check…
Best Place to Get a Traffic Ticket
“Downtown…,” sang Petula Clark, “…where all the lights are bright.” And she’s exactly right — it’s where all the flashing red lights are brightest. Perhaps the trade-off, the sense of security from crime, is worth it. But downtown cops seem dead set on writing up damn near every driver that…
Best Pasta
As much as we love the pasta explosion of the past 20 years (lighter sauces, Asian pastas, Cajun pastas, pan-cross cultural pastas, you know the rest), sometimes it’s nice to eat the kind of pasta that reminds us why we loved it so much in the first place, and for…
Best Drive-thru Drink
1. Houston is a car city. 2. Houston is hot. 3. Driving in the heat makes you crave big cold drinks. Which is why you should drive to Bambolino’s. Without leaving your car, you can buy a semifrozen lemonade for a piddling $1.29. At 32 ounces, the large serving is…
Best Place to Buy Middle Eastern Groceries
Don’t be put off by the sign outside that reads “wholesale” — if you’ve got cash, they’ve got the merchandise. While they specialize in Middle Eastern ingredients, they also have many Western and Eastern European specialties. Here you’ll find bulk bulgur at 59 cents per pound; all kinds of dried…
Best Former Soviet Union Grocery and Deli
Now that there are several stores catering to the large and growing Russophone community of Houston, it’s possible to pick the best one. This little spot, located in an obscure strip center in southwest Houston, is a true general store in the American sense, selling foodstuffs, prepared to-go items, CDs,…
Best Newsstand
SuperStand lacks the hard-boiled grit of an old-time newsstand, but it does have thousands of magazines, cresting in glossy abundance like waves of a media-saturated sea. The inevitable mugs of Eastwood, Travolta and Buffy the Vampire Slayer stare from shelves, but you also will find more arcane fare. Aggressive outdoor…
Best Chicken Salad Sandwich
“You eat there?” most people ask. Yes, we eat there. Most people go to Brasil for coffee or Hawaiian Punch-like hibiscus tea, but we always order the same thing: the spicy chicken salad sandwich. Most chicken salad sandwiches are little more than shredded, mashed-up chicken mixed with mayonnaise. Boring. This…
Best Florist
Scott McCool is Houston’s florist to the stars. He won’t name the names of the socialites on his roster of 1,800 accounts, but he will tell us that his designers have spruced up events at the Museum of Fine Arts, the Alley Theatre and the River Oaks Country Club, with…
Best Oil Change
Don’t let the name of the place fool you. K&R Tire is a full-service auto shop. They’ll do your oil change while you wait, often in the same amount of time it takes those other franchises that promise you oil, lube and filter in a jiff. The difference is that…
Best Chef’s Table
Some restaurants feature a table, generally in the kitchen, where you can experience the hustle and bustle of the back room firsthand. Others feature small intimate rooms or cozy nooks for a private get-together, away from the common folk. All of this, in an effort to make the dining experience…
Best Vegetarian Restaurant
Unless they have chosen a vegetarian way of life, some people won’t let anything green cross their lips. An easy way to see some of the magnificent things that can be done with vegetables is at the lunch buffet ($6.95 weekdays, $8.95 weekends) at Madras Pavilion. This vegetarian-only South Indian…
Best Restaurant
If ever there was a “temple of cuisine,” this cutting-edge American restaurant located in a former church must be it. There are stars painted above the former altar, and the bar runs where the communion rail used to be. Here, in this Montrose church-turned-restaurant, an un-solemn congregation of convivialists meets…
Best Place to In-line Skate
I’m sorry, what did you say? The Fruit Loop offers the best blading in town? Honey, you need to start thinking like a realtor: location, location, location. What a difference a couple of miles makes. With its stratospheric tax bracket, River Oaks offers the smoothest asphalt, the safest environs and…
Best Place to See a College Football Game
Wait a minute, that’s not just “Robertson Stadium,” that’s “John O’Quinn Field at Robertson Stadium.” A lengthy name like that is what happens when a big-bucks alumnus donates $6 million to improve a facility that’s named after a former UH regent. The public-relations people at UH would like you to…
Best Place to Work Out and Not Be Intimidated
Most health clubs are intimidating for the beginner. For one thing, you have to get past all those awesome abs and perfect pecs when all you have is a bulging belly. Second, most of the other people are half-dressed in skimpy spandex, all the better to show off their perfect…
Best Poor Boy
La Tapatia Taqueria’s poor boys are practically an entire Mexican meal between two fresh buns. Along with a belt-bustingly generous serving of one of 12 meats or a veggie, the sandwich is smeared with refried beans and sour cream. It also includes slippery avocado slices (which sometimes escape the sandwich…
Best Salad
When Johnny Carraba wanted to pay tribute to a couple of family members, he bestowed upon them a true culinary honor in our book, the Johnny Rocco salad ($10). The name is a combination of Carrabas dad, Johnny, and good old Uncle Rocco. The salad is a combination of mixed…
Best Oil Change
Don’t let the name of the place fool you. K&R Tire is a full-service auto shop. They’ll do your oil change while you wait, often in the same amount of time it takes those other franchises that promise you oil, lube and filter in a jiff. The difference is that…
Best Zoo Animal
Most of the animals at the zoo don’t seem to care too much about visitors. They eat or pee or groom themselves or loll about, oblivious to the prying eyes and children’s cries. But the orangutan knows what’s going on. When a crowd gathers on the other side of her…
Best Baseball Announcer
It’s easy to be an engaging analyst when the team you’re covering is breezing to championships. It’s a little tougher to hold viewers’ interest when the bottom falls out, and when you have to walk the fine line between offering much-needed criticism and unduly offending the team that signs your…
Best Pizzeria
Americans spent more money last year on pizzas than they did on computers and software combined, or so says an industry trade group. At any rate, pizza is one subject about which nearly every American can be counted on to have an opinion. Why Star Pizza? It is not a…
Best Name for Houston’s New Football Team
Bob McNair, the man who returned professional football to Houston, has dubbed his new team the Texans. Forgive us if we don’t immediately share the jingoistic joy of the moniker. Last time we looked, much of the city had little to do with Texas (aside from obvious geography): Haven’t seen…
Best Nonprofit
While most people are loath to acknowledge it, Houston’s housing boom has a downside, too: higher rents and less affordable single-family housing. Avenue CDC was formed in 1991 by a handful of residents of the Sixth Ward, back when demands for inner-city housing forced out lower-income renters and homeowners who…
Best Time and Place to See Low-Riders
Yes, there are other cruising routes — out on Airline or Irvington, say — but this western stretch of Richmond club land is the oldest and biggest and most reliable. If the weather’s good and the cops aren’t swarming, car-watchers will be rewarded with a combination parade and dance competition…
Best Bar with a Ghost Story
Lend an ear to anybody over at the hallowed beer hall, and they will tell stories of the apparition that has been lurking in the nooks and crannies of the place for ages. Just how long has this spook been around? Well, long enough that the people have given it…
Best Street Festival
Oh, what were you expecting, the Westheimer Street Festival? The Houston International Festival, with its overpriced gyros and male Carmen Miranda impersonators? They may be the largest and most popular street fests in the city, but this modest weekend get-together should be rightfully recognized. For a couple of days last…
Best Value
The regulars lined up outside this tiny sidewalk cafe don’t want the secret to get out, but too bad. La Vista is too good to keep quiet. Not only are aptly prepared modern American, Italian and even south-of-the-border dishes offered at a fraction of what they could be, but this…
Best Restaurant Playground
Yes, your kids like those giant plastic Habitrails that loom over every fast-food burger joint. But wouldn’t the little rowdies like a real playground even better? One that’s outdoors? One with sand, shovels and buckets? One where they can keep their shoes on? Joe’s Crab Shack has thought of all…
Best Motorcycle Parking Lot
Maybe these are just the moments that downtown finally arrives. Party on the Plaza is in full swing. So is its dynamic corner of the central city, with Bayou Place beckoning the masses across the street. And there, on the magnificent grounds that serve as the front entrance to the…
Best Cake Shop
Pandan, also called screwpine leaves, is a popular ingredient in Southeast Asian cuisine. Its floral flavor and intense green hue usually enhance rice and pudding dishes. But at Goodness Cake House, pandan also makes a surprisingly good cake flavor, along with coffee, vanilla and chocolate. The choices may be few,…
Best Bookstore
You won’t encounter a “mystery” section at Brazos Bookstore; nor can you order a mocha au lait. A fabulous collection of books and a knowledgeable staff are this classy enclave’s draw. Brazos clearly places quality over quantity. Perusing the literature, history and art sections, you will be hard-pressed to find…
Best Pool Guy
Bill Jordan is too nice a guy to be in the pool business, a rare dolphin in a sea of sharks. Swimming pools, as their owners well know, are subject to a host of problems, and to deal with them requires an incongruent knowledge of chemistry, construction, engineering and mechanics…
Best Designer
Jason Nodler’s Infernal Bridegroom Productions is still the most innovative and exciting theater company in town. A lot of its success goes to the inspired designers Nodler has been able to coerce into coming on board. Such is the case with his deliciously dark production of David Mamet’s Edmond. It…
Best Director
Jason Nodler is without a doubt the best thing that has happened to Houston theater in a long, long while. An artistic hoodlum of the most provocative sort, the thirtysomethinger has tenaciously built his vagabond theater company, Infernal Bridegroom Productions, from the gutter up. And now, after many years of…
Best Adulterated Shakespeare
Stand-up comedy in Shakespeare? How about slapstick? Or musical interludes from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly? The Alley’s Gregory Boyd did all this and more in his irreverent and very funny take on one of Shakespeare’s zaniest tales of mistaken identity, The Comedy of Errors. The Looney Tunes…
Best Actress
Remember Brandon Teena, the 21-year-old female who was murdered because she tried to live her life as a man? This true-life cautionary tale about a young person’s desperation to find herself was brought to passionate life last fall in Leigh Silverman’s minimalistic stage play Brandon Teena at The Little Room…
Best Burger
The burgers at this downtown watering hole are the real deal: a half-pound handmade patty of 80 percent lean ground chuck that is never frozen and never more than two days old. The most popular burger at Market Square is the blue-cheese burger, but the restaurant also offers a bacon…
Best Use of School Property
Attention all playas, pimps, hustlers, ballers and macks: Texas Southern University will host its first-ever Old School Celebrity Weekend, where locals and celebrities will come together and get their roll on. The three-day shindig will kick off Thursday night at TSU’s Hannah Hall with Luther Campbell, Luke Skyywalker himself, presenting…
Almost Famous
At first, you don’t want to admit it, because it seems somehow wrong–just too easy. After all, the woman on the other end of the phone line is not that woman seen every Sunday night on HBO, lamenting the sad, sorry state of her love affairs. She’s not an actress…
Best New Theater
Even the surroundings are theatrical — sort of. When you drive up to Ashland Street Theatre Co., the first thing you see is the factory at the end of the street. Huge and metallic and glowing in the shadowy darkness, the ominous building looks like it could be the hideaway…
Best Honky-tonk
The minute you walk into Blanco’s and see the beaten hardwood floors, or breathe in the fog of cigarette smoke, or just push your way past a posse of cowboys in Wranglers and pearl-snaps, you know you’ve found the real thing: a genuine Texas honky-tonk. This oasis of traditional Texana…
Booze in a Blender
Chuy’s [2706 Westheimer, (713)524-1700] is the perfect place to ponder the connection between Elvis Presley and fine Tex-Mex. The Elvis shrine at the front door features an LP of the soundtrack to Blue Hawaii along with a bust of the King. I take a seat at the Chihuahua Bar a…
Best Reading Series
To know why the Margarett Root Brown Reading Series has persevered for 20 years, you need only look at some of the top-notch writers who have participated. Raymond Carver, Margaret Atwood, Donald Barthelme, Robert Pinsky, Galway Kinnel, Tobias Wolff and Jamaica Kincaid are just some of the names on the…
Best Restoration Project
After a year and a half with its doors shut for a $1.8 million face-lift, the Rothko Chapel reopened in June, radiating renewed richness in its muted simplicity. The renovation work reached from the ground up, bringing the shrine closer to what Rothko had intended, says Suna Umari, the chapel’s…
Best Nonprofit
While most people are loath to acknowledge it, Houston’s housing boom has a downside, too: higher rents and less affordable single-family housing. Avenue CDC was formed in 1991 by a handful of residents of the Sixth Ward, back when demands for inner-city housing forced out lower-income renters and homeowners who…
Best Administrative Judge
Even in the justice system, silence can be golden. While the 14th Court of Appeals has been in seemingly continual controversy in recent years — justices even sued their chief justice at one point in a long-running dispute over administrative authority — the First Court of Appeals has been a…
Best Local TV News Anchor
By now, any TV buff knows this show. Diverse characters come together under demanding conditions and fend for themselves on a remote island. Darwinism depletes their numbers as the weak-willed get culled — voted off the island — while others thrive on the primal challenges for their tribes. Survivor scored…
Best Hero
Houston-based Drew Carter’s combination of law enforcement sleuthing and social working with the family of serial killer Angel Maturino Resendiz resulted in the killer’s bloodless surrender last summer. Carter, with less than one year’s tenure with the Rangers, had become involved five months earlier, when the Rangers were called in…
Best Shish Kebab
The “East” in this spiffy, clean little restaurant, housed in a former fast-food outlet, does not refer to its location in Houston (it’s actually on the far west side of the city), but to the Russian word for east, vostok. In Russia, east is a shorthand term for the Moslem…
Best Cold Boiled Shrimp
Some people refer to journalists as bottom-feeders. Well, as long as there are crustaceans like the ones served up at the Captain’s around, we will consider ourselves in good company. Since the restaurant is best known for its oysters on the half shell, the cold boiled shrimp sometimes get overlooked,…
Best Place to Buy a Live Chicken
Fans of the movie Chicken Run may wonder if the birds at Tai Hung are hatching fantastic escape schemes along with eggs. They’re everywhere, these hapless birds — clucking inside coops, strutting on the grass, fleeing wild-eyed children. The frowsy white hens and proud orange roosters spend most of their…
Best Place to Buy Used CDs
It kills us to let this secret out, but Houstonians with good taste already know it: Not only does Wherehouse Music have the most impressive collection of used, mostly pop CDs, arranged nicely and in a customer-friendly way (in alphabetical order and by artist) along a handful of 20-foot-long display…
Best Use of Dental Floss
We’re not sure of the brand, but this past March, Texas prison inmate Antonio Lara allegedly sawed through several cell bars using dental floss. Unfortunately, say prison officials, he then fatally stabbed fellow prisoner Rolando Rios as guards were escorting him to the shower. The incident resulted in a statewide…
Best Steamed Dumplings
Darkened windows prevent you from seeing inside this tiny storefront restaurant next to the Diho Market in the “new” Chinatown. You might even think it’s closed. But open the door and you’ll discover a hidden treasure. All dumplings are handmade to order, so it takes a little time. While fried…
Best Drive-thru Bank
Where else but on the gentrifying Washington Avenue can you find a slick Bank of America a stone’s toss from junkyards, dive bars and diners? With 11 (yes, 11) drive-thru slots, this drive-up darling in the shadow of downtown fills up around lunchtime and quitting time. It’s a fun place…
Best Gourmet Doggy Biscuits
This store is heaven for the yuppie puppy. Situated in River Oaks, it’s a place where people spend $12 for a bottle of ChampPagne (which is Canadian spring water). The pastry case rivals that of Three Brothers Bakery just down the street. (Sometimes people get confused and go to the…
Best Restaurant to Impress a Date
Start out at the intimate bar, then move on to the elegant and sumptuous dining room, where you’ll experience not only first-class classical French cuisine but service to match. If the evening is going well, and you’re feeling lucky, upstairs rooms with names like Renoir and Cezanne go for $195…
Best Cuban Restaurant
Waiters with white shirts and black mustaches, wonderful photos and memorabilia of Cuba, and an air of quiet sophistication make Cafe Piquet the No. 1 choice for Cuban dining in Houston. The buttery black beans and gooey sweet bronze plantains are perfect, and the Cuban sandwiches are first-rate, but don’t…
Best Hole-in-the-Wall Burger Joint
This is a no-frills experience all the way. These two little Heights-area huts have been around forever and, despite occasional turnover in staff, continue to serve up the best greasy burgers in town. You can either walk up or phone in your order. Most people get their food to go,…
Best Place to Get Away from Cars
Step out of the city and into the Wild West. Down Cyprus Woods Road out in Humble is Cyprus Trails. You pull into the driveway, and the yard is filled with horses tethered to trees and roaming around. On your left is a pen filled with puppies and a potbellied…
Best Gadfly
Dan Hart is the indefatigable property tax activist who bugs Harris County Tax Appraisal District officials with the persistence of a salt marsh mosquito. Hart, a retired Kinkaid School coach, has embraced the role of tax watchdog as a second career, and has even started up a nonprofit organization, Taxpayers…
Best French Fries
Great french fries are probably the last thing that come to mind when thinking about Cafe Annie (something we do a great deal), but since one of the keys to a great restaurant is the details, it should come as absolutely no surprise that its fries are first-rate. They are,…
Best Drive-thru Drink
1. Houston is a car city. 2. Houston is hot. 3. Driving in the heat makes you crave big cold drinks. Which is why you should drive to Bambolino’s. Without leaving your car, you can buy a semifrozen lemonade for a piddling $1.29. At 32 ounces, the large serving is…
Best Orange Juice
Well, hell. The alarm failed you again; the sun’s already long up, importing sweat through the panes and overpowering the asthmatic window unit, and somehow — hard to remember exactly — you’re hungover. Again. You can tell even before you rise from the pillows that actual food retention is not…
Best Gourmet Doggy Biscuits
This store is heaven for the yuppie puppy. Situated in River Oaks, it’s a place where people spend $12 for a bottle of ChampPagne (which is Canadian spring water). The pastry case rivals that of Three Brothers Bakery just down the street. (Sometimes people get confused and go to the…
Best Jukebox
A downtown fixture as venerable as Warren’s would be incomplete without a fine jukebox to complement the (Houston Press) award-winning decor, martinis and staff. And there, placed innocuously inside the main room, sits the late-model Rowe Ami. It’s not the flashiest box in town, but what sets it apart are…
Best Place to See a Polo Game
Polo used to be called the sport of kings because you had to have six horses to play (one for each period in the game). These days you don’t have to be a member of the royal family to play, and you sure don’t have to be upper-class to watch…
Best Hero
Houston-based Drew Carter’s combination of law enforcement sleuthing and social working with the family of serial killer Angel Maturino Resendiz resulted in the killer’s bloodless surrender last summer. Carter, with less than one year’s tenure with the Rangers, had become involved five months earlier, when the Rangers were called in…
Best Bike Lanes
At least Houston now has bike lanes. The intersection where Alabama meets Shepherd has long been a congested one for Houston motorists. And now one of the lanes in either direction on Alabama has been converted into a lane for bicycles. It may not improve the traffic flow for gas-guzzling…
Best Adventure Race Series
Some athletes are just plain hard to please. Take mountain bike riders, for example. You’d think traversing terrain that might cause a tank commander to rethink his route would be a sufficient challenge. But for people who compete in the Texas State Championship Sprint Adventure race series, risking life and…
Best Pool Hall
The billiard cloth has long since faded to a lighter shade of green; the cues are sometimes as curved as an archer’s bow, and a few tables are as level as a raked stage. The Waugh Drive Pool Hall is not about the tools of the trade. This Montrose institution…
Best Citizens
For more than two decades the Zwicks have helped thousands of Latin American immigrants make the transition to life in the United States. What began as a humble shelter for refugees from war-torn Central America has evolved into a multifaceted operation that includes two health clinics, a labor hall and…
Best Sports Bar
Nothing says “fine dining” like rows and rows of autographed sneakers and moldy uniforms, but such is the standard decor at sports bars nationwide. Luckily you don’t go to sports bars for food. You go to see games you can’t get on the tube at home, with a lively crowd,…
Best Comfort Food
3801 Farnham, (713)523-2333; 8125 Katy Freeway, (713)681-5559
Best Barbecue Joint
This is one of the oldest barbecue joints in the city. When legendary pit boss John Davis founded the place in the early 1930s, it was called Shepherd Drive Bar-B-Q. Davis’s secret recipe for zingy sauce died with him, but the business, including the original pit, was sold to Jerry…
Best Car Wash
Tucked behind a service station between Montrose and the Museum District, Carriage Car Care must be the car wash of choice for the SUV-driving crowd. On a recent Saturday, no fewer than a half-dozen urban war wagons were either lined up waiting for the Carriage crew’s treatment or basking in…
Best Place to Get Impressive Art Cheap
Well, okay, $3,000 isn’t cheap. But for, say, a drawing by James Surls or a painting by Vernon Fisher — both of which would likely fetch at least $5,000 elsewhere — it’s a bargain, to be sure. Held every spring (the next one is May 4, 2001), the Glassell’s annual…
Best Billboard
To grab your attention, billboards should be as explosive as a child’s temper tantrum, and just as unsubtle. Vasectomy reversal! Who’s the father?! When half’s not enough! The best billboards are amusing as much for what they don’t say as for what they do. “The church found out about our…
Best Place to Learn “The Whip”
Before you get too excited, you should know that SSQQ stands for slow, slow, quick, quick, not sadomasochists squealing and quivering quietly. And instruction in “The Whip” has more to do with fancy footwork than learning how to inflict a blow that will hurt like hell without breaking the skin…
Best Restaurant in the Tunnels
If you think good tunnel food is an impossibility, and if you think the only stuff you can find down there is doled out by chain fast-food eateries, stop by Panini for a pleasant lunchtime surprise. Homemade soups. Freshly baked pizzas. Wonderful salads. Terrific sandwiches (we particularly like the homemade…
Best Sex Scene
Boy meets Girl. Boy gets Girl. Boy is “hard all the time.” Girl is young and lithe, with pert breasts and slim hips. Boy chases Girl across stage, naked and giddy. Boy pulls Girl’s towel off, exposing her body under bright lights. Boy describes the tremendous trek through the divide…
Best Plants
Pennants and posters that say “plants” and “sale sale sale” in bold black letters are in The Plant Lady’s front yard. Her plants are gorgeous, and cheap. She sells big trees for $10 and enormous peace lilies for $5 (we’ve seen wimpier, wilted ones for $30 elsewhere). Flowering plants that…
Best Dentist’s Office Inside the Loop
The folks at Outreach Dentistry will banish forever those Marathon Man-like memories of the evil white-coated dentist who looms like a horrifying shadow over the landscape of your oral hygiene. When you push open the glass door of Outreach, you’ll get a home-style welcome. The waiting room of this mom-and-pop…
Best Bar Food
Pizza? At an Irish bar? We didn’t think that made sense either. We were expecting DiGiorno or something far more frozen. But this homemade pizza is the best we’ve ever tasted. They’ve made it fresh every day for the past 11 years, and they almost always sell every slice they…
Best Chanteuse
Linda Eder may be able to sing the roof off a concert hall, but she’s anything but a diva. “I really want to be happy,” says Eder, the kind of girl who played stickball as a kid, the Winnie Cooper to our Kevin Arnold. “I want to have time to…
Timber!
Known for its cuckoo-clock industry, half-timber houses and dense landscape of dark pines, the Black Forest region of southwestern Germany is a strange collision of kitsch, beauty and unconscious fears. It has provided the setting for many fairy tales that, underneath their sugarcoated surfaces, explore some rather unsettling themes. Most…
Best Poetry Magazine
Get your heads out the damn gutter right now! Despite its suggestive title, tongue is a magazine that specializes in the words of local creative minds. Believe it or not, this city has an eclectic poetry scene. And with all the spoken-word nights that circulate from all points of town…
Best Blues Club
The blues is not complicated. It does not require a complicated venue to host it. In fact, it thrives in just the opposite: intimate neighborhood bars where the beat of the drummer matches the beat of your heart, each offering something to the other in a sort of telepathy between…
Strange Fruit
Until a few years ago, Houston may have possessed the finest supermarket in the entire United States of America, the Jamail’s on Kirby Drive. The public it sought to serve was a minority of the city’s population — the minority that associates the word “coupon” with the little pieces of…
Best Bar Manager
Tucked in the armpit of West U, Bellaire and the railroad tracks, Little Woodrow’s seems out of place and time. Few of the mostly working-class regulars who frequent the area’s only neighborhood bar live in the monstrosities that have sprouted in the adjoining neighborhoods, displacing the modest middle-class ranch-styles. But…
Best Place to Beat Road Rage
Afternoon rush hour. Traffic oozes south from the Cullen Center garage and north from Brazos Street, battling for the turn that will take commuters onto the Interstate 45 ramp at Pease. Others are roaring off the exit ramp onto Jefferson. The light turns red and stays that way just long…
Best Place for a Last Date
The grand doorway opens at this obscure Midtown corner on Fannin. A heavy sense of foreboding can be felt with the first step into the enormous premises. The clock freezes at the just-off-peak dining hour. Over in the hazy corner, by that faded mural of the canals of Venice, a…
Best Y2K Story
Last time we checked in with La Porte jack-of-all-junk Butch Forest (see “J-U-N-K in the Y2K,” December 30, 1999), the conversation revolved around a complicated four-way horse trade involving a gutted 18-foot Airstream trailer in Manvel, a 14-foot fiberglass bass boat in Houston, a Hi-Lo camper in Dickinson and a…
Best Reason to Join the Houston Zoo
This annual members-only party takes place in early summer, but blessedly, it’s during the cool of evening, when it’s pleasant to stroll the grounds. Stuff your offspring full of free hot dogs, sodas and ice cream. Sway to the reggae band. Watch the clown wobble on stilts and juggle flaming…
Best Place to Meet Single Women
She was bored. She had nothing to do after work except eat dinner and watch TV, and the reception was so bad in her apartment that the rabbit ears were useless. She wanted to do something fun, something artsy and hands-on. And she wanted to meet other people. A Leisure…
Best Beignets
Shuffling your tray down the line at Crescent City Beignets amid the Lamar High students, you can’t help feeling like you’re eating breakfast in the high school cafeteria. You also can’t help wondering whether these beignets are going to be as good as the ones you get in New Orleans…
Best Dim Sum
Being new, big and shiny, Ocean Palace has a few obvious advantages over its competitors: a ballroom-size dining room with 100 tables, a pond in front of the restaurant garnished with lily pads, and substantial hype that keeps people waiting every Sunday morning for a table — for good reason…
Best Place to Buy Art Supplies
Two years ago, after 40 years at Richmond and Montrose, Ben Russell and Vikki Trammell moved Art Supply to a two-story commercial space in Midtown. Respected as nurturers of the local art scene as well as the preferred source for top-grade fine-arts supplies, the couple remodeled the upstairs of 2711…
Best Cake Shop
Pandan, also called screwpine leaves, is a popular ingredient in Southeast Asian cuisine. Its floral flavor and intense green hue usually enhance rice and pudding dishes. But at Goodness Cake House, pandan also makes a surprisingly good cake flavor, along with coffee, vanilla and chocolate. The choices may be few,…
Best Execution of a Business Plan
The late Dickie Rosenfeld, who died in July, was a giant in Houston radio. He brought the Beatles to town in the 1960s and was the creator of the original Hudson and Harrigan show. He spent most of his 50 years in radio as general manager of KILT. But even…
Best Drive-thru Java
It’s a wonder traffic doesn’t grind to a halt as the luxury SUV crowd does a double-take at the competing Starbucks stores at the corners of West Gray at Shepherd. After all, they just need their mid-afternoon java jolt — not another decision to make. We’ll make it easy for…
Best Used Clothing
The problem with thrift stores is that they require too much work: To find that vintage western shirt, or that trendy fresh-from-the-mall sundress, you have to paw through racks of stained or ripped goods that honestly weren’t all that desirable to begin with. But at Buffalo Exchange, the dregs have…
Best Auto Parts Store
SGP Racing in Deer Park isn’t one of those places you drop off your car for a quickie oil change or brake check. It’s the place where serious speed and performance enthusiasts might leave their cars for weeks for engine overhauls, ridiculous amounts of horsepower (600, anyone?) and new computerization…
Best Alfresco Dining
Nestled between La Griglia on West Gray and Tila’s on Shepherd, amid a sea of lofts that are sprouting like weeds, you’ll find a quiet oasis on the patio of the Backstreet Cafe. Flowers are plentiful and always in bloom, and there’s plenty of shade from a huge oak tree,…
Best Japanese Restaurant
The difficult truth is this: Most native Japanese never, ever have a chance to dine in a truly great Japanese restaurant, of the sort one finds in Kyoto and a few other locations in Japan. The classic kai-seki-ryori dinner is an aesthetic experience that even the most decorated of Michelin…
Best Neighborhood Spot in Montrose
This cozy cafe, named after a Slavic witch, has been a favorite for locals ever since Montrose became the capital of the bohemian culture. Now, the homey converted bungalow — with patio seating and a lush herb garden, complete with trilling birds — serves Houston’s largest gay population, as well…
Best Racetrack
Houston has never been known as a hotbed for big-time auto racing. Sure, A.J. Foyt grew up in the Heights, but as far as top-notch racing facilities are concerned, forget it. That was, until 1988, when Houston Raceway Park in Baytown came onto the scene. The sprawling facility has played…
Best Source for Texas Political Info
For a $175 annual subscription, this Austin-based political newsletter published by Bellaire High grad Harvey Kronberg churns up plenty of information. Features of the Quorum Report Web site (quorumreport.com) include bulletins in the form of the Daily Buzz plus an invaluable daily clip service of relevant Texas and national media…
Best Place for a Pickup Soccer Game
If you see a blade of grass in Houston, someone has probably gotten to it before you. In order to play soccer in a city park, you have to be registered with the folks at the Parks and Recreation Department and present them with a league schedule. And pay a…
Best Chicken-Fried Steak
Normally Texans do not associate chicken-fried steak with a Cajun restaurant. Granted, the one served up at Treebeards — best known for its red beans and rice — is not the typical battered piece of meat smothered in a white cream gravy. Instead, this is chicken-fried like your grandmother used…
Best Appraiser
Anybody who has tuned in to PBS’s Antiques Roadshow marvels at how veteran appraisers quickly scan somebody’s closet clutter and come up with rich histories and details on such obscure items. Paul F. Wishnow takes it one step further. Each Sunday morning on KPRC Radio (950 AM), he delivers a…
Best Gay Role Model
When he was growing up in the town of Hallettsville, Gene Mikulenka thought the word “gay” meant that you smoked pot, that you were cool. One day a couple of guys came into the restaurant where he worked and asked Gene if he was gay. “I did it a couple…
Best Bike Path
While Houston has light-years to go before becoming a truly bike-friendly city, it is finally beginning to get at least tolerant of the two-wheelers. Nothing shows the détente with motorists better than the pathway system along Brays Bayou in the southern sector of the city. Paved lanes swoop from street…
Best Driving Range
Summers in Houston — especially this summer, when temperatures were pushing 110 degrees into September — are a detriment to your golf game. It’s hot and sticky, the fairways are parched and burned, and the greens are baked to the unforgiving consistency of a parking lot. Not exactly conducive to…
Best Place to Meet Single Women
She was bored. She had nothing to do after work except eat dinner and watch TV, and the reception was so bad in her apartment that the rabbit ears were useless. She wanted to do something fun, something artsy and hands-on. And she wanted to meet other people. A Leisure…
Best Roadway Improvement
Not that long ago, the Eastex Freeway was the obvious orphan of area transportation arteries, a forlorn, four-lane route to sheer frustration. Compared to its sister link, the Southwest Freeway on the other side of town, this section of U.S. 59 suffered from potholes, uneven pavement, antiquated access and awful…
Best Place for a Last Date
The grand doorway opens at this obscure Midtown corner on Fannin. A heavy sense of foreboding can be felt with the first step into the enormous premises. The clock freezes at the just-off-peak dining hour. Over in the hazy corner, by that faded mural of the canals of Venice, a…
Best Bus Stop
A bus stop is pretty much a bus stop here in Houston. But there is one location that offers a little variety, not to mention style. Outside the Sears in the Garden Oaks neighborhood, north of the Heights, is a 1950s gem, with a space-age roof featuring the curves of…
Best Racetrack
Houston has never been known as a hotbed for big-time auto racing. Sure, A.J. Foyt grew up in the Heights, but as far as top-notch racing facilities are concerned, forget it. That was, until 1988, when Houston Raceway Park in Baytown came onto the scene. The sprawling facility has played…
Best View
The sky lobby on the 60th floor of the I.M. Pei-designed Chase Tower offers the kind of view that gets kids oohing and asking really deep questions. “What would happen if there was no glass here?” queried one little girl as she and her brother pressed against the floor-to-ceiling window,…
Best Kids’ Meal Toys
Day care has left you broke, but still you have your pride. You hate the fluorescent-lit, Formica-table fast-food experience. You don’t want the kids to eat rubbery deep-fried poultry by-products. And please, no more of those offensive, licensed-character-du-jour Happy Meal toys. What you need is Mission Burritos on Alabama. Grab…
Best Place to Buy a Live Chicken
Fans of the movie Chicken Run may wonder if the birds at Tai Hung are hatching fantastic escape schemes along with eggs. They’re everywhere, these hapless birds — clucking inside coops, strutting on the grass, fleeing wild-eyed children. The frowsy white hens and proud orange roosters spend most of their…
Best Garish Ties
Like dead fish, the ties hang unhappily, wrapped in cellophane, suffocated. They look for a way out; they yearn to be bought. Every now and again, a Jerry Garcia tie — harmless as a watercolor painting — leaves the store. Otherwise, the ties remain. Perhaps because they’re just too darn…
Best Public Make-out Place
Journey back to your junior year of high school. You just saw a movie while seated next to the crush of your dreams, with your feet propped up on the back of the seat in front of you. Your hands touched in the giant tub o’ popcorn. Happiness shot straight…
Best Asian Grocery
Say good-bye to the cramped, dirty Asian grocery store with its persistent fishy stench, and hello to brightly lit aisles upon aisles of groceries. True to the very Texas notion that bigger is better, the newest Hong Kong Market location on Bellaire at Boone Road is bigger than a Randalls…
Best Local Terrorist
Lloyd Kelley never worked for the U.S. Postal Service, but the former cop, city councilmember and controller has been living up to the standard set in the 1990s by the both-barrels-blazing mail clerks. Once a rising star in Republican political circles, the photogenic Kelley was on a fast track to…
Best Choreographer
Trey McIntyre is a modern dancemaker whose ideas are as evocative as the movements that express them. His White Noise dealt with a fear of death; Speak pitted soft ballet against violent rap; and Aliss in Wonderland cast the storybook characters in modern celebrity culture. McIntyre’s latest creation, Bound, choreographed…
Best Gay Theater
Christian De Vries did a lot of living before he took over the small space on Washington Avenue and turned it into Bienvenue Theatre, one of Houston’s most successful small theaters, gay or otherwise. In past lives he’d been a carpenter, a painter, an electrician and an actor. But no…
Best Camp
Howard Crabtree’s When Pigs Fly is perhaps one of the silliest, funniest and even bravest autobiographical scripts ever penned. Totally gay and wonderfully queeny, the odd synthesis of old-fashioned musical and screeching wildness set up camp at Masquerade Theatre, and there it spun a magical haze of hilarious hair-sprayed boys…
Best Show You Can Chew Over
Spero Criezis, producer of The Great Caruso, seems hell-bent on yanking the quaintly dated idea of dinner theater into the 21st century. And with his production of Ain’t Misbehavin’, the Fats Waller Musical Show, the man just might succeed. The tiny Caruso stage, built into a snooty strip center in…
Best Shish Kebab
The “East” in this spiffy, clean little restaurant, housed in a former fast-food outlet, does not refer to its location in Houston (it’s actually on the far west side of the city), but to the Russian word for east, vostok. In Russia, east is a shorthand term for the Moslem…
The Spy Who Loved Meat
My blind date, Zelda, is meeting me at Matahari, an Indonesian restaurant on Dairy Ashford. The restaurant is decorated with puppets and painted masks from the Indonesian theater. The color scheme is somewhat dramatic, with royal blue tablecloths and blue-green and red carpets. It is named for Mata Hari, the…
Scripted Responses
Playwright Maria Irene Fornes is the grand dame of avant-garde, off-off-Broadway theater. Over the last 35 years, her work, which includes such elemental titles as Mud and Drowning, has garnered eight Obies and inspired a whole new generation of dramatists, including hugely successful artists such as Tony Kushner, of Angels…
Best Radio Station
Selecting Houston’s best supplier of over-the-airwaves music can seem like an exercise in picking the lesser evil. Between corporate-held stations controlled by focus groups and a public station run by a general manager who seems intent on destroying its democratic ways, our city’s radio offerings don’t exactly inspire listeners to…
Best Karaoke
If Ed McMahon had the gumption to host a Houston Star Search, Spotlight Karaoke would be his headquarters. Bringing in crowds of all colors, all ages and all — umm, both — genders, the Spotlight is where countertenor accountants go when they’re not crunching numbers and where shower-stall divas go…
Fun with Mick and Mary Jane
Mickey Kapoor, who says his titles at the popular restaurant Khyber North Indian Grill [2510 Richmond, (713)942-9424] as “emperor extraplenipotentiary, tsar … and small-but-not-petty tyrant.” As for his qualifications to wear the toque, Kapoor states, “I have attended a culinary school, somewhere.” Q: Upon recently rereading the 1894 report of…
Best 15 Minutes of Fame
On June 16, the New Black Panthers had every right to be pissed. They’d dressed all in eye-catching black. They arrived at the state GOP convention in Houston in a rare Hummer limousine. And most of them came to the protest party armed with all manner of menacing weapons: rifles,…
Best Rest Stop
The Texas Department of Transportation has the cookie-cutter approach to rest stops. Most of them are no more than off- and on-ramps from freeways, where the harried masses of motorists huddle at basic tables as traffic roars by a few yards away. The no-frills approach suits drivers just fine. But…
Best Event That No One Thought Would Ever Happen
For almost 20 years Allen Parkway Village, the sprawling 963-unit public-housing project just east of downtown, was at the heart of a class war that pitted a small band of tenants and affordable-housing advocates against the Housing Authority of the City of Houston, or HACH, which wanted to bulldoze the…
Best Contribution to Downtown Redevelopment
Enron Field? Hardly. The Astros’ stadium may be a strong anchor to east downtown’s revitalization, but the real stars of central city redevelopment were already playing hardball long before Drayton’s dream ever hit the drawing board. The real pioneers are people like New York implant Sharon Roseke Haynes. She led…
Best Amnesia
Essaying New Yorker Phillip Lopate (track down a copy of his out-of-print “Against Joie de Vivre”) spent eight years, from 1980 to 1988, living and working and teaching in Houston, so he must have seemed a defensible choice when the editors of the New York Times Magazine assigned him to…
Best Place to Smoke
Walk up. Sit down. Light up. Savor. The State Bar, that one-flight-up reincarnation of the Old Capitol Club at the Rice Lofts, pays ample tribute to an earlier time when tobacco could be richly enjoyed, right along with well-mixed drinks and quiet conversation among trusted associates. Atop the grand stairway,…
Best Catfish
The twisted, splintery logs stacked in a pile behind Goode Co. Seafood right next to the barbecue pits are a good omen. Just in case anyone was worried, there will be mesquite-smoked catfish tonight. In a day and age where catfish just isn’t considered any way but coated with flour…
Best Fried Rice
At most Chinese restaurants, fear the “special” fried rice. Rumored to be made of day-old rice and whatever leftover meat and vegetable bits fall from the cutting board, the only thing special about the rice is that it’s drowned in soy sauce, creating a super-salty and greasy meal. But not…
Best Place to Buy Doughnuts
Note that this category is called Best Place by Buy Doughnuts, not Best Doughnuts. If we were picking the best doughnuts, we would have to give the nod to Krispy Kreme again. But our favorite place to buy doughnuts is Shipway Donuts, at Telephone Road near the South Loop, a…
Best Place to Get Impressive Art Cheap
Well, okay, $3,000 isn’t cheap. But for, say, a drawing by James Surls or a painting by Vernon Fisher — both of which would likely fetch at least $5,000 elsewhere — it’s a bargain, to be sure. Held every spring (the next one is May 4, 2001), the Glassell’s annual…
Best Bike Lanes
At least Houston now has bike lanes. The intersection where Alabama meets Shepherd has long been a congested one for Houston motorists. And now one of the lanes in either direction on Alabama has been converted into a lane for bicycles. It may not improve the traffic flow for gas-guzzling…
Best Non-Cold Boiled Shrimp
These days the Blue Agave, with its tight T-shirted waitresses, feels a bit like a high-class Hooters. But that doesn’t diminish our fondness for the restaurant’s cornflake-fried shrimp “pina” that’s much better than its name. Adding to the improbability of this dish are the chunks of pineapple and hot sauce…
Best Live Window-Dressing
If you think leather is just for bulky bomber jackets and boring loafers, the North Beach girls will make you think again. Posing at the door of the Galleria store, these leathered-up ladies are more likely to be dressed in hot pink hot pants, turquoise halter tops, python-print miniskirts or…
Best Used Boots
A pair of purple ropers from the ’80s. A needle-nosed black pair with six impressive rows of stitching on the shaft. A ’50s pair of toddler boots with nifty red inlays. White majorette boots with fringe. High-heeled fashion boots from the ’70s. Elephant hide, rough-outs, skins from reptiles so exotic…
Best Chinese Restaurant
It doesn’t attract much attention to itself in the large strip center in the 3800 block of Bellaire, but Hunan’s food is worth coming back to — again and again. Go before you’re really hungry. You’ll need the extra time to wade through the eight-page menu in the understated but…
Best Place to Indulge Anglophilia
This redoubt of vintage Britannia is dead-on in every sense but two: The pub grub is not the slightest bit grubby, and the pints are cold. Shepherd’s pie, beef Wellington, fish and chips, and West Highland cheese soup are but a few of the outstanding victuals. The steamed mussels would…
Best Diner
Given that the historic Avalon Drug Co. and Diner is more authentic — even if it, too, is in a newer spot — many Houstonians consider it blasphemous to name the also-ran as the best diner. After all, what says “diner” more than screaming fry cooks and surly, seasoned waitresses?…
Best Roller Rink
Grade school and junior high in the ’80s. Days of tube socks, Keds, T-shirt rings and passing crushes. Every Friday night you traded in your sneakers for a pair of brown quads with bright orange wheels and fat rubber toe-stops. If you were really cool, you brought your own skates…
Best Frisbee Players
That’s where you’ll see hot players getting a ho-d (diving horizontal to deflect a disc), throwing a hammer (humming a Frisbee like a baseball) or hucking the disc (tossing a Frisbee 50 yards or more). The Rice fields are home to Enfuego (for men) and Spin (for women), teams affiliated…
Best Mariscos
If you don’t know what al mojo de ajo means, ask before you order. Loosely translated, it means Godzilla portions of garlic. But there must be a lot of garlic lovers out there, because Pico’s camarones al mojo de ajo ($14.99) is one of the restaurant’s most popular dishes. Six…
Best Margarita
Life is complicated enough. Don’t let your liquor be that way. Unhappily, Houston has hundreds of bars and restaurants trying to hook consumers with ever-evolving concoctions. By all means, let them audition. Encourage them to pour all kinds of fruity and frothy mixtures to be zapped into life by 220-volt…
Best Bike Shop
When asked how he could be leading bike rides well into his eighties, B.M. Shirar always replied, “I eat a banana every day.” B.M. died nine years ago, but his bicycle shop — the nation’s oldest, according to B.M.’s grandson and the current proprietor, James Turner — is still pedaling…
Best Auto Parts Store
SGP Racing in Deer Park isn’t one of those places you drop off your car for a quickie oil change or brake check. It’s the place where serious speed and performance enthusiasts might leave their cars for weeks for engine overhauls, ridiculous amounts of horsepower (600, anyone?) and new computerization…
Best Oysters
While many will argue that the only good oyster is a raw oyster, we believe that the oysters in garlic sauce at Fung’s Kitchen will cause anyone to reconsider that position. Large (usually huge) oysters on the half shell are steamed just enough to bring out their maximum, well, oysterness,…
Best Place to Work Out and Not Be Intimidated
Most health clubs are intimidating for the beginner. For one thing, you have to get past all those awesome abs and perfect pecs when all you have is a bulging belly. Second, most of the other people are half-dressed in skimpy spandex, all the better to show off their perfect…
Best Place to Smoke
Walk up. Sit down. Light up. Savor. The State Bar, that one-flight-up reincarnation of the Old Capitol Club at the Rice Lofts, pays ample tribute to an earlier time when tobacco could be richly enjoyed, right along with well-mixed drinks and quiet conversation among trusted associates. Atop the grand stairway,…
Best Place to See a College Football Game
Wait a minute, that’s not just “Robertson Stadium,” that’s “John O’Quinn Field at Robertson Stadium.” A lengthy name like that is what happens when a big-bucks alumnus donates $6 million to improve a facility that’s named after a former UH regent. The public-relations people at UH would like you to…
Best Event That No One Thought Would Ever Happen
For almost 20 years Allen Parkway Village, the sprawling 963-unit public-housing project just east of downtown, was at the heart of a class war that pitted a small band of tenants and affordable-housing advocates against the Housing Authority of the City of Houston, or HACH, which wanted to bulldoze the…
Best Enchilada
Irma Galvan, the venerable Tex-Mex diva of the Warehouse District, has dished up a mean enchilada for years. Now, her son, Louis Galvan, is betting on the ballpark to score points for his own downtown enterprise, Irma’s Southwest Grill. Sure, the grill part of the name specializes in such fancy…
Best Place to Meet Single Men
Walk into this dive, and you’re surrounded by beer and boys. The walls are papered in beer ads, and hanging over the Texas-shaped table is a faux Tiffany lamp advertising Pabst Blue Ribbon and Miller Lite. Around the Texas table are men, men, men. Men in lumberjack plaids, men in…
Best Name for a Nail Salon
With 547 manicurist shops listed in the Yellow Pages, Houston must serve as home to more nail salons per capita than any other American city. While we haven’t statistically tested our hypothesis, we can’t miss the glaring fact that a different nail shop sits on every other block. Why is…
Best Vegetarian Restaurant
Unless they have chosen a vegetarian way of life, some people won’t let anything green cross their lips. An easy way to see some of the magnificent things that can be done with vegetables is at the lunch buffet ($6.95 weekdays, $8.95 weekends) at Madras Pavilion. This vegetarian-only South Indian…
Best Greek Restaurant
Opa! You can’t go wrong ordering Greek food at Mykonos. The only thing the restaurant doesn’t have is crashing plates. The traditional dishes of this long-standing mom-and-pop eatery are all top-notch. Start with the skordalia, a blend of garlic, potato, olive oil and lemon for $4.50. This flavorful “Greek caviar,”…
Best Use of Taxpayer Dollars
The stuff of public art, hike-and-bike paths, youth programs and parks are pleasant municipal amenities, to be certain. Even residents who don’t personally partake of such things can still feel good about having them as part of life in Houston. But all those come after what ought to be the…
Best Veterinarian
The ancient house ferret, Bandit, rummages among the boarding cages filled with loved ones. Pepi, a black mutt abandoned by his owners because his hind legs were paralyzed, bounds four at a time about the premises. Kate is back for another week’s vacation, little evidence remaining of the jaw reconstruction…
Best Newsstand
SuperStand lacks the hard-boiled grit of an old-time newsstand, but it does have thousands of magazines, cresting in glossy abundance like waves of a media-saturated sea. The inevitable mugs of Eastwood, Travolta and Buffy the Vampire Slayer stare from shelves, but you also will find more arcane fare. Aggressive outdoor…
Best Bobsledder
Six months of the year Meg Henderson is a med student at Baylor College of Medicine. The other six months she lives in Park City, Utah, training for the 2002 Olympics with the national bobsledding team. Meg’s sister, Kate, calls her the Dot Richardson of bobsled (Dot took a year…
Best One-Man Show
Writer/actor Rob Nash has lots of fans. No wonder. His one-man shows, including Junior Blues and Senioritis, which ran this year at the Bienvenue Theater, are pure theatrical magic. Built around his teenage years at Houston’s own Strake Jesuit high school, the scripts are hysterically funny. But a lot of…
Best Rant
Anyone who has heard Ray Hill’s Prison Show on KPFT, a sort of lonely hearts’ club call-in show for all those folks who’ve got loved ones locked up in the big house, knows something about the loud-mouthed activist. The political gadfly has been biting at the backside of prominent uptight…
Best Christmas Show
There is no worse time to go to the theater than that seven-week period so innocently referred to as the holiday season, a time in which playhouses all over town prove that they can be as money-grubbing as the next tawdry business. Just look at all the lame productions of…
Best Theater the Size of a Postage Stamp
The road has been rocky and hard, but now there are two spaces under The Little Room Downstairs Theater’s modest little sign on Bissonnet. Still, neither of Richard Laub’s theaters seats more than 60 people, and most of the time the stages have been reconfigured so as to allow no…
Best Family Restaurant
The current Asian invasion has revived a classic form of entertainment: the Japanese steak house. Family groups, especially those covering a wide age span, are the perfect audience for the sleight of hand of Tokyohana’s master table chefs. Though elitists may find the show a little cheesy, children watch in…
Bebopping Along
When Ed Gerlach led one of Houston’s most popular dance bands in the mid-1970s, he often employed a teenage guitarist named Scott Hardy who had more passion for Jim Hall than for Jeff Beck. Bob Morgan, the pianist who headed the High School of the Performing and Visual Arts’ jazz…
BEST OF HOUSTON® 2000:
The wheel: arguably one of the best inventions of all time. It’s been in existence for 55,000 years, and what does humanity have to show for it? We have Houston. We have grocery carts and golf carts. Street skates, in-line skates and skateboards. Normal strollers and fancy dolphin-shaped strollers. Wheelchairs…
Best Local Cookbook
It’s not precisely a cookbook, as Houston Chronicle columnist Leon Hale makes clear in his author’s note, but he has subtitled this gastro-memoir “Recollections and Recipes,” so fair game. Who cares if most of the recipes are for Depression-era fare like pinto beans and corn bread. We like these things…
Best Comedy Club
Face it. The heat, humidity, hurricanes and assorted other urban horrors make Houston a place that can’t survive without a healthy dose of — you guessed it — humor. While there are only a handful of stand-up comedy venues in the area, the the Laff Stop consistently comes through with…
Breakfast Bonanza
The walls at the Buffalo Grille [3116 Bissonnet, (713)661-3663] are a virtual shrine to the Old West, a time when the restaurant’s namesake animal was indeed a primary source of sustenance. The grill’s rough-‘n’-tumble attitude filters right down to its menu, where you will find such hearty plates as the…
Best Car-Commercial Jingle
Just another example of how overrated pop music songcraft is. Since a catchy five- or ten-second hook is usually described as genius, the little bit of pop profundity known as the Mossy Nissan commercial jingle also deserves as glowing a description. Over a snappy beat, a male voice sings the…
Best Birthday Present
UH’s Creative Writing Program turned 20 this year, and in its honor, the literary magazine Gulf Coast devoted its summer 2000 issue to essays, stories and poems by the program’s alumni and professors. The fat issue (303 pages, about twice the magazine’s usual size) bulges with surprises: national poet laureate…
Best Speed Trap
Ask most cops about the favorite HPD speed traps, and they’ll chuckle. After all, speeders are everywhere in Houston. Traffic enforcement is like radar-shooting SUVs in a barrel. Perhaps a few miles over the limit can be tolerated in most areas, simply because there’s not much reason to slow down…
Best Ferry
We dithered on this one: Lynchburg or Bolivar? Bolivar or Lynchburg? Lynchburg is a shorter ride, a smaller, perhaps cozier ferry, and it operates in the appropriately industrial seascape of the Ship Channel near the San Jacinto Monument, which is always a plus. The Bolivar ferries make for a longer…
Best Street Festival
Oh, what were you expecting, the Westheimer Street Festival? The Houston International Festival, with its overpriced gyros and male Carmen Miranda impersonators? They may be the largest and most popular street fests in the city, but this modest weekend get-together should be rightfully recognized. For a couple of days last…
Best Republican
This state rep ran a smart but vastly underfunded campaign against River Oaks big bucks Peter Wareing. He also showed rare political moxie by taking on westside political activist Steven Hotze and refusing to kowtow to the good doctor to get his endorsement. After leading a crowded field into the…
Best Steak Dinner for Two for 20 Bucks
Finding a cheap steak dinner can be dicey — if the price is right, the meal usually isn’t. Small tough cuts of meat that have been sitting under a warming light for an hour or so ain’t a bargain, no matter how inexpensive they might be. PJ’s Sports Bar, on…
Best Garlic Beef
Almost everything at this Thai/Chinese restaurant is good. One strange bonus is that the place is almost always empty. The walls are red with gold trim and funky Chinese artifacts; the waitstaff smiles and doesn’t say much. The garlic beef is the best food we’ve ever tasted in our entire…
Best Person to Consult About Renting Movie Videos
So you want to watch a good movie on your VCR, but your mind is a blank as to what to pick? Just tell St. Clair what you’re in the mood for, and he’ll rattle off a half-dozen or so suggestions. If that’s not enough, he’ll come up with more…
Best Veterinarian
The ancient house ferret, Bandit, rummages among the boarding cages filled with loved ones. Pepi, a black mutt abandoned by his owners because his hind legs were paralyzed, bounds four at a time about the premises. Kate is back for another week’s vacation, little evidence remaining of the jaw reconstruction…
Best Roadway Improvement
Not that long ago, the Eastex Freeway was the obvious orphan of area transportation arteries, a forlorn, four-lane route to sheer frustration. Compared to its sister link, the Southwest Freeway on the other side of town, this section of U.S. 59 suffered from potholes, uneven pavement, antiquated access and awful…
Best Enchilada
Irma Galvan, the venerable Tex-Mex diva of the Warehouse District, has dished up a mean enchilada for years. Now, her son, Louis Galvan, is betting on the ballpark to score points for his own downtown enterprise, Irma’s Southwest Grill. Sure, the grill part of the name specializes in such fancy…
Best Junkyard
Like a Glamour magazine list of fashion don’ts, Pick-n-Pull’s proscriptions for maintaining junkyard etiquette, hanging directly in front of the place’s South Shaver entrance, are equally as mind-numbing. Some deserve mentioning: 5. No open-toed shoes; 6. No alcohol; 7. No torches or power saws; and the doozy, 11. No cameras…
Best Restaurant in the Tunnels
If you think good tunnel food is an impossibility, and if you think the only stuff you can find down there is doled out by chain fast-food eateries, stop by Panini for a pleasant lunchtime surprise. Homemade soups. Freshly baked pizzas. Wonderful salads. Terrific sandwiches (we particularly like the homemade…
Best Italian Restaurant
In a city proud of Texas-size portions, the waitstaff at Osteria d’Aldo still feels obliged to explain to patrons that the serving sizes are like Italian tapas — we prefer to call them civilized. And with such manageable portions, one can do a multicourse Italian meal just as the good…
Best Vietnamese Restaurant
Houston has the best Vietnamese restaurants in the country — the problem is picking one. We like Nga’s, a little unassuming joint with a friendly atmosphere and a hip clientele. There are all kinds of discoveries on this menu, but the waiter tells us the most popular thing to order…
Best Cafeteria
Sure, the local institution that once sported a retro, school-cafeteria feel has given way to the neotraditional design trend of West University Place. But the food is still good, and the company is even better. Cafeteria standards like roast beef, chicken-fried steak and a really tasty piece of fried fish…
Best Houston Rocket
It may seem odd to pick a guy who wasn’t even good enough to start for the Rockets last year, but don’t let Cuttino Mobley’s sixth-man status fool you. He’s more important to the team than fellow guard Steve Francis, who has the name recognition and the fancy dunks but…
Best Bread
Rosemary-and-olive-oil focaccia was the bread special the last time we stopped by Whole Foods on Kirby. The flat, crunchy Italian bread dripping with olive oil didn’t make it out of the parking lot in one piece. Day in and day out, Whole Foods stocks excellent European artisanal breads. The chewy…
Best Nachos
If you ask the owner of Ciro’s Italian Grill, Ciro Lampasas, how the delightful Italian nachos came into thankful existence, he’ll tell you it’s what you get when an Italian restaurant owner and his Mexican kitchen manager cross culinary wits. This appetizing amalgam of ingredients is one of the finest…
Best Drive-thru Drink
1. Houston is a car city. 2. Houston is hot. 3. Driving in the heat makes you crave big cold drinks. Which is why you should drive to Bambolino’s. Without leaving your car, you can buy a semifrozen lemonade for a piddling $1.29. At 32 ounces, the large serving is…
Best Microbrewery
The Best Microbrewery prize easily goes to… the only microbrewery in Houston! That stated, Saint Arnold produces a revolving selection of beers and ales that really are, if you happen to be a serious devotee of the brewmaster’s art, excellent. The brews are made according to German legal standards that…
Best Downtown Bar That’s Still There
Don’t get us wrong. We love the “revitalization” of downtown. We love the crowds, the foot traffic, the energy and the fact that in some bars you have to wear the right fucking clothes to get a drink. This is not our idea of alcohol consumption. Our ideal bar combines…
Best Whistle-Blower
Like a hand-hewn beam, Charles Max Jennings is both rough-cut and a commodity. He may come off as a crude old fart with an attitude (“You’re goddamn right” is one of his favorite phrases), but Jennings is the worst nightmare of a corrupt bureaucracy. In his case, it’s the City…
Best Place for a Pickup Soccer Game
If you see a blade of grass in Houston, someone has probably gotten to it before you. In order to play soccer in a city park, you have to be registered with the folks at the Parks and Recreation Department and present them with a league schedule. And pay a…
Best Video Game
No shooting. No explosions. But there are ideas here, furtively embedded in this first-person driver game designed by Houston-born artist Mel Chin and a passel of MIT programmers. You press the gas pedal and drive through the desert, where a “tree of life” dispenses golden balls to the tents of…
Best Ditch
The trickle of water emerges from a giant culvert and heads south in a straight line, carved years ago by machinery, bounded by a grass-covered levy to the east and power lines to the west. The water has a brownish hue, and at times a faint whiff of sewage speaks…
Best Steamed Dumplings
Darkened windows prevent you from seeing inside this tiny storefront restaurant next to the Diho Market in the “new” Chinatown. You might even think it’s closed. But open the door and you’ll discover a hidden treasure. All dumplings are handmade to order, so it takes a little time. While fried…
Best Administrative Judge
Even in the justice system, silence can be golden. While the 14th Court of Appeals has been in seemingly continual controversy in recent years — justices even sued their chief justice at one point in a long-running dispute over administrative authority — the First Court of Appeals has been a…
Best Roller Rink
Grade school and junior high in the ’80s. Days of tube socks, Keds, T-shirt rings and passing crushes. Every Friday night you traded in your sneakers for a pair of brown quads with bright orange wheels and fat rubber toe-stops. If you were really cool, you brought your own skates…
Best Insider’s Shortcut
Ah, progress. Northbound motorists on the Southwest Freeway have that elevated TxDOT marvel to get them to the I-45 interchange. The only problem, as any regular driver on that route knows by now, is the stop-and-slow traffic on what has turned out to be a consistent bottleneck. Age adds wisdom…
Best Cuban Restaurant
Waiters with white shirts and black mustaches, wonderful photos and memorabilia of Cuba, and an air of quiet sophistication make Cafe Piquet the No. 1 choice for Cuban dining in Houston. The buttery black beans and gooey sweet bronze plantains are perfect, and the Cuban sandwiches are first-rate, but don’t…
Best Car-Commercial Jingle
Just another example of how overrated pop music songcraft is. Since a catchy five- or ten-second hook is usually described as genius, the little bit of pop profundity known as the Mossy Nissan commercial jingle also deserves as glowing a description. Over a snappy beat, a male voice sings the…
Best Retro Goods
The giant Big Boy in the window beckons, “Hello, remember me?” So you open the door and cross the threshold from modern-day Montrose into a bewilderment of decades. Old gas pumps with bulbous signs stand across the room from heavy rotary-dial phones and coin-operated diner jukebox connectors. Art deco chairs,…
Best Science Teacher
No job is harder than teaching public school. So how does Jamie Scott, the integrated-physics and chemistry teacher at HISD’s Hamilton Middle School, make it look like so much fun? The big, blond, smiling bear of a man is clearly doing something right. His students come home from citywide science…
Best Ballpark Vendor
The Astros have tanked, and the pitchers can’t get anybody out, but one guy at “Homeron” Field is still consistently throwing strikes: Arnie the Peanut Dude, who hurls his roasted wares across entire sections to waving fans and nails ’em in the mitts every time. Arnie doesn’t just deliver peanuts…
Best Road to Drive When You Happen to Have Your Martini Shaker Handy and Are Thirsty
So The Incredible Hulk gets ahold of our roads, and all the City of Houston can do is set up orange cones and sawhorses around the damage. Oy vey. Driving down Westheimer, specifically through the Montrose area, has become as jarring as navigating the lunar surface on a Huffy. The…
Best New Theater
Even the surroundings are theatrical — sort of. When you drive up to Ashland Street Theatre Co., the first thing you see is the factory at the end of the street. Huge and metallic and glowing in the shadowy darkness, the ominous building looks like it could be the hideaway…
Best Angst-Ridden Show
Was there any group of young people more head-bangingly angst-filled than the twentysomethingers living in New York City during the cocaine-driven days of the 1980s? Not according to Kenneth Lonergan’s This Is Our Youth, a wickedly cynical script about three would-be adults trapped in that dark crawl space between money,…
Best Latin Grill
At this time last year, Charles Clark was making an impressive name for himself as head chef at Tasca Kitchen and Wine Bar. These days Clark heads up the kitchen at the new downtown Elvia’s, where he proves he is a master of many culinary disciplines. The killer bee menu…
Best Dancing by the Side of the Road
Dancing and driving hardly seem compatible. But choreographer Leslie Scates, the woman who single-handedly engineered Drive By Dancing 2000, is clearly not the type to let a little workaday common sense supersede inspiration. The big idea came to her back in 1997, during one of those Houston-freeway-turned-parking-lot-hell moments. She tells…
Going Public
All too often, the inspiration for making an album comes from the marketplace or out of the music itself. It’s far rarer, yet usually better, for inspiration to arise out of personal, private convictions. Dave Alvin’s Public Domain, a collection of songs from the broad American folk tradition, was sparked…
Best Manly Ballet
Stevenson’s biggest ballet since Dracula was billed as a star vehicle for Lauren Anderson, the African-American principal Stevenson spotted at the Houston Ballet Academy when she was just a child. But while the title role certainly allowed Anderson to show off her explosive athleticism and theatricalism, Cleopatra turned out to…
Best Band to Break Up/ Get Together
Only a couple of months after young buck Clay Farmer disbanded his four-piece earlier this year, the singer-songwriter was playing open-mikes whenever and wherever with three of his former four musical deputies in tow. So while technically the Clay Farmer Band remains dead, Clay Farmer the humanoid performer — gettin’…
Best Movie Theater
Sometime in the ’60s, the moviegoing experience suffered a serious blow: Chain operators built small, shoe-boxlike theaters where people were shooed in and out with all the ceremony of cattle herding. In recent years, chains have started building megaplexes with stadium seating and large screens. But the cheap materials, gaudy…
Best Movie Theater That Will Never Show Gladiator
Sure, there are other places in town that show cool stuff, but it’s hard to compete with a video kaleidoscope for a marquis, a converted church for a venue and a quirky Sandy Duncan look-alike running the place. But don’t expect big reclining seats and a tub of $5 popcorn…
Best Bar Bathroom
Europeans may build great cathedrals, but Americans have a genius for bathrooms. At Prague, the WC marries old-world elegance with Yankee utilitarianism. When nature’s irrepressible call rises above the club’s techno beat, you can drift down to this swank unisex chamber of flickering candles, period furniture and a full-service bar…
Best Do-It-Yourself Nature Park
Just west of the Heights, in the largely undiscovered subdivision of Timbergrove Manor, sit 21 acres of pine-tree-filled land, one of the largest such plots left inside the Loop. The land is owned by the Houston Independent School District, and residents grew alarmed last year when HISD announced plans to…
Best Car for Houston Roads
Elegance and efficiency. Durability with at least a dab of uniqueness. Houstonians aren’t that different from drivers elsewhere. We want the best of all worlds: tungsten toughness combined with soft leather. Consumers pick the SUVs, the E-cars — Ford Expeditions and Explorers, Caddy Escalades — or the Suburbans, or even…
Best Happy Hour
Right in the center of Houston’s gay bars, JR.’s has one of the longest and most entertaining happy hours around. Though its patrons are predominantly gay men, people of all persuasions are welcome (age 21 and older, that is). Happy hour begins at noon (yes, noon) but really starts firing…
Best View
The sky lobby on the 60th floor of the I.M. Pei-designed Chase Tower offers the kind of view that gets kids oohing and asking really deep questions. “What would happen if there was no glass here?” queried one little girl as she and her brother pressed against the floor-to-ceiling window,…
Best Local Boy Made Good
Tilman Fertitta already had a sizable restaurant empire, including his highly successful Kemah Waterfront complex. Now he has snagged a prime pied-à-terre in the burgeoning downtown entertainment district as well. Fertitta recently won the competition to lease from the city the old Fire Station No. 1 and original municipal water…
Best Club Sandwich
‘Tis a monstrous thing, this double-decker piled high and sliced in substantial halves, not those traditional quarters. That single diagonal cut, though, is as far as Express Deli, the all-purpose lunch counter-grocery on the ground floor of Houston House apartments, strays toward the experimental. Sure, you can choose your cheese…
Best Lemonade
Some things you just can’t get year-round in other parts of the country. Take lemonade: It’s a seasonal refreshment up north, and even then, it’s usually made with the powdered stuff in a can. That’s not the case in Houston, or at Barnaby’s Cafe. Every morning they squeeze their own…
Best Place to Buy an Action Figure
Stop rummaging through the local comic-book stores in town looking for that rare orange-carded TIE Fighter Pilot with the “Warning!” sticker on the box. When a store catering to obsessive SF fans (which means sci-fi, for the uninitiated [which stands for science fiction, for the very uninitiated]) is locked away…
Best Science Teacher
No job is harder than teaching public school. So how does Jamie Scott, the integrated-physics and chemistry teacher at HISD’s Hamilton Middle School, make it look like so much fun? The big, blond, smiling bear of a man is clearly doing something right. His students come home from citywide science…
Best Ditch
The trickle of water emerges from a giant culvert and heads south in a straight line, carved years ago by machinery, bounded by a grass-covered levy to the east and power lines to the west. The water has a brownish hue, and at times a faint whiff of sewage speaks…
Best Soup
You probably wouldn’t know it to look at it, but this tiny Cuban/Mexican restaurant with a drive-thru offers up the best chicken tortilla soup in the city. Walk inside, though, and you’ll see the chickens rotating on the old-fashioned rotisserie, some of which, we’re certain, are the base of the…
Best Developer
In Houston, real estate development is a business dominated by stereotypes: the good ol’ boy, the profit-at-all-costs mentality, the belief that any structure more than 25 years old needs to be torn down and replaced with something shiny and new, not to mention exorbitantly expensive. Tamra Pierce and Mimi Scarpulla…
Best Restaurant for Lunch
Many will say this category is too broad. Do we mean best power lunch? Best place for ladies who lunch? Best place for a quick bite — alone? How about all of the above? No longer a tiny cafe in an old house, Ouisie’s has moved to more upscale digs,…
Best Middle Eastern Restaurant
We’re always happy to walk into Cedars, see that splendid buffet line and remember how very little it’s going to cost us to dine royally. For meat lovers, there’s terrific roast lamb served up simply with just its natural juices, or a nice piece of red snapper with tahini sauce…
Best Sit-Down Breakfast
A weekend breakfast at Goode Co. is a manly meal, but the women like it, too. After all, some mornings call for some serious sustenance, and this place answers with its own call of the wild. Thrillseekers rustle up the Buck Fever, which is venison sausage and eggs. Also paired…
Best Bowling Alley
Of all the gall. Houston goes nuts when Bob McNair lands a pro football team for the area, or when Grand Prix racing adds the city to its circuit. But there’s not even a tax subsidy or muted shout ready when Diamond Lanes operator Jimmy Young attracts one of the…
Best Houston Astro
Best Astro? Of this godforsaken season? Isn’t that like having a category for Best Police Academy Sequel? Let’s be blunt: Good Astros are few and far between this year. But why not offer up some applause for local-boy-made-good Lance Berkman, the pride of Rice University and slugger of the future?…
Best Apartment Complex Tennis Center
Let’s face it: When you think of apartment complex tennis courts, the image of a lumpy concrete slab with a woefully uneven, dilapidated span of chain-link fence serving as the net probably comes to mind. Most complexes tend to throw in a tennis court as a means of justifying why…
Best Pasta
As much as we love the pasta explosion of the past 20 years (lighter sauces, Asian pastas, Cajun pastas, pan-cross cultural pastas, you know the rest), sometimes it’s nice to eat the kind of pasta that reminds us why we loved it so much in the first place, and for…
Best Cold Boiled Shrimp
Some people refer to journalists as bottom-feeders. Well, as long as there are crustaceans like the ones served up at the Captain’s around, we will consider ourselves in good company. Since the restaurant is best known for its oysters on the half shell, the cold boiled shrimp sometimes get overlooked,…
Best Place to Beat Road Rage
Afternoon rush hour. Traffic oozes south from the Cullen Center garage and north from Brazos Street, battling for the turn that will take commuters onto the Interstate 45 ramp at Pease. Others are roaring off the exit ramp onto Jefferson. The light turns red and stays that way just long…
Best Used Boots
A pair of purple ropers from the ’80s. A needle-nosed black pair with six impressive rows of stitching on the shaft. A ’50s pair of toddler boots with nifty red inlays. White majorette boots with fringe. High-heeled fashion boots from the ’70s. Elephant hide, rough-outs, skins from reptiles so exotic…
Best Place to Play Racquetball
Remember back in the 1980s when it seemed like everybody and their mother was playing racquetball? It was as if the pasty white walls of the racquetball court were placing everyone who entered under some mysterious sweat-soaked spell. But the boom went bust. As trendy activities like step aerobics, spinning…
Best Postcollegiate Fraternity Experience
From the street, music blares from the Bronx Bar like a warning. Thump-thump-thump, the numbing bass line declares. At the sidewalk gate, a broad-shouldered bouncer clad in a black T-shirt gives the coveted silent nod. Inside, members of the mostly young and Caucasian crowd navigate around, trying to shout to…
Best Republican
This state rep ran a smart but vastly underfunded campaign against River Oaks big bucks Peter Wareing. He also showed rare political moxie by taking on westside political activist Steven Hotze and refusing to kowtow to the good doctor to get his endorsement. After leading a crowded field into the…
Best Aquarium
Fish are usually the featured performers in any aquarium, but at Sawadee, they take a backseat. Sure, there are a few exotic species swimming in the jumbo 500-gallon tank that greets customers near the door. But the real attractions are the stunning varieties of coral: spectacular tentacled colonies waving in…
Best Speed Trap
Ask most cops about the favorite HPD speed traps, and they’ll chuckle. After all, speeders are everywhere in Houston. Traffic enforcement is like radar-shooting SUVs in a barrel. Perhaps a few miles over the limit can be tolerated in most areas, simply because there’s not much reason to slow down…
Best Y2K Story
Last time we checked in with La Porte jack-of-all-junk Butch Forest (see “J-U-N-K in the Y2K,” December 30, 1999), the conversation revolved around a complicated four-way horse trade involving a gutted 18-foot Airstream trailer in Manvel, a 14-foot fiberglass bass boat in Houston, a Hi-Lo camper in Dickinson and a…
Best Lawyer
Richard Burr is the veteran Houston attorney who devoted his intellect and emotions to fighting the death penalty long before Governor George Bush’s run for president made the issue a hot-button topic with the national media. Burr started his career as a public defender in Florida and became director of…
Best Time and Place to See Street Racers
From the Galleria past Beltway 8, as Saturday night gives way to Sunday, the strip-mall parking lots on Westheimer host impromptu car shows, with ball-capped guys checking out each other’s mods. You hear words like “cams” and “noz.” You feel the sub-bass rumble of Corvettes eager to exceed the speed…
Best 15 Minutes of Fame
On June 16, the New Black Panthers had every right to be pissed. They’d dressed all in eye-catching black. They arrived at the state GOP convention in Houston in a rare Hummer limousine. And most of them came to the protest party armed with all manner of menacing weapons: rifles,…
Best Korean Restaurant
Someone has written a comment in ballpoint pen on Seoul Garden’s menu: “Yum!” It’s right beside the thinly sliced, marinated beef ($12.95). They might as well have gone down the entire menu, writing the same comment. Other favorites in the barbecue section of the menu are the beef ribs ($14.95)…
Best Retro Furniture
That’s right. Point Five no longer has a monopoly on the ’50s furniture market. Jerry Gibson’s new shop has all the modern classics, too: chairs by Eames and Bertoia, an Eero Saarinen table, a Paul McCobb desk, a Herman Miller sofa, a Frank Lloyd Wright rug, each accompanied by a…
Best Reason Not to Take Public Transportation
Finally, now that Houston ranks No. 1 in something, why should we give that up? You thnk it’s easy being top dog when it comes to ozone violations? This year shows all signs of a tough competition with Los Angeles, the traditional winner of the smog crown. Consider this: Houston’s…
Best Patio
Houston boosters are fond of reminding the uninitiated that Bob Hope once said the view from the Warwick penthouse was the most beautiful he had ever seen. If only the Main Street Coalition had as juicy a celebrity quote about the hotel at street level. Light rail or no light…
Best Houston Comet
By now you’re probably familiar with the TV promotional campaign in which pickup hoopsters are told that the women of the WNBA are “better than you are.” If you’re like most guys, your response goes something like, “Yeah, right.” In the case of the Houston Comets’ Sheryl Swoopes, it’s best…
Best Restaurant for Lunch
Many will say this category is too broad. Do we mean best power lunch? Best place for ladies who lunch? Best place for a quick bite — alone? How about all of the above? No longer a tiny cafe in an old house, Ouisie’s has moved to more upscale digs,…
Best New Black Novelist
African-American literary circles around this country may be singing the praises of such contemporary authors as E. Lynn Harris, Eric Jerome Dickey and Omar Tyree, but black Houstonians have their own Sensitive Brotha educating the men and satisfying the women with his dead-on words. This year author and local boy…
Best Out-of-Print Book by a Dead Local Columnist
Sig Byrd spent years as a columnist with the old daily Houston Press and later moved to the Houston Chronicle, but his columns, compiled and connected here, read today like nothing you’d expect to find in a newspaper, daily or otherwise. Downtown, when there was still a thing called Vinegar…
Best Out-of-Print Book by a Living Local Columnist
After stumbling across this book on eBay, we tracked down the retired George Fuermann’s phone number and called, hoping to hear some stories of his career, which spanned the better part of half a century, seven books, innumerable magazine articles and long-running columns in both major dailies. “Career?” Fuermann growled…
Important Imports
Conventional wisdom dictates that the phrase “but they’re big in Europe” — when applied to a band — indicates a career that has either seen better days or never had them. But the four Scottish lads of Travis have inverted the formula. After seeing their sophomore effort, The Man Who,…
Best Band Stage Show
During a CD release performance at Fitzgerald’s earlier this year, Middlefinger lead singer Matt Kelly asked the crowd in between songs for the correct pronunciation of the name “G-O-E-T-H-E.” Whoever answered first would get one of the Middlefinger CDs Kelly held in his hands. After getting nothing but quizzical looks,…
Best Live Music Venue
Adding up sound, clientele, drink selection and ambience, you couldn’t beat the Sidecar Pub with a male Tennessee Williams character at your side. The owners, husband and wife Peron Einkauf and Marybeth Moore, have done somersaults to create the ideal joint, from the century-old Belgian chairs to the 140 international…
Best A Cappella Group
In 1994 a group of Rice graduate students realized that drinking and singing together was more fun than writing their dissertations. Many eventually graduated anyway, but their group, the Lager Rhythms, lives on, filled out by a rotating cast of other Rice people: grad students, faculty, undergrads, staff, a faculty…
Best Impersonations on the Radio
With his partner, John Granado, Zierlien is co-host of The Bench, heard on KILT from 7 a.m. to 11 a.m. each weekday. When it comes to a sports background, Zierlien was raised right. His dad was offensive line coach for years with Bill Yeoman at the University of Houston. But…
Best Motorcycle Parking Lot
Maybe these are just the moments that downtown finally arrives. Party on the Plaza is in full swing. So is its dynamic corner of the central city, with Bayou Place beckoning the masses across the street. And there, on the magnificent grounds that serve as the front entrance to the…
Best Gay Role Model
When he was growing up in the town of Hallettsville, Gene Mikulenka thought the word “gay” meant that you smoked pot, that you were cool. One day a couple of guys came into the restaurant where he worked and asked Gene if he was gay. “I did it a couple…
Best Local Boy Gone Bad
If anyone wants to dent a squeaky-clean political image in the course of one evening, look no further than the unfortunate 39-year-old Bert Keller for pointers. First the councilman, who was already estranged from wife Susan, took off after an Astros game for the inner sanctum of Centerfolds topless bar…
Best Mile of Houston
Houston’s strength is in diversity and ever-evolving transitions. Nothing shows this off better than the last leg of Memorial Drive into the city. Relish the tribute to nature on the green-space trails along Buffalo Bayou, the ones accented with public art, the ones that could have been erased with a…
Best Name for a Nail Salon
With 547 manicurist shops listed in the Yellow Pages, Houston must serve as home to more nail salons per capita than any other American city. While we haven’t statistically tested our hypothesis, we can’t miss the glaring fact that a different nail shop sits on every other block. Why is…
Best Response to a Houston Press Story
In a story this past February about the suicide of lottery winner Billie Bob Harrell, we described Karen Gerstner, an attorney, as seeming “more likely to offer someone a glass of milk and a plate of cookies rather than cutting-edge financial advice.” A couple of weeks later, Gerstner had a…
Best Curried Goat
The $5.99 lunch buffet at this Pakistani hangout is an incredible bargain. The zesty curried goat features the softest goat meat you’ve ever eaten. Pakistani curry is spicy and much more exciting than most Indian versions. There also are plenty of chicken, beef and vegetable dishes on the buffet along…
Best Mashed Potatoes
Once you get over the fact that they look like a failed attempt at guacamole — made with the bright green avocado paste, no less — you’ll realize that the poblano pepper mashed potatoes at Vallone’s are some spectacular spuds. Sure, the bright color is not found in nature, and…
Best Car Wash
Tucked behind a service station between Montrose and the Museum District, Carriage Car Care must be the car wash of choice for the SUV-driving crowd. On a recent Saturday, no fewer than a half-dozen urban war wagons were either lined up waiting for the Carriage crew’s treatment or basking in…
Best Place to Buy a Gun
Houston has a special fondness for its firearms. That’s obvious from the sheer number and variety of outlets, from Carter’s Country — that Wal-Mart of weaponry — to other high-profile retailers. Top Gun takes a different, specialized tact. Just like most golfers know they shouldn’t buy clubs until they test…
Best Aquarium
Fish are usually the featured performers in any aquarium, but at Sawadee, they take a backseat. Sure, there are a few exotic species swimming in the jumbo 500-gallon tank that greets customers near the door. But the real attractions are the stunning varieties of coral: spectacular tentacled colonies waving in…
Best Licuado
On those days when Houston’s summer refuses to end, when your eyes hurt from too much sunlight and your pores are clogged with sweat, when plastic objects melt on your dashboard, when you see squirrels spread-eagle on the ground, panting, and the neighborhood cats droop nearby, too languid to give…
Best Pool Guy
Bill Jordan is too nice a guy to be in the pool business, a rare dolphin in a sea of sharks. Swimming pools, as their owners well know, are subject to a host of problems, and to deal with them requires an incongruent knowledge of chemistry, construction, engineering and mechanics…
Best Hunk o’ Meat
If you like your meat well hung — gastronomically speaking, that is — you’ll love the dry-aged, certified Angus porterhouse steak ($30) at the Capital Grille. The dry-aging process takes place in an environment where the temperature, humidity and airflow are controlled. The meat cures for up to 21 days…
Best Pizzeria
Americans spent more money last year on pizzas than they did on computers and software combined, or so says an industry trade group. At any rate, pizza is one subject about which nearly every American can be counted on to have an opinion. Why Star Pizza? It is not a…
Best Neighborhood Spot in Bellaire
Sinatra’s music bellows through this quaint corner cafe featuring floor-to-ceiling windows and Chianti in diner juice glasses. Such a place easily could be found in the Little Italy section of New York, but this bistro overlooks Bellaire’s Paseo Park and its newly reconstructed Trolley Pavilion. Locals love the friendly atmosphere…
Best Tube Trip
Not for us the overhyped Guadalupe, with its clear-water views of overboard Revos and its drunk-flotillas gummed together like fire ants in a flash flood. Give us instead the Colorado, a true Texan’s Texas river, greenish on a good day, brownish on most, wide, flat, slow and so far blessedly…
Best Sports Bar
Nothing says “fine dining” like rows and rows of autographed sneakers and moldy uniforms, but such is the standard decor at sports bars nationwide. Luckily you don’t go to sports bars for food. You go to see games you can’t get on the tube at home, with a lively crowd,…
Best Tamales
One of the last of Houston’s old-time tamale men was an American Indian named Walter Berryhill. Dressed in a white jacket and top hat, Berryhill sold tamales from his pushcart in River Oaks. He rigged the cart with a propane burner in order to comply with health department regulations and…
Best Beignets
Shuffling your tray down the line at Crescent City Beignets amid the Lamar High students, you can’t help feeling like you’re eating breakfast in the high school cafeteria. You also can’t help wondering whether these beignets are going to be as good as the ones you get in New Orleans…
Best Dim Sum
Being new, big and shiny, Ocean Palace has a few obvious advantages over its competitors: a ballroom-size dining room with 100 tables, a pond in front of the restaurant garnished with lily pads, and substantial hype that keeps people waiting every Sunday morning for a table — for good reason…
Best Place to Get Flavored Condoms Free
Has this ever happened to you? You’re with your beloved for a night of freaky-sneaky, hanky-spanky action. Then you realize — oh, damn — you’re all out of flavored condoms. You could do the whole thing manually with some regular rubbers and a bottle of flavored Motion Lotion, but that…
Best Bloody Mary
So it’s a chichi hotel — the Four Seasons still makes a mean Bloody, equally adept at killing a hangover as slaking a fierce thirst on a hot day. The house vodka, though a little too carefully measured for our taste, is Smirnoff — not some generic brand. Made from…
Best Place to Get a Traffic Ticket
“Downtown…,” sang Petula Clark, “…where all the lights are bright.” And she’s exactly right — it’s where all the flashing red lights are brightest. Perhaps the trade-off, the sense of security from crime, is worth it. But downtown cops seem dead set on writing up damn near every driver that…
Best White House Intern
In a world where the phrase “White House intern” elicits sniggers and blow-job jokes, we all can say we’re relieved that Monica “I don’t take dirty dresses to the dry cleaners” Lewinsky wasn’t from Houston, but Kristen Jones is a White House intern we’re proud of. The 20-year-old University of…
Best Local Boy Made Good
Tilman Fertitta already had a sizable restaurant empire, including his highly successful Kemah Waterfront complex. Now he has snagged a prime pied-à-terre in the burgeoning downtown entertainment district as well. Fertitta recently won the competition to lease from the city the old Fire Station No. 1 and original municipal water…
Best Appetizer
Some of life’s most dynamic beauty exists in its contrasts: the famous yin/yang, the complementary push/pull, the popular in/out. And these mouthwatering morsels of Caribbean glory are no different. The crunchy blue corn chip plays off the slathering of soft black beans that covers it. The thick slab of sweet,…
Best Car for Houston Roads
Elegance and efficiency. Durability with at least a dab of uniqueness. Houstonians aren’t that different from drivers elsewhere. We want the best of all worlds: tungsten toughness combined with soft leather. Consumers pick the SUVs, the E-cars — Ford Expeditions and Explorers, Caddy Escalades — or the Suburbans, or even…
Best Contribution to Downtown Redevelopment
Enron Field? Hardly. The Astros’ stadium may be a strong anchor to east downtown’s revitalization, but the real stars of central city redevelopment were already playing hardball long before Drayton’s dream ever hit the drawing board. The real pioneers are people like New York implant Sharon Roseke Haynes. She led…
Best Place to Take Out-of-Towners
Sometimes referred to as the Flower Man, Cleveland Turner is a former drunk who slipped the grip of booze by promising God he’d dedicate his life as a sober man to creating a place of uncommon beauty. God must have held him to the vow, because Turner’s home and yard…
Best Muffuletta
Who says you have to go to New Orleans to get a good muffuletta? Murphy’s Deli, with 18 locations to choose from, gives the Big Easy a run for its money with its hefty, heavy-on-the-meat-and-cheese rendition. Hot hickory-smoked ham, Genoa salami and provolone cheese are stacked inside a huge round…
Best Japanese Restaurant
The difficult truth is this: Most native Japanese never, ever have a chance to dine in a truly great Japanese restaurant, of the sort one finds in Kyoto and a few other locations in Japan. The classic kai-seki-ryori dinner is an aesthetic experience that even the most decorated of Michelin…
Best Taqueria
There are so many fabulous little taco places in Houston, it is difficult to single one out. And so we picked a fabulous big taco place instead. Gorditas Aguascalientes makes antojitos of all kinds, not just tacos. The fresh masa huaraches and gorditas are real stand-outs. And the soups are…
Best Bowling Alley
Of all the gall. Houston goes nuts when Bob McNair lands a pro football team for the area, or when Grand Prix racing adds the city to its circuit. But there’s not even a tax subsidy or muted shout ready when Diamond Lanes operator Jimmy Young attracts one of the…
Best Place to Buy a Gun
Houston has a special fondness for its firearms. That’s obvious from the sheer number and variety of outlets, from Carter’s Country — that Wal-Mart of weaponry — to other high-profile retailers. Top Gun takes a different, specialized tact. Just like most golfers know they shouldn’t buy clubs until they test…
Best Museum Gift Shop
Make this one plural, as in Best Shops. The Houston Museum of Natural Science severs the traditional museum gift store into a parent-and-child participatory sport. Mom and Dad — or just those without children — get their consumer time in the fairly upscale Collector’s Gift Shop. The quiet confines with…
Best Manly Ballet
Stevenson’s biggest ballet since Dracula was billed as a star vehicle for Lauren Anderson, the African-American principal Stevenson spotted at the Houston Ballet Academy when she was just a child. But while the title role certainly allowed Anderson to show off her explosive athleticism and theatricalism, Cleopatra turned out to…
Best Poetry Magazine
Get your heads out the damn gutter right now! Despite its suggestive title, tongue is a magazine that specializes in the words of local creative minds. Believe it or not, this city has an eclectic poetry scene. And with all the spoken-word nights that circulate from all points of town…
Best Dollar Movie Theater
Squish-squish, go your shoes as you enter the darkened theater. Squish-squish-squish, they continue, as you make your way down the aisle, eyes scanning for that perfect middle seat. To prevent anyone from blocking your line of sight to the screen, you might rest your legs over the chair in front…
Best Nasty Puppets
Disturbing, funny and downright odd, Joel Orr’s Bobbindoctrin Puppet Theatre is the best and, thankfully, only one of its kind in town. The creepy beings who come out to play at Orr’s strange theatrical events are nothing less than your worst childhood nightmares come to full-color papier-mäché life. Talking devil…
Best Late-Night Spot
All the bars are closed, there’s no life on the streets, but you and your friends aren’t ready to trundle home. Plus, you’re all starving. Usually late-night fare is limited to those 24-hour egg-and-bacon places or the drive-thru lane at a fast-food joint. But you want real food. Mai’s Restaurant…
Stayin’ Alive
Twenty-four years ago, Peter Frampton was a Rock God, a curly, feathered-haired totem on the peak of Mount Olympus. In 1976 he was Rolling Stone’s artist of the year, the magazine’s cover shot and every girl’s poster boy. Even now, his huge breakthrough Frampton Comes Alive! remains the best-selling live…
Best Pastime for Hands When Not Servicing $100,000 Automobiles
Acquaintances who happen to see 27-year-old Jug O’ Lightnin’ front man Aaron Loesch tooling around town in that glossy, black late-model Jaguar of his might well wonder whether The Jug has somehow managed to parlay its regular free Sunday-night gig at Rudyard’s into a multimillion-dollar deal with Sony or somesuch…
Best Circus
“There’s a sucker born every minute,” or so said Phineas Taylor Barnum, the greatest American huckster who ever lived. He honed his flimflam skills to such astonishing heights that he eventually became the owner and hawker of “The Greatest Show on Earth,” a grand colossus of a circus that lately…
Best Actor
All hail John Feltch, the gorgeous and thoroughly rakish actor who played Henry in the Alley’s production of Tom Stoppard’s The Real Thing. The show was one of the season’s best, owing in no small part to Feltch’s bespectacled and brooding sexuality, along with his blazing intelligence. The long-limbed performer…
Best Radio Sidekick
You gotta give some much-deserved credit to the man they call Jay Mack. How many brothas out there you know who are as suave as a Julio Iglesias song and can still not take themselves too seriously? There seems to be a shortage these days. Thankfully, the cat who co-commands…
Best Use of Taxpayer Dollars
The stuff of public art, hike-and-bike paths, youth programs and parks are pleasant municipal amenities, to be certain. Even residents who don’t personally partake of such things can still feel good about having them as part of life in Houston. But all those come after what ought to be the…
Best Downtown Bar That’s Still There
Don’t get us wrong. We love the “revitalization” of downtown. We love the crowds, the foot traffic, the energy and the fact that in some bars you have to wear the right fucking clothes to get a drink. This is not our idea of alcohol consumption. Our ideal bar combines…
Best Use for the Astrodome
The poor Dome. The former Eighth Wonder of the World has to sit there helplessly and watch as, right across the parking lot, construction crews build the new NFL stadium that has a contract out to kill it. The humiliation is compounded by the endless speculation and discussions about what…
Best Place to Park Your Car and Walk Two Feet for an Ice-Cold Shiner
You’re stuck in traffic, the temperature is over 100 degrees, and you’re thirsty. Highway beer billboards are making you even thirstier. This is what hell must be like, you think to yourself. Pull off the highway and head to the West Alabama Ice House. Park your car and stumble to…
Best Insider’s Shortcut
Ah, progress. Northbound motorists on the Southwest Freeway have that elevated TxDOT marvel to get them to the I-45 interchange. The only problem, as any regular driver on that route knows by now, is the stop-and-slow traffic on what has turned out to be a consistent bottleneck. Age adds wisdom…
Best Place to Smoke a Hookah
Star Cafe is for real. It doesn’t cater to denizens of the mainstream American culture looking to try something it deems “exotic.” Nope, at Star Cafe, the clientele is composed of Arabic immigrants, mostly from Egypt. They gather at this drab location (next to Sun & Ski on the far…
Best Fried Chicken
Time, an endless river, rolls along, as does the channelized stream of Brays Bayou, a few blocks south of Frenchy’s Chicken. But this family-run operation just keeps on keepin’ on. Opened in 1969 by Louisiana native Frenchy Cruzot, this small 99 percent takeout spot (a few metal tables are set…
Best (Pile of) Junk
From beyond the corrugated tin walls, copper light posts topped with bulbous white globes protrude, and wilted chandeliers lie on top of the impossibly piled pile of junk. Sandwiched between La Maison and Value Village in the Heights, this nameless junk shop is easy to miss, especially when it’s closed…
Best Garish Ties
Like dead fish, the ties hang unhappily, wrapped in cellophane, suffocated. They look for a way out; they yearn to be bought. Every now and again, a Jerry Garcia tie — harmless as a watercolor painting — leaves the store. Otherwise, the ties remain. Perhaps because they’re just too darn…
Best Toy Store
The nice thing about having a mall like Town & Country crash and burn is that rent plummets to the point that more obscure independent stores like Toys for All can move in. Specializing in vintage toys and games spanning the entire spectrum of obsessive-compulsive hobbies, from Beanie Babies and…
Best New Downtown Bar
Slainte (pronounced “SLAWN-cha”) is a Gaelic drinking toast, which translates roughly to “Cheers!” Stools are situated around a big black barrel of Jameson whiskey, a James Joyce quote is on the wall, and Lord of the Dance music fills the air. You can order a blarney burger, Irish lamb stew,…
Best Muffuletta
Who says you have to go to New Orleans to get a good muffuletta? Murphy’s Deli, with 18 locations to choose from, gives the Big Easy a run for its money with its hefty, heavy-on-the-meat-and-cheese rendition. Hot hickory-smoked ham, Genoa salami and provolone cheese are stacked inside a huge round…
Best Bike Shop
When asked how he could be leading bike rides well into his eighties, B.M. Shirar always replied, “I eat a banana every day.” B.M. died nine years ago, but his bicycle shop — the nation’s oldest, according to B.M.’s grandson and the current proprietor, James Turner — is still pedaling…
Best Cajun Restaurant
The low-slung white building with its spreading porch housing Floyd’s Cajun Kitchen almost looks like a home you might find in South Louisiana. Inside, the aromas of food definitely put you in Cajun Country. The five-page menu covers everything from crawfish boulettes (crawfish stuffing rolled into balls, breaded and fried,…
Best Thai Restaurant
Taste of Thai is one of those restaurants whose whole is far greater than the sum of its parts. Sure, the food is wonderful, whether it’s the soups, the angel wings, the roast duck curry with pineapple and tomato, the chef’s special duck, the pad thai (last year’s Best of…
Best Neighborhood Spot Outside the Loop
Yes, Virginia, there is a great restaurant outside the Loop (way, way outside the loop, to be precise). It’s in Katy, its name is Barcelona, and it is a truly excellent Spanish restaurant. Gracious service, charming atmosphere and the best Spanish food this side of — well, maybe not the…
Best Place to Mountain Bike
We know what you’re thinking. Mountain biking? In Houston? Well, our famously flat town has its own version: bicycling the bayou. The best-kept mountain-biking secret in town is the Ant Hills, a system of ten-plus miles of trails and paths along Buffalo Bayou from Wilcrest to Highway 6. The prime…
Best Ass-Whipping
The powers that be have seen fit to pass laws to keep our hands to ourselves in times of personal conflict, but there’s at least one place you can go to experience a good old-fashioned face pummeling vicariously. Browning Boxing has been serving up modern-day gladiators every month for three…
Best Place to Canoe
The experts — assuming people who join canoe clubs can be called experts — agree: For shoulder-powered, water-top locomotion, Armand Bayou is where it’s at. Declared a coastal preserve by Texas Parks and Wildlife, the Armand Bayou watershed near Clear Lake City is one of Houston’s last unchanneled bayous, an…
Best Catfish
The twisted, splintery logs stacked in a pile behind Goode Co. Seafood right next to the barbecue pits are a good omen. Just in case anyone was worried, there will be mesquite-smoked catfish tonight. In a day and age where catfish just isn’t considered any way but coated with flour…
Best Fried Rice
At most Chinese restaurants, fear the “special” fried rice. Rumored to be made of day-old rice and whatever leftover meat and vegetable bits fall from the cutting board, the only thing special about the rice is that it’s drowned in soy sauce, creating a super-salty and greasy meal. But not…
Best Rest Stop
The Texas Department of Transportation has the cookie-cutter approach to rest stops. Most of them are no more than off- and on-ramps from freeways, where the harried masses of motorists huddle at basic tables as traffic roars by a few yards away. The no-frills approach suits drivers just fine. But…
Best Bridge
Yeah, yeah. We know. The bridges being built over U.S. 59 have caused ridiculously frequent freeway closures. And on the occasion when 59 is open, drivers have to risk life and limb just negotiating the lane merges around heavy machinery. But as our own Mayor Lee Brown so prosaically put…
Best Bird-Watching
With its woodlands, low-lying prairies and many acres of ponds, Barker Reservoir has helped make Houston’s ozone-choked air less foul, and more fowl. The nature preserve is a pre-eminent spot for birding within the city limits, particularly during winter months. Assorted songbirds, waterfowl, hawks, blackbirds, owls and other species thrive…
Best Mussels
Mussel ecstasy reigns at this warm Belgian bistro, with diners endlessly spooning tastes of their steamed mussels into their companions’ mouths like priests giving communion. The reaction is always the same — thoughtful mastication followed by an energetic nod of delight. Once your own black mussel pot arrives, the real…
Best Sandwich
Urban Foods, a friendly deli/gourmet food store in the Rice Lofts, makes one of the best sandwiches we’ve ever tasted. Here’s the blueprint (as Ken Hoffman might say): house-smoked salmon, sliced hard-boiled eggs, slightly bitter arugula and a sprightly, creamy dill spread. We suggest you have it on ciabatta. As…
Best New Downtown Bar
Slainte (pronounced “SLAWN-cha”) is a Gaelic drinking toast, which translates roughly to “Cheers!” Stools are situated around a big black barrel of Jameson whiskey, a James Joyce quote is on the wall, and Lord of the Dance music fills the air. You can order a blarney burger, Irish lamb stew,…
Best Local Boy Gone Bad
If anyone wants to dent a squeaky-clean political image in the course of one evening, look no further than the unfortunate 39-year-old Bert Keller for pointers. First the councilman, who was already estranged from wife Susan, took off after an Astros game for the inner sanctum of Centerfolds topless bar…
Best Ferry
We dithered on this one: Lynchburg or Bolivar? Bolivar or Lynchburg? Lynchburg is a shorter ride, a smaller, perhaps cozier ferry, and it operates in the appropriately industrial seascape of the Ship Channel near the San Jacinto Monument, which is always a plus. The Bolivar ferries make for a longer…
Best Licuado
On those days when Houston’s summer refuses to end, when your eyes hurt from too much sunlight and your pores are clogged with sweat, when plastic objects melt on your dashboard, when you see squirrels spread-eagle on the ground, panting, and the neighborhood cats droop nearby, too languid to give…
Best Flack/ Public Information Officer
Not only is University of Houston grad Judy Hay one of the best straight shooters in town in her dealings with the media, but she would surely be the last flack standing if Survivor had peopled its island with public relations types. Hay joined the agency in 1970 with a…
Best Place to Indulge Anglophilia
This redoubt of vintage Britannia is dead-on in every sense but two: The pub grub is not the slightest bit grubby, and the pints are cold. Shepherd’s pie, beef Wellington, fish and chips, and West Highland cheese soup are but a few of the outstanding victuals. The steamed mussels would…
Best Place to Buy Art Supplies
Two years ago, after 40 years at Richmond and Montrose, Ben Russell and Vikki Trammell moved Art Supply to a two-story commercial space in Midtown. Respected as nurturers of the local art scene as well as the preferred source for top-grade fine-arts supplies, the couple remodeled the upstairs of 2711…
Best Thrift Store
Most thrift stores are dusty-musty pits that you brave in hopes of making the Big Score; that is, finding that perfect, soulful piece of clothing at an insanely low price. By comparison, the Salvation Army on Washington makes a strenuous effort to be shopper-friendly. The big front windows let in…
Best Democrat
Seventy-two-year-old Billie Carr has finally retired from her DNC position, and she’ll leave plenty of devoted fans behind, including her old friend President Bill Clinton. Having fought her way to the top through the ranks of conservative Democrats who once dominated the party, Carr, by necessity, also adopted many of…
Best Community Newspaper
If Houston’s Spanish-speaking community has a paper of record, El Día is it. More than simply recap police blotter sagas, this daily diligently covers news affecting the city’s diverse Hispanic community that otherwise wouldn’t get covered. El Día has kept a watchful eye on police brutality, the fire department’s handling…
Best Band Stage Show
During a CD release performance at Fitzgerald’s earlier this year, Middlefinger lead singer Matt Kelly asked the crowd in between songs for the correct pronunciation of the name “G-O-E-T-H-E.” Whoever answered first would get one of the Middlefinger CDs Kelly held in his hands. After getting nothing but quizzical looks,…
Best Hunk o’ Meat
If you like your meat well hung — gastronomically speaking, that is — you’ll love the dry-aged, certified Angus porterhouse steak ($30) at the Capital Grille. The dry-aging process takes place in an environment where the temperature, humidity and airflow are controlled. The meat cures for up to 21 days…
Best Honky-tonk
The minute you walk into Blanco’s and see the beaten hardwood floors, or breathe in the fog of cigarette smoke, or just push your way past a posse of cowboys in Wranglers and pearl-snaps, you know you’ve found the real thing: a genuine Texas honky-tonk. This oasis of traditional Texana…
Best Bar Manager
Tucked in the armpit of West U, Bellaire and the railroad tracks, Little Woodrow’s seems out of place and time. Few of the mostly working-class regulars who frequent the area’s only neighborhood bar live in the monstrosities that have sprouted in the adjoining neighborhoods, displacing the modest middle-class ranch-styles. But…
Best Local Song About Drivin’
Front man and local homeboy Jesse Dayton says on the band’s Web site that this song is “based on a real-life altercation between the Texas Highway Patrol and a kid with a hot-rod Ford and a little too much to drink.” But you gotta believe Dayton’s crunchy-twangy guitar work and…
Incubus
With the possible exception of those four Kittie cats, Incubus will probably emerge as the only breakout act from this year’s Ozzfest. That’s more of an accomplishment than originally thought, since the California-based quintet sounds slightly off-kilter in a land occupied by mooks. The band’s sophomore (and rapidly approaching platinum)…
Best Open-Mike Night
Seasoned musicians drift into Dan Electro’s on Thursdays and jam with whoever happens to be around. Frequently these impromptu groupings kick ass. On a recent night, veterans Andy Williams and Diunna Greenleaf took the stage with three others and unleashed a feverish set of blues. Williams made his guitar moan,…
Best Swells of Houstonian Pride
Some of y’all guys probably don’t know this, but when you saw American Pie for the 40th time last year just to see that Czechoslovakian chick take her top off in the bedroom of the guy who humped the pie, those were Houston-born breasts you were ogling. Those were local…
Best Production
Margaret Edson just might be the only kindergarten teacher in the country who can list the Pulitzer Prize on her résumé. But Edson is no ordinary teacher — or writer, for that matter. It was just a couple of years ago that the unassuming teacher won the award for her…
Best Actress
Remember Brandon Teena, the 21-year-old female who was murdered because she tried to live her life as a man? This true-life cautionary tale about a young person’s desperation to find herself was brought to passionate life last fall in Leigh Silverman’s minimalistic stage play Brandon Teena at The Little Room…
Best Place for a First Date
Dating is like ordering tapas: You try a whole bunch of different things and you hope you get something you like that agrees with you and doesn’t make you sick. Mi Luna is a fun “first date” — it’s like a fancy mall food court, because you each can get…
Best Bridge
Yeah, yeah. We know. The bridges being built over U.S. 59 have caused ridiculously frequent freeway closures. And on the occasion when 59 is open, drivers have to risk life and limb just negotiating the lane merges around heavy machinery. But as our own Mayor Lee Brown so prosaically put…
Best Dot-com Ad Campaign
Some folks think they’re creepy, but we like the various foods that have taken on the personae of animals in the company’s billboard campaign around the city. They have a banana that looks like an octopus, cherries made to resemble an ant, a watermelon as a turtle, and several other…
Best Revolution
Democracy reared its not-so-ugly head in Seabrook this year when residents got mightily pissed off that their elected officials were determined to bring a mammoth billion (with a “B”)-dollar container port to the doorstep of their small town. Visions of a huge rail yard and 7,000 trucks a day rumbling…
Best Time and Place to See Street Racers
From the Galleria past Beltway 8, as Saturday night gives way to Sunday, the strip-mall parking lots on Westheimer host impromptu car shows, with ball-capped guys checking out each other’s mods. You hear words like “cams” and “noz.” You feel the sub-bass rumble of Corvettes eager to exceed the speed…
Best Weathercaster
During the long half-year that is the Houston summer, there’s not much to the weather beyond hot and humid. Occasional rainfall will pass through; even less occasionally some severe weather will occur. But Houstonians still cling desperately to the romantic notion that maybe, just maybe, the weather will one day…
Best Iced Tea
Iced tea is a gracious beverage. It hints of endless refills and an infinity of time, and it’s the right thing to drink at funky, laid-back Kaldi Cafe, where no one is ever in a hurry. Kaldi offers tea drinkers a nifty selection of flavors du jour — ginger-peach, say,…
Best Plants
Pennants and posters that say “plants” and “sale sale sale” in bold black letters are in The Plant Lady’s front yard. Her plants are gorgeous, and cheap. She sells big trees for $10 and enormous peace lilies for $5 (we’ve seen wimpier, wilted ones for $30 elsewhere). Flowering plants that…
Best Retro Goods
The giant Big Boy in the window beckons, “Hello, remember me?” So you open the door and cross the threshold from modern-day Montrose into a bewilderment of decades. Old gas pumps with bulbous signs stand across the room from heavy rotary-dial phones and coin-operated diner jukebox connectors. Art deco chairs,…
Best Local Designer
Stacked unceremoniously under the sale racks at the back of Vanessa Riley’s boutique are sheets and sheets of drawings of chic, oh-so-European women in slinky, oh-so-European suits and gowns. Their haphazard nondisplay belies their significance. This is no ordinary designer store where some anonymous underling in a faraway fashion house…
Best Driving Accessory
When it comes to getting around in a car, Houston is a sprawling, featureless, illogically laid out mess. Which means you should never attempt to get anywhere without a Key Map in the car. For 42 years the Rau family has been producing annually updated, easy-to-use maps of Harris County…
Best Mussels
Mussel ecstasy reigns at this warm Belgian bistro, with diners endlessly spooning tastes of their steamed mussels into their companions’ mouths like priests giving communion. The reaction is always the same — thoughtful mastication followed by an energetic nod of delight. Once your own black mussel pot arrives, the real…
Best Microbrewery
The Best Microbrewery prize easily goes to… the only microbrewery in Houston! That stated, Saint Arnold produces a revolving selection of beers and ales that really are, if you happen to be a serious devotee of the brewmaster’s art, excellent. The brews are made according to German legal standards that…
Best Indian Restaurant
With its dark wood furniture, abundant greenery and well-stocked bar, Bombay Brasserie exudes a glory-days-of-the-British Empire sort of elegance. The $9.95 lunch buffet is one of the best samplings of Indian food we’ve seen. The long line of chafing dishes reveals one excellently prepared Indian dish after another. But dinner…
Best Drive-thru Eatery
From the looks of all the new drive-thrus dominating roadway vistas, this car-crazy city craves speed — in food as much as commute times. What’s been missing is obvious: variety. Menu boards may have expanded, but the basic choices seem so limited. How many ways can a chicken or cow…
Best Atmosphere
Atmosphere is a deeply subjective thing. What may delight Zippy the Pinhead could depress Bug-Eyed Earl. Or vice versa on a different day. Additionally, Houston tends to celebrate the shiny and new and to destroy the mellow and old, where atmosphere has had time to develop. Thus, the recent opening…
Best Bobsledder
Six months of the year Meg Henderson is a med student at Baylor College of Medicine. The other six months she lives in Park City, Utah, training for the 2002 Olympics with the national bobsledding team. Meg’s sister, Kate, calls her the Dot Richardson of bobsled (Dot took a year…
Best Bicycle Day Trip
Start behind West Oaks Mall and head out Westheimer, which becomes FM 1093. Turn left at 1464 (by the Shell station), across the tracks past the Clodine general store. Instead of following 1464 as it curves left, take the road to the right, which is O’Brien. Cross Beechnut and continue…
Best Racetrack
Houston has never been known as a hotbed for big-time auto racing. Sure, A.J. Foyt grew up in the Heights, but as far as top-notch racing facilities are concerned, forget it. That was, until 1988, when Houston Raceway Park in Baytown came onto the scene. The sprawling facility has played…
Best Steak Dinner for Two for 20 Bucks
Finding a cheap steak dinner can be dicey — if the price is right, the meal usually isn’t. Small tough cuts of meat that have been sitting under a warming light for an hour or so ain’t a bargain, no matter how inexpensive they might be. PJ’s Sports Bar, on…
Best Garlic Beef
Almost everything at this Thai/Chinese restaurant is good. One strange bonus is that the place is almost always empty. The walls are red with gold trim and funky Chinese artifacts; the waitstaff smiles and doesn’t say much. The garlic beef is the best food we’ve ever tasted in our entire…
Best Bookstore for Poetry
“My business is words. Words are like labels / Or coins, or better, like swarming bees,” writes Anne Sexton, in Said the Poet to the Analyst. The shrink may have tried Thorazine to subdue Sexton’s swarm, but the tenacious buzzing persists. Her works and those of many of the giants…
Best Judges
Justices Paul Murphy and John Anderson brought the wrath of GOP social conservatives down on their heads by ruling that the state’s antediluvian homosexual conduct law discriminates against gays by banning sexual behavior that is legal for straights. Murphy and Anderson made up the majority on a three-judge panel that…
Best Participatory Sporting Event
Are you the CEO of an international corporation? Are you always looking for ways to spend that extra pocket change? Do you dream of supporting a vital component of our city’s attempt at health consciousness? If so, the Houston Marathon could have used you. But you missed the chance to…
Best Freeway to Get Lost On
How can you get lost on a circular freeway? Easy. Other large cities have a natural barrier such as an ocean or mountain. In Chicago, you can go east only as far as Lake Michigan. The Atlantic gets in your way in Boston, Baltimore and Miami. Seattle has Puget Sound…
Best Response to a Houston Press Story
In a story this past February about the suicide of lottery winner Billie Bob Harrell, we described Karen Gerstner, an attorney, as seeming “more likely to offer someone a glass of milk and a plate of cookies rather than cutting-edge financial advice.” A couple of weeks later, Gerstner had a…
Best Participatory Sporting Event
Are you the CEO of an international corporation? Are you always looking for ways to spend that extra pocket change? Do you dream of supporting a vital component of our city’s attempt at health consciousness? If so, the Houston Marathon could have used you. But you missed the chance to…
Best Golf Hole
The fundamental fantasy of the golfing world is that best is supposed to be brutal. Year after year, Houston hackers hold the notion that tribute should be paid to the toughest holes. Of course, that ignores the basic premise that this game is geared toward finding that rare feeling of…
Best Water Park
When it comes to adventures in baby-sitting, water parks are a no-brainer. But don’t let the big guys drown out Houston’s best-kept secret: Adventure Bay. On just 12 acres in far west Houston, it’s intimate enough to let older kids roam free (though we suggest the buddy system) through the…
Best Politician
After the death of 51-year Democratic incumbent Carl Smith, former corporate salesman and GOP Harris County treasurer Paul Bettencourt ran a political gauntlet to win the post. After Commissioner Steve Radack pushed the appointment of former Oilers defensive back Willie Alexander through the court, supporters on the county GOP Executive…
Best Ass-Whipping
The powers that be have seen fit to pass laws to keep our hands to ourselves in times of personal conflict, but there’s at least one place you can go to experience a good old-fashioned face pummeling vicariously. Browning Boxing has been serving up modern-day gladiators every month for three…
Best Sit-Down Breakfast
A weekend breakfast at Goode Co. is a manly meal, but the women like it, too. After all, some mornings call for some serious sustenance, and this place answers with its own call of the wild. Thrillseekers rustle up the Buck Fever, which is venison sausage and eggs. Also paired…
Best Restaurant
If ever there was a “temple of cuisine,” this cutting-edge American restaurant located in a former church must be it. There are stars painted above the former altar, and the bar runs where the communion rail used to be. Here, in this Montrose church-turned-restaurant, an un-solemn congregation of convivialists meets…
Best Professional Wench
Her real name is Catherine Douglas, and she’s a Florida-born actress and comedienne, making a living doing what she loves best. But when she slips on her corseted milkmaid dress, pushes her freckled cleavage up to her chin and puts on a choppy Scottish accent, this redheaded spitfire becomes Lucenden…
Best Toy Store
The nice thing about having a mall like Town & Country crash and burn is that rent plummets to the point that more obscure independent stores like Toys for All can move in. Specializing in vintage toys and games spanning the entire spectrum of obsessive-compulsive hobbies, from Beanie Babies and…
Best Mobile Barbecue Pit
The Houston makers of this device tout it as “the ultimate tailgate barbecue pit.” What you have is your basic steel drum-style cooker that you can use in your backyard or attach to the back of your car or truck and haul to the beach, park or ball game. Apparently…
Best Pastime for Hands When Not Servicing $100,000 Automobiles
Acquaintances who happen to see 27-year-old Jug O’ Lightnin’ front man Aaron Loesch tooling around town in that glossy, black late-model Jaguar of his might well wonder whether The Jug has somehow managed to parlay its regular free Sunday-night gig at Rudyard’s into a multimillion-dollar deal with Sony or somesuch…
Best Radio Station
Selecting Houston’s best supplier of over-the-airwaves music can seem like an exercise in picking the lesser evil. Between corporate-held stations controlled by focus groups and a public station run by a general manager who seems intent on destroying its democratic ways, our city’s radio offerings don’t exactly inspire listeners to…
Best Blues Club
The blues is not complicated. It does not require a complicated venue to host it. In fact, it thrives in just the opposite: intimate neighborhood bars where the beat of the drummer matches the beat of your heart, each offering something to the other in a sort of telepathy between…
Best Band to Leave Houston
Obvious jokes that come to mind when it is learned that, of all the dens of iniquity, Los Angeles is the new home of cannabis commanders and slip-hop merchants I-45: If L.A. suddenly is recrowned the smoggiest city in America, then Houston City Council knows where to send the cleanup…
Best Guitarist Who Never Plays in Public
Cherie Craze is one of Houston’s unrecognized wonders. Like lots of shy teenagers, the self-taught guitarist spent a good deal of her childhood hiding out in her room, wrapped around her guitar, teaching herself to play. What sets Craze apart from most pimply-faced, angst-ridden adolescents is the fire in her…
Goudie
For those who first became familiar with Austinite-by-way-of-Houston Johnny Goudie during his days as a boundaryless, chain-smoking rock-and-roll traditionalist, the opening strains of Peep Show are going to take some getting used to. Many layers deep, delicate and fraught with drama, the beginning to a song like “Baby Hello” is…
Best Open-Mike Poetry Reading
Usually an open reading serves a particular clique, but when Mike Alexander started running things at the Mausoleum, he made an effort to create the kind of environment where anti-intellectual anarchists could follow the academic folks from the creative writing programs. A selected poet opens the reading every Wednesday at…
Best Local Television Show Causing a Commotion
Ever since Channel 39’s Straight from the Streetz, hosted by the KBXX-FM’s omnipresent Madd Hatta, sadly disappeared from television airwaves a while back, rap-video enthusiasts who can’t afford cable for BET or public access have had to get their weekly fix from KUHT’s Saturday-night video fest. But not all folks…
Best Adulterated Shakespeare
Stand-up comedy in Shakespeare? How about slapstick? Or musical interludes from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly? The Alley’s Gregory Boyd did all this and more in his irreverent and very funny take on one of Shakespeare’s zaniest tales of mistaken identity, The Comedy of Errors. The Looney Tunes…
Best Place to Watch a Belly Dancer
The restaurant is dim and empty; you have arrived too early for a late dinner. A dark-skinned young man in a pressed white shirt shows you to a table far away from the stage. Halfway through your baba ghanoush or hummus appetizer, a stoic-faced band begins to play Middle Eastern…
Best Random Act of Kindness
There’s no telling where Cynthia Flood and her two children would be living today if they hadn’t crossed paths with Mark Davis. Last October, Davis read a story in the Houston Press that recounted how Flood’s $250-a-month apartment in the Fourth Ward was in the path of a city-sponsored redevelopment…
Best Judges
Justices Paul Murphy and John Anderson brought the wrath of GOP social conservatives down on their heads by ruling that the state’s antediluvian homosexual conduct law discriminates against gays by banning sexual behavior that is legal for straights. Murphy and Anderson made up the majority on a three-judge panel that…
Best Zoo Animal
Most of the animals at the zoo don’t seem to care too much about visitors. They eat or pee or groom themselves or loll about, oblivious to the prying eyes and children’s cries. But the orangutan knows what’s going on. When a crowd gathers on the other side of her…
Best Bar with a Ghost Story
Lend an ear to anybody over at the hallowed beer hall, and they will tell stories of the apparition that has been lurking in the nooks and crannies of the place for ages. Just how long has this spook been around? Well, long enough that the people have given it…
Best Flack/ Public Information Officer
Not only is University of Houston grad Judy Hay one of the best straight shooters in town in her dealings with the media, but she would surely be the last flack standing if Survivor had peopled its island with public relations types. Hay joined the agency in 1970 with a…
Best Tamales
One of the last of Houston’s old-time tamale men was an American Indian named Walter Berryhill. Dressed in a white jacket and top hat, Berryhill sold tamales from his pushcart in River Oaks. He rigged the cart with a propane burner in order to comply with health department regulations and…
Best Martini
In our ardent quest for Houston’s best martini, we asked several bartenders to define the drink. Of course, each gave us a different answer — and all were correct. While there are some definite guidelines, a single definition does not exist. A generation ago, a martini was as cut-and-dry as…
Best Dentist’s Office Inside the Loop
The folks at Outreach Dentistry will banish forever those Marathon Man-like memories of the evil white-coated dentist who looms like a horrifying shadow over the landscape of your oral hygiene. When you push open the glass door of Outreach, you’ll get a home-style welcome. The waiting room of this mom-and-pop…
Best Retro Furniture
That’s right. Point Five no longer has a monopoly on the ’50s furniture market. Jerry Gibson’s new shop has all the modern classics, too: chairs by Eames and Bertoia, an Eero Saarinen table, a Paul McCobb desk, a Herman Miller sofa, a Frank Lloyd Wright rug, each accompanied by a…
Best Appraiser
Anybody who has tuned in to PBS’s Antiques Roadshow marvels at how veteran appraisers quickly scan somebody’s closet clutter and come up with rich histories and details on such obscure items. Paul F. Wishnow takes it one step further. Each Sunday morning on KPRC Radio (950 AM), he delivers a…
Best Lobbyist
If he wasn’t the best-known municipal lobbyist before he was elevated to the prestigious chairmanship in June, he will be now. For years affable, low-key Jim Edmonds has run with the big boys, ranging from developer Walter Mischer to financial guru Tom Masterson to previous port chair Ned Holmes, pouring…
Best Oysters
While many will argue that the only good oyster is a raw oyster, we believe that the oysters in garlic sauce at Fung’s Kitchen will cause anyone to reconsider that position. Large (usually huge) oysters on the half shell are steamed just enough to bring out their maximum, well, oysterness,…
Best Place to Get Flavored Condoms Free
Has this ever happened to you? You’re with your beloved for a night of freaky-sneaky, hanky-spanky action. Then you realize — oh, damn — you’re all out of flavored condoms. You could do the whole thing manually with some regular rubbers and a bottle of flavored Motion Lotion, but that…
Best Latin Grill
At this time last year, Charles Clark was making an impressive name for himself as head chef at Tasca Kitchen and Wine Bar. These days Clark heads up the kitchen at the new downtown Elvia’s, where he proves he is a master of many culinary disciplines. The killer bee menu…
Best Deli
Until recently, Houston lacked an authentic New York-style deli, despite the size of its Jewish community and a natural customer base (a million people who like eating giant heaps of meat in one sitting). Sure, we had our share of fine sandwich shops or bagel joints, but nothing that combined…
Best Cheap Lunch
Cahill’s owner Martin “Cahill” Hammer honed his chops down the road at Kenneally’s Irish Pub, where he was a bartender and chef. Now that he has had his own place for a few years, Hammer has taken a page out of Kenneally’s steak night by having a Wednesday steak lunch:…
Best Houston Comet
By now you’re probably familiar with the TV promotional campaign in which pickup hoopsters are told that the women of the WNBA are “better than you are.” If you’re like most guys, your response goes something like, “Yeah, right.” In the case of the Houston Comets’ Sheryl Swoopes, it’s best…
Best Place to Play Racquetball
Remember back in the 1980s when it seemed like everybody and their mother was playing racquetball? It was as if the pasty white walls of the racquetball court were placing everyone who entered under some mysterious sweat-soaked spell. But the boom went bust. As trendy activities like step aerobics, spinning…
Best Drive-thru Food
First, you need to take into account the logistics of eating while driving. For the record, a car with a standard transmission is not the most desirable drive-thru vehicle, unless you have someone in the passenger seat to help out. Shifting gears complicates unwrapping and eating your dinner, and may…
Best Lemonade
Some things you just can’t get year-round in other parts of the country. Take lemonade: It’s a seasonal refreshment up north, and even then, it’s usually made with the powdered stuff in a can. That’s not the case in Houston, or at Barnaby’s Cafe. Every morning they squeeze their own…
Best Tube Trip
Not for us the overhyped Guadalupe, with its clear-water views of overboard Revos and its drunk-flotillas gummed together like fire ants in a flash flood. Give us instead the Colorado, a true Texan’s Texas river, greenish on a good day, brownish on most, wide, flat, slow and so far blessedly…
Best New Downtown Club
Dorothy Parker would drink here. The old Isis Theater has been restored to its swinging, speakeasy style. There’s a 25-foot-long cherry-wood bar with a rolling library ladder to get to the good stuff. You can buy a $4 bottle of Bud Light and order caviar at the bar. Down the…
Best Mall-Walking
Mall management usually is ambivalent about walkers. Not Memorial City Mall. They encourage indoor exercise. Mall walkers can gain access beginning at 5:30 a.m. each day. Throughout the mall, plaques mark a walking course at one-eighth-mile intervals. The mall co-sponsors the Health Check Walking Club with Memorial Hospital-Memorial City. Prizes…
Best Bicycle Day Trip
Start behind West Oaks Mall and head out Westheimer, which becomes FM 1093. Turn left at 1464 (by the Shell station), across the tracks past the Clodine general store. Instead of following 1464 as it curves left, take the road to the right, which is O’Brien. Cross Beechnut and continue…
Best Friends
Native Houstonian Kay Poe was expected to win the U.S. Taekwondo Union’s Olympic trials in May. But in her last match before the flyweight division championship fight, Poe took a blow to the knee that rendered her barely able to walk. It appeared her Olympic dreams would be dashed; she…
Best Driving Accessory
When it comes to getting around in a car, Houston is a sprawling, featureless, illogically laid out mess. Which means you should never attempt to get anywhere without a Key Map in the car. For 42 years the Rau family has been producing annually updated, easy-to-use maps of Harris County…
Best Archival Project No One Has Heard About
Producer Huey Meaux was a perfect fit for Houston. Something of a wildcatter of Texas music, Meaux never showed any interest in history. His focus was always on the new thing: the next single, the latest thrill, the youngest girl. The past was only a tool to acquire something in…
Best Happy Hour
Right in the center of Houston’s gay bars, JR.’s has one of the longest and most entertaining happy hours around. Though its patrons are predominantly gay men, people of all persuasions are welcome (age 21 and older, that is). Happy hour begins at noon (yes, noon) but really starts firing…
Best Local Girls Gone Bad
The long arm of the law has permanently broken up that old gang of Kingwood High School convenience-store banditas whose rampage for cash and cigarettes earned them face time on such national news shows as 20-20 and 48 Hours. The trio most involved in the series of five robberies –…
Best Thai Restaurant
Taste of Thai is one of those restaurants whose whole is far greater than the sum of its parts. Sure, the food is wonderful, whether it’s the soups, the angel wings, the roast duck curry with pineapple and tomato, the chef’s special duck, the pad thai (last year’s Best of…
Best Place to Pick Up a Slightly Worn Copy of the Marquis de Sade’s The 120 Days of Sodom
Okay, maybe you won’t find that precise title, but this place is about as highbrow a used bookstore as you’ll find in this city that doesn’t market exclusively rare and collectible editions — though there are plenty of those on the shelves. This is not a source for light reading;…
Best Neighborhood Spot in Montrose
This cozy cafe, named after a Slavic witch, has been a favorite for locals ever since Montrose became the capital of the bohemian culture. Now, the homey converted bungalow — with patio seating and a lush herb garden, complete with trilling birds — serves Houston’s largest gay population, as well…
Best Banjo Teacher
Full disclosure: We haven’t exactly traipsed around town sampling the services of the city’s presumably multitudinous banjo instructors (check the Yellow Pages — that “multitudinous” bit was a joke), but we have shopped widely for one of the semi-archaic five-stringers to practice on. The level of music-store expertise on display…
Best Local Designer
Stacked unceremoniously under the sale racks at the back of Vanessa Riley’s boutique are sheets and sheets of drawings of chic, oh-so-European women in slinky, oh-so-European suits and gowns. Their haphazard nondisplay belies their significance. This is no ordinary designer store where some anonymous underling in a faraway fashion house…
Best Restoration Project
After a year and a half with its doors shut for a $1.8 million face-lift, the Rothko Chapel reopened in June, radiating renewed richness in its muted simplicity. The renovation work reached from the ground up, bringing the shrine closer to what Rothko had intended, says Suna Umari, the chapel’s…
Best Open-Mike Night
Seasoned musicians drift into Dan Electro’s on Thursdays and jam with whoever happens to be around. Frequently these impromptu groupings kick ass. On a recent night, veterans Andy Williams and Diunna Greenleaf took the stage with three others and unleashed a feverish set of blues. Williams made his guitar moan,…
Best Cajun Restaurant
The low-slung white building with its spreading porch housing Floyd’s Cajun Kitchen almost looks like a home you might find in South Louisiana. Inside, the aromas of food definitely put you in Cajun Country. The five-page menu covers everything from crawfish boulettes (crawfish stuffing rolled into balls, breaded and fried,…
Best Karaoke
If Ed McMahon had the gumption to host a Houston Star Search, Spotlight Karaoke would be his headquarters. Bringing in crowds of all colors, all ages and all — umm, both — genders, the Spotlight is where countertenor accountants go when they’re not crunching numbers and where shower-stall divas go…
Best Unsigned Band
It’s just too damn bad major record labels haven’t figured out a way to bottle live energy and the hundreds of bodies that figure into that force and package it. If they could, the work of ska giants Los Skarnales would be worth more than a Los Alamos hard drive…
Best Club for Local Acts
Though being able to sit on a musician’s lap as he plays does not necessarily a great live local-music venue make, fantastic sound and a hospitable atmosphere do (we’re talking about a city that is not Los Angeles or New York and where local musicians need that friendly face to…
In Good Hands
Just like every other club in town, Cezanne does what it can to survive. Every Thursday, Houston’s only serious jazz hangout invites aspiring professional vocalists to its space to belt out a couple of tunes backed by a major-league ensemble. Crowds, lured inside by the prospect of seeing friends or…
Best Band Name
What’s in a name? The Trailer Park Playboys, we reckon, are the sort of fellas who understand the lyricism of Jerry Springer and the poetry of the WWF. They’re the kind that growed up on Momma’s broken heart and Daddy’s whiskey breath. These boys, we suspect, now find it in…
Best Director
Jason Nodler is without a doubt the best thing that has happened to Houston theater in a long, long while. An artistic hoodlum of the most provocative sort, the thirtysomethinger has tenaciously built his vagabond theater company, Infernal Bridegroom Productions, from the gutter up. And now, after many years of…
Best Camp
Howard Crabtree’s When Pigs Fly is perhaps one of the silliest, funniest and even bravest autobiographical scripts ever penned. Totally gay and wonderfully queeny, the odd synthesis of old-fashioned musical and screeching wildness set up camp at Masquerade Theatre, and there it spun a magical haze of hilarious hair-sprayed boys…
Best Show You Can Chew Over
Spero Criezis, producer of The Great Caruso, seems hell-bent on yanking the quaintly dated idea of dinner theater into the 21st century. And with his production of Ain’t Misbehavin’, the Fats Waller Musical Show, the man just might succeed. The tiny Caruso stage, built into a snooty strip center in…
Best Public Make-out Place
Journey back to your junior year of high school. You just saw a movie while seated next to the crush of your dreams, with your feet propped up on the back of the seat in front of you. Your hands touched in the giant tub o’ popcorn. Happiness shot straight…
Best New Downtown Club
Dorothy Parker would drink here. The old Isis Theater has been restored to its swinging, speakeasy style. There’s a 25-foot-long cherry-wood bar with a rolling library ladder to get to the good stuff. You can buy a $4 bottle of Bud Light and order caviar at the bar. Down the…
Best Archival Project No One Has Heard About
Producer Huey Meaux was a perfect fit for Houston. Something of a wildcatter of Texas music, Meaux never showed any interest in history. His focus was always on the new thing: the next single, the latest thrill, the youngest girl. The past was only a tool to acquire something in…
Best Citizens
For more than two decades the Zwicks have helped thousands of Latin American immigrants make the transition to life in the United States. What began as a humble shelter for refugees from war-torn Central America has evolved into a multifaceted operation that includes two health clinics, a labor hall and…
Best Postcollegiate Fraternity Experience
From the street, music blares from the Bronx Bar like a warning. Thump-thump-thump, the numbing bass line declares. At the sidewalk gate, a broad-shouldered bouncer clad in a black T-shirt gives the coveted silent nod. Inside, members of the mostly young and Caucasian crowd navigate around, trying to shout to…
Best Drive-thru Food
First, you need to take into account the logistics of eating while driving. For the record, a car with a standard transmission is not the most desirable drive-thru vehicle, unless you have someone in the passenger seat to help out. Shifting gears complicates unwrapping and eating your dinner, and may…
Best New York Deli Sandwich
Weighing in at slightly less than a pound, the Reuben ($6.99) at Kahn’s Deli is a delicious way to exercise jaw muscles. It’s a jungle of pungent sauerkraut, piles of corned beef and a thick layer of melted Swiss cheese that makes one wonder if any human can open their…
Best Used Car Lot
Lawrence Marshall must really love cars. Starting as a mechanic in 1949, Marshall worked his way up the auto food chain to the purchase of a small Chevy dealership in 1969, parlaying that one outlet into the semirural, multibrand megaplex that straddles little Hempstead like an automotive behemoth. In 1999…
Best Thrift Store
Most thrift stores are dusty-musty pits that you brave in hopes of making the Big Score; that is, finding that perfect, soulful piece of clothing at an insanely low price. By comparison, the Salvation Army on Washington makes a strenuous effort to be shopper-friendly. The big front windows let in…
Best Local Invention
Though not expected on the market before early next year, FrogPad, developed by Houston-based FrogPad L.L.C., could revolutionize the exploding market for wireless Web technology. While the gadgets — smart phones, handheld PCs and personal digital assistants, like the Palm — are getting smaller and more sophisticated, manufacturers have yet…
Best Gadfly
Dan Hart is the indefatigable property tax activist who bugs Harris County Tax Appraisal District officials with the persistence of a salt marsh mosquito. Hart, a retired Kinkaid School coach, has embraced the role of tax watchdog as a second career, and has even started up a nonprofit organization, Taxpayers…
Best Sandwich
Urban Foods, a friendly deli/gourmet food store in the Rice Lofts, makes one of the best sandwiches we’ve ever tasted. Here’s the blueprint (as Ken Hoffman might say): house-smoked salmon, sliced hard-boiled eggs, slightly bitter arugula and a sprightly, creamy dill spread. We suggest you have it on ciabatta. As…
Best Bookstore for Poetry
“My business is words. Words are like labels / Or coins, or better, like swarming bees,” writes Anne Sexton, in Said the Poet to the Analyst. The shrink may have tried Thorazine to subdue Sexton’s swarm, but the tenacious buzzing persists. Her works and those of many of the giants…
Best Tex-Mex Restaurant
With south-of-the-border fare having gone gourmet, Felix is often dismissed by highbrow naysayers. They forget that it’s the good old-fashioned grease factor that makes true Tex-Mex. It’s in abundance here, although it’s a little sad to see the disclaimer: “We cook with cottonseed oil only!” Felix also is keeping up…
Best Family Restaurant
The current Asian invasion has revived a classic form of entertainment: the Japanese steak house. Family groups, especially those covering a wide age span, are the perfect audience for the sleight of hand of Tokyohana’s master table chefs. Though elitists may find the show a little cheesy, children watch in…
Best Place to Eat When You Can’t Decide What You Want
When you’re with a large number of people, or have the kids in tow, and nobody can decide exactly what they feel like eating, our suggestion is Super Steak & More. Sure, there are steaks on the menu, but where else in Houston can you get (all at the same…
Best Sports Columnist
No one is ever going to pick up the Houston Chronicle’s sports pages for the sheer joy of reading; the best you can hope for is to get the basic information efficiently, unfettered by clunky current-events references (“The Astros fell to their knees faster than Monica Lewinsky”) and free from…
Best Bird-Watching
With its woodlands, low-lying prairies and many acres of ponds, Barker Reservoir has helped make Houston’s ozone-choked air less foul, and more fowl. The nature preserve is a pre-eminent spot for birding within the city limits, particularly during winter months. Assorted songbirds, waterfowl, hawks, blackbirds, owls and other species thrive…
Best Gymnast
While most 21-year-old males are too busy kickin’ it with the guys or trying to get lucky on Friday night, Sean Townsend logged more than 25 hours in the gym per week training for what he hoped would be a spot on the 2000 U.S. Olympic gymnastics team. The odds…
Best Club Sandwich
‘Tis a monstrous thing, this double-decker piled high and sliced in substantial halves, not those traditional quarters. That single diagonal cut, though, is as far as Express Deli, the all-purpose lunch counter-grocery on the ground floor of Houston House apartments, strays toward the experimental. Sure, you can choose your cheese…
Best Mashed Potatoes
Once you get over the fact that they look like a failed attempt at guacamole — made with the bright green avocado paste, no less — you’ll realize that the poblano pepper mashed potatoes at Vallone’s are some spectacular spuds. Sure, the bright color is not found in nature, and…
Best Tofu/Soy Products
Bean curd doesn’t have to be tasteless, especially if you can buy it fresh. Thanh Son-Hien Khanh makes its tofu daily. Unlike the packaged stuff, which can have a tinge of sourness to it and behave with the consistency of an eraser, this tofu is soft, silky and as fluffy…
Best Place to Mountain Bike
We know what you’re thinking. Mountain biking? In Houston? Well, our famously flat town has its own version: bicycling the bayou. The best-kept mountain-biking secret in town is the Ant Hills, a system of ten-plus miles of trails and paths along Buffalo Bayou from Wilcrest to Highway 6. The prime…
Best Frisbee Players
That’s where you’ll see hot players getting a ho-d (diving horizontal to deflect a disc), throwing a hammer (humming a Frisbee like a baseball) or hucking the disc (tossing a Frisbee 50 yards or more). The Rice fields are home to Enfuego (for men) and Spin (for women), teams affiliated…
Best Restaurant to Impress a Date
Start out at the intimate bar, then move on to the elegant and sumptuous dining room, where you’ll experience not only first-class classical French cuisine but service to match. If the evening is going well, and you’re feeling lucky, upstairs rooms with names like Renoir and Cezanne go for $195…
Best Place to Smoke a Hookah
Star Cafe is for real. It doesn’t cater to denizens of the mainstream American culture looking to try something it deems “exotic.” Nope, at Star Cafe, the clientele is composed of Arabic immigrants, mostly from Egypt. They gather at this drab location (next to Sun & Ski on the far…
Best Lobbyist
If he wasn’t the best-known municipal lobbyist before he was elevated to the prestigious chairmanship in June, he will be now. For years affable, low-key Jim Edmonds has run with the big boys, ranging from developer Walter Mischer to financial guru Tom Masterson to previous port chair Ned Holmes, pouring…
Best Drive-thru Java
It’s a wonder traffic doesn’t grind to a halt as the luxury SUV crowd does a double-take at the competing Starbucks stores at the corners of West Gray at Shepherd. After all, they just need their mid-afternoon java jolt — not another decision to make. We’ll make it easy for…
Best Place to In-line Skate
I’m sorry, what did you say? The Fruit Loop offers the best blading in town? Honey, you need to start thinking like a realtor: location, location, location. What a difference a couple of miles makes. With its stratospheric tax bracket, River Oaks offers the smoothest asphalt, the safest environs and…
Best Landlord
Brian Copeland is definitely the nicest landlord in town. He owns five area properties, but he has scaled down and sold a few apartment houses so that he and his partner, Tyler, can spend more time with their adorable son. Most landlords are just people who collect your rent check…
Best Drive-thru Eatery
From the looks of all the new drive-thrus dominating roadway vistas, this car-crazy city craves speed — in food as much as commute times. What’s been missing is obvious: variety. Menu boards may have expanded, but the basic choices seem so limited. How many ways can a chicken or cow…
Best Neighborhood Spot in Bellaire
Sinatra’s music bellows through this quaint corner cafe featuring floor-to-ceiling windows and Chianti in diner juice glasses. Such a place easily could be found in the Little Italy section of New York, but this bistro overlooks Bellaire’s Paseo Park and its newly reconstructed Trolley Pavilion. Locals love the friendly atmosphere…
Best Diner
Given that the historic Avalon Drug Co. and Diner is more authentic — even if it, too, is in a newer spot — many Houstonians consider it blasphemous to name the also-ran as the best diner. After all, what says “diner” more than screaming fry cooks and surly, seasoned waitresses?…
Best Place for a Free Massage
Remember when bars used to cater expansive free buffets to entice people to walk through the door? Remember how you used to go there, order a Coke and eat like a wild pig? This is the same philosophy, only with less guilt. While your parsimonious partying may have contributed to…
Best Local Invention
Though not expected on the market before early next year, FrogPad, developed by Houston-based FrogPad L.L.C., could revolutionize the exploding market for wireless Web technology. While the gadgets — smart phones, handheld PCs and personal digital assistants, like the Palm — are getting smaller and more sophisticated, manufacturers have yet…
Best Florist
Scott McCool is Houston’s florist to the stars. He won’t name the names of the socialites on his roster of 1,800 accounts, but he will tell us that his designers have spruced up events at the Museum of Fine Arts, the Alley Theatre and the River Oaks Country Club, with…
Best Open-Mike Poetry Reading
Usually an open reading serves a particular clique, but when Mike Alexander started running things at the Mausoleum, he made an effort to create the kind of environment where anti-intellectual anarchists could follow the academic folks from the creative writing programs. A selected poet opens the reading every Wednesday at…
Best Local Cookbook
It’s not precisely a cookbook, as Houston Chronicle columnist Leon Hale makes clear in his author’s note, but he has subtitled this gastro-memoir “Recollections and Recipes,” so fair game. Who cares if most of the recipes are for Depression-era fare like pinto beans and corn bread. We like these things…
Best Comedy Club
Face it. The heat, humidity, hurricanes and assorted other urban horrors make Houston a place that can’t survive without a healthy dose of — you guessed it — humor. While there are only a handful of stand-up comedy venues in the area, the the Laff Stop consistently comes through with…
Best New Effort to Inject Culture into Houston
Last year Brazos Bookstore, the most civilized shop in town, gave birth to a nonprofit arm, Brazos Projects, which sponsors the kind of artistic and literary events that make thinking people swoon. So far it has brought to town Robert Pinsky, the U.S. poet laureate, and has shown furniture (furniture?!)…
Best Reading Series
To know why the Margarett Root Brown Reading Series has persevered for 20 years, you need only look at some of the top-notch writers who have participated. Raymond Carver, Margaret Atwood, Donald Barthelme, Robert Pinsky, Galway Kinnel, Tobias Wolff and Jamaica Kincaid are just some of the names on the…
Benefit for Pete Mayes and Hamp Simmons
Mayes-Simmons BenefitAs doctor bills pile up for two Houston blues titans, Pete Mayes and Hamp Simmons, the blues community has gathered its troops to help out. Calvin Owens and LaLa Wilson have corralled a galaxy of Lone Star blues and jazz talents for this concert, which will benefit the two…
Best IMAX Theater
With all due respect to the Houston Museum of Natural Science’s IMAX Theatre, which has been giving us exemplary wide-screen nature documentaries for 12 years now, this theater takes the prize because it shows the cool IMAX flicks — the ones in 3-D, y’all! Seeing how koala bears survive in…
Best Sex Scene
Boy meets Girl. Boy gets Girl. Boy is “hard all the time.” Girl is young and lithe, with pert breasts and slim hips. Boy chases Girl across stage, naked and giddy. Boy pulls Girl’s towel off, exposing her body under bright lights. Boy describes the tremendous trek through the divide…
Best Christmas Show
There is no worse time to go to the theater than that seven-week period so innocently referred to as the holiday season, a time in which playhouses all over town prove that they can be as money-grubbing as the next tawdry business. Just look at all the lame productions of…
Best Theater the Size of a Postage Stamp
The road has been rocky and hard, but now there are two spaces under The Little Room Downstairs Theater’s modest little sign on Bissonnet. Still, neither of Richard Laub’s theaters seats more than 60 people, and most of the time the stages have been reconfigured so as to allow no…
Best Reason Not to Take Public Transportation
Finally, now that Houston ranks No. 1 in something, why should we give that up? You thnk it’s easy being top dog when it comes to ozone violations? This year shows all signs of a tough competition with Los Angeles, the traditional winner of the smog crown. Consider this: Houston’s…
Best Bureaucrat
City Parks Director Oliver Spellman is without question Mayor Lee Brown’s most popular appointee as a city department head. Spellman, formerly the Cleveland, Ohio, parks chief, faced a daunting task when he arrived in Houston in the spring of 1998. The department had been left in shambles by Lanier administration…
Best Hidden Neighborhood
It’s not hidden if you live there, of course, but for plenty of us who’ve arrived at thinking-about-home-buying age in the last few years, it’s all about — in words lifted from the housewarming invitation of one recent arrival — “East side, baby!” East side means different things to different…
Best Place to Meet Single Men
Walk into this dive, and you’re surrounded by beer and boys. The walls are papered in beer ads, and hanging over the Texas-shaped table is a faux Tiffany lamp advertising Pabst Blue Ribbon and Miller Lite. Around the Texas table are men, men, men. Men in lumberjack plaids, men in…
Best White House Intern
In a world where the phrase “White House intern” elicits sniggers and blow-job jokes, we all can say we’re relieved that Monica “I don’t take dirty dresses to the dry cleaners” Lewinsky wasn’t from Houston, but Kristen Jones is a White House intern we’re proud of. The 20-year-old University of…
Best Crabs
After five years of satisfying customers with his famous black-pepper crabs ($11.95), Kim Son owner Tan La became concerned that the restaurant’s most spectacular menu item was becoming passé. So he sent his mother back to Vietnam to find another crab recipe. She returned with one for tamarind crabs ($11.95),…
Best Poor Boy
La Tapatia Taqueria’s poor boys are practically an entire Mexican meal between two fresh buns. Along with a belt-bustingly generous serving of one of 12 meats or a veggie, the sandwich is smeared with refried beans and sour cream. It also includes slippery avocado slices (which sometimes escape the sandwich…
Best Place to Get a Car TV Installed
What smooth talkers they are at All-Star Audio Video. Any group of employees who can talk so many customers into believing that TVs — inside cars! — are required accessories deserves this award. And it’s not as if Houston drivers weren’t bad enough, turning without signaling or lining up seven…
Best Salad
When Johnny Carraba wanted to pay tribute to a couple of family members, he bestowed upon them a true culinary honor in our book, the Johnny Rocco salad ($10). The name is a combination of Carrabas dad, Johnny, and good old Uncle Rocco. The salad is a combination of mixed…
Best Tow Truck Driver
Jerry Turner doesn’t fit the wrecker-driver profile. Towing cars is a cutthroat kind of business, but Turner just isn’t a cutthroat kind of guy. He’ll advise drivers at accident scenes, for example, of their right to refuse his assistance and to select the wrecker company of their choice. If he…
Best Source for Texas Political Info
For a $175 annual subscription, this Austin-based political newsletter published by Bellaire High grad Harvey Kronberg churns up plenty of information. Features of the Quorum Report Web site (quorumreport.com) include bulletins in the form of the Daily Buzz plus an invaluable daily clip service of relevant Texas and national media…
Best Appetizer
Some of life’s most dynamic beauty exists in its contrasts: the famous yin/yang, the complementary push/pull, the popular in/out. And these mouthwatering morsels of Caribbean glory are no different. The crunchy blue corn chip plays off the slathering of soft black beans that covers it. The thick slab of sweet,…
Best Tofu/Soy Products
Bean curd doesn’t have to be tasteless, especially if you can buy it fresh. Thanh Son-Hien Khanh makes its tofu daily. Unlike the packaged stuff, which can have a tinge of sourness to it and behave with the consistency of an eraser, this tofu is soft, silky and as fluffy…
Best Drive-thru Breakfast
There’s nothing quite like rolling through the drive-thru around 7:30 a.m. at the Kolache Factory, the morning sun in your eyes and the mouthwatering prospect of imminent kolaches teasing your palate. Even better, should you have a spare moment, step in just as a warm batch of sausage-and-cheese kolaches emerges…
Best Neighborhood Spot in West University
With its rows of tract mansions and commercial urban sprawl, it’s easy to forget about West U’s quaint town square. Anchored by the Little League field and surrounded by the school, the grocery store, the library and the courthouse is the Edloe St. Cafe & Deli. There, in the cramped…
Best Restaurant Playground
Yes, your kids like those giant plastic Habitrails that loom over every fast-food burger joint. But wouldn’t the little rowdies like a real playground even better? One that’s outdoors? One with sand, shovels and buckets? One where they can keep their shoes on? Joe’s Crab Shack has thought of all…
Best Adventure Race Series
Some athletes are just plain hard to please. Take mountain bike riders, for example. You’d think traversing terrain that might cause a tank commander to rethink his route would be a sufficient challenge. But for people who compete in the Texas State Championship Sprint Adventure race series, risking life and…
Best Video Game
No shooting. No explosions. But there are ideas here, furtively embedded in this first-person driver game designed by Houston-born artist Mel Chin and a passel of MIT programmers. You press the gas pedal and drive through the desert, where a “tree of life” dispenses golden balls to the tents of…
Best Crabs
After five years of satisfying customers with his famous black-pepper crabs ($11.95), Kim Son owner Tan La became concerned that the restaurant’s most spectacular menu item was becoming passé. So he sent his mother back to Vietnam to find another crab recipe. She returned with one for tamarind crabs ($11.95),…
Best Curried Goat
The $5.99 lunch buffet at this Pakistani hangout is an incredible bargain. The zesty curried goat features the softest goat meat you’ve ever eaten. Pakistani curry is spicy and much more exciting than most Indian versions. There also are plenty of chicken, beef and vegetable dishes on the buffet along…
Best Place to Watch a Belly Dancer
The restaurant is dim and empty; you have arrived too early for a late dinner. A dark-skinned young man in a pressed white shirt shows you to a table far away from the stage. Halfway through your baba ghanoush or hummus appetizer, a stoic-faced band begins to play Middle Eastern…
Best Birthday Present
UH’s Creative Writing Program turned 20 this year, and in its honor, the literary magazine Gulf Coast devoted its summer 2000 issue to essays, stories and poems by the program’s alumni and professors. The fat issue (303 pages, about twice the magazine’s usual size) bulges with surprises: national poet laureate…
Best Bureaucrat
City Parks Director Oliver Spellman is without question Mayor Lee Brown’s most popular appointee as a city department head. Spellman, formerly the Cleveland, Ohio, parks chief, faced a daunting task when he arrived in Houston in the spring of 1998. The department had been left in shambles by Lanier administration…
Best Apartment Complex Tennis Center
Let’s face it: When you think of apartment complex tennis courts, the image of a lumpy concrete slab with a woefully uneven, dilapidated span of chain-link fence serving as the net probably comes to mind. Most complexes tend to throw in a tennis court as a means of justifying why…
Best Place to Get a Car TV Installed
What smooth talkers they are at All-Star Audio Video. Any group of employees who can talk so many customers into believing that TVs — inside cars! — are required accessories deserves this award. And it’s not as if Houston drivers weren’t bad enough, turning without signaling or lining up seven…
Best Area Team
With seven state champions in the past eight years, the greater Houston area has established itself as the softball hotbed in Texas. This year’s winner, Brazoswood, had to fight off a number of outstanding teams in its own region before tackling the best of the rest, and that makes the…
Best Mall-Walking
Mall management usually is ambivalent about walkers. Not Memorial City Mall. They encourage indoor exercise. Mall walkers can gain access beginning at 5:30 a.m. each day. Throughout the mall, plaques mark a walking course at one-eighth-mile intervals. The mall co-sponsors the Health Check Walking Club with Memorial Hospital-Memorial City. Prizes…
Best Hidden Neighborhood
It’s not hidden if you live there, of course, but for plenty of us who’ve arrived at thinking-about-home-buying age in the last few years, it’s all about — in words lifted from the housewarming invitation of one recent arrival — “East side, baby!” East side means different things to different…
Best Mile of Houston
Houston’s strength is in diversity and ever-evolving transitions. Nothing shows this off better than the last leg of Memorial Drive into the city. Relish the tribute to nature on the green-space trails along Buffalo Bayou, the ones accented with public art, the ones that could have been erased with a…
Best Local TV News Anchor
By now, any TV buff knows this show. Diverse characters come together under demanding conditions and fend for themselves on a remote island. Darwinism depletes their numbers as the weak-willed get culled — voted off the island — while others thrive on the primal challenges for their tribes. Survivor scored…
Best Deli
Until recently, Houston lacked an authentic New York-style deli, despite the size of its Jewish community and a natural customer base (a million people who like eating giant heaps of meat in one sitting). Sure, we had our share of fine sandwich shops or bagel joints, but nothing that combined…
Best Neighborhood Spot Outside the Loop
Yes, Virginia, there is a great restaurant outside the Loop (way, way outside the loop, to be precise). It’s in Katy, its name is Barcelona, and it is a truly excellent Spanish restaurant. Gracious service, charming atmosphere and the best Spanish food this side of — well, maybe not the…
Best Bar Bathroom
Europeans may build great cathedrals, but Americans have a genius for bathrooms. At Prague, the WC marries old-world elegance with Yankee utilitarianism. When nature’s irrepressible call rises above the club’s techno beat, you can drift down to this swank unisex chamber of flickering candles, period furniture and a full-service bar…
Best Music Store
To be the best, a music store has to carry a vast selection. For those whose tastes run all over the board, you can find everything from your favorite Jello Biafra or Henry Rollins spoken-word CD to Peter Allen’s At His Best. You also will find everything in the middle…
Best Tow Truck Driver
Jerry Turner doesn’t fit the wrecker-driver profile. Towing cars is a cutthroat kind of business, but Turner just isn’t a cutthroat kind of guy. He’ll advise drivers at accident scenes, for example, of their right to refuse his assistance and to select the wrecker company of their choice. If he…
Best Drive-thru Bank
Where else but on the gentrifying Washington Avenue can you find a slick Bank of America a stone’s toss from junkyards, dive bars and diners? With 11 (yes, 11) drive-thru slots, this drive-up darling in the shadow of downtown fills up around lunchtime and quitting time. It’s a fun place…
Best Band Name
What’s in a name? The Trailer Park Playboys, we reckon, are the sort of fellas who understand the lyricism of Jerry Springer and the poetry of the WWF. They’re the kind that growed up on Momma’s broken heart and Daddy’s whiskey breath. These boys, we suspect, now find it in…
Best Band to Break Up/ Get Together
Only a couple of months after young buck Clay Farmer disbanded his four-piece earlier this year, the singer-songwriter was playing open-mikes whenever and wherever with three of his former four musical deputies in tow. So while technically the Clay Farmer Band remains dead, Clay Farmer the humanoid performer — gettin’…
Best Movie Theater
Sometime in the ’60s, the moviegoing experience suffered a serious blow: Chain operators built small, shoe-boxlike theaters where people were shooed in and out with all the ceremony of cattle herding. In recent years, chains have started building megaplexes with stadium seating and large screens. But the cheap materials, gaudy…
Best Tex-Mex Restaurant
With south-of-the-border fare having gone gourmet, Felix is often dismissed by highbrow naysayers. They forget that it’s the good old-fashioned grease factor that makes true Tex-Mex. It’s in abundance here, although it’s a little sad to see the disclaimer: “We cook with cottonseed oil only!” Felix also is keeping up…
Best Neighborhood Spot in the Village Area
Don’t be too quick to quoth “Nevermore,” upon a first visit to The Raven Grill. This tribute to Edgar Allan Poe’s famous poem and the nearby elementary school bearing his name has taken flight as a neighborhood haunt. The flock of fans may be due to the trendy industrial decor…
Alice Cooper
Alice CooperThough the Father of Shock Rock is more sideshow than satanic these days — and spends his off-time golfing with Pat Boone — Vincent Furnier’s mega-mascara’d alter ego is on the loose again. Though ostensibly touring in support of a new record, Brutal Planet (Spitfire), Cooper undoubtedly will serve…
Best Radio Talk Show
Talk show host Matthew Momoh serves up faultless venues for clashes among Houston’s liberals, moderates and conservatives. From issues of UN peacekeeping to ethnic injustice to police brutality, his show is a magnet for the wise, the weird and the wacky. Sixteen years ago the West African native employed by…
Best Gay Theater
Christian De Vries did a lot of living before he took over the small space on Washington Avenue and turned it into Bienvenue Theatre, one of Houston’s most successful small theaters, gay or otherwise. In past lives he’d been a carpenter, a painter, an electrician and an actor. But no…
Best Out-of-Print Book by a Dead Local Columnist
Sig Byrd spent years as a columnist with the old daily Houston Press and later moved to the Houston Chronicle, but his columns, compiled and connected here, read today like nothing you’d expect to find in a newspaper, daily or otherwise. Downtown, when there was still a thing called Vinegar…
Best Dancing by the Side of the Road
Dancing and driving hardly seem compatible. But choreographer Leslie Scates, the woman who single-handedly engineered Drive By Dancing 2000, is clearly not the type to let a little workaday common sense supersede inspiration. The big idea came to her back in 1997, during one of those Houston-freeway-turned-parking-lot-hell moments. She tells…
Best Democrat
Seventy-two-year-old Billie Carr has finally retired from her DNC position, and she’ll leave plenty of devoted fans behind, including her old friend President Bill Clinton. Having fought her way to the top through the ranks of conservative Democrats who once dominated the party, Carr, by necessity, also adopted many of…
Best Country Club
Trick answer: As you may have guessed by the street name, the Harrisburg Country Club is not a country club at all, but an exceptionally cheeky icehouse, and a fine example of the genre at that. “Just good folks” and “Just good food,” promise the signs flanking the door, and…
Best Explanation of a Traffic Accident
On a Thursday morning last December, two automobiles collided at the T intersection of Hillcroft and Skyline. One car, traveling south on Hillcroft, was attempting a left turn onto Skyline when it slammed into a northbound vehicle. It’s impossible to tell, by virtue of the police report, which driver was…
Best Lawyer
Richard Burr is the veteran Houston attorney who devoted his intellect and emotions to fighting the death penalty long before Governor George Bush’s run for president made the issue a hot-button topic with the national media. Burr started his career as a public defender in Florida and became director of…
Best Freeway to Get Lost On
How can you get lost on a circular freeway? Easy. Other large cities have a natural barrier such as an ocean or mountain. In Chicago, you can go east only as far as Lake Michigan. The Atlantic gets in your way in Boston, Baltimore and Miami. Seattle has Puget Sound…
Best French Fries
Great french fries are probably the last thing that come to mind when thinking about Cafe Annie (something we do a great deal), but since one of the keys to a great restaurant is the details, it should come as absolutely no surprise that its fries are first-rate. They are,…
Best Drive-thru Drink
1. Houston is a car city. 2. Houston is hot. 3. Driving in the heat makes you crave big cold drinks. Which is why you should drive to Bambolino’s. Without leaving your car, you can buy a semifrozen lemonade for a piddling $1.29. At 32 ounces, the large serving is…
Best Bartender
For most of the past decade and a half, the forever-young Patti D has kept a hard-core group of regulars coming back for another round at the two locations where she pours the drinks and beers: T.K. Bitterman’s (2010 West Alabama) and The Ginger Man (5607 1/2 Morningside). In addition…
Best Professional Wench
Her real name is Catherine Douglas, and she’s a Florida-born actress and comedienne, making a living doing what she loves best. But when she slips on her corseted milkmaid dress, pushes her freckled cleavage up to her chin and puts on a choppy Scottish accent, this redheaded spitfire becomes Lucenden…
Best Liquor Store
Every shop’s stock of booze pales in comparison to the famed downtown Spec’s, where enthusiasts can spend hours browsing among the thousands of bottles of wine from every region of every alcohol-producing nation in the world. But most people don’t have hours to browse, and the massive selection can overwhelm…
Best Orange Juice
Well, hell. The alarm failed you again; the sun’s already long up, importing sweat through the panes and overpowering the asthmatic window unit, and somehow — hard to remember exactly — you’re hungover. Again. You can tell even before you rise from the pillows that actual food retention is not…
Best Bread
Rosemary-and-olive-oil focaccia was the bread special the last time we stopped by Whole Foods on Kirby. The flat, crunchy Italian bread dripping with olive oil didn’t make it out of the parking lot in one piece. Day in and day out, Whole Foods stocks excellent European artisanal breads. The chewy…
Best Place to Buy CDs by Local Musicians
Okay, we’re cheating here. Obviously you can’t buy — in the traditional sense of the word — CDs at this Web site. What you can do, however, is find MP3s of local and regional bands, then with a few mouse clicks, make a purchase. The site is essentially an MP3.com…
Best Late-Night Spot
All the bars are closed, there’s no life on the streets, but you and your friends aren’t ready to trundle home. Plus, you’re all starving. Usually late-night fare is limited to those 24-hour egg-and-bacon places or the drive-thru lane at a fast-food joint. But you want real food. Mai’s Restaurant…
Best Service
It should come as no surprise that a Vallone Group restaurant would claim the coveted prize of best service. Tony Vallone, the patriarch of Houston’s most elite dining dynasty, has instilled this work ethic in all his progeny, who provide a horde of servers, from captains to busboys, to surround…
Best Barbecue Joint
This is one of the oldest barbecue joints in the city. When legendary pit boss John Davis founded the place in the early 1930s, it was called Shepherd Drive Bar-B-Q. Davis’s secret recipe for zingy sauce died with him, but the business, including the original pit, was sold to Jerry…
Best Golf Hole
The fundamental fantasy of the golfing world is that best is supposed to be brutal. Year after year, Houston hackers hold the notion that tribute should be paid to the toughest holes. Of course, that ignores the basic premise that this game is geared toward finding that rare feeling of…
Best Friends
Native Houstonian Kay Poe was expected to win the U.S. Taekwondo Union’s Olympic trials in May. But in her last match before the flyweight division championship fight, Poe took a blow to the knee that rendered her barely able to walk. It appeared her Olympic dreams would be dashed; she…
Best Franchise Owner
After only two games in its inaugural season, the four-team Spring Football League suspended its operations, owing largely to microscopic attendance. But you have to admire Houston investment banker and restaurateur Mark Rice, who owns the league’s Houston Marshals franchise (which went a heady 2-0) as well as the three…
Best Fried Chicken
Time, an endless river, rolls along, as does the channelized stream of Brays Bayou, a few blocks south of Frenchy’s Chicken. But this family-run operation just keeps on keepin’ on. Opened in 1969 by Louisiana native Frenchy Cruzot, this small 99 percent takeout spot (a few metal tables are set…
Best New Restaurant
Nuevo Latino gets funky at this new outlet for Michael Cordas cooking, located in the back of a shopping mall in the Galleria area. At his nearby fine-dining restaurant, Amricas, Corda uses traditional South American and Central American dishes as jumping-off points for exciting upscale presentations. Here at Amazon Grill,…
Best Beer Selection
Few Best of Houston categories are as clear-cut as this. Just count the taps. The newly opened Flying Saucer, in the newly renamed St. Germain building (it’s known to real Houstonians as the H.S. Kress building), has 85 draft beer taps flowing. If nothing looks good on tap, there are…
Best Chicken Salad Sandwich
“You eat there?” most people ask. Yes, we eat there. Most people go to Brasil for coffee or Hawaiian Punch-like hibiscus tea, but we always order the same thing: the spicy chicken salad sandwich. Most chicken salad sandwiches are little more than shredded, mashed-up chicken mixed with mayonnaise. Boring. This…
Best Place to Canoe
The experts — assuming people who join canoe clubs can be called experts — agree: For shoulder-powered, water-top locomotion, Armand Bayou is where it’s at. Declared a coastal preserve by Texas Parks and Wildlife, the Armand Bayou watershed near Clear Lake City is one of Houston’s last unchanneled bayous, an…
Best Alfresco Dining
Nestled between La Griglia on West Gray and Tila’s on Shepherd, amid a sea of lofts that are sprouting like weeds, you’ll find a quiet oasis on the patio of the Backstreet Cafe. Flowers are plentiful and always in bloom, and there’s plenty of shade from a huge oak tree,…
Best Weathercaster
During the long half-year that is the Houston summer, there’s not much to the weather beyond hot and humid. Occasional rainfall will pass through; even less occasionally some severe weather will occur. But Houstonians still cling desperately to the romantic notion that maybe, just maybe, the weather will one day…
Best Place to Buy CDs by Local Musicians
Okay, we’re cheating here. Obviously you can’t buy — in the traditional sense of the word — CDs at this Web site. What you can do, however, is find MP3s of local and regional bands, then with a few mouse clicks, make a purchase. The site is essentially an MP3.com…
Best Place to Play Table Tennis
For most of us, table tennis (it was called Ping-Pong in our day) was a game best played in the rec room with Uncle Charlie and a few of your Little League team buddies. One visit to the Houston Table Tennis Center on West Bellfort, and you’ll realize just how…
Best Soup
You probably wouldn’t know it to look at it, but this tiny Cuban/Mexican restaurant with a drive-thru offers up the best chicken tortilla soup in the city. Walk inside, though, and you’ll see the chickens rotating on the old-fashioned rotisserie, some of which, we’re certain, are the base of the…
Best Houston Rocket
It may seem odd to pick a guy who wasn’t even good enough to start for the Rockets last year, but don’t let Cuttino Mobley’s sixth-man status fool you. He’s more important to the team than fellow guard Steve Francis, who has the name recognition and the fancy dunks but…
Best Yoga Studio
Webster’s describes yoga as a system of exercises for attaining bodily or mental control and well-being. But to its most dedicated adherents, yoga is the key that unlocks the secrets of the universe. Passing through that door is best accomplished with the help of a guide. Finding one in Houston,…
Best Place to Buy Middle Eastern Groceries
Don’t be put off by the sign outside that reads “wholesale” — if you’ve got cash, they’ve got the merchandise. While they specialize in Middle Eastern ingredients, they also have many Western and Eastern European specialties. Here you’ll find bulk bulgur at 59 cents per pound; all kinds of dried…
Best Cafeteria
Sure, the local institution that once sported a retro, school-cafeteria feel has given way to the neotraditional design trend of West University Place. But the food is still good, and the company is even better. Cafeteria standards like roast beef, chicken-fried steak and a really tasty piece of fried fish…
Best Place for a First Date
Dating is like ordering tapas: You try a whole bunch of different things and you hope you get something you like that agrees with you and doesn’t make you sick. Mi Luna is a fun “first date” — it’s like a fancy mall food court, because you each can get…
Best Local Girl Made Good
The settlement of the mega-nasty divorce suit between Christopher and Valerie Sarofim in June suited more than just the parties themselves. Former mayor Bob Lanier’s adopted daughter Courtney, who had paired off with Chris when he moved out on Val, would likely have gotten a ski ride through the mud…
Best Used Clothing
The problem with thrift stores is that they require too much work: To find that vintage western shirt, or that trendy fresh-from-the-mall sundress, you have to paw through racks of stained or ripped goods that honestly weren’t all that desirable to begin with. But at Buffalo Exchange, the dregs have…
Best IMAX Theater
With all due respect to the Houston Museum of Natural Science’s IMAX Theatre, which has been giving us exemplary wide-screen nature documentaries for 12 years now, this theater takes the prize because it shows the cool IMAX flicks — the ones in 3-D, y’all! Seeing how koala bears survive in…
Best Live Music Venue
Adding up sound, clientele, drink selection and ambience, you couldn’t beat the Sidecar Pub with a male Tennessee Williams character at your side. The owners, husband and wife Peron Einkauf and Marybeth Moore, have done somersaults to create the ideal joint, from the century-old Belgian chairs to the 140 international…
Best A Cappella Group
In 1994 a group of Rice graduate students realized that drinking and singing together was more fun than writing their dissertations. Many eventually graduated anyway, but their group, the Lager Rhythms, lives on, filled out by a rotating cast of other Rice people: grad students, faculty, undergrads, staff, a faculty…
Best Movie Theater That Will Never Show Gladiator
Sure, there are other places in town that show cool stuff, but it’s hard to compete with a video kaleidoscope for a marquis, a converted church for a venue and a quirky Sandy Duncan look-alike running the place. But don’t expect big reclining seats and a tub of $5 popcorn…
Best Used Car Lot
Lawrence Marshall must really love cars. Starting as a mechanic in 1949, Marshall worked his way up the auto food chain to the purchase of a small Chevy dealership in 1969, parlaying that one outlet into the semirural, multibrand megaplex that straddles little Hempstead like an automotive behemoth. In 1999…
Betty Buckley
Betty BuckleyNow that the interminably long Broadway run of Cats has finally ended (and not a moment too soon), it’s understandable that singer-actress-teacher-Texas native Betty Buckley would be content to rest on her laurels as the woman who made “Memory” famous. Not so fast. Buckley, whose 30-plus-year career includes an…
Best Theater Season
The Alley’s artistic director, Gregory Boyd, is eclectic and gutsy and sometimes simply wicked. But most of all, the man is smart. Since he was appointed head honcho at Houston’s richest theater in late 1988, he has brought home a Tony and taken to Broadway a whole slew of shows…
Best Rant
Anyone who has heard Ray Hill’s Prison Show on KPFT, a sort of lonely hearts’ club call-in show for all those folks who’ve got loved ones locked up in the big house, knows something about the loud-mouthed activist. The political gadfly has been biting at the backside of prominent uptight…
Best Nasty Puppets
Disturbing, funny and downright odd, Joel Orr’s Bobbindoctrin Puppet Theatre is the best and, thankfully, only one of its kind in town. The creepy beings who come out to play at Orr’s strange theatrical events are nothing less than your worst childhood nightmares come to full-color papier-mäché life. Talking devil…
Best Out-of-Print Book by a Living Local Columnist
After stumbling across this book on eBay, we tracked down the retired George Fuermann’s phone number and called, hoping to hear some stories of his career, which spanned the better part of half a century, seven books, innumerable magazine articles and long-running columns in both major dailies. “Career?” Fuermann growled…
Best Local Girl Made Good
The settlement of the mega-nasty divorce suit between Christopher and Valerie Sarofim in June suited more than just the parties themselves. Former mayor Bob Lanier’s adopted daughter Courtney, who had paired off with Chris when he moved out on Val, would likely have gotten a ski ride through the mud…
Best Local Terrorist
Lloyd Kelley never worked for the U.S. Postal Service, but the former cop, city councilmember and controller has been living up to the standard set in the 1990s by the both-barrels-blazing mail clerks. Once a rising star in Republican political circles, the photogenic Kelley was on a fast track to…
Best Name for a Dry Cleaners
For a year, Vijay Grrala called his dry cleaners, located in a strip mall at Westheimer and Kirkwood, The Kirkwood Dry Clean. Situated down the mall sidewalk from an H-E-B and Half Price Books, it seemed a boring little name for a boring little dry cleaners, with cheap, plastic-framed decorations…
Best Place to Take Out-of-Towners
Sometimes referred to as the Flower Man, Cleveland Turner is a former drunk who slipped the grip of booze by promising God he’d dedicate his life as a sober man to creating a place of uncommon beauty. God must have held him to the vow, because Turner’s home and yard…
Best Jukebox
A downtown fixture as venerable as Warren’s would be incomplete without a fine jukebox to complement the (Houston Press) award-winning decor, martinis and staff. And there, placed innocuously inside the main room, sits the late-model Rowe Ami. It’s not the flashiest box in town, but what sets it apart are…
Best Burger
The burgers at this downtown watering hole are the real deal: a half-pound handmade patty of 80 percent lean ground chuck that is never frozen and never more than two days old. The most popular burger at Market Square is the blue-cheese burger, but the restaurant also offers a bacon…
Best Bar Food
Pizza? At an Irish bar? We didn’t think that made sense either. We were expecting DiGiorno or something far more frozen. But this homemade pizza is the best we’ve ever tasted. They’ve made it fresh every day for the past 11 years, and they almost always sell every slice they…
Best Yoga Studio
Webster’s describes yoga as a system of exercises for attaining bodily or mental control and well-being. But to its most dedicated adherents, yoga is the key that unlocks the secrets of the universe. Passing through that door is best accomplished with the help of a guide. Finding one in Houston,…
Best Banjo Teacher
Full disclosure: We haven’t exactly traipsed around town sampling the services of the city’s presumably multitudinous banjo instructors (check the Yellow Pages — that “multitudinous” bit was a joke), but we have shopped widely for one of the semi-archaic five-stringers to practice on. The level of music-store expertise on display…
Best Body Piercing
Black-haired, pale-skinned and soft-spoken Byriah Dailey has earned a reputation as a clean, safe and super-professional piercer at his seven-year-old shop, Taurian. But with the addition of piercer Steve Joyner, who relocated to Houston earlier this spring from Obscurities Precision Piercing in Dallas, some of the best Texas piercers now…
Best Salsa
Sit back with a Mexican Coke and enjoy four tacos for the price of three (that’s 75 cents each!). And be sure to slather them all with La Bamba’s fabulous homemade salsa. Cooking onions and tomatoes with chiles de árbol makes the dark red sauce. Chile de árbol is a…
Best Ballpark Vendor
The Astros have tanked, and the pitchers can’t get anybody out, but one guy at “Homeron” Field is still consistently throwing strikes: Arnie the Peanut Dude, who hurls his roasted wares across entire sections to waving fans and nails ’em in the mitts every time. Arnie doesn’t just deliver peanuts…
Best Mexican Bakery
On weekends, cars wedge into the small lot of this service station-turned-panaderia, with most people hoofing it from distant parking spaces down the street. They know. They’ve been warring over parking spots every year for the last two decades or so to get at the pan dulce of La Victoria…
Best Neighborhood Spot in the Village Area
Don’t be too quick to quoth “Nevermore,” upon a first visit to The Raven Grill. This tribute to Edgar Allan Poe’s famous poem and the nearby elementary school bearing his name has taken flight as a neighborhood haunt. The flock of fans may be due to the trendy industrial decor…
Best Value
The regulars lined up outside this tiny sidewalk cafe don’t want the secret to get out, but too bad. La Vista is too good to keep quiet. Not only are aptly prepared modern American, Italian and even south-of-the-border dishes offered at a fraction of what they could be, but this…
Best Greek Restaurant
Opa! You can’t go wrong ordering Greek food at Mykonos. The only thing the restaurant doesn’t have is crashing plates. The traditional dishes of this long-standing mom-and-pop eatery are all top-notch. Start with the skordalia, a blend of garlic, potato, olive oil and lemon for $4.50. This flavorful “Greek caviar,”…
Best Place to Play Table Tennis
For most of us, table tennis (it was called Ping-Pong in our day) was a game best played in the rec room with Uncle Charlie and a few of your Little League team buddies. One visit to the Houston Table Tennis Center on West Bellfort, and you’ll realize just how…
Best Area Team
With seven state champions in the past eight years, the greater Houston area has established itself as the softball hotbed in Texas. This year’s winner, Brazoswood, had to fight off a number of outstanding teams in its own region before tackling the best of the rest, and that makes the…
Best Baseball Announcer
It’s easy to be an engaging analyst when the team you’re covering is breezing to championships. It’s a little tougher to hold viewers’ interest when the bottom falls out, and when you have to walk the fine line between offering much-needed criticism and unduly offending the team that signs your…
Best Iced Tea
Iced tea is a gracious beverage. It hints of endless refills and an infinity of time, and it’s the right thing to drink at funky, laid-back Kaldi Cafe, where no one is ever in a hurry. Kaldi offers tea drinkers a nifty selection of flavors du jour — ginger-peach, say,…
Best Bartender
For most of the past decade and a half, the forever-young Patti D has kept a hard-core group of regulars coming back for another round at the two locations where she pours the drinks and beers: T.K. Bitterman’s (2010 West Alabama) and The Ginger Man (5607 1/2 Morningside). In addition…
Best Mexican Bakery
On weekends, cars wedge into the small lot of this service station-turned-panaderia, with most people hoofing it from distant parking spaces down the street. They know. They’ve been warring over parking spots every year for the last two decades or so to get at the pan dulce of La Victoria…
Best Country Club
Trick answer: As you may have guessed by the street name, the Harrisburg Country Club is not a country club at all, but an exceptionally cheeky icehouse, and a fine example of the genre at that. “Just good folks” and “Just good food,” promise the signs flanking the door, and…
Best Racetrack
Houston has never been known as a hotbed for big-time auto racing. Sure, A.J. Foyt grew up in the Heights, but as far as top-notch racing facilities are concerned, forget it. That was, until 1988, when Houston Raceway Park in Baytown came onto the scene. The sprawling facility has played…
Best Chinese Restaurant
It doesn’t attract much attention to itself in the large strip center in the 3800 block of Bellaire, but Hunan’s food is worth coming back to — again and again. Go before you’re really hungry. You’ll need the extra time to wade through the eight-page menu in the understated but…
Best Use of Dental Floss
We’re not sure of the brand, but this past March, Texas prison inmate Antonio Lara allegedly sawed through several cell bars using dental floss. Unfortunately, say prison officials, he then fatally stabbed fellow prisoner Rolando Rios as guards were escorting him to the shower. The incident resulted in a statewide…
Best Bar Decor
Sure, we were sad to see the well-preserved grit and grime of the old Dean’s go. But let’s face it: The couches smelled like pee, and the dark, cluttered room was a minefield of opportunities to fall on your ass. Besides, the new yuppified version of Dean’s makes a few…
Best Name for a Dry Cleaners
For a year, Vijay Grrala called his dry cleaners, located in a strip mall at Westheimer and Kirkwood, The Kirkwood Dry Clean. Situated down the mall sidewalk from an H-E-B and Half Price Books, it seemed a boring little name for a boring little dry cleaners, with cheap, plastic-framed decorations…
Best Place to Park Your Car and Walk Two Feet for an Ice-Cold Shiner
You’re stuck in traffic, the temperature is over 100 degrees, and you’re thirsty. Highway beer billboards are making you even thirstier. This is what hell must be like, you think to yourself. Pull off the highway and head to the West Alabama Ice House. Park your car and stumble to…
Best Reason to Join the Houston Zoo
This annual members-only party takes place in early summer, but blessedly, it’s during the cool of evening, when it’s pleasant to stroll the grounds. Stuff your offspring full of free hot dogs, sodas and ice cream. Sway to the reggae band. Watch the clown wobble on stilts and juggle flaming…
Best Neighborhood Spot in West University
With its rows of tract mansions and commercial urban sprawl, it’s easy to forget about West U’s quaint town square. Anchored by the Little League field and surrounded by the school, the grocery store, the library and the courthouse is the Edloe St. Cafe & Deli. There, in the cramped…
Best Atmosphere
Atmosphere is a deeply subjective thing. What may delight Zippy the Pinhead could depress Bug-Eyed Earl. Or vice versa on a different day. Additionally, Houston tends to celebrate the shiny and new and to destroy the mellow and old, where atmosphere has had time to develop. Thus, the recent opening…
Best Place to Buy Doughnuts
4324 Telephone Road, (713)644-1907
Best Former Soviet Union Grocery and Deli
Now that there are several stores catering to the large and growing Russophone community of Houston, it’s possible to pick the best one. This little spot, located in an obscure strip center in southwest Houston, is a true general store in the American sense, selling foodstuffs, prepared to-go items, CDs,…
Best Liquor Store
Every shop’s stock of booze pales in comparison to the famed downtown Spec’s, where enthusiasts can spend hours browsing among the thousands of bottles of wine from every region of every alcohol-producing nation in the world. But most people don’t have hours to browse, and the massive selection can overwhelm…
Best Live Window-Dressing
If you think leather is just for bulky bomber jackets and boring loafers, the North Beach girls will make you think again. Posing at the door of the Galleria store, these leathered-up ladies are more likely to be dressed in hot pink hot pants, turquoise halter tops, python-print miniskirts or…
Best Radio Talk Show
Talk show host Matthew Momoh serves up faultless venues for clashes among Houston’s liberals, moderates and conservatives. From issues of UN peacekeeping to ethnic injustice to police brutality, his show is a magnet for the wise, the weird and the wacky. Sixteen years ago the West African native employed by…
Best Circus
“There’s a sucker born every minute,” or so said Phineas Taylor Barnum, the greatest American huckster who ever lived. He honed his flimflam skills to such astonishing heights that he eventually became the owner and hawker of “The Greatest Show on Earth,” a grand colossus of a circus that lately…
Best Actor
All hail John Feltch, the gorgeous and thoroughly rakish actor who played Henry in the Alley’s production of Tom Stoppard’s The Real Thing. The show was one of the season’s best, owing in no small part to Feltch’s bespectacled and brooding sexuality, along with his blazing intelligence. The long-limbed performer…
Best Drive-thru Breakfast
There’s nothing quite like rolling through the drive-thru around 7:30 a.m. at the Kolache Factory, the morning sun in your eyes and the mouthwatering prospect of imminent kolaches teasing your palate. Even better, should you have a spare moment, step in just as a warm batch of sausage-and-cheese kolaches emerges…
Best Un-Diner
If you’re looking for a chicken-fried steak covered in cream gravy with a strawberry shake on the side to wash it down, this is not the place for you. And you won’t find the sparkly blue vinyl booths or garish neon signs that good old Americans have come to expect…
No Woman-ly Charms
Some may find reason to embrace the romantic comedy Woman on Top as the nonsensical but sweet-tempered fantasy of two South American filmmakers who don’t understand life in this country very well but grasp all the magical powers of Brazil. After all, Brazil ranks second only to fashionable Tibet on…
Best Designer
Jason Nodler’s Infernal Bridegroom Productions is still the most innovative and exciting theater company in town. A lot of its success goes to the inspired designers Nodler has been able to coerce into coming on board. Such is the case with his deliciously dark production of David Mamet’s Edmond. It…
Best Angst-Ridden Show
Was there any group of young people more head-bangingly angst-filled than the twentysomethingers living in New York City during the cocaine-driven days of the 1980s? Not according to Kenneth Lonergan’s This Is Our Youth, a wickedly cynical script about three would-be adults trapped in that dark crawl space between money,…
Best Band to Leave Houston
Obvious jokes that come to mind when it is learned that, of all the dens of iniquity, Los Angeles is the new home of cannabis commanders and slip-hop merchants I-45: If L.A. suddenly is recrowned the smoggiest city in America, then Houston City Council knows where to send the cleanup…
Best Local Song About Drivin’
Front man and local homeboy Jesse Dayton says on the band’s Web site that this song is “based on a real-life altercation between the Texas Highway Patrol and a kid with a hot-rod Ford and a little too much to drink.” But you gotta believe Dayton’s crunchy-twangy guitar work and…
Best Billboard
To grab your attention, billboards should be as explosive as a child’s temper tantrum, and just as unsubtle. Vasectomy reversal! Who’s the father?! When half’s not enough! The best billboards are amusing as much for what they don’t say as for what they do. “The church found out about our…
Best Road to Drive When You Happen to Have Your Martini Shaker Handy and Are Thirsty
So The Incredible Hulk gets ahold of our roads, and all the City of Houston can do is set up orange cones and sawhorses around the damage. Oy vey. Driving down Westheimer, specifically through the Montrose area, has become as jarring as navigating the lunar surface on a Huffy. The…
Best Neighborhood Sculpture Garden
Three years ago, the square block of land surrounded by Shepherd, Durham, Blossom and Floyd was a debris-filled mess that did little more than depress the few drivers who bothered to notice it. Richard Roederer, owner of the Blossom Street Gallery, cleaned the place up and used it to display…
Best Politician
After the death of 51-year Democratic incumbent Carl Smith, former corporate salesman and GOP Harris County treasurer Paul Bettencourt ran a political gauntlet to win the post. After Commissioner Steve Radack pushed the appointment of former Oilers defensive back Willie Alexander through the court, supporters on the county GOP Executive…
Best Bike Path
While Houston has light-years to go before becoming a truly bike-friendly city, it is finally beginning to get at least tolerant of the two-wheelers. Nothing shows the détente with motorists better than the pathway system along Brays Bayou in the southern sector of the city. Paved lanes swoop from street…
Best Mariscos
If you don’t know what al mojo de ajo means, ask before you order. Loosely translated, it means Godzilla portions of garlic. But there must be a lot of garlic lovers out there, because Pico’s camarones al mojo de ajo ($14.99) is one of the restaurant’s most popular dishes. Six…
Best Chicken-Fried Steak
Normally Texans do not associate chicken-fried steak with a Cajun restaurant. Granted, the one served up at Treebeards — best known for its red beans and rice — is not the typical battered piece of meat smothered in a white cream gravy. Instead, this is chicken-fried like your grandmother used…
Best Hairdresser
A woman we know has followed this man to five different salons over six years. Together they traveled from long, mousy, dishwater-blond high school hair through short and red, short and dark brown, and really short and platinum (the experimental college years) to a much more Texas-professional highlighted bob. Incredibly,…
Best Place for a Free Massage
Remember when bars used to cater expansive free buffets to entice people to walk through the door? Remember how you used to go there, order a Coke and eat like a wild pig? This is the same philosophy, only with less guilt. While your parsimonious partying may have contributed to…
Best Bookstore
You won’t encounter a “mystery” section at Brazos Bookstore; nor can you order a mocha au lait. A fabulous collection of books and a knowledgeable staff are this classy enclave’s draw. Brazos clearly places quality over quantity. Perusing the literature, history and art sections, you will be hard-pressed to find…
Best Beer Selection
Few Best of Houston categories are as clear-cut as this. Just count the taps. The newly opened Flying Saucer, in the newly renamed St. Germain building (it’s known to real Houstonians as the H.S. Kress building), has 85 draft beer taps flowing. If nothing looks good on tap, there are…
Best Museum Gift Shop
Make this one plural, as in Best Shops. The Houston Museum of Natural Science severs the traditional museum gift store into a parent-and-child participatory sport. Mom and Dad — or just those without children — get their consumer time in the fairly upscale Collector’s Gift Shop. The quiet confines with…
Best Place to Learn “The Whip”
Before you get too excited, you should know that SSQQ stands for slow, slow, quick, quick, not sadomasochists squealing and quivering quietly. And instruction in “The Whip” has more to do with fancy footwork than learning how to inflict a blow that will hurt like hell without breaking the skin…
Best New Restaurant
Nuevo Latino gets funky at this new outlet for Michael Cordas cooking, located in the back of a shopping mall in the Galleria area. At his nearby fine-dining restaurant, Amricas, Corda uses traditional South American and Central American dishes as jumping-off points for exciting upscale presentations. Here at Amazon Grill,…
Best Comfort Food
Solace and comfort can be found in the chicken pot pie from the 59 Diner, but be sure to bring a healthy appetite, since the serving is substantial. As you break through the crispy biscuit crust, allowing the steam to dissipate, you’ll reach plenty of chunks of white chicken meat…
Best Korean Restaurant
Someone has written a comment in ballpoint pen on Seoul Garden’s menu: “Yum!” It’s right beside the thinly sliced, marinated beef ($12.95). They might as well have gone down the entire menu, writing the same comment. Other favorites in the barbecue section of the menu are the beef ribs ($14.95)…
Best Pool Hall
The billiard cloth has long since faded to a lighter shade of green; the cues are sometimes as curved as an archer’s bow, and a few tables are as level as a raked stage. The Waugh Drive Pool Hall is not about the tools of the trade. This Montrose institution…
Best Thing About Enron Field
There’s a lot to like about Enron Field. (There’s also a lot to dislike, but now’s not the time to mention $5.25 beers. Or cold hot dogs. Or the cramped and hot upper deck. And now certainly is not the time to bring up the team’s performance this year.) Enron…
Best Place to See a Polo Game
Polo used to be called the sport of kings because you had to have six horses to play (one for each period in the game). These days you don’t have to be a member of the royal family to play, and you sure don’t have to be upper-class to watch…
Best Martini
In our ardent quest for Houston’s best martini, we asked several bartenders to define the drink. Of course, each gave us a different answer — and all were correct. While there are some definite guidelines, a single definition does not exist. A generation ago, a martini was as cut-and-dry as…
Best Vietnamese Restaurant
Houston has the best Vietnamese restaurants in the country — the problem is picking one. We like Nga’s, a little unassuming joint with a friendly atmosphere and a hip clientele. There are all kinds of discoveries on this menu, but the waiter tells us the most popular thing to order…
Best Do-It-Yourself Nature Park
Just west of the Heights, in the largely undiscovered subdivision of Timbergrove Manor, sit 21 acres of pine-tree-filled land, one of the largest such plots left inside the Loop. The land is owned by the Houston Independent School District, and residents grew alarmed last year when HISD announced plans to…
Best Use for the Astrodome
The poor Dome. The former Eighth Wonder of the World has to sit there helplessly and watch as, right across the parking lot, construction crews build the new NFL stadium that has a contract out to kill it. The humiliation is compounded by the endless speculation and discussions about what…
Best Gymnast
While most 21-year-old males are too busy kickin’ it with the guys or trying to get lucky on Friday night, Sean Townsend logged more than 25 hours in the gym per week training for what he hoped would be a spot on the 2000 U.S. Olympic gymnastics team. The odds…
Best Italian Restaurant
In a city proud of Texas-size portions, the waitstaff at Osteria d’Aldo still feels obliged to explain to patrons that the serving sizes are like Italian tapas — we prefer to call them civilized. And with such manageable portions, one can do a multicourse Italian meal just as the good…
Best Thing About Enron Field
There’s a lot to like about Enron Field. (There’s also a lot to dislike, but now’s not the time to mention $5.25 beers. Or cold hot dogs. Or the cramped and hot upper deck. And now certainly is not the time to bring up the team’s performance this year.) Enron…
Best Mystery
Freshly elected in 1998, Mayor Lee Brown had a chance to add substance to his well-padded résumé by doing what predecessor Bob Lanier had only pretended to do: shore up the city’s sagging infrastructure with an aggressive public works program. Lanier’s program had been aggressive, at least in terms of…
Best Non-Cold Boiled Shrimp
These days the Blue Agave, with its tight T-shirted waitresses, feels a bit like a high-class Hooters. But that doesn’t diminish our fondness for the restaurant’s cornflake-fried shrimp “pina” that’s much better than its name. Adding to the improbability of this dish are the chunks of pineapple and hot sauce…
Best Place to Get Away from Cars
Step out of the city and into the Wild West. Down Cyprus Woods Road out in Humble is Cyprus Trails. You pull into the driveway, and the yard is filled with horses tethered to trees and roaming around. On your left is a pen filled with puppies and a potbellied…
Best Amnesia
Essaying New Yorker Phillip Lopate (track down a copy of his out-of-print “Against Joie de Vivre”) spent eight years, from 1980 to 1988, living and working and teaching in Houston, so he must have seemed a defensible choice when the editors of the New York Times Magazine assigned him to…
Best Hairdresser
A woman we know has followed this man to five different salons over six years. Together they traveled from long, mousy, dishwater-blond high school hair through short and red, short and dark brown, and really short and platinum (the experimental college years) to a much more Texas-professional highlighted bob. Incredibly,…
Best Cheap Lunch
Cahill’s owner Martin “Cahill” Hammer honed his chops down the road at Kenneally’s Irish Pub, where he was a bartender and chef. Now that he has had his own place for a few years, Hammer has taken a page out of Kenneally’s steak night by having a Wednesday steak lunch:…
Best Person to Consult About Renting Movie Videos
So you want to watch a good movie on your VCR, but your mind is a blank as to what to pick? Just tell St. Clair what you’re in the mood for, and he’ll rattle off a half-dozen or so suggestions. If that’s not enough, he’ll come up with more…
Best Random Act of Kindness
There’s no telling where Cynthia Flood and her two children would be living today if they hadn’t crossed paths with Mark Davis. Last October, Davis read a story in the Houston Press that recounted how Flood’s $250-a-month apartment in the Fourth Ward was in the path of a city-sponsored redevelopment…
Best Salsa
Sit back with a Mexican Coke and enjoy four tacos for the price of three (that’s 75 cents each!). And be sure to slather them all with La Bamba’s fabulous homemade salsa. Cooking onions and tomatoes with chiles de árbol makes the dark red sauce. Chile de árbol is a…
Best Junkyard
Like a Glamour magazine list of fashion don’ts, Pick-n-Pull’s proscriptions for maintaining junkyard etiquette, hanging directly in front of the place’s South Shaver entrance, are equally as mind-numbing. Some deserve mentioning: 5. No open-toed shoes; 6. No alcohol; 7. No torches or power saws; and the doozy, 11. No cameras…
Best Theater Season
The Alley’s artistic director, Gregory Boyd, is eclectic and gutsy and sometimes simply wicked. But most of all, the man is smart. Since he was appointed head honcho at Houston’s richest theater in late 1988, he has brought home a Tony and taken to Broadway a whole slew of shows…
Best Swells of Houstonian Pride
Some of y’all guys probably don’t know this, but when you saw American Pie for the 40th time last year just to see that Czechoslovakian chick take her top off in the bedroom of the guy who humped the pie, those were Houston-born breasts you were ogling. Those were local…
Best Indian Restaurant
With its dark wood furniture, abundant greenery and well-stocked bar, Bombay Brasserie exudes a glory-days-of-the-British Empire sort of elegance. The $9.95 lunch buffet is one of the best samplings of Indian food we’ve seen. The long line of chafing dishes reveals one excellently prepared Indian dish after another. But dinner…
Best Impersonations on the Radio
With his partner, John Granado, Zierlien is co-host of The Bench, heard on KILT from 7 a.m. to 11 a.m. each weekday. When it comes to a sports background, Zierlien was raised right. His dad was offensive line coach for years with Bill Yeoman at the University of Houston. But…
Best Chef’s Table
Some restaurants feature a table, generally in the kitchen, where you can experience the hustle and bustle of the back room firsthand. Others feature small intimate rooms or cozy nooks for a private get-together, away from the common folk. All of this, in an effort to make the dining experience…
