John Royal’s MLB Awards: Why Wait for the World Series?
With the regular season over, it’s soon going to be time to start handing out various postseason awards. Most won’t come until after the World Series has ended. But why wait? The National League Manager of the Year is Bob Melvin of the Arizona Diamondbacks. The media will focus on…
RIP, Kerwin James (and New Orleans and Houston too)
New Birth Brass Band tuba player Kerwin James, who walked out of devastated New Orleans with his instrument on his back, passed away Friday at a Houston hospital. He had been in a coma since the summer of 2006, when he suffered a devastating stroke at a gig in the…
Jason Friedman’s MLB Playoff Predictions: Trust the Sabermetricians, Go with the BoSox
I originally planned on boycotting my postseason baseball picks on account of the MLB turning the sport into one giant snoozefest. Seriously, how else you can describe a game which features broadcasts that are more than four hours, Scooter the talking baseball, Joe Buck, Tim McCarver and the eradication of…
Cover Story: The ManKind Project
I was first introduced to a men’s group called The ManKind Project while reading through a lawsuit filed against the organization in Harris County civil court. It described a weekend retreat north of Houston where men dress in black, wear face paint, and engage in rituals and exercises called “Cock…
Tales from Transit: Proxima Estacion
John Nova Lomax rides the rails. The Metro Rail, to be exact. And when he isn’t busy dealing with bomb scares or dodging Nigerian scammers , he’s jamming out to Manu Chao and writing poems… Infinita Tristeza Manu Chao writes train songs But they don’t roll with Johnny Cash’s smoke-belching…
John Royal’s MLB Playoff Predictions: Satan Is Our First Base Coach, Go D-Backs!
Yankees versus Indians. Red Sox versus Angels. Diamondbacks versus Cubs. Rockies versus Phillies. Welcome to playoff baseball. The playoff pairings were finalized Monday night after the Rockies defeated the Padres in 13 innings to win game number 163 of the season. And while MVP candidate Matt Holliday missed the bag…
To Do: Listen to S.O.S. Radio, Hang Out with Wyclef
Wednesdays are busy days for Zin, the local underground rapper and KPFT DJ. From three to five in the afternoon, he and The Kase co-host the KPFT hip-hop / soul / Afro-beat show S.O.S. Radio. (Motto: “Everything from Mos Def to Fela Kuti”) After that wraps, Zin heads over to…
StickerStop, Thanks. Midas, Eff Off.
The inspection sticker on our 1995 Toyota Camry expired October 1, and since we live near the cities of Bellaire, West U and South Side Place and their vigilant police forces, we don’t mess around about getting a replacement. So today my wife Jacqueline Lomax and our almost-three-year-old daughter Harriet…
Drenched In Blog: Spice of Life
Today, as I sifted through my daily e-mail deluge of penis creams, Ugandan princes asking for cash and forwarded lists of pot jokes from my grandpa, I spied a rather curious message. It seems my registration to buy Spice Girls tickets was successful. I vaguely remember the ex using my…
Free Jazz at the Dollar Store
My older brother lives in NYC (oooohh!) and my best friend lives in Austin (aaaahh!). Both snidely declare that Houston has no good record stores. Really, according to both, what it comes down to is consistency. I’ve been told local record stores just don’t offer up enough in terms of…
A Night at the Opera
For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been working backstage at Opera in the Heights’ production of Carmen. The score is of a rare breed—both familiar and fresh. Also perpetually entertaining are the backstage antics. For every performance in a theatre, there is a show behind the scenes. It takes…
John Royal’s Astros Recap. In Song.
The nightmare that is the Astros season has finally ended. And I’m the type who hates to go about saying that I told you so, but… I told you so. There was no evidence anywhere to prove the Astros were a good team. Or could compete, bad division or no…
Miss Pop Rocks: Phil Spector Gets Freed, Gets Humped
Once again proving that America has the best justice system money can buy, Phil “Crazy Hair” Spector was sent home last week after a mistrial was declared in the murder trial that had Phil accused of taking the life of actress Lana Clarkson. Full disclosure: Let is be known that…
Get Lit: Sedaris, by Kevin Kopelson
Known for his satirical, autobiographical stories, author-performer-playwright David Sedaris has captured the attention of countless readers since his “SantaLand Diaries” first aired on National Public Radio’s Morning Edition in 1992. One of those readers is Kevin Kopelson, a professor at the University of Iowa, whose new book, Sedaris, asks: “Why…
Drenched in Blog: Hall of Fame Nominations a Big Cleveland Steamer
Late Friday, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame announced their nominees for its class of 2008: Madonna, John Mellencamp, Beastie Boys, Donna Summer, Leonard Cohen and Afrika Bambaataa are the heavyweights. Mind you, these are just nominees. Oh, I forgot to mention that Chic somehow rates a nomination, and…
Red River Rap Battle: Dallas MCs Fight Out the Sooners-Horns Tilt
Some of the rhymes in this rap battle have already gone stale, given the devastating losses suffered by both the Texas Longhorns and Oklahoma Sooners over the weekend, but Dallas rappers Mr. Pookie and Mr Lucci still put on a good show in this video. Pookie, reppin’ the Horns, is…
The NYT Once Again Rides Our Coattails
“Houston’s Fifth Ward has an abundance of overgrown grass fields and dilapidated chicken restaurants: chicken and barbecue, chicken and waffles and just plain chicken.” So begins a New York Times Sunday magazine story that features Hada Flores, a 22-year-old Houstonian of El Salvadoran origin who graduated from YES College Prep…
The College Football Review, Week Five: Horns, Sooners and Coogs Lose. Gig ‘Em.
Was that a fun weekend of college football, or what? (Note: UT and Oklahoma fans will probably say no). As I suspected, the University of Houston hosted one of the more entertaining games of the weekend. The turnover-prone Cougars continued with the turnover problems (they turned it over three times…
This Just In: New Radiohead Next Week (Really!)
Boy, were the music blogs buzzing this morning, and with good reason. It seems Radiohead, the enigmatic Oxford dons whose every move is closely monitored and breathlessly reported across the Internet, has a new album due out soon. As in next week. Sort of. Through their PR firm Nasty Little…
No More Insider Info from Coach Fran
In a move sure to further anger the Fire Coach Fran guys, Texas A&M head coach Dennis Franchione admitted to a secret newsletter sent to select people offering information on his team and players that he willingly withheld from the public. “I knew it was probably going to be controversial,”…
Progress Report: Jason Friedman Ponders Kim Kardashian’s Butt. Oh, and the Houston Texans too.
Much like Kim Kardashian’s ass, these are the things that stick out to me when contemplating the Texans’ performance through the season’s first four games. 1. The team has DRASTICALLY upgraded itself at the quarterback position. There are no words to describe the difference between Matt Schaub and David Carr…
High on Fire at the Meridian
“Hi, my name is Matt Pike. I’m the lead guitarist from High on Fire. Mind if I eat one of your children? Seriously, ma’am. It’s for the best. It’s for metal. Which one is the weakest? Is there one you really don’t love that much? Come on, you can level…
Still the Same: John Royal on the Houston Texans
I’ve got a confession to make. I was hurt by the things some of you people said about me last week. My job is to call things I see them, and I saw a Texans team I thought was bad. And you people jumped all over me. Y’all told me…
Big Surprise: Conservative Columnists Dominate Texas Newspapers
We learn some not-so-shocking news today from liberal think tank Media Matters for America that conservative syndicated columnists dominate their progressive counterparts in Texas daily newspapers. The findings of the report, titled “Black and White and Re(a)d All Over: The Conservative Advantage in Syndicated Op-Ed Columns,” include:…
Craig Biggio Is Gone, Daddy, Gone. But What about Jose de Jesus Ortiz?
Click here for a slideshow. The Astros finished up the season by defeating the Braves in two of three games this weekend, the Sunday final being 3-0 Astros. But let’s face the truth, no one cared about the Astros game yesterday. There were over 43,000 people at MMP yesterday, and…
This Just In: Tool at the Toyota Center
What with all the talk of being tool in the comments to this post, it’s kind of fitting that we just got an email announcing that Tool, the band, is coming to the Toyota Center on Friday, November 16. Tickets go on sale next Friday. If you make it out…
Cecil Cooper Made Permanent Manager
Well, even though rumors are increasing that Tony La Russa might be on the market come this off-season, it appears that Drayton McLane is more concerned with keeping Bud Selig happy than he is in fielding a winning team, because the Astros just named Cecil Cooper as the team’s manager…
Jason Friedman’s NFL Picks, Week Four: Salma Hayek, the Green Bay Packers, Anna Kournikova and the Baltimore Ravens
We need more award shows in our life, don’t we? Absolutely nothing consistently delivers the comedy goods like watching the entertainment industry give itself one giant, drunken, drugged-up pat on the back. So since it’s been a couple weeks since Rosie O’Donnell wowed us with her best Britney Spears impression…
Galveston’s Fat Tuesday Gets a Little Thinner
According to this Chronicle report, Galveston Mardi Gras has decided to ax live music from the official festivities. Organizers say the bands cost too much money and created too much of bacchanalian atmosphere that jarred with the family vibe they want to create. I’m not gonna argue the first point…
John Royal’s NFL Picks, Week Four: Betting on the Houston Texans. What? Why Are You Surprised?
Okay kids, it’s that time of week again. Yep, it’s time for my NFL picks. I actually had a winning record last week (9-7), so that puts me at 20-28 for the season. Just a reminder, I’m picking against the spread as established by the point spread of my office…
Sucks to Be Bob and Vivian Smith Right Now
There’s been an unfortunate oversight in this week’s Press celebrating all-things Houston. Somehow, we failed to include the category Best Fountain That Appears To Be Bubbling Liquid Poop. The winner: Bob and Vivian Smith Fountain at Polk and Smith. Did anybody else see this today? Ich. – Todd Spivak…
The College Football Preview, Week Five: No Wins for Notre Dame, No Arrests for Texas
Welcome back to another weekend of college football. Let’s get started. The big game, as far as I’m concerned, is at Robertson Stadium where the 2-1 Houston Cougars are taking on the 1-3 East Carolina Pirates. This is the Conference USA home opener for the Cougars. The Coogs appear to…
Yo Quiero Rare Vinyl
Sound Exchange honcho Kurt Brennan (right) purchases Sean McManus’s fabled record collection and funds his move to the Big Apple with this giant check for a gazillion dollars. McManus’s stash is now on the racks at Sound Ex. – John Nova Lomax…
Drenched In Blog: MFing EMF
Has something ever happened in your life that just made you wanna ball your fists up and punch a wall like the Hulk? Have you ever been so angry and desperate for an outlet for your primitive frustrations that you bit your own steering wheel in half? If you have…
Drenched In Blog: A Special Message from Bob Dylan
— Craig Hlavaty…
Going, Going, Gone: Craig Biggio Winds Down, the Playoff Chase Speeds Up
The Astros won last night, beating Cincinnati 4-3. That was the third straight win for the Astros and the sixth win in their last eight games. Leave it to the Astros to wait until the last week of the season to figure out how to win. I guess Cecil Cooper’s…
$13 at Cali Sandwich & Fast Food
Where: Cali Sandwich & Fast Food, 3030 Travis, 713-526-0112 What $13 gets you: The freshest food at the best value in all of midtown. Figuring out how to drop $13 at Cali is no easy task. After all, the giant sandwiches cost a mere $2 apiece. That’s right, $2. Meaning…
$13 at Cali Sandwich & Fast Food
Where: Cali Sandwich & Fast Food, 3030 Travis, 713-526-0112 What $13 gets you: The freshest food at the best value in all of midtown. Figuring out how to drop $13 at Cali is no easy task. After all, the giant sandwiches cost a mere $2 apiece. That’s right, $2. Meaning…
Miss Pop Rocks: Sarah Silverman Makes Abortion Hilarious!
I’ll be straight up honest and say Sarah Silverman kinda works my nerves sometimes. I find her jokes hilarious, but the delivery is a little wearing. The whole naïve act, that deer lost in the headlights look, the “Oh my goodness, I’m such a dirty little girl who says such…
Q&A: Greg Giraldo Talks about Carrot Top, Carlos Mencia, Ray Romano, Lewis Black, Patton Oswalt, Dick Cheney and, of course, Paris Hilton
Greg Giraldo drops into the Improv this week, but last week Assistant Night & Day Editor Dusti Rhodes talked to him on the phone about roasting celebrities, stealing jokes, being a dad, and his upcoming show on Comedy Central. Houstoned: You’re kind of known for being really good at roasting…
We Would Call This an MLB Playoff Preview, But We Really Don’t Know What’s Gonna Happen
For those of you who gave up on following baseball once the Astros fell out of contention (roughly around April 2nd), here’s a brief update on how the playoffs, set to begin next week, are stacking up. The AL playoff teams are set, and for those of you hoping Roger…
Dreaming with the Astros
You know, I’ve been talking to a few people and I’ve discovered that, apparently, I’m this really mean guy. And in reality, I’m not. So, I’m turning over a new leaf. I’m going to be nice. For instance, take this blog posting from my buddy Richard Justice. It’s not much,…
Radio Houstoned: Stephen Hunter and The 47th Samurai
Click the buttons below to hear Richard Connelly’s interview with Pulitzer Prize-winning film reviewer and best-selling novelist Stephen Hunter. They talk of many things, including film violence, written revenge, Bill Clinton, Point of Impact (the novel on which the movie Shooter was based) and The 47th Samurai (his latest Bob…
No Worries: Wayne Dolcefino Is on the Case
Wayne Dolcefino, the blustering “Undercover Reporter!!” of KTRK, is an acquired taste. Many choose not to acquire it, but we think he’s kind of endearing. He’s been on a Metro binge lately, and – well, the pickings have been somewhat slim. Metro execs are overpaid; fine, do a report on…
Oswalt Sits Down. Biggio Catches. Jesus Ortiz Says Something Right. No Kidding.
The Astros won a slugfest last night, 7-6, over the Cincinnati Reds. But that’s not the real news. The news is that Roy Oswalt is shutting it down for the season. But that’s still not the real news. No, the real news is that I agree with Jesus Ortiz about…
A Paean to Texas Blues in Arlington?
Some cities are famous for their unique cultural contributions: Philly and cheesesteak. New Orleans and jazz. Arlington and…the blues. Yup, developers in Arlington want to turn some vacant land by the Rangers ballpark into a $300 million paean to Texas blues. The complex, which right now is just a a…
Long Snaps with Bryan Pittman: God, Elephantitis and Those Damn Dirty Patriots
www.houstontexans.com Houston Texans’ long-snapper Bryan Pittman returns for more thoughts on life both on and off the gridiron. This week, while going one-on-one with Ballz columnist Jason Friedman, Bryan talks about religion in the locker room, wacky motivational tactics and his hatred of the New England Patriots. JCF: First things…
Drenched In Blog: Middle Age Crazy
Drenched in Blog has officially turned 50 posts old. If it were a white male, it would be buying a Camaro with its kids’ college fund and getting hair plugs to impress Texans cheerleaders. Basically it would be American Beauty’s Lester Burnham. Over these past two months, I have tried…
“Turn Off the Radio”
“Turn Off the Radio” is not just a clever name – it’s an order. “Turn off the radio, come to the show and check out the work,” says Robert Hodge, the artist behind today’s exhibition at H Gallery. It’s not that Hodge isn’t a fan of music; in fact, his…
Barber of Seville
Does your ten-year-old hum Verdi? Does your toddler nap to Bach? Then you’ll love the Opera to Go! production of The Barber of Seville. An offshoot of Houston Grand Opera, Opera to Go! is aimed at kids. Sung in English and lasting just 45 minutes, performances are entertaining, engaging and…
Best Buried Treasure
In 1836, America was in the throes of a national frenzy of Manifest Destiny. In support of their brethren fighting Santa Anna in Texas, the citizens of Cincinnati forged two small cannons. The guns were shipped on steamboats down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers and then out of New Orleans…
Best Dive
Stepping into this dark, friendly cavern of a tatterdemalion strip mall bar near the ruins of Westbury Square is like entering a portal back to 1980, with a difference. Yes, it’s got the requisite low ceiling, cheap drinks, smoky ambience, early opening time (11 a.m.) and friendly, take-no-shit service you…
Best Artistic Renovation
Isabella Court opened in 1929, the year the Great Depression began, but the lovely Spanish-style building is a survivor that made it onto the National Register of Historic Places. Purchased in 1991 by Trudy Hutchings, Isabella Court has been lovingly preserved and restored. The building’s stunning courtyard is legendary, and…
Best Dancer
Graceful and strong at the same time, with a style that masks the difficulty of the dance, Houston Ballet principal dancer Randy Herrera glides effortlessly from role to role (his favorite is Basilio in Don Quixote). Herrera is both smooth and explosive in his performances, with effortless jumps and pirouettes…
Best Ruins
This 48-year-old outdoor mall looked old when it opened and was full of life. Designed by architect William J. Wortham, Jr., a man with a fixation on all things Italian Renaissance, Westbury Square was supposed to evoke a village in Tuscany, and for a decade or so it thrived as…
Best Parade
When His Royal Highness of Funk, George Clinton, is your parade’s grand marshall, it’s a safe bet that you have the coolest parade in town. And such was the case with the Orange Show’s 20th annual Art Car Parade. The 282 entries this year included a few Lord of the…
Best Route into the City
If you reside on the northeast side, Bissonnet Street won’t do you much good. But if you’re anywhere on the southwest side, Bissonnet represents not only the best but also the most sane route to downtown. Offering a much-needed respite from Houston’s choked, monotonous highways, Bissonnet will glide you through…
Best Guacamole
There are no secret ingredients to Mucho Mexico’s guacamole — it’s just avocado, onion and tomato smashed into a creamy dip that sits on top of a mound of lettuce. It isn’t made in a showy tableside performance or served on any special dish, but Mucho Mexico’s back-to-basics approach delivers…
Best Drive-Thru Seafood
Can’t wait for your seafood? Then order ahead and use the drive-thru at Baytown Seafood. Here you’ll find glorious gumbo, sensational shrimp (both grilled and fried), fresh oysters, catfish and red snapper, to mention but a few of the items on the extensive menu. Need a quick lunch? Try the…
Best Baklava
They bake seven varieties of baklava fresh every day at Phoenicia. There are Turkish ground-walnut triangles that ooze honey with every bite. And then there are the large Turkish cream and orange blossom syrup-filled baklava that taste a little like phyllo dough éclairs. The Persian baklava is layered with a…
Best Japanese Snack Food
Houston is long on sushi restaurants, but Japanese street food is hard to come by. The expanse of Asian-melting-pot strip malls that are popping up seemingly overnight in Bellaire Chinatown seem to have forgotten about the Japanese entirely. Takoyaki Tea House is one of the exceptions. The menu here is…
Best Comic Book Store
If you’re into comics, anime, action figures, movie posters or goth collectibles, check out Bedrock City. They answer the question “Whadda ya got besides funny-books?” with total logic and verve: “Does the Louvre only house works by Da Vinci?” Owner Richard Evans opened the original location in 1990, and he…
Best Resurrected Vintage Shop
If used threads are your bag, baby, then you should know why we’re so happy to see Wear It Again Sam…again. The store once graced the vintage strip on Westheimer, but after a dispute with the landlord, owner Sam Van Bibber had to shut it down. These days it’s on…
Best Computer Store
Okay, all you PC lovers, put up your dukes! It’s on! The PC vs. Mac argument has been going for years. It will be years still before that particular consumer struggle is decided, but inside the Apple store in the Galleria, Mac has won. A haven for Mac lovers who…
Best Late-Night Restaurant
Generally speaking, anyone out at 4:30 a.m. is up to no good. Be they druggie, thief, insomniac or just seriously craving some queso, night owls can direct themselves to this eclectic Heights establishment. Spanish Flowers dishes up authentic Mexican cuisine for an impressively affordable price. Sure, it’s no Taco Bell,…
Best Wine List
The best thing about Catalan’s wine list is the prices. They aren’t much higher than what you pay at a retail store. But good luck finding most of these rare, highly allocated wines at the local bottle shop. Charles Clark and Grant Cooper from Ibiza, former Brennan’s chef and sommelier…
Best Neighborhood Spot in Galveston
This quintessential neighborhood hangout is a longtime favorite of island folk. Larry Puccetti has been tending bar at Sonny’s Place for 30 years. His dad, Lawrence “Junior” Puccetti, has been there almost 60 years. He inherited the place from his father Lawrence “Pappa” Puccetti, who opened the bar and restaurant…
Best Comet
Forward Tina Thompson was the first-ever draft pick for the WNBA, and she’s been proving why ever since. Part of the 2004 gold-medal-winning Olympic team, the 6-foot-2-inch Thompson was key to the Comets’ sweep of the first four WNBA Championships (1997-2000). Thompson has earned a slew of MVP and All-Star…
Best Play-By-Play Announcer
Let’s be blunt here: Take away a few legends like Vin Scully, and there’s no better way, anywhere in the country, to follow a major-league baseball game than with Bill Brown and Jim Deshaies in the TV booth. Deshaies is funny as hell, has insight into the game and isn’t…
5th Annual Latino Book and Family Festival
Univision anchorman Jorge Ramos set out to report news, not make it, but his bestselling books keep him in the headlines anyway. Ramos (think a Mexican Anderson Cooper), who is hawking his latest release, El Regalo del Tiempo: Cartas a Mis Hijos (“The Gift of Time: Letters to My Children”),…
11th Houston Grand Taiko Festival
Taiko is the Japanese word for “drum,” so it doesn’t take a genius to figure out what will be at the 11th Annual Houston Grand Taiko Festival. You guessed it — lots of big, booming drums. (Hey, you’re a genius.) Taiko music only recently started being used as a form…
Best Club for Local Acts
A band would be hard-pressed to get turned away from Super Happy Fun Land, whether their shtick is playing traditional style (using instruments as they were meant to be used) or hitting a mayonnaise jar with a rubber chicken. The lack of standards gives many a green musician a chance…
Best Pirate Band
From their name to their repertoire, historical nautical themes permeate all that the Flying Fish Sailors do. Each of their albums features a sea shanty or four, and even shanties about such landlubberly subjects as mowing the lawn, and U-Haul trucks. (If you ask them nicely, they’ll don “pseudo-pirate” attire…
Best Curator
Kim Davenport has made Rice Gallery a treasure trove of installation art in the middle of the Rice University campus, an institution far better known for engineering than for visual art. This past year, Davenport brought in two particularly outstanding installations. The first, “Rip Curl Canyon” by the young collaborative…
Best Drag Queen
Previous Readers’ Choice Best Drag Queen winner Kofi is originally from Louisiana, but she’s been in Houston for so long, she calls herself a local girl. Regulars at JR’s Bar and Grill and South Beach know her well — she hosts the Tuesday- and Sunday-night shows (a mix of drag…
Best Haunted House
In a haunted house, youre worried about a lot of things jumping out at you, but a car is not usually one of them. This is how ScreamWorld caught our attention. (Read: made us pee our pants.) The haunters teamed with Scion to set up actual vehicles that come to…
Best Local Radio Talk Show
“If you’re against apologizing for slavery, then you gotta be against giving welfare to the American Indians because of the fact that 200 years ago they were whipped in a war. And let’s just call it what it is: They lost a war.” These erudite words were spoken by radio…
Best School
One day, if we’re lucky, YES College Preparatory School will have dozens of campuses across Houston. So far there are four. Well, five, actually, if you count the one about to go inside Houston Independent School District’s long-struggling Lee High School. YES, which stands for Youths Engaged in Service, is…
Best Enchiladas
Ah, enchiladas, the cornerstone of all Tex-Mex combo plates. Most are good in the sidekick position, but there are a very few that can take center stage and demand the spotlight for themselves. The mole enchiladas at La Guadalupana are among them. A little different from the ordinary rolled tortilla…
Best Neighborhood Spot Outside the Loop
Why would you pick a place where you can’t actually sit down and eat? Because of the food, the people-watching and the atmosphere. Besides, there’s always the trunk of your car or, for most people, take-out. And there’s one or two picnic tables, too. Finding the place is difficult, because…
Best Burger
T-Bone Tom’s is a Kemah meat market that morphed into a restaurant. The burgers are exceptional, thanks in large part to the quality of the hamburger meat, which is ground fresh daily on the premises. The meat is formed into a distinctive square patty in your choice of a quarter-pound…
Best Mojito
Don’t let the dentist’s office exterior fool you — The Flat is open for business, and contains one of the city’s best-kept secrets: Their signature frozen mojito manages to improve upon perfection, taking a mojito and making it even more enticing through the miracle of osmosis. The delectable combination of…
Best Neighborhood Liquor Store
From bourbons to vodkas, this quaint store holds a well-priced selection of all your boozing needs. But the thing that makes it so great is the incredibly knowledgeable staff. It doesn’t matter if you think you know more about drinking than Jack Daniel. Or maybe you just turned 21 and…
Best Place to Buy CDs by Local Musicians
The perfect bricks-and-mortar store to buy local CDs does not exist. If you wanted to stock everything this city has come up with and continues to churn out — folk, zydeco, hip-hop, blues, rock, jazz, punk, R&B and country — you’d need a store as big as the Astrodome. (Hmm,…
Best Massage
It had to happen — a chain offering massages at discount rates. And we tired, poor, huddled masses say, “Bring it!” Of 660 clinics nationwide, 20 or so are in the Houston area, lending credibility to the rumor that our city’s traffic really does suck. We go to the one…
Best Greasy Spoon
Late-night gangsters, early morning landscapers and afternoon hangovers have all come to depend on Poppa’s grease. Grease can be like a starter for sourdough bread: A little is carried over from the previous batch to increase flavor. Poppa must have, like, heirloom grease or something. There’s genuine flavor in every…
Best Burger Joint
The walls are covered with buffalo heads, cowboy memorabilia and giant photos of Jim Goode’s chuck-wagon cooking team. The live music comes from Texas singer/songwriters, and the ice-cold draft comes in frozen cannonball schooners. The bar stools are shaped like saddles, and the bartenders spin the longnecks around one finger…
Best Italian Restaurant
This time-honored Tuscan-style restaurant has been purring along for decades, turning out classic Italian cuisine. The grilled seasonal vegetables are a favorite appetizer, and there’s a wide variety of antipasti. The pasta with seafood in cream sauce is stellar, and the veal chops are legendary. But in the last few…
Best Aero
Ryan Stokes is a tough, physical defense man for the Houston Aeros, not afraid to pile up the penalty minutes or take on the other team’s banger in a fight. But he also has another title: Reigning Connect Four Champ at the Aeros’ Power Playroom. The playroom is in Children’s…
Best Commentator
The sports commentator doesn’t give the facts. He fills in the lines that connect the facts. He helps the fans, serious and casual, understand what’s happening in the game, and why it’s happening. No one in Houston does this better than Jim Deshaies. The former Astros pitcher latched onto the…
City of Angels
Cy Coleman is a Broadway legend. One of musical theater’s most prolific songwriters, he wrote the tunes for Sweet Charity, I Love My Wife, Little Me and Seesaw, among others. But in 1990 he outdid himself with City of Angels, an intriguingly complicated comedy about a young L.A. writer named…
Best Comedian
Rodney Yarbrough, a.k.a. Lil Brough, has been on the Houston scene for more than 15 years. He’s toured nationally and was invited to perform at the Houston stop of Dave Chappelle’s Block Party Tour a couple of years back. He makes regular appearances at local venues like The Improv and…
Best Local CD Reissue
All these decades later, it’s still hard to believe that these brassy, jazzed-up funk grooves were made by mere high school kids. It’s also amazing how fresh and contemporary these pieces sound today — when done well, classic funk never, ever goes out of style, and Texas Thunder Soul definitely…
Best Installation
Two architects took eight tons of cardboard and three tons of wood and created a surreal landscape that consumed all of Rice Gallery. Benjamin Ball and Gaston Nogues of the collaborative team Ball-Nogues previously worked with architect Frank Gehry, the don of cardboard furniture. But Ball-Nogues did Gehry one better…
Best Gay Bar
Set in the golden gay triangle next to JR’s Bar and Grill and the Mining Company, South Beach is the pretty boy of the bunch. And here, it’s all about the dancing. Regularly importing DJs from Miami, San Francisco and New York, South Beach offers some of the best and…
Best Building Makeover
Okay, so they were six months behind schedule, but it was worth it. No mere eye patch here. Developer Charlie Givens and partners have taken the city’s premier Warwick Hotel and turned it into a mega-star. The grand opening on June 1 was so over-the-top, they had a live mermaid…
Best Radio Duo
Okay, so the best duo in local radio is really a trio: Roula, Ryan and their sidekick engineer, Eric. Roula’s vivacious and impassioned; Ryan’s hunky and impassioned; and Eric sounds all nerdy (yet impassioned). They’re not the usual radio schlubs: They’re telegenic enough for a career in TV, but they’d…
Best New Law/City Ordinance
No new local laws have stirred up such attention and made the dividing line so clear between those who support and those who oppose the law. Drinking smokers despise the ban, which has forced their nicotine-loving habit outdoors. Nonsmokers and bar employees rejoice in its passage, because they will now…
Best Martini
McCormick & Schmick’s intriguing vibe and fantastic service don’t begin and end with the restaurant portion of the building. One part Casablanca, one part fully stocked bar, this Uptown seafood restaurant enjoys paying homage to the history of the cocktail. Their “gin delicious” martini is a classic in itself, a…
Best Middle Eastern Restaurant
If you’ve ever wanted to eat in a Middle Eastern home, now you can: at Rita’s. This small, one-of-a-kind neighborhood spot is owned and operated by the husband-and-wife team known to all as George and Rita, an elderly Armenian couple who are eager to display their natural hospitality as well…
Best Empanadas
Houston is well-endowed in the empanada department. There are Colombian, Argentinean and Central American empanadas to choose from. But the richest, flakiest, tastiest in town are served at this Venezuelan pastry shop in Braes Heights. The half-moon-shaped meat pies come with a delicate yellow crust and your choice of a…
Best Ceviche
Take raw fish, in this case tilapia, and marinate it in lime juice until it is “cooked,” add finely diced hot peppers, shrimp, avocado, tomatoes, onions, cilantro and pineapple. Toss it all together and pile it high on a bed of shredded red cabbage and carrots and you have ceviche,…
Best Shoe Store
You won’t find the latest high heels here, nor will you find ostrich-skin cowboy boots. But plenty of people still line up to buy shoes at this Rice Village-area sneaker boutique. When this sister store of the original Premium Goods in Brooklyn opened in our fine city, it brought with…
Best Place to Buy a Jolly Roger
Want to strike terror into the heart of that idiot doing a mere 75 miles an hour in the fast lane on the Katy Freeway? Hoist a Jolly Roger from your car’s mainmast — that ought to get them the hell out of the way. Kronberg’s Flags and Flagpoles carries…
Best Bookstore
Houston book lovers were crushed a few years back with the closing of Colleen’s Books, the ramshackle used book store out on Telephone Road. But good things have sprung from the closure: Now, if you enjoy a little country drive, you can head to Butler & Sons in Rosenberg. Owner…
Best Pre- or Post-Theater Restaurant
One of the great things about dining at Damian’s — in addition to the fact that it’s one of the best Italian restaurants in town, with service to match — is its shuttle service. When you make a reservation, let them know you’ll be attending the theater, symphony or any…
Best Comeback
The new Armandos is even better than the original. That’s because it’s been reincarnated in the former location of the River Oaks Grill. What a place to dunk tortilla chips in chili con queso! The walls are elegantly paneled, the doorways are set off by lavish carved arches and the…
Best Service
The restaurant is designed to resemble an art deco ocean liner, and the pampering service fits right into the theme. The staff is extremely well-trained. They know the oyster list and can explain the differences among every variety of fish on the menu. The waiter will select a white or…
Best Astro
This hasn’t been Craig Biggio’s finest year. The 41-year-old has struggled in the batter’s box and on the field, and sports-talk has been filled with calls for him to be taken out of the lead-off position. But Bidge, in 2007, broke into the ranks of one of baseball’s most select…
Best Sports-Talk Host
Houston has more sports-talk stations than any fan really needs, but far fewer good sports-talk shows than anyone would like. There’s a slew of hosts who don’t know basic stuff but prefer going for cheap laughs talking about babes and movies. On the other hand, there’s Charlie Pallilo of “The…
The Busy World Is Hushed
When Brooklyn denizen Keith Bunin dropped by the Rothko Chapel while visiting friends in H-town, it got him thinking. What came of that visit is The Busy World Is Hushed, a drama about faith and family. The story focuses on Hannah (played by Main Street Theater’s artistic director, Rebecca Greene…
Best Coffee House
Onion Creek first sprang to the owners’ minds while they were tubing in the Hill Country, and was birthed while the Heights was recovering from Tropical Storm Allison. Since, it has attracted a loyal, eclectic following: Bikers find it a place a tad nicer than most, gays and lesbians feel…
Best Comedy Show
We’ll probably get some threatening letters from the folks at Doomsday Wrestling for calling them a “Comedy Show,” but rest assured, it’s in good fun. It’s hard to believe either the wrestlers or producers don’t see the humor in their events. Especially considering Doomsday’s roster, which includes Precious Jewels, a…
Best New Song about Houston
A lovely lament from Tom Waits’s latest, Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers and Bastards, “Fannin Street” seems especially timely. The song opens like this: “There’s a crooked street in Houston town / it’s a well-worn path I’ve traveled down / now there’s ruin in my name / I wish I’d never got…
Best Ensemble Production
Artful, surprising and truly fine in so many ways, the Alley Theatre’s Spring production of Sarah Ruhl’s Pulitzer Prize-nominated The Clean House was thrilling. Houston’s inventive cast turned each and every character into a creative joy. Josie de Guzman’s Matilde, the Brazilian maid who didn’t like to clean, was a…
Best Jazz Club
Live jazz, seven nights a week, in Houston? Look no further than Sambuca. Set in an oasis of dark woods and white linen with the occasional tiger print thrown in, Sambuca features local singers, like the sultry Yvonne Washington and Tianna Hall, and high-energy Houston bands, like the Blue Monks…
Best Demolition
Houston is a city hell-bent on tearing down every building that is the slightest bit old. Sometimes that can be a good thing: A year ago we were finally able to see the death throes of the Houston school district’s Stalinesque headquarters. As the booms crashed into the walls, you…
Best Radio News
Houston used to be a thriving town for radio news, but those days are long past. Clear Channel has taken a big ax to the newsrooms of KTRH and KPRC, and while the reporters who remain do stellar work, in many ways the product is a shell of what it…
Best Landmark
Sure, it isn’t as grand as Trevi or as recognizable as Buckingham, but Mecom Fountain hands-down wins the title of Houston’s best landmark. The elegant 1960s fountain serves as a gateway to the museum district, the Medical Center, Hermann Park and Rice University. Its Roman-style colonnades and 12-foot-tall water jets…
Best Fried Chicken
For the best fried chicken in town, there’s nothing like homemade. But if mama’s isn’t available, there’s always the Barbecue Inn. I know, you’re thinking, BBQ Inn? Yep, BBQ Inn. When you order the Southern fried chicken, you will face two problems. The first is that it takes 25 minutes,…
Best Chain
Chili’s is the kind of place where you can take anyone — grandma, fussy kids, your golfing buddies, a date. Okay, maybe not a date, but the menu is so wide and varied, and the food so predictable, there’s something for everyone to enjoy. Chili’s is a casual restaurant with…
Best Fish and Chips
“Wild Kitchen, London and Cajun Style” reads the confusing sign in front of this wacky fish-and-chip stand. The Korean-American owner, Joon, explains that he moved to Houston from Northern California, where he had a 14-store chain of London-style fish-and-chip restaurants. But when he tried to serve London-style fish and chips…
Best Margarita
The margaritas at Tony’s Mexican Restaurant always seem to stir up an endless series of questions, including, “What the hell is this secret ingredient?” and “Where the hell did you put my car keys, you asshat!?” This family establishment never seems to be anything less than packed, and for good…
Best Toy Store
Don’t let the name fool you into thinking this Montrose-area store is merely some sort of Barnes & Noble-like local. Domy offers their customers the latest in specialty artist-designed toys. It’s one of the only places in town to find a random assortment of Bearbricks or Kid Robot designs. From…
Best Apartment Finder
We were gonna say Craig’s List, but then we found Adrien Gibson, who hangs out on Craig’s List and who, despite the inauspicious place for a first meeting, is one helluva apartment hunter. Our friend used Gibson when she was looking for a place a little while back. He asked…
Best Seaside Store
If there is a hub in Crystal Beach, the long, narrow strip of often ramshackle beach houses, tumbledown seafood restaurants and dive bars along the Bolivar Peninsula’s Highway 87, the Gulf Coast Market is it. Known locally simply as “the Big Store,” this gas station/supermarket/bait camp/hardware store/bookshop/souvenir emporium is as…
Best Filipino
Buffets can be a wonderful way to sample the cuisine of a particular country, especially if you’re not familiar with it. At Gold Ribbon, names of dishes appear above each item on the buffet, which helps to identify the choices. White rice and fried rice anchor the buffet offerings, where…
Best Atmosphere
Brennan’s of Houston calls its cuisine “Texas Creole,” and seldom do you find a cooking style and a restaurant atmosphere so perfectly in sync. When people walk into the old mansion on Smith Street, they look at the dark wooden bar and the magnificent brick courtyard outside and remark, “It…
Best Seafood Restaurant
Try a cup of the dark brown crawfish bisque — you couldn’t finish a whole bowl. The flavor of Lafayette, Louisiana, lingers on in Houston at Jimmy Wilson’s. Denis Wilson and his partner Jimmy Jard swapped first and last names to rechristen the old Denis’s Seafood on Westheimer. It’s either…
Best Sports Moment
Taking nothing away from the Coogs’ C-USA championship night, Houston was host to another athletic night to remember for all time this year. The 2007 Astros season opened with all eyes on second-baseman Craig Biggio as he chased the storied mark of 3,000 career hits; unfortunately, Bidge struggled at the…
Best Cheap Seats
Hockey’s a sport that truly needs to be seen in person. And the Houston Aeros make it possible to see the games while sitting in great seats with the best prices in Houston. The Aeros aren’t a major league club. The team plays in the AHL minor league. But the…
Punky Reggae Party
Rockbox, the weekly dance installment at the Proletariat, is getting a little help from HoustonSoReal hip-hop guru (and former Press contributor) Matt Sonzala for the Punky Reggae Party. The night will feature Austin’s Grimy Styles, a dub/reggae band Sonzala says aren’t you’re typical dreadheaded weirdoes. “A lot of the white,…
Best Hip-Hop Producer
The ARE is no newcomer to the hip-hop game. He started searching for the perfect beat in 1991 and hasn’t stopped moving since. First getting his feet wet as a member of the legendary Houston rap group K-Otix, nowadays the ARE bares the production skills behind the boards to more…
Best Film Festival
The Houston 48 Hour Film Project is for both your viewing and participating pleasure. Houstonians get the chance not only to watch films created in the titular time frame, but also create one themselves. Teams are given a list of guidelines, including a genre and a prop, a line and…
Best New Bar
The antithesis of all the trendy lounges catering to the fickle 400 that come and go every year, Pearl Bar is in it for the long haul. Right now, it’s just a beer garden with an icehouse vibe behind what once was Mary Jane’s. A few picnic tables are scattered…
Best Performance of a Really, Really Long Monologue
Magical, lyrical, ecstatically in love with the power of language, and profoundly political, Tony Kushner’s Homebody/Kabul was one of last season’s best plays. A good part of the power came from the writing, which was unquestionably extraordinary, but what made Main Street Theater’s production so amazing was Christianne Mays’s brilliant…
Best Latin Club
Hot DJs, an enthusiastic crowd and live music from top local and international Latin acts make Club Tropicana an easy choice for this year’s Best Latin Club. (It won the title in 2003 and 2004.) The club is open only three nights a week (Tuesday, Friday and Saturday), so try…
Best Architect
Scott Ballard has worked on design projects as far away as Kuala Lumpur, but some of his coolest work is right here in Houston, where the architect lives inside the Loop in one of his own hip designs. Sleek and oh-so-modern, the homes he creates are fine enough to impress…
Best Pirate Relic
Sometime before the Texas Revolution, James Campbell settled on a point near Galveston Bay in what is now Texas City and took to farming — with a little sideline in smuggling. His past was murky — some called him a privateer, while others said he was a pirate. It all…
Best Local Blog
Outrageous and provocative, the local blog Call of Da Wild offers original reporting and commentary on scandal-plagued Texas Southern University in a voice that is both insanely pissed-off and fall-down hilarious. Be warned: it’s filled with race- and sex-baiting, often reducing the school’s woes to a steamy, very non-PC daytime…
Best Bread
Duomo means dome in Italian, as in the top of a cathedral. It is also the name of a loaf of bread and, as its name suggests, it is big and round. It is also so crusty that it hurts the inside of your mouth when you bite into it…
Best Lasagna
Eating lasagna at Patrenella’s is like eating lasagna at the home of a kind Italian family. Wait a minute – that’s exactly what this is. Sammy Patrenella welcomes guests to his home in the Heights, which his father built in 1938 and where the family has lived ever since. He’s…
Best Cheese Plate
Cheese plates are popping up as fast as the wine bars that carry them, and the one at 13 Celsius is particularly delicious. Served with mostarda di prugne (plum mustard), apples and a piece of fig cake, the plate comes with a variety of local and foreign cheeses. The waitstaff is…
Best Croissants
In the heart of Rice Village is a little French bakery that serves an almond-crusted monster of a croissant. These things are huge. Somebody had the ingenious idea of making an almond sandwich out of a croissant and almond paste. The croissant is big, buttery, flaky and a rich dark…
Best Record Store
For collectors of new and old vinyl, regardless of what genres of music one collects, making the voyage out to this giant music cache near 1960 is like going on a Haj to record Mecca. The first time one visits, it can be more than overwhelming. Cardboard boxes of the…
Best Candy Store
It’s not easy to make high-society, grown-up types look like, well, kids in a candy store, but these sweet slingers manage to pull it off. The Chocolate Bar offers tasty, original-recipe ice cream and cakes along with chocolate-covered everything; and Candylicious sells a variety of traditional and wacky confections, from…
Best Farmers’ Market
Farmers’ markets are hard to come by in Houston, which is why Bayou City Farmers’ Market is such a find. It’s tucked away on a side street in the Upper Kirby district, and growers and artisans alike come to peddle their goods every Wednesday and Saturday. Aside from produce, you…
Best Brunch
Forget nachos, tacos and Tex-Mex in general. At Hugo’s, the brunch features regional Mexican cuisine at its finest. Set the scene with Bloody Marias or a pomegranate mimosa and enjoy the live music coming from the upstairs balcony before venturing to the elaborately decorated buffet. It contains an incredible variety…
Best Restaurant
Year after year, meal after meal, plate after plate, no chef in Houston is as consistently brilliant as Marco Wiles. Try his velvety eggplant soup with a bruschetta crouton, his meaty braised duck ravioli served in a pile of wild mushrooms or his simple shaved celery salad topped with a…
Best Greek Restaurant
There’s so much more to Biba’s than the food — the retro-trash decor, for instance, and the fact that it’s open 24 hours. Sometimes, when you’re drunkenly stumbling across the street from Cecil’s and you just have to have a delicious gyro, it’s nice to know that someone’s got your…
Best Dynamo
While Brian Ching was away representing the USA during the World Cup, Dwayne De Rosario proved why he should have been there, too. Of course, the Canadian native would have to play for his own country’s team, but still, he should have been there. Instead, the six-year MLS veteran gave…
Best Little League Concession Stand
Yes, you can still get hot dogs, Frito pie and snow cones at West U Little League’s concession stand, but there are also a few more upscale items on the menu. Let’s see…How about Thai Spice spring rolls? Check. Beef and chicken fajitas from Skeeter’s? Got them too. And yes,…
“War”
From the heroic imagery of propaganda posters and memorial statues to the raw brutalism of Picasso’s Guernica and Goya’s Disasters of War, art and war have always had a symbiotic, if tortured, relationship. It’s too soon to tell how the art world will commemorate our current situation in Iraq, but…
Best Tattoo Artist
Brett Osborne isn’t as old or as experienced as Houston tattoo-artist illuminati such as Dan Martin and Tiger John. Nevertheless, Osborne has firmly established himself as one of Houston’s most talented with a needle-tipped gun. Lovers of permanent ink outside of his hometown have taken notice, and some of his…
Best Improv Troupe
Houston has a nice tradition of short-form improv, so it was nice to see a change of pace this year with The Greatest Thing in the History of the World. The long-form improv troupe works in the style perfected by the Upright Citizens Brigade. (In fact, many of the members…
Best New Club
Almeda south of Alabama is hopping these days, nowhere more so than at the Libra Lounge. New Orleans native and longtime Houstonian Coye Devrouax set out to create an authentic Crescent City-style hole in the wall, and he’s done just that. It’s easy to imagine you’re in the Big Easy’s…
Best Original Show
Local playwright John Harvey is nothing if not bizarre, at least he’s that way in writing. His disturbingly funny plays, featured at Mildred’s Umbrella, have examined incest, debauchery and sex with animals. Last season’s Rot, presented with the help of those grand puppets from Bobbindoctrin Puppet Theatre, was Harvey’s most…
Best Happy Hour
This paragraph should really just begin and end with “$6 pitchers.” But if that’s not enough to convince you, keep in mind that this gigantic West Gray pub has an obscenely cheap, and extended, happy hour six days out of the week, and all day on Sunday. Add to this…
Best Charity
The foundation supports the Children’s Assessment Center, which provides medical, psychological, forensic and therapeutic services to aid in the healing of sexually abused children and the prosecution of their attackers. Charity Navigator has bestowed its highest (four-star) rating on CACF, stating that 89.2 percent of the funds go toward program…
Best Civil Attorney
Houston is a town full of swaggering lawyers making big headlines. And many of them deserve the accolades they get. But let’s not forget there are also a bunch of lawyers here who stay out of the spotlight and just do good work for their clients. Dayle Pugh, of the…
Best Regular Public Speaker at City Council Meetings
Unless he’s throwing eggs at them, Senator Robert Horton is generally ignored by City Council members, who are so used to his cryptic mutterings that there’s no novelty left to them. To wit, an entry from one council meeting reads: “Senator Robert Horton…appeared and stated that he was God and…
Best Cheesecake
If you ate one slice of cheesecake every day, it would take you more than a month to make your way through the offerings here — not counting special holiday offerings, which might add a couple more days to your adventure. Of course, no one is suggesting you do that,…
Best Pork Chop
The pork chop at Perry’s ain’t no ordinary pork chop, it’s a damn roast. It’s known as the Seven Finger Pork Chop, ’cause when it stands tall on your plate, it’s a full seven fingers high. Before carving it, your server will inform you that this cut has an eyelash,…
Best Shot
Featuring a healthy dose of self-deprecating humor and an army of oversexed twentysomething beauties on both sides of the bar, The G.R.A.B. manages to fit into a niche so many Houston bars have failed to grab hold of: the gap between the bohemian hipsters of Montrose and the gel-haired yuppies…
Best Caterer
We had Thanksgiving catered from Adrian’s – delivered to our home, no less – for pennies on the dollar for what it would have cost to cook it ourselves. And could we have duplicated Robert Campbell’s succulent turkey or Tina Grimstead-Campbell’s perfect potato salad? No way! Walk-in customers have learned…
Best Music Store
This Montrose-area establishment has been supplying local music snobs with the most epicurean of sounds for years now. No matter if you’re looking for the latest vinyl release from an obscure noise band or a self-manufactured CD by a local group, Sound Exchange is the place you’re most likely to…
Best Florist
Its hard to pick a favorite. You have the Bright Day Bouquet, the Mellow Yellow, the Picture Perfect. You could spend quite a long time at Breens, searching through many beautiful bouquets, looking for the one that expresses exactly what you want to say. And no doubt Breens will have…
Best Antiques Store
“Trash and Treasure since 1947,” the slogan for Antique Warehaus, says it all. The Montrose-based dive is stacked from dirty floor to raftered ceiling with everything from leather couches and ottomans to flatware and glassware, lamps, old cameras, bar stools and picture frames. It’s the city’s best, most affordable and…
Best Neighborhood Spot in Sugar Land
Jeff Vallone is following in his father’s footsteps with his new restaurant in the ‘burbs. Now southwest suburbanites don’t need to trek into town to enjoy the Vallones’ legendary food and service. Whether it’s on the expansive patio or in the nicely appointed dining room, you will enjoy fine Italian…
Best Chinese Restaurant
There’s lots to choose from on the 400-item menu, but don’t confuse this with your average Chinese take-out joint. Chef and owner Hoi Fung comes from a long line of Hong Kong chefs. He is also a pillar of the Houston Asian community. When visiting Asian royalty comes to Houston,…
Best Bang for the Buck
In the corner of the Kim Hung Market is a gem of a to-go counter filled with Asian-style barbecue ribs, fried rice and pig stomach. Really, you could feed an entire village for about 18 bucks! The deals here include an entire roasted duck for $12 or the barbecue lunch…
Best Rocket
It’s been a long, long time since the Houston Rockets have done anything in the playoffs, but hope springs eternal. Tracy McGrady and Yao Ming are the Rockets’ superstars, but when it comes to quiet, solid contributions to the team, forward Shane Battier is the real superstar. Rarely out of…
Best Place to Watch F?tbol
Now dont get us wrong, the Dynamo and their rowdy, loyal fans kick ass. But watching pickup games played on fields with more dirt than grass, where trash barrels are used as goal posts, all while swaying in a hammock right next to the action is a great way to…
“Sounds of the Past: Phonographs, Radios, and Records”
If you think the 8-track tape is an ancient form of recording sound, wait until you discover the cylinder. These small devices from the late 1800s were played on mechanical phonographs and looked like rolls of film with the music engraved on the outside surface. Cylinders eventually lost out to…
Best Strip Club
Whereas one can go to any Inner Loop establishment and get ignored for $100, those who want a real gentlemen’s — and we use that word loosely — club experience go to Splendor. With all its 1983-casino-lobby, uh, splendor, this independently owned and operated club treats every customer as if…
Best Mom and Pop Band
Paris Falls is the brainchild of Jennifer and Raymond Brown. When the two are not perfecting their musical offspring, they’re raising their biological one. The pair creates some of the best rock around and recorded most of their first album, Paris Falls Vol. I, after the birth of their son…
Best Public Art Project
Nobody ever goes to this spectacular water park hidden in plain sight near the Med Center on the site of the old Shamrock Hotel. There’s no free parking around and almost no foot traffic in the area, so likely as not your only company will be maintenance workers. And that’s…
Best Performance Space
Perched on the northeast edge of downtown, the squatty building doesn’t look like much from the outside. But that’s okay, all the magic happens inside. The 7,200-square-foot venue houses a 120-seat black-box performance space that’s as versatile and smart as they come. One night it’s turned into a full in-the-round…
Best Hidden Bar
Nestled in a nondescript little office strip on the lower end of Richmond, Absinthe is a terrific bar, but one that doesn’t exactly spread the word about itself. There’s no sign, no indication that the low-slung little building houses anything at all, but open the impressive wooden doors and you’ve…
Best Renovation
Harrisburg Plaza, the newly renovated 1929 blond-brick building with a terra-cotta roof and reflective steel canopy, would look right at home on any ivy-covered college campus. Instead, it houses an auto parts store and payday loan center on Houston’s rough-and-tumble east side. Designed by German-born architect Joseph Finger, the building…
Best Court Ruling
For ten years, the City of Houston has been in federal and state courts defending its ordinances against so-called “gentlemen’s clubs,” places where gentlemen ogle women who are (depending on who you talk to) either a) single-mom grad students working towards their MBAs, or b) cokeheads. Earlier this year, U.S…
Best Flack
Sure, most people think this award should go to some city official or corporate PR person, but you’d be surprised how hard it is to find a good publicist in the art world. Our entertainment desk is thankful there are folks like Jimmy Castillo of Lawndale Art Center, who is…
Best Mollejas
Maria Rojas serves her mollejas (sweetbreads) on two griddle-heated corn tortillas with caramelized onion and chopped cilantro on top. She puts the sweetbread tacos and a half of a lime on a Styrofoam plate and sets out a little stone molcajete full of dark hot sauce beside it. The sweetbreads…
Best Pho
There’s a ritual to eating the Vietnamese beef noodle soup known as pho that makes each bowl as individual as you are. It involves adding leafy vegetables and herbs such as cilantro, sweet basil and bean sprouts, an element of heat from jalapeños or Sriracha sauce, plus additional flavoring from…
Best French Fries
Laurier Café is a modern neighborhood bistro with some seriously addictive fries. Shoestring cut, they are always crispy, golden and piled high. Whether you choose the traditional steak frites, the steamed mussels and fries with a side of aioli, or one of the many outstanding sandwiches with fries offered at…
Best Tutor
Mathematician Ellen Clardy, who got her Ph.D. in economics from Rice University, has a love of logic. It shows most astutely when she recommends that potential pupils consider a tutor before October hits — when it’s often too late to turn around a lousy semester in algebra. If you really…
Best Adult Video Store
Bizarre Times on Richmond lets you cover more vices than most (Houston Press employees excluded) can handle in one night. Of course, there’s the porn, with a selection ranging from borderline tasteful to completely horrifying; sex toys, featuring nine variations on The Rabbit; prostitute-esque fetish wear; and “viewing rooms” for…
Best Manicure
The camaraderie among the friendly staff — most of whom hail from Vietnam — is a big draw for some of the loyal clientele. But other happy customers, like Thomas Dickerson, who teaches prison inmates how to reduce their risk of catching AIDS, can vouch for something else: “They’re so…
Best Auto Mechanic
We know a driver who fell victim to one of Houston’s notorious potholes, leaving half the front underside of his car dragging ominously. He took it to the nearest garage, where they helpfully jury-rigged a solution but told him to get a permanent fix at his regular mechanic. So he…
Best Cheap Seafood Restaurant
Want to vary your fare from hardtack and salmagundi but don’t want to reach too deep into your chest of doubloons? Climb aboard this old-school Houston survivor. Housed in what looks like a shrimp boat broken from its moorings and marooned on South Main, Captain Benny’s serves raw oysters that…
Best Indian Restaurant
Hidebound types sputter and fume, “That’s not Indian food!” when confronted with Indika’s innovative cooking. There’s no chicken tikka masala here. But they do have foie gras with fig preserves and trout stuffed with nuts. If this isn’t what you usually think of as Indian food, then it’s time to…
Best Breakfast
The location next door to New York Bagels, the best bagel bakery in town, gives this New York-style coffee shop a major advantage over other breakfast venues — if you like bagels. These bagels at New York Coffee Shop aren’t just fresh, they’re hot out of the oven. And they…
Best Houston Texan
DeMeco Ryans was the Texans’ second pick in the 2006 NFL draft. If that’s news to you, chances are you never got over the team’s bizarre decision not to pick Vince Young or Reggie Bush in the first round. Ryans, a linebacker, averaged almost ten tackles a game and wound…
Doomsday Wrestling’s ‘Roid Rage
“If you’ve been reading the papers, there is a lot of media slanting on professional wrestling and the steroid use,” says Tex Lonestar. The local promoter, who sat down with us and his rival Dirty Sanchez for a little trash talk, says Doomsday Wrestling’s ‘Roid Rage will prove athletes don’t…
Best Patio
Sure, you could eat their delicious Guatemalan and Mexican dishes in a jail cell or a submarine and they’d still probably taste good, but you’ll be doing yourself a disservice if you don’t dine on the patio. It’s like you’re not even on the same continent. Tiki torches and string…
BEST OF HOUSTON® 2007
Did you know that in 1817, Galveston was a pirate kingdom headed up by Jean Lafitte? It’s said that today, his buried treasure lies somewhere between Galveston, Bolivar Peninsula and High Island. But that isn’t the only clandestine cache around — the urban pirates at the Houston Press, descendants of…
Best Rapper
The Dirty South takes a lot of knocks from the greater Hip-Hop Nation. New Yorkers, especially, accuse us of dumbing down the music. They love to say hip-hop is dead, murdered by stupid songs like “Laffy Taffy” and “Chain Hang Low.” They say our beats are wack and our lyrics…
Best Second Banana/Supporting Actor
Annalee Jeffries is one of Houston’s most wonderful treasures. Funny, fierce, smart and glowing with charisma and charm, the quirky actor is a bright spot in every production she joins. But this season she created one of her most unforgettable performances as the dowdy kook of a sister in the…
Best Hotel Bar
You may not be able to afford to stay at the Magnolia, but that shouldn’t keep you from nabbing a drink in the hotel’s posh second-floor bar. There’s something almost ethereal about the place, which is decked out with plasma TVs and dozens of leather couches and chairs. There’s live…
Best Tourist Attraction
Okay, so we’re not vouching for the artistic merit of David Adickes’s gigantic sculptures, but for some reason this was the artist’s year. Not only did Adickes finally finish his 36-foot-tall rendering of the Beatles, but it seems every out-of-town visitor asked us for directions on how to get to…
Best Democrat
You’re a Democratic state senator. The Republicans have proposed a bill that you think strikes right at the heart of the democratic process. It’ll pass without your vote against it. The trouble is, you’ve just had a liver transplant and are pretty damn sick. What do you do? If you’re…
Best Sushi
Nestled into a small Montrose-area strip mall, this place has been a favorite of neighborhood patrons for some time. Osaka serves up some of the largest and freshest pieces of sashimi a person can find in the city. The salmon is always so magically fresh, you can’t believe it’s served…
Best Desserts
If you have even the slightest sweet tooth, you will find this place irresistible, not only for the sheer quantity of desserts, but the way they remind you of homemade cooking — you know, the kind that happened before the microwave. If you’re yearning for an old-fashioned raspberry and blackberry…
Best Hero Sandwich
You go up north, you can get in some pretty heated arguments about where to get the best hero. Hell, you can get into heated arguments about whether to call the thing a hero, a sub or a grinder. Here in Houston, though, the choice is pretty simple: Jersey Mike’s…
Best BLT
Bacon is sacred. And there’s no reason to go messing with the time-honored formula of the classic BLT…unless you’re going to do it right. The BLT at Brasil treats bacon with the respect it deserves. The addition of blue cheese, herbed aioli and red onion does good things for this…
Best Facial
Maybe Halliburton can’t run a war — much less a country — but one of its former civil engineers can whip your skin into shape! Mahssa burned out on her former career but, lucky for us, became an esthetician and makeup artist. She’s as bubbly as you’d expect for someone…
Best Bike Shop
So, Bob, heard you need a road bike. You should try Bike Barn. And Emily, I hear you need a mountain bike. You should tag along with Bob. And Frank, you need a cool bike for your kids, right? Dude, go to Bike Barn. Trek, Serotta, Gary Fisher: Bike Barn…
Best Fabric Store
Four stories of fine fabric is only the beginning of the offerings at High Fashion Fabrics. Besides the yards and yards of silk, velvet, brocade, leather, linen and every other kind of millinery marvel, there’s furniture, design books, ribbon, pillows, rugs and design thingamajigs and doodads in just about every…
Best Barber
Men frequent barbershops less for the trim than for the banter, the testosterone and the taxidermy. The best barbers fall into two categories. There’s the cutter who jawbones nonstop on everything. Then there’s the quiet man, usually a stooped old-timer, who lets the customer do the yakkety-yakking. Matt Wright falls…
Best Vietnamese Restaurant
If you turn your nose up at buffets, stop here. The newest Kim Son has over 150 feet of buffet space devoted to serious Asian food. It all centers on the “hot pot” concept, where a pan of steaming broth is placed on a personal hot plate situated on every…
Best Taco Truck
The bistek taco and the cochinita pibil taco at the Jarro taco trailer are transcendental. After the cook in the Jarro uniform passes your taco through the window, the real fun begins. On the stainless-steel counter that runs along the front of the trailer, there are assorted salsas and condiments…
Best Wine Bar Food
Cova is one of many wine bars that have quickly populated the Houston bar scene over the last couple of years. What sets it apart is the food. Cova’s menu is always fresh, inventive and delicious. In addition to the typical cheese-and-meat plates that other wine bars offer, Cova’s seasonal…
Best Coach
Who ever thought the small school out on South Main would ever develop a sports dynasty? Rice’s best athletic days were thought to be mere nostalgia, but that’s changed big time, thanks to coach Wayne Graham. College baseball has evolved into a sport for rich white kids (players who are…
Knocking
Most of us know Jehovah’s Witnesses as door-to-door non-secular salesmen, but, as PBS’s documentary Knocking testifies, the real Witnesses are a breath of fresh air: a depoliticized group of moral conservatives who believe in persuasion over imposition. Tracking two families through a few days of the 1.3 billion hours Witnesses…
Best Sports Bar
This venerable neighborhood bar isn’t just for ass-kicking Saint Paddy’s Day blowouts. It’s also a great place to watch the Texans, Astros, Rockets or whomever any time of the year. And if your game is on a Tuesday night, you’re in for an especially tasty treat: Griff’s $10 steak night…
Best New Coffee Shop
This coffeehouse is attracting as much attention as its namesake. Inspired by Inversion, the giant-vortex house that once stood at 1956 Montrose, Inversion Coffee House has just as many Houstonians stopping by for its art as for its killer cup of joe. Inversion has all the pleasantries of Starbucks (i.e.,…
Best Pool Hall
Sure, sure, we don’t like to praise the chain outlets, but this really is the best pool hall in town, and we’re not just saying that because we get a kick out of the irony of a place called Slick Willie’s being stationed right across the street from the girl…
Best Theatrical Idea
When Suzan Lori Parks became the first black woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama — for 2001’s TopDog/Underdog — you’d think she might have been willing to sit back on her laurels for a while. Not the reigning queen of American theater. Just one year later, in November…
Best Place to Stage Yiddish Theater
Sadly, except for “schmuck,” “schlemiel” and a few other silly-sounding words, Yiddish is mostly dead. A Yiddish theater revival would go a long way in resurrecting the language, and there’s no better place for it than the gorgeous, grossly underutilized open-air chapel at Emanu El Memorial Park. Long live Tevye…
Best Weathercaster
Hurricane season is the time of year when all the local weathermen and -women (and, ahem, dogs) tell you, time and time again, that you are about to die!!! All of them, that is, except for Channel 2’s Frank Billingsley, who prides himself on not giving in to the hype…
Best Republican
Like his Democratic Best of Houston® counterpart, we’ve had our disagreements with State Senator Kyle Janek’s record. But the anesthesiologist from West U has shown some impressive thinking on health issues. This year he helped spearhead the drive to make Texas high schools test for steroids. Anyone who’s seen the…
Best Milk Shake
Next time you’re on 19th Street riding your bike and window-shopping with your best friend, stop into Cricket’s Creamery and have a strawberry shake. Cricket’s makes its own ice cream and gelato, so that’s a good start for a really good shake. Ask for it to be extra-thick and with…
Best Kebabs
Chances are, if you do only one thing, you’re gonna do it right. At Darband, all they do is kebabs and, yes, they do ’em right, every time. This is a no-nonsense place, where six bucks buys you a kebab plate like no other. Here, you get in line, review…
Best Fried Shrimp
“Chicken-fried shrimp” on the bar menu at Café Annie is one of the best fried-shrimp creations you will ever put in your mouth. Half a dozen big shrimp are butterflied and skewered together to form a “patty” which is then dipped in batter, deep-fried and served flat on a plate…
Best House-Made Pasta
The house-made Emily’s goat cheese ravioli at Divino is heavenly. A fresh sage and brown-butter sauce with pine nuts and fresh parmesan nicely complements the sharp goat cheese and is well worth soaking up with a piece of bread after the ravioli is gone. Perfectly paired with a crisp white…
Best Landscaping Materials
This rock yard should be a field trip for college geology students. There’s a wealth of natural products, all clearly marked and organized, for all of your backyard needs (except maybe grass): limestone, flagstone, gravel, soil, mulch, boulders. They will mentor the do-it-yourselfer, give guidelines on figuring out how much…
Best Car Wash
Bubbles isn’t the cheapest car wash in Houston. But do you want your car to be clean, or do you want it to be kinda clean? The good folks at Bubbles will clean your carriage inside and out, top to bottom, while you chill inside and entertain yourself by looking…
Best Local Clothing Designer
So she didn’t win Project Runway like that other gal in town, but Vanessa Riley has a hot new shop next door to Grotto and across the street from Hotel Derek. If it’s a swashbuckling Elizabeth Swann you want to channel, Riley’s your frock-maker. With enough ruffled bodices and tight-fitting…
Best Quilting Store
Whether you’ve been quilting for years or are just starting out, It’s A Stitch is the place to go. The three Houston-area locations offer the best selection of materials, patterns and threads, not to mention instructional books, movies and loads of fun accessories. The stores also offer classes for every…
Best Cuban Restaurant
If you’re looking for atmosphere, don’t go here. You will be disappointed in this hole in the wall, whose only wall decorations are pictures of Cuba. However, if you want simple, authentic, homemade Cuban food, and lots of it, you won’t find any finer or any cheaper. Start out with…
Best Persian
It’s the intensity of the flavors that sets Kasra apart. Take Kasra’s khorake bademjan, a long-cooked lamb shank, for instance. The meat falls apart at the touch of a fork, but it’s the tart sour grape and tomato sauce with the gooey eggplant slices that makes it shine. Even the…
Best Thai Restaurant
Kanomwan has a cult following that speaks for itself. Sometimes the people who eat here communicate with each other using menu item numbers like a secret code. They also insist that the owner puts an addictive substance in the food that keeps them coming back at least once a week…
Best Gym
It’s fun to stay at the YMCA. It’s fun to stay at the YMCA. It’s also fun to exercise there, in the no-nonsense weight-machine area downstairs and the austere classroom areas upstairs. This isn’t the place to see and be seen. It’s a place to work out for real. You…
Rough Night at the Remo Room
If we’ve learned anything from more than two decades with the fictitious (though shockingly rednecky realistic) Singing Fertle Family of Dumpster, Texas, created by Radio City Music Theatre’s husband-and-wife team Steve and Vicki Farrell and cohort Rich Mills, it’s that they should never be trusted with anything remotely sophisticated. In…
Electroma
Electroma is the first film by French DJ duo Daft Punk. The flick follows two robots as they travel across the U.S. in a quest to become human. They reach a town where scientists fashion them with oversize, -rubbery-looking faces that melt in the sun, then there’s a fiery conclusion…
Best Actor
Intense and passionate, Luther Chakurian, a mainstay of Masquerade Theatre for nearly a decade, embodies this multitalented musical company with highly stylized, brooding performances that grab you by the throat and take your breath away. Starring in three of the group’s most intriguing recent shows, Jane Eyre, Sweeney Todd and…
Best Place for Local Comedy
If you ever find yourself at Rudyard’s on a Tuesday night, do yourself a favor and head upstairs to check out Rudz Comedy Werkshop. The free event — run by and for comedians — gives local comedians a chance to stretch their wings with more than the usual two to…
Best Icehouse
West Alabama Ice House is a perennial Best of Houston® winner, most deservedly, so rather than subject you to a rewording of bygone blurbs, we’ll just give the place the Zagat treatment. It’s not plagiarism if you’re quoting yourself, right? “Cheap beers, pretty bohemian bartenders, roots rock and free hot…
Best Ballet
Houston Ballet’s opening-night performance of Christopher Wheeldon’s Carnival of Animals had the audience roaring, thanks to a special performance by two-time Tony Award-winner John Lithgow. The multitalented actor and children’s book author wrote the dialogue for this family-friendly ballet, and he performed it with scene-chewing zeal in Houston for two…
Best Bartender
Montrose-area bar patrons have been delighted to have this man pouring their hooch for years now. Many claim he makes the meanest margaritas this city has to offer. Others claim that his famous Bloody Marys have the healing powers of black magic. Whether that’s true or not, Moore will greet…
Best Local TV Anchor
Houston has been happily waking up with José Griñan for over a decade now. Part of the FOX 26 Morning News since its inception, José Griñan is on-air every morning from 5 a.m. to 9 a.m. and then again for the FOX 26 News at Noon. Unlike his “wring the…
Best New Development (If the Artist’s Renderings Are True)
The corner of Kirby and Westheimer has always seemed undeveloped, but that’s about to change big-time. Gone are the Shell station and, more sadly, Jalapeño’s Restaurant. So should we expect yet another dull strip mall, maybe livened up with a few allegedly classy architectural touches? Not this time. If the…
Best Cheap Sandwich
In the middle of the “food court” of the Kim Hung Mall is a Vietnamese sandwich shop that sells superdelicious sandwiches for $1.75. Sure, you can find a limp little burger at your local chain for 99 cents, but it won’t have near the quality this sandwich does. First, Hoang…
Best Ice Cream
In many ice cream shops, the choices are so overwhelming that most people either take forever to order or just order vanilla, chocolate or strawberry so as not to hold up the line. At Hank’s, the choices are not overwhelming — there’s a manageable 16 flavors in all, which they…
Best Salsa
Though Chuy’s serves pretty good salsas all year long, during the month of September, their green chile salsa is the best in town. The vibrant New Mexican-style green chile salsa served up during their annual “Green Chile Festival” is made with chiles roasted fresh in the parking lot for the…
Best Crawfish
Ask any native Louisianan and they’ll tell you: Anyone can do crawfish, but not anyone can season and prepare them like a true Cajun. Fortunately, The Concert Pub manages to do both — and it doesn’t skimp on the size. While others might cut corners with the seasoning or mix…
Best Sale Rack
There’s a television anchorwoman from a nearby state who comes to Houston to spend her annual wardrobe budget in one place. Nope, not the fantastic department store known for its service that begins with “N” (of course, that would be Nordstrom, not Neiman Marcus). It’s Syms, that big ol’ hulk…
Best Maid Service
Are you a lazy slob? Do you not like cleaning up after yourself? Well, whether you’re lazy or legitimately cleaning-impaired, Maid 4 Texas is your savior. They will tackle your nasty kitchen and your disgusting bathroom. They will disinfect, mop, sweep, dust, vacuum, polish, remove, add and empty. They will…
Best Place to Buy Stuff for a Pirate Party
Want to throw a grog-soaked debauch that would do Blackbeard proud, or a teetotaling little pirates’ bash? Either way, Southern Importers has you covered. There, you can not only pick up pirate guy stuff like eye patches, hook hands, sashes, cutlasses and ruffled shirts but also bonny “pirate wench” attire…
Best Spice Shop
Hang out in Penzey’s Spices and a customer will inevitably open the front door and gush, “My, it smells good in here.” And it does. The large, austere storefront in the Heights is a sensuous delight with hundreds of varieties of herbs and spices, each with its own smelling jar…
Best South American Restaurant
Nelore is the name of Brazil’s most famous breed of cattle, so it’s no wonder that it’s all about the meat here, and lots of it. Oh sure, there’s a fabulous salad bar with copious amounts of smoked salmon, extra-large shrimp, huge asparagus stalks and Brazilian cheese puffs galore. But…
Best Tex-Mex
There’s a Schlitz beer poster with a photo of a caballero in a huge sombrero astride his horse hanging above La Fiesta’s front door. (When was the last time you saw a Schlitz ad?) And then there’s a mural of a Mexican village on the back wall. The original La…
Best Korean Restaurant
Seoul House is the laid-back little brother of the huge cook-your-own-food Korean restaurants that populate Spring Branch and parts of Bellaire Chinatown. It’s less of an ordeal to eat here (they cook the food for you and, consequently, you don’t walk out smelling like a short rib), and the food…
Best Public Pool
The city’s best and perhaps most-used public pool can be found in Emancipation Park, set in the Third Ward just east of downtown. During the segregation era, Emancipation was Houston’s lone municipal park for African-Americans. Today it’s a hub for athletics and all kinds of fun and friendly neighborhood activities…
Greg Giraldo
If you can’t remember where you’ve seen comedian Greg Giraldo, we’re going to guess it was likely on Comedy Central. Giraldo has been all over the station in the past few years, doing his own half-hour stand-up special, hosting his own show, partaking in Dave Attell’s Insomniac Tour and being…
Manhattan Short Film Festival
You’ll be part of an international jury at today’s Manhattan Short Film Festival. Houston is one of 99 cities around the world screening 12 shorts (culled from 456 entries) this week as part of the festival. Included in the lineup is American Sonja Jasansky’s “Lines,” which, like many of the…
Best Actress
There are numerous actresses who gave radiant performances this year, all of them at least a generation, if not two, younger than our winning pick. But our heart goes out to theater veteran, and consummate pro, Jeannette Clift George. Playing obsessed, drab Carrie Watts in Horton Foote’s masterpiece The Trip…
Best Clown School
John Wayne Gacy. That spider-clown from It. The dude from Capturing the Friedmans. For generations, clowns have held a special place in our hearts. They camouflage their faces and speak like castrati, and we let them near our children. We do this because the painted man-child lets children revel in…
Best Art Gallery
Texas Gallery manages to be both blue-chip and hip. Opening in 1971, they were the first to show artists like Chuck Close, Brice Marden, Ed Rusche and William Wegman in Houston. They’ve shown Lynda Benglis since 1972. Some 30 years ago, they exhibited her bronze cast of a double-headed dildo…
Best Body Shot
The Jimmy Buffet-meets-Larry Flynt style of Seabrook Beach Club definitively answers the age-old question that we all ponder at some point in our lives: “What do people at NASA do when they get fucked up?” The answer, of course, is body shots off of hot women in bikinis, which also…
Best DJ
A veteran who’s been down in the trenches of the music scene for years now, Ceeplus (aka Eric Castillo) has a love for music of all genres that shines through his DJ sets. Any given night, the man behind the black-framed glasses will take you from Baltimore club sounds to…
Best Local TV News
When you need to know, you need Channel 26 News. Forget about the hype and scare tactics that other stations use to draw you in — Channel 26 News delivers the most comprehensive, well-researched and balanced newscast in the city. Whether it’s the tragedy of Katrina or the victory of…
Best Local Magazine
Hey, Houston magazines, here’s an idea: Why not have actual editorial content, as opposed to being all advertorial, all the time? Sure, reading about the “top” dentists, plastic surgeons or tree-trimmers in the city (i.e., dudes who bought the biggest ads) is fun, but OutSmart is one of the few…
Best Hot Dog
Let’s start with the buns here. Katz’s uses a rich, yellow, brioche-style bun to hold an all-beef wiener that snaps when you bite it. Cover that with a wad of caramelized onions and sauerkraut, and you have the makings of a damn good hot dog. If you’re a purist, you…
Best Oysters
The oyster bar is the first thing you see when you walk in the front door of this Cajun seafood restaurant near Bush Intercontinental Airport. Belly up to the bar and get a couple dozen on the half shell and a cold beer. They serve half-shell oysters all year round,…
Best Bloody Mary
You might not expect to find a kick-ass Bloody Mary at a mini-mall, but Mugsy’s, an Upper Kirby staple, offers just that. Sandwiched between a tanning salon and a drive-through bank, Mugsy’s serves its Bloody Mary as a perfect blend of spicy and hot, with a kick that will leave…
Best Risotto
The risotto at Gravitas is full of contrasts. Although the ingredients change with the menu, there’s always a balance between textures, flavors and temperatures. Recently, the risotto had English peas and was topped with lightly dressed greens, red onion and a pecorino crisp. The acidity of the dressing cut some…
Best Asian Grocery
There’s no place that can compare to Hong Kong Market No. 4. It’s probably the best example of the mix of Texan and Asian cultures. Only in Houston can you find an Asian grocery that has adopted the local fetish of building the largest and grandest supermarkets possible. Here you’ll…
Best Maternity Clothes
So there’s a tiny, weird-looking human being living in your body, Alien-style. That’s no reason to spend nine months imprisoned in a frumpy muumuu. You have choices, and Mommie Chic wants you to know that. That’s why they carry some of the best names in quality maternity fashion, including Olian,…
Best Spectacles, Glasses, Optometry
Getting older ain’t so bad when you can do it with flair. The Rice Village outpost of the national Reading Glasses To Go stocks thousands of fashionable reading glasses, including the white ones Meryl Streep wore in The Devil Wears Prada. Quel chic. Wanna look cool while reading Proust at…
Best Aquarium Fish
Originally from the coral reefs of the Pacific, the Napoleon wrasse living in the confines of the Downtown Aquarium is truly a wonder to behold. He looks as if he’d like to strike up a conversation with you – and that he could formulate a good sentence with those huge…
Best Soul Food
At this small, colorful, converted old house, you’re bound to get personalized service because there are but a few tables. Here, they churn out crispy catfish, glorious gumbo, sensational smothered pork chops and exciting étouffées, all of which will make you want to hug yo’ mama — not to mention…
Best Dry Restaurant
Sure, you can’t drink here — but beer and wine will only fill you up, and you want to have plenty of room for all the delicious menu items at Dry Creek. Try a flavored limeade instead of a mixed drink as you dip into their fried goodies, tasty burgers…
Best Comfort Food
Comfort food can be a lot of things to a lot of different people, depending on their childhood. However, if your idea of familiar fare is oxtail, rice, cornbread, macaroni and cheese with sweetened ice tea, then welcome to Mama’s Oven. A hole-in-the-strip-mall kinda place, Mama’s offers meat and two…
Best Park for Kids
Houston’s best playgrounds — Fire Truck Park and Karl E. Young Park — are set less than two miles apart. Both have the requisite slides, swings, monkey bars and sandpits. But Fire Truck Park, located in Southside Place, has the edge thanks in part to its ultracool, kid-friendly 1935 fire…
Kirsten Hassenfeld: “Dans la Lune”
The Rice Gallery will be transformed into a treasure trove for Kirsten Hassenfeld’s “Dans la Lune.” Hassenfeld, an artist based in New York, is obviously passionate about jewels and riches. Her meticulously made paper sculptures are giant models of gemstones, jewelry and highly ornate decorative arts. According to the Rice…
Jean Luc Mylayne
How does a French photographer wind up in West Texas? But of course, for zee bluebirds. The Blaffer Gallery is presenting work by Jean Luc Mylayne, the artist’s first solo exhibition in an American museum. Born in 1946 in Amiens, France, and trained as a painter, Mylayne became a photographic…
Best Musical
The black gloom of irony inherent in Stephen Sondheim’s peerless 1979 musical was elevated by its epic sweep on every level: Grand Guignol-like revenge melodrama, characters who ranged from virginal to debauched, bleak world view of the powerlessness of the powerless, bouncy English music hall roots, cinematic staging, immaculate lyrics…
Best Unexpectedly Good Juke
After a night of drinking enough to make you crave the food of whatever restaurant is in sight, you’re not usually worried about the music that accompanies the meal. This is what makes Chapultepec’s jukebox such a pleasant surprise. The music machine is loaded with enough classic jazz, soul, rock…
Best Art Show
Pipilotti Rist’s video work is lush, elegant, absurd — and hard to sum up. But “Wishing for Synchronicity,” organized by the CAMH’s Paola Morsiani, created a riveting and fabulous retrospective of the Swiss artist’s work. While most video art ends up being shown in or on a black box, Rist’s…
Best Cigar Bar
Come September 1, the city’s new smoking ordinance goes into effect, banning smoke in just about every building imaginable. One of the few exemptions will be cigar bars, thanks pretty much to Downing Street Pub. What saved Downing Street? Was it the 400-square-foot humidor in the center of the dark…
Best Hero
“I love you!” That’s how Karen Jennings, homeless liaison for all of Fort Bend ISD for a dozen years, always greets her overworked underlings. It’s her way of acknowledging up-front all the good deeds they perform each day, keeping teens in school and out of trouble. This year Jennings took…
Best Local TV News Reporter
It’s early Saturday morning, you’re hung over and you can’t sleep. You flip on the TV for something to soothe your aching brain. Local news is the last thing you want — no cheesy, chatty, cookie-cutter face blathering on about red-light cameras, thank you. But there’s anchorwoman Chau Nguyen, making…
Best Free Wi-Fi Spot
This Greek-themed coffee shop and wine bar is like a posh library during the day. Students quietly type away on laptops while sipping on assorted coffee drinks. The large two-story building houses all sorts of Greek relics among the scattered tables and couches. And if you feel like a quiet…
Best Onion Rings
Little Hip’s pays homage to a now-defunct diner once located in San Antonio. Among its standout classic Texas-style (by way of Louisiana) dishes is the homemade onion rings. While most local diners settle for the frozen bag of prefab rings, Little Hip’s shows the love by breading every one of…
Best Rum Drinks
This Montrose-area hipster pool hall has a creative array of frozen daiquiris featuring our favorite Caribbean invention. Concoctions like the Slippery Climax and the Force Field go heavy on the rum and light on the everything else, including price. Their use of Bacardi 151 and Malibu rums makes the mixes…
Best Dumplings
Fu Fu’s awesome soup dumplings appear on the menu disguised as “A26 Steam Pork Bun (4) $2.50.” The only way to appreciate the true genius of the soup dumpling is to burst the whole thing in your mouth. That way, the soup combines with the soft dough and the loose…
Best Calamari
The menu at Mi Luna tapas restaurant in the Village has no shortage of things to choose from. It’s helpful to have a glass of sangria in hand before even trying to make a decision. On this impressive list, there are two calamari dishes, one fried and one grilled. The…
Best Place to Buy Coffee Beans
Lots of places in the city offer good cups of coffee, but how many offer you a cup or a bag of beans that were roasted that very morning? Take a drive out to La Porte and visit the Purple Turtle Coffee Company, where they roast coffee beans daily. From…
Best Hairstylist
Mary Catherine got her initial training at Toni & Guy when it was still chichi and exclusive — long before you could buy their hair products at, say, a bait ‘n’ tackle shop in Llano. Though she’s worked at several salons and spas during her more than 20 years in…
Best Vet
What can we say about Dr. Danielle Rosser and the staff at WAAC? Woof! What’s not to like about a clinic that sports free, adoptable puppies in the waiting room, tiny canine T-shirts with rhinestone sayings like, “My Mother’s a Bitch!,” premium pet food, a 20-plus-pound cat on the reception…
Best Liquor Store
They call it Spec’s Liquor Warehouse because, well, calling a liquor store the size of a large supermarket just a store wouldn’t exactly do it justice. This Mecca offers it all, no matter what you’re looking to down. If you need a keg for a frat party, they have over…
Best Deli
Kahn’s Deli is a Houston institution, and as you sit and wait for your sandwich you’ll soon figure out why. This old-school deli in the Village makes one hell of an amazing Reuben sandwich, and almost everyone in line will be ordering the original or some variation of it. The…
Best Taqueria
Matamoros Meat Market used to sell the best carnitas and barbacoa in the city, but you could only get them by the pound to go. Then they added the taqueria a few years ago, so now you can get your barbacoa or carnitas on a taco and then sit down…
Best Tapas
If you’re looking for a swanky wine bar that’ll impress a date, Oporto is your place. The tapas here aren’t snacks; they’re huge. There’s nothing better to nibble on while quaffing a glass of wine than the “Oportobello.” It’s a marinated portobello mushroom topped with spinach and artichoke gratin and…
Best Gun Range
Texans love to blow up stuff, and we take serious pride in doing it. Naturally, then, it’s important to us to have the best facilities. And when Houstonians feel the need to start shooting, there’s no better place to do it than American Shooting Centers. This 563-acre adult playground of…
Stove Blow
Forget the Beatles. Whatever, Metallica. And never mind, Nirvana. The biggest musical influence on musicians today is the Nintendo Entertainment System. For an entire generation of bands raised by video games, it makes more sense to jam on the Bubble Bobble theme than to play “You Really Got Me” in…
Anthony Arnove
Anthony Arnove doesn’t expect a knock-down-drag-out fight during his upcoming appearance at Rothko Chapel, but he does admit it might be a good idea to bring your own megaphone. That’s because Arnove, the author of Iraq: The Logic of Withdrawal, will be discussing — if the book title wasn’t a…
Best Theater Company
Founded 31 years ago “to preserve African-American artistic expression and to enlighten, entertain and enrich a diverse community,” the Ensemble Theatre gets better each season, and this year was a banner one. The stage fare was distinctly varied and indefectibly produced with the company’s usual high polish and downtown sass…
Best Unsigned Band
Formerly known as The Squishees, who were formerly known as The Slurpees, 500 Megatons of Boogie offers up an original, post-punk sound. Led by Erik Westfall, who has played with such notable names as Randy “Biscuit” Turner, the group conjures up comparisons to Gang of Four, The Melvins and Link Wray…
Best Artist
Bill Davenport embraces his inner hobbyist when he makes art. He’s built wonky wood sculptures that look like shop-class rejects. He’s crocheted objects and needlepointed drawings. He’s painted trompe l’oeil replicas of old paperbacks. In his recent work, he’s made outsized sculptures from insulating foam board and joint compound that…
Best Family Outing
Houston was once home to AstroWorld, amusement park extraordinaire. Sadly, AstroWorld is gone, but we still have a world-class family entertainment facility – the Houston Museum of Natural Science. Wait, wait, yes, it’s a museum, but it’s not the kind where you have to whisper and the exhibits are safely…
Best Interstate Church
It took what seemed like years to build, and then, voilà, there it was. But what is it? There amid many a gun shop, porn emporium and used-tire barn, rising out of the pine-tree-lined concrete gash that is the Eastex Freeway, now stands this vast apparition, looking like nothing so…
Best Local TV Personality
KHOU Channel 11’s Great Day Houston host and senior producer Whitney Casey has plenty of brains under her perfectly coiffed blond hair. Before coming to Houston, the Emmy Award-winning Casey was one of CNN’s youngest correspondents ever, and her television news duties included coverage of the September 11 attacks in…
Best Community Newspaper
Still adapting to the Internet age, newspapers everywhere are emphasizing more localized coverage. Few do local news as well as the West University Examiner, which excels in identifying crime patterns, explaining development deals and crafting human-interest profiles. And, in the age of Craigslist, it’s one of the-few rags out there…
Best Mac and Cheese
We all know everything Monica Pope touches turns to gold: food, cocktails, locations, even her wait staff. Take her simple-but-elegant mac and cheese. On any given Tuesday, you can walk into T’afia and order a side of mac and cheese just like mom used to make — that’s if your…
Best Mussels
‘Twas a brave soul that first ate an oyster, and the same can be said of mussels. When it comes to mussels, or moules as they are called in French, no country does more with them than Belgium, where moules frites (mussels and fries), pronounced as one word, has become…
Best Dim Sum
The Hong Kong-trained chef at Kim Son’s Southwest Freeway location in Stafford turns out more than 100 different dim sum dishes. His green-skinned xiu mai is gorgeous, and his shrimp-stuffed eggplant is divine. Ask for the photo-illustrated dim sum menu at the front desk; it will help you figure out…
Best Nachos
Pico’s is known for many things, but Nachos Jorge should be near the top of the list. Piled high with savory cochinita pibil (Yucatan-style roasted pork), pickled onions, refried black beans, Chihuahua cheese, guacamole and jalapeños, these nachos are exceptional. More than enough for a meal, they’re hard to stop…
Best Bait ‘n’ Tackle
This sprawling complex in Katy is a sort of Mecca for outdoorsmen. If Armageddon ever comes, this is the only place you’ll need. It’s your basic one-stop survival shop, selling a variety of guns and hunting supplies and probably everything a man who loves fishing ever needs, and then some…
Best Costume Shop
This family-run business has been a Houston institution since 1950. Things have changed a bit since then, and that’s a good thing — you can now view costumes and order online. And they have disguises for pretty much everyone — adults, kids, plus-size — from the standard to the more…
Best Wine Store
From a single Uptown location to three Tasting Rooms and the überhip Max’s Wine Dive, TTR has spread like barnacles on the Black Pearl. It’s a wine bar-cum-cafe-cum-super-chic eatery (Max’s), but we still like it just as a wine store — a perfect place to pop in after work and…
Best Native Texas Plants
Walking through the maze of plants at Joshua’s immediately slows the heart rate, as you lose yourself in a mini-Garden of Eden. Two zebra finches, Dot and Dash, hold court in a faux bois birdcage, stuttering the soothing Morse code that inspired their names. We’ve seen Joshua Kornegay throw in…
Best Expense Account Restaurant
Everything about Tony’s exudes class, and if you’re entertaining an important client, you’ll want everything to be executed flawlessly from the moment you arrive to the moment you leave. That’s precisely what you’ll get here. If you’re into “over the top” and have a limitless expense account, open with a…
Best Mexican
Mexico’s Deli on Dairy Ashford is a humble little eatery with walk-up counter service and exceptional food. The tacos al pastor are made with marinated pork and bits of pineapple carved from a trompo (a cone of meat on a vertical roaster) on display beside the grill. The tangy pork…
Best Neighborhood Spot Downtown
Ask any downtown dweller where you can get a cold beer and a sandwich at any time of the day or week, and they will tell you The Flying Saucer. Said dweller may or may not mention the waitresses in short skirts, the wide selection of beer, the tasty bar…
Best Place for a Pickup Game
The Fonde Recreation Center, set along the Buffalo Bayou just west of downtown, is the city’s premier spot for pickup basketball. Dozens of NBA legends, from Clyde Drexler to Hakeem Olajuwon, have graced the courts, and many of the old-timers still occasionally show up to run the floor. The gym…
The Western Civilization
Local popsters The Western Civilization are hitting the road and hoping fans will help out. “We have all kinds of expenses coming up with the tour in October and could really use some help,” says a tour donation request on the group’s MySpace page. (Uh, yeah, let us know how…
“Tradition and Invention: the Woodcut Prints of Akira Kurosaki”
Akira Kurosaki knows patience is a virtue. The Japanese artist spent years mastering the painstaking, intricate art of woodcutting — then he spent another couple of years revolutionizing it. “Tradition and Invention: the Woodcut Prints of Akira Kurosaki” shows how Kurosaki took the practice of ukiyo-e, made famous between the…
Best Bar
Rudyard’s has captured countless Best of Houston® awards, including Best Veggie Burger, Best Burger, Best Bar Food and Best Neighborhood Bar. It’s really about time it was recognized for being everything patrons love about a bar. The jukebox is usually off, but the staff’s eclectic preference for everything from jazz…
Best Band to Break Up in the Last Year
The legendary ska/norteño/rockabilly/punk vatos rudos went out the way they came in — playing a packed house full of brawling, beered-up pachucos and peckerwoods. (There were no less than four fights that night at the Continental Club.) Their particular only-in-Houston brand of Second Ward psychosis and Navigation Boulevard madness might…
Best Art Guru
Clint Willour is everywhere — but quietly. His intense involvement in the Houston art scene is about the art rather than his ego. Curator of the Galveston Arts Center, Willour not only puts together great shows at his own institution, he has curated and juried hundreds of exhibitions all over…
Best Bingo Night
Our selection for Best Bingo Night this year is JR’s Bar and Grill’s Drag Queen Bingo. Now, bingo played à la JR’s has some special rules. For one thing, the opening instructions include “Pay attention to your drag queens!” For another, every time the number “O-69” is called, everyone has…
Best Place to People Watch
Where can you see Houstonians from every race, age and walk of life: Zulu warriors in full tribal regalia, Australian aborigines, Chinese kung fu experts, Indian fakirs, Kazakh belly dancers, Tuareg musicians, Japanese drummers, Greek dancers, Rastafarian CD salesmen, Irish bagpipers and Caribbean brass bands with a full complement of…
Best Place to Meet Single Men
A single, female friend of ours describes this place as “the yuppie Rudyard’s,” and we have to agree. Here, just as at any bar, you’ll find tons of dudes drinking away and looking for love. But the crop at this Irish-tinged pub is a little creamier, if you know what…
Best Cemetery
We are lucky enough to know of Woodlawn’s superiority over most local cemeteries not because we were clients, but because of a high school assignment to collect a “romantic” gravestone rubbing. The assignment wasn’t easy. We went to the oldest cemetery, where stones — if they said anything at all…
Best Pizza
The gourmet pizzas at Dolce Vita on Westheimer are fine — if they cook them long enough to get them crisp. But if you find yourself craving a plain old-fashioned cheese pie, it’s time to go to Antonio’s Flying Pizza. Antonio Rosa really throws his crusts. Normally, he caters to…
Best Tamales
Decent Tex-Mex may be as plentiful as traffic jams here in Houston, but when it comes to authentic Mexican tamales, one need look no further than 25-year-old La Mexicana. Their homemade tamales are nothing short of spectacular. They always taste fresh and have generous doses of pepper and chile powder…
Best Chicken-Fried Steak
Lankford Grocery and Market started out as a grocery store, but it became so famous for hamburgers that at some point, it morphed into a restaurant. Today, this funky country-style café in an inner-city neighborhood is a Houston civic treasure. The breakfasts are excellent, the hamburgers are stellar and they…
Best Veggie Burger
Rudyard’s has some of the best bar food in Houston, and their veggie burger with cheese is no exception. The patty is not of the homemade variety, but on a toasted bun with cheddar and honey mustard, it’s really quite tasty. The fries have something about them, too, especially when…
Best Convenience Store
This chain of Vietnamese-owned stores has been serving neighborhood patrons with all sorts of needs, at all sorts of hours. No matter if you need to just pick up some milk or want to choose a fresh cigar from the walk-in humidor, this place provides the things commonly found in…
Best Novelty Store
So it’s two days before Mother’s Day and, like an idiot, you forgot all about it again. All the good flowers are probably gone — you need to get her something sweet, and you need it quick. Then you remember: What about that dual vibrating flexidong Mom’s always hinting about?…
Best Thrift Shop
While Value Village Super Store has plenty to offer anyone stocking an apartment on a budget, the best part of the thrift store is its stock of weird crap to buy for stupid reasons. You can get an old computer screen to throw off a building for a YouTube movie…
Best Pet Adoption
If you want to snap up a cute lil’ chihuahua, get a really big dog for protection or even snare one of the new hybrids, like a Puggle, for cheap from the Houston SPCA, first you gotta pass muster with the gentle folks there. The organization has you undergo a…
Best Sommelier
Andrea Lazar prefers the title of “beverage director” to sommelier, but whatever you call her, she has changed the way Houston drinks. Lazar is a firm believer in the naturalistic notion of terroir, and a champion of underappreciated wines. One page of her wine list is devoted entirely to overlooked…
Best Bistro
After an up-and-down career in the fine-dining arena, Chef John Sheely has found a home in the more relaxed bistro category. Mockingbird Bistro is a perfect example of what a bistro is supposed to be — a place that’s both comfortable enough to get a beer and a burger while…
Best Neighborhood Spot in Bellaire
The Roadster is a family-owned burger joint with a Greek twist. (“Yia Yia” is Greek for “granny.”) A lot of times, hybrid restaurants fall flat on one side of the equation or the other — think of all those barbecue/burger joints with great burgers but lame ‘cue. Not the Roadster;…
Best Dog Park
Last year’s winner returns victorious! To its credit, it is a darn fine dog park; to the city’s shame, it’s not like there are a bunch of great, centrally located dog parks to choose from. This is quite a hike for Inner Loopers, but if you want to give Fido…
Rise Over Ruin
While the rest of the Riff Tiffs are off at college, frontman Chris Rehm is taking a backseat to his music, literally. The singer/guitarist of the local experimental rock group is testing his skills behind the skins (that’s drums, people) in Rise Over Ruin. The group is getting some well-deserved…
Tiger Army
While many bands can claim rabid fans, fewer can fill their MySpace with scores of photos from listeners who have committed to tattoos of the group’s logo. Tiger Army boasts page after page of its distinctive tiger-head-with-bat-wings graphic decorating backs, arms and other regions. For more than a decade, the…
Best Movie Theater
A chain movie theater is the same everywhere, right? Not so with the one we affectionately call “Fountains.” There are indeed fountains nearby, but we hardly ever notice them. We rush right past to get to the unassuming theater that boasts the most comfy seats in town. Maybe it’s the…
Best CD about Houston
Long a resident of San Antonio, Texas honky-tonk titan Johnny Bush turned his attention this year to the city of his birth and raising. In collaboration with former Chronicle music critic Rick Mitchell, Bush both authored his memoirs (Whiskey River [Take My Mind]: The True Story of Texas Honky-Tonk) and…
Best Artistic Collaboration
Otabenga Jones & Associates may have hit the big time, but they’re not letting it go to their heads. OJ&A — aka Dawolu Jabari Anderson, Jamal Cyrus, Kenya Evans and Robert A. Pruitt — first met in a freshman art class at Texas Southern University. The collective’s inclusion in the…
Best Blues Club
The Big Easy is big fun. Nowhere else in Houston can you find live blues six nights a week. The venue features music legends like Guitar Shorty (Jimi Hendrix was a fan) one night and local favorites like Tony Vega or Earl Gilliam the next. They take turns keeping the…
Best Hidden Neighborhood
This Southwest Houston neighborhood has had a bit of a bad rap, some of it connected to relocated Katrina victims. But, despite the catfight at Westbury High last year, a lot of that involved the victims as victims, not as perpetrators. Other émigrés in this neighborhood, chock-full of 50-year-old, easily…
Best Place to Meet Single Women
Here’s the trick: Just walk in, grab a cart, stroll over to the book aisle and pick a diet, any diet. Let’s say you go with the Master Cleanse. Fill up your cart with all the ingredients except one, like, say, maple syrup. Walk up to the first hottie you…
Best Place to Dumpster Dive
First of all, it’s important to note that Dumpster diving does not actually entail climbing inside and rummaging around one of those giant metal bins. It’s more like yard-sale shopping, except nobody has taken the time to set up poster-board signs and sit outside collecting quarters for old flannels and…
Best Sangria
Sangria is translated from a Latin word meaning “thin out your blood before sex in the sun near the sea.” Yeah, we know you and your older brother used to mix all of your dad’s cheap wine with a bunch of fruit and booze and get totally shit-faced every summer…
Best Gay-Friendly Restaurant
Many members of Houston’s gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered communities consider Baba Yega to be the heart of Montrose. Just a few feet away from hotspots JR’s and The Mining Company, Baba Yega certainly sits in the middle of everything Montrose. But more than that, the restaurant has embraced its…
Best Drink Special
While the heyday of the Richmond Strip has gone the way of slap bracelets and grunge, The Concert Pub’s Industry Night Mondays are the best way to get drinks that are typically expensive on the cheap. With their $2 Kamikazes and $4 Bull Blasters, you can pull an Elvis and…
Best Breakfast Tacos
Look for a shiny taco truck parked in front of a do-it-yourself car wash. The big fat breakfast tacos are $1 a piece and you get your choice of scrambled eggs with bacon, ham, potatoes, nopalitos, machacado (shredded beef), chorizo or roasted peppers on a corn or flour tortilla. The…
Best Hardware Store
This isn’t a mega-size warehouse, and you won’t find any people wearing orange aprons here. Instead, you’ll find one of the oldest hardware stores in the city and a staff that can help you with the most obtuse of questions. By the time they’re done answering you, you’d believe they…
Best Place to Buy Fish
Are you a fool for flounder? A sucker for salmon? A cuckoo for cod? Ah, well, you probably see where we’re going. And that’s straight to Central Market, where seafood is delivered fresh six days a week and you’ll find one of the biggest selections in the city. And if…
Best Baby Store
Packed with high-quality furniture for babies and kids, USA Baby is the place to go when you’re looking to outfit your nursery. From beautiful and delicate bassinets to rough-and-tumble bunk beds, from rocking chairs to car seats, it’s all at USA Baby. It doesn’t matter if you want to create…
Best Pet Psychic
Lai won “Best Psychic” two years ago, so it’s no cowinky-dink that she’d move on to animals once she got people down. Whether she’s working with two-, four- or no-legged creatures, she has a freaky way about her, seemingly bridging three worlds — past, present and future. While any pet…
Best Steakhouse
The wet-aged USDA Prime porterhouse here is one of the best steaks in the city. But it’s the lack of snobbery that puts Bob’s ahead of the steakhouse pack. The Houston Bob’s is a clone of the original Bob’s in Dallas, where the bar always seems to be crowded with…
Best New Restaurant
Chef Bryan Caswell, formerly of Bank by Jean Georges in the Hotel Icon, has struck out on his own with this hip new eatery in Midtown. The seafood is not only local, it’s unique. Where else can you get triple tail and croaker? Dishes like crispy-skinned snapper and pompano a…
Best Place for an After-Work Jog
Though it looks like we can’t decide which one of these places is best, the truth is their connections make them all winners. The trails running through Buffalo Bayou Art Park, Eleanor Tinsley Park and the Sabine-to-Bagby Promenade allow off-the-jobbers from many locations — including Montrose, Memorial and downtown —…
Best Place for Judo
Martial arts schools that teach styles ending with chi or fu far outnumber those that specialize in ones ending with do in Houston. Chalk it up to large Chinese and Vietnamese populations and the better commercial viability of their flashier fighting techniques (the Jackie Chan factor). Those looking to study…
Georgian State Dance Company
Though the schedule might say The Georgian State Dance Company, don’t expect a hoedown or interpretative dance on the life of Jimmy Carter. This program of folk dances reflects ceremonial and comic aspects of the history of Georgia — the Eurasian country that was formerly part of the Soviet Union…
ODC’s Velveteen Rabbit
Tender as the dawn, Margery Williams’s Velveteen Rabbit is classic children’s story-telling at its very, very best. The tale is about a much-loved, soft stuffed rabbit who becomes real after he nurses a little boy through a bout with scarlet fever. Now imagine this sweetness as a ballet complete with…
Best Bar Atmosphere/Decor
Whether you’re looking to make eyes with a cutie at the end of the bar, shoot pool with friends in a hunter’s lodge or listen to a piano man in a room of gorgeous wood paneling and fancy mirrors, Leon’s Lounge is your place. Just off the McGowen stop on…
Best CD By Local Musicians
A true jazzman on the mike, Devin is a master of meter, intonation and rhyme. His down-to-earth words are full of wit and humor, and man, those relaxing, blessed-out beats — they make you exhale like you just slid into a hot whirlpool bath after toting the rock 32 times…
Best Band Name
Unfortunately, the most memorable and original name for a band is Doo Doo Butter. No other moniker could better burn “disgusting” into a person’s mind. What it means exactly — well, we’ll let you figure it out on your own. Doo Doo Butter is just gross on so many levels…
Best Club for Out-of-Town Acts
Imagine Corinne Bailey Rae in an intimate setting, with just you and 300 of your closest friends. Maybe you’d prefer Stephen Marley or James Hunter. From neo-soul up-and-comers to blues legends, everyone stops by Warehouse Live. The club, a converted 1920s warehouse, has made its reputation by having a diverse…
Best 15 Minutes of Fame
For a short while, this unhinged woman was a savior to our bummed-out, cynical nation. Iraq, the U.S. Attorneys scandal, dead Anna Nicole — it was too much bleakness for us to handle. But then God, who obviously wants to produce movies for the Lifetime Network, sent us Lisa Nowak…
Best Spanish Radio Station
Estereo Latino KLTN 102.9 FM has tons of the latest hot Latin music. But then again, so do a dozen other Spanish-language radio stations. So, what makes the station stand out in the crowded Latino radio market? The DJs, of course. Host and show producer Raul Brindis is the morning…
Best Public Library Branch
So many libraries are stale, stiff, silent. Theyre more like mortuaries than hubs of active study and learning. Not so McGovern-Stella Link, located in a modern glass and brick building with sleek furniture, efficient computers, a buzzing snack area and loads of natural light. With a line that forms outside…
Best Taco
Sure, they might not be the most authentic tacos in town — and heck, the entire establishment is puro bolillo — but we can’t get enough of the tacos verde at Tacos a Go-Go, and we’re not just talking about the times we stumble over there drunk from a night…
Best Family Restaurant
Cavatore’s has been serving Houston families for generations. A warm, friendly staff, excellent food, reasonable prices and Michaelangelo on piano make this one of the most popular Italian restaurants in town. (Folks drive in from the suburbs to dine on Cavatore’s scrumptious spaghetti and handmade meatballs.) The restaurant is still…
Best Cheeseburger
The city’s best cheeseburger starts with a half pound of juicy ground Kobe cooked medium-rare. The cheese is nothing less than triple cream brie, troweled on extra thick. The bun is a custom-baked brioche fashioned by the artisan crew at Kraftsmen Bakery. Once the burger is mounted on the roll,…
Best Doughnuts
As with Dunkin’ Donuts fans in the Northeast, there’s something about Shipley’s that Texans can’t get enough of. Started in 1936 in Houston, Shipley’s is in just about every Texas town and throughout the South. The offerings here are always fresh and, if your timing is good, the hot glazed…
Best Laundromat
Tucked into a mostly residential part of Montrose, this laundromat is as good as it gets when it comes to laundry day. AM radio nonchalantly fills the place with the music of Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin, making the chore just a little more digestible. Washers and dryers always seem…
Best Tobacco Store
A past champion reemerges! Nestled in Rice Village, this tobacconist treasure trove has been in business since 1962. Bulk, chewing, rolling, canned — they can meet all your tobacco needs. And if it’s a cigar you’re after, they have one of the biggest selections in the city. You can find…
Best Dentist
Bruce Smith is a great believer in “no pain” dentistry. That alone should qualify him for an award, but that’s not all Dr. Smith has done to deserve our notice. The dentist, who began his career by doing service work in rural Waller County, came to Houston in 1981 —…
Best Pool Service
Don’t service people generally just scare the crap out of you? They reel off a judgmental tirade laden with technological jargon designed to make you feel like a worm. Where to go, if you’re a new pool owner flummoxed by the summertime care and feeding that rivals a newborn baby’s?…
Best Vegetarian
The menu may not be strictly vegetarian, but most of the second page of Baba Yega’s menu is devoted to meat-free fare. It’s not all soy protein, either, although the veggie club, stacked with provolone and fake bacon and turkey, is one of the best choices. If actual vegetables are…
Best Barbecue Restaurant
Originally known as Shepherd Drive Barbecue, this is the restaurant where the legendary John Davis once presided as owner and pit boss. When John Davis died in 1983, the current owner, Jerry Pizzitola, bought the place from the Davis family so he could preserve it. The old-fashioned pit burns hickory,…
Best Picnic Spot
Bell Park, a tiny slice of green space on Montrose just north of Hermann Park, is both romantic and soothing. A wall of lush, well-kept greenery keeps the traffic out of sight and cuts down on the noise, giving visitors a respite from the busy hustle-bustle of everyday life. Tall…
Best Stadium Announcer
The voice booms and echoes through the stadium. The names are announced clearly. And with authority. The man behind the microphone at Minute Maid Park never fails to let you know who’s batting. Or pitching. Or coming in from the bullpen. Bob Ford’s the one constant with the Houston Astros…
Black Lips Shopping Spree
Regular visitors to Internet voyeur portals like Lastnightsparty.com, listen up: Here’s your chance to pick up some of the same clothes all those adorable (if somewhat underfed) hipsters on those sites wear, and still have plenty of cash left over for vodka and cocaine. Stop by Buffalo Exchange, 1618 Westheimer,…
New DVD Releases
As You Like It (HBO) Babel: 2-Disc Collectors Edition (Paramount Vantage) Broken (Weinstein) The Bronx Is Burning (ESPN) Building Bombs (New Video Group) Chalk (Arts Alliance America) Cinema 16: European Short Films (Warp) Cujo: 25th Anniversary Edition (Lionsgate) Davey and Goliath: The Lost Episodes (Starlight) Drawn Together: Season Two (Paramount)…
Art Capsule Reviews
“Ellen Orseck: Storms, Sumos and Sweets” Ellen Orseck’s paintings of sumo wrestlers and cupcakes, as well as tornadoes, are nestled snugly in the warm, intimate gallery of UH Downtown. In energetic paintings culled from photographs, the small plastic sumo wrestler parades and pantomimes on a dining room table with cupcakes…
The Kingdom
The Kingdom is the first film from Peter Berg since the actor-turned-director’s Friday Night Lights, which spawned an acclaimed, if struggling, franchise for NBC. There will be no small-screen spin-off of The Kingdom — there are too many corpses lying around to populate a sequel, much less a series. Besides,…
Feature Photo
Hours before his death, John Kennedy told a rain-soaked crowd at Fort Worth that his wife Jacqueline would not be appearing with him at a rally. “Mrs. Kennedy is organizing herself. It takes longer, but, of course, she looks better than we do when she does it,” he said. Today’s…
Lair
In terms of the yawning chasm between what was promised and what has been delivered, Lair earns the distinction of being the biggest letdown ever for PlayStation 3. Worse, it’s also one of those games where massive prerelease hype merely ended up underscoring its flaws, transmogrifying a game that would’ve…
Gringo’s Grill
At Gringo’s Grill (12330 Southwest Fwy., 281-980-1784), the cheese they put on top of the seafood au gratin ($9.99) is sure to put a smile on your face. This version is made with white wine, cream and Parmesan, and it’s melted on top of an abundant mixture of crab, shrimp…
Stage Capsule Reviews
Jeannette Clift George Onstage If Houston stage veteran Jeannette Clift George decided to read from the Yellow Pages, she could imbue it with drama to spare. She’s that good. Her one-woman show ushers in the 41st season of A.D. Players – where she is founder and artistic director – and…
Murcof, Cosmos
Minimalist techno maestro Murcof, a.k.a. Fernando Corona, summons the monolith on Cosmos. His third LP is an epic exploration of electronically manipulated acoustic recordings featuring crystalline atmospheres and subtle piano chords. Alternately haunting and stark, his almost marrow-eviscerating strings are interspersed with infinitesimal beats. A founder, and until recently a…
Feast of Love
Director Robert Benton, best known for his zeitgeisty divorce drama Kramer vs. Kramer, has tapped into more than a few current trends in Feast of Love. There are the interlocking mini-stories, à la Crash; the different color filters for different scenes (happy moments in yellow, sad ones in blue), à…
Weird Wide Web: International Strange Music Day, Oddmusic, Starving Weirdos, Strange Glue and many more
www.strangemusic.com This site claims August 24 is International Strange Music Day. Its creator is Patrick Grant, whose sound The Village Voice calls a “driving and harsh energy redolent of rock” with “intricate cross-rhythms.” You can also hear songs on Grant’s MySpace page: www.myspace.com/patrickgrantnyc. www.oddmusic.com The name says it all: “Oddmusic…
Texas Felonies, Boner Lawsuits and Priscilla Slade’s MySpace
Kevin Lee is currently in Harris County Jail. Which isn’t all that unusual for him — he’s been convicted of 20 felonies over the last 22 years. Twenty felony convictions, and he’s been sent away to the state penitentiary exactly once. What the hell ever happened to tough-as-nails, three-strikes-and-you’re-out Texas?…
Houston’s Very Best Songs Ever
When we originally set about attempting to catalogue a list of Houston’s top songs ever, we thought it was a stretch. How could there be a list of ten, much less 100, world-recognized songs from this relative backwater of a music city? In fact, the exact opposite is true. The…
Mail Call
District dogma: Thanks for putting something in your newspaper about this matter [“Shouldn’t You Be in Church?” Hair Balls, by Richard Connelly, September 13]. I have contacted the American Civil Liberties Union and Americans United for Separation of Church and State. I think these guys at Fort Bend Independent School…
Sushi Jin
The challenge in reviewing Sushi Jin, the stellar Japanese restaurant on Memorial at Dairy Ashford, is finding new adjectives to describe how fresh the fish is. I’ve already said the fish at other sushi places around town was fresh, really fresh and really, really, bright-and-shiny fresh, so now what do…
Mexican-American Culture
Dear Mexican, After the great migration of Jews to this nation, a question was posed: “How long does it take a Jew to go from being a street sweeper to becoming a corporate attorney?” The answer given was, “One generation.” Not so for Mexicans. Most Mexicans seem to recoil from…
The Art Guys, “Cloud Cuckoo Land”
So you’ve just made the hour-long trek to Galveston, and you’re going to see an exhibit called “Cloud Cuckoo Land,” a collection of works by Jack Massing and Michael Galbreth — The Art Guys. You may be expecting to see an outrageous stunt on the scale of Absolutly 1,000 Coats…
Clint Black
Despite landing on both the best and worst lists of Houston songs elsewhere in this issue, Clint Black has mostly been a model of consistency. Years of toiling in area clubs resulted in the overnight success of 1989’s Killin’ Time and an armload of country-music awards hardware over the years…
Do Make Say Think
The moment music is rediscovered after being buried alive can be just as important as, and far more personal than, the moment it originally came to life. Post-rock has already suffered one of these untimely deaths, but a few bands — Toronto’s Do Make Say Think chief among them —…
The Melody Club
My big sis Shannon, who doubles as my best friend, suggested we take a dance lesson on Monday night. Bearing the emotional and physical scars of past bad ideas (padded bras in high school and back diving off the high board), I really wanted to say no. But I acquiesced…
DJ Screwfest
DJ Screw would never have imagined that one day a festival large enough to require Reliant Arena would be held in his honor. Sadly, the inventor and namesake of all things screwed and chopped left this world earlier than anyone planned, but he left an indelible impression the short time…
Anders Parker
These days we’re utterly awash in music from all sides — terrestrial and satellite radio, iPods, MP3 blogs, TV ads, and on and on. This raging torrent of sound, this outrageous clatter of ambient hum, spans the quality spectrum from sublime to awful, and yet it seems harder than ever…
Special Delivery
Knocked Up (Universal) Apparently, as Judd Apatow was making Knocked Up he was also prepping for its DVD release, as most of the bonuses here were shot during breaks on location. And they’re no small treats, either — finally, here’s a “collector’s edition” worthy of the moniker. Chief among the…
Mono
At first glance, Mono’s stratospheric rock may seem like a dead ringer for any number of instrumental post-rock bands out there. But the Tokyo outfit delineates itself fairly well from its rivals, mainly the guitar dirges of Scotland’s Mogwai and Explosions in the Sky’s similar plume of spangled electric guitars…
Gene Watson, In a Perfect World
Houstonian Gene Watson may not be a household name, but he’s no stranger to the country charts; “Fourteen Carat Mind,” his diary of losing a woman to her uptown tastes, hit No. 1 in 1982. Nashville hasn’t forgotten him, as Vince Gill, Lee Ann Womack, Connie Smith, Rhonda Vincent, Joe…
Del the Funky Homosapien, Devin the Dude, Coughee Brothaz
Del the Funky Homosapien has gone from protégé to pioneer. The Oakland flowmaster began under the wing of cousin and OG Ice Cube, but flew the coop to develop his own style. The result was a mix of jazzy sampling and off-center lyrics about topics such as bowel movements (“BMs”)…
Jimmie’s Place
Forty-three years ago, a seven-year-old girl stood in line at the Sam Houston Coliseum. She was wearing a dress her mother had made — blue velvet with white lace — and clutching a concert program in her hand, stretching her arm and waving over the woven cord barrier in the…
Houston’s Ten Worst Songs
Three years back, inspired by Texas Monthly’s list of the 40 best songs from Texas, I compiled a list of the “Dirty 30” worst tunes from the Lone Star State. I went pretty easy on Houston, because when it comes to bad music from Texas, Dallas has the market cornered…
DJ Witnes, Spain Colored Orange, You (genious), DJ Paramour, Paris Falls, Wicked Poseur, DJ Melodic
Love it or hate it — and it’s nigh impossible to be neutral about the place — the Proletariat has something other Houston nightlife outposts wish they did: an honest-to-goodness scene, and quite a scene at that. In five years, the modest building near Richmond and Montrose has become perhaps…
Kanye West, Graduation
Graduation completes Kanye West’s academic trilogy, and if it’s truly his “dissertation,” as he says on opener “Good Morning,” he’s created another crowd-pleaser but neglected the deeper social and introspective observations that elevated 2005’s Late Registration. But should an artist even be compared to a gold standard he/she created? If…
Ministry, The Last Sucker
If The Last Sucker is, as leader Al Jourgensen says, Ministry’s swan song, fans are not left wanting. From the assault of opener “Let’s Go,” the album recalls the thick groove and overall intensity of The Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Taste, churning through downtuned heavyweights like “Life Is…
Houston Ballet’s Fall 2007 Mixed Repertory Program
Lascivious lifts, provocative poses, skimpy skivvies and adulterous affairs. Now that we have your attention, let’s talk about Houston Ballet’s Fall 2007 Mixed Repertory Program, which features a world premiere, a company premiere and a modern classic. And yes, there’s plenty of sex. First off, Houston Ballet artistic director Stanton…
Iron & Wine, The Shepherd’s Dog
Even if you don’t think you know Iron & Wine, the stage name of singer-songwriter Sam Beam (inspired by the packaging on a protein supplement), you’ve no doubt been caught mouthing the words to his cover of the Postal Service’s “Such Great Heights” in the M&Ms commercial that plays before…
Local Motion
Vinal Edge Records 13171 Veterans Memorial Blvd., 281-537-2575 1. Animal Collective, Strawberry Jam (CD) 2. Circle, Katapult (LP/CD) 3. Psychic Paramount, Gamelan Into The Mink Supernatural (LP) 4. Sleep, Holy Mountain (LP) 5. Angels of Light, We Are Him (CD) 6. Baroness, Red Album (CD) 7. KTL, 2 (LP) 8…
