Mini Marathon
SUN 10/2 We all dream of being a movie star: our name in lights, our dirt discussed on fan blogs and our breakups the dramatic stuff of tabloid fodder. But sit through the 11 minutes of Rick Kent’s Starlet — a doc that brutally depicts pretty young things enduring the…
Played for Fools
Anyone vaguely familiar with the rules of golf knows that you may not improve your lie, ground your club in a sand trap or — most grievous of all — subtract strokes from your score. This last one apparently never occurred to the makers of a new movie with the…
Best Local Musician Who Left Town and Will Truly Be Missed
Brian McManus — also known as Brian McGuilloteen, the rowdy guitarist for the Fatal Flying Guilloteens, and as Filthy McNasty, the rambunctious, R&B-singing front man for Filthy McNasty and the Rhinestone Life (not to mention the Press’s former Nightfly) — has picked up and moved to Philadelphia. Anyone who’s ever…
Best Gay Bar
We were big fans of Guava Lamp in its old location, tucked away over there at Shepherd and Richmond, but we like its digs on Waugh even better. The new circular bar, covered in copper-colored tiles, just makes it a lot easier to check out who’s checking us out. The…
Best Band to Leave Houston in the Last Year
Nikki Texas, a.k.a. NTX, a.k.a. Tex Kerschen, was important to Houston’s independent music scene. But he’s gone and left us for the (less intense) sun and surf of Los Angeles, a move that makes perfect sense for him. After the demise of his early combo, the synth-fueled rock band Japanic,…
Best Musical
Burt Bacharach will forever be associated with the ’60s. Tunes like “I’ll Never Fall in Love Again,” made famous by the velvet-voiced Dionne Warwick, defined urbane cool. They also do quite well in today’s world of musical comedy, as Main Street Theater’s production of Bacharach’s Promises, Promises made clear. Spun…
Best Blues Club
At first glance, the Big Easy’s vicelike grip on the category seems too easily clinched. For a city like Houston, with a sizable amount of blues history, there’s a surprising paucity of clubs devoted to the genre. The Dead Club Scythe has killed off the little joints (Miss Ann’s Playpen,…
Best Nachos
When some folks think of nachos, they think of the plastic tub full of Tostitos and Cheez Whiz served up at places like Minute Maid Park. But to merely place cheese on a chip is practically a crime; those fried little tortillas can hold so much more. The Spanish Flowers…
Best Chicken-Fried Steak
Stringy, sinewy cuts of second-rate cow bathed in a blanket of pasty flour can come dangerously close to high school cafeteria levels in some joints. Cookie the trail-hand cowboy cook would be downright offended by some of the versions being rustled up. Not so at Hickory Hollow, where they truly…
Best Production
This year the folks at Infernal Bridegroom Productions conjured the ancient Greeks to help them create the most extravagantly intelligent and wonderfully original production of the season. Euripides’s Medea, about a woman who kills her children to get back at her unfaithful husband, is one of Western civilization’s oldest and…
Best View
The best view in the Houston area requires some gas money and a large appetite for Gulf Coast seafood. Head down I-45 to Galveston, catch the ferry to Bolivar Peninsula and follow the signs to Stingaree Restaurant. For optimal viewing, arrive about an hour and a half before sunset and…
Best Local TV News Reporter
We’re not saying that it only takes a pretty face to be a good TV reporter. We’re not saying that notorious “Railcar Killer” Angel Maturino Resendiz had anything other than Cynthia Hunt’s austere professionalism on his mind when he sent her exclusive jailhouse letters that were ultimately subpoenaed for his…
Best Vintage Houston Personality
There’s not a Houstonian alive who doesn’t know this human oddity’s name and freakish visage. To a Houston transplant, the first Zindler sighting is one of those occasions where you question reality, the existence of a fair and merciful God, and your eyesight. Could that dude really look like that?…
Best Tapas
In a town rife with excellent Mexican food, it’s almost too easy to overlook tapas. Well, ignore no more, because Mi Luna brings the Espana with panache to spare. Order a variety of the smaller, affordable dishes like the cheese plate or the pulpa a la vinagreta (marinated octopus in…
Best Tofu/Soy Products
Sometimes we all need a break from chicken-fried steak and baby-back ribs smothered in mesquite barbecue sauce. And, well, some of us don’t like to eat dead stuff. So when your inner hippie’s stomach starts grumbling, hightail it to Rice Epicurean Markets. These classy joints are part of Houston’s oldest…
Best Black-and-White Photo Booth
Nothing captures spontaneity more than a trip into a photo booth. In four frames, moods and gestures can change so rapidly. While a lot of photo booths have come to the modern age with color photos and stickers, this veritable time warp inside Amy’s Ice Cream has stayed just the…
Best Wine Class
So, you have a subscription to Wine Enthusiast, own a wine encyclopedia and special corkscrews, and conduct blind tastings at home with vintages from your cellar. Still feel like that’s not enough? If you really want to impress your friends and be the ultimate wine geek, fork out $1,500 and…
Best Cuban Restaurant
The huge awning outside this classic little joint on the southwest side announces that Cafe Miami is the “King of Black Beans.” In this town, that’s no mean feat, and the fact is, the restaurant deserves the title. Also, try a basket of fried plantains and some yuca relish bathed…
Best Soul Food Restaurant
Just Oxtails Soul Food is modestly named and modestly situated in a corrugated metal building next to a church and a biker bar. It easily lives up to its name, offering divine oxtails, which are tender and drenched in an addictive, slightly sweet gravy. But that’s not the only reason…
Best Neighborhood Spot in Galveston
Real Galvestonians don’t give a damn about tourist restaurants in restored Victorians. They don’t fret over finding a tabletop view of the beach. Their folk is bayou folk, and just about the last down-home, real Galveston spot left on this island ain’t scenic. It’s a red-and-white shack surrounded by a…
Best Deli
If the phrase “Gimme some tongue” flows freely from your lips, then you’re gonna love Kenny & Ziggy’s, where there’s more than just tongue. Here you’ll also find the tastiest corned beef, pastrami and chopped liver as well as some outstanding smoked fish, such as sturgeon, sable and whitefish, all…
Best Place to Ride a Horse
Like riding horses? Hate terrorists? Well, now’s your chance to trot ol’ Trigger around the trail and keep a lookout for Osama at the same time. The Houston Airport System’s Airport Rangers are volunteers who patrol the 34 miles of perimeter fencing around Intercontinental. You have to pass a background…
Best Park
Row upon row of golden and brown cocoons shiver at the Cockrell Butterfly Center. Soon an iridescent wing will slip from the husk, and another creature will join the spectacle under way in the towering glassed-in exhibit filled with colorful drifting wings and flowering plants. Within and without this sanctuary…
Think Pink
SAT 10/1 It’s time again for the Komen Houston Race for the Cure, the largest road race in Houston, which raises money for breast cancer education, screening, research and treatment. This year’s race was relocated because of hurricane relief efforts, but that hasn’t stopped volunteers from raising a record amount…
Capsule Reviews
An Empty Plate in the Caf du Grand Boeuf Michael Hollinger’s play, now running at Main Street Theater, is a most unusual comedy. Wildly ambitious, the play invokes some of American literature’s most familiar images, including Ernest Hemingway, a Parisian cafe and existential angst. But revered as they may be,…
Best Unsigned Act
He’s got that Ron Sexsmith-Neil Finn-Jeff Buckley melancholy singer-songwriter thing going for him. He’s got a great band, featuring hypercerebral drummer Paul “Falcon” Valdez and dreamlike pedal steel player Matt Rhodes. His CD was perched at or near the top of the sales chart at Cactus Music & Video all…
Best Icehouse
No effing contest. Once again, West Alabama Ice House gets the prize. The beer, the bikers, the bands — this place has it all. Where else can you dine on dogs, pitch shoes and take it to the hole, all in one place? In your own backyard, you say? Well,…
Best Bar
While flashier and hipper bars have come and gone in downtown Houston, rock-steady Warren’s Inn remains a bar for people who go to bars to drink, not to mingle or self-advertise. The decor is dark and wooden, with a mishmash of tables and a single turret-style elevated booth (the best…
Best Rice Village Bar
The undisputed college bar’s college bar, The Ginger Man boasts a massive menu of magnificent microbrews. The CD jukebox has an eclectic selection, ranging from high-octane classic rock to London Calling. And as might be expected, conversation overheard here is as intellectually stimulating as it is slurred, but who would…
Best Coffeehouse
Thanks to prefab Starbucks stores on every block, independent coffeehouses are on the decline. Located in a beautiful two-story house in the heart of Montrose, Agora defies all corporate definitions of an exceptional coffeehouse. Six different brews, including organic and exotic roasts and a great Texas pecan, make up the…
Best Pho
You know the drill. Semi-fatty discs of medium-rare beef stewed with chicken broth, pork bits and glass noodles in a steaming bowl as big as your head. You’re eating pho — the incomparable Vietnamese soup that’ll make you wonder aloud why those cartoon kids on the Campbell’s cans look so…
Best Croissants
This patisserie rocks the chateau. The almond croissants are thick and rich — a dieter’s nightmare. But live a little. Indulge in this buttery, flaky pastry topped with slivered almonds and stuffed to the seams with frangipane, the creamy almond filling. Heaven. Late sleepers might miss out on these because…
Best Club for Local Acts
On almost any given weekend, close to 20 Houston-area start-up punk, emo, ska and/or all-of-the-above bands show up to play no-age-restriction shows in a nonalcoholic environment. Sure, the place used to be somebody’s house, but heck, that’s appropriate — many of these combos are taking their first baby steps out…
Best Buddhist Temple
Remove your shoes and shuffle to the front of the hall. The benevolent eyes of a three-ton white jade Buddha follow your steps — as do those of a hundred lesser gold Buddhas sunk into the front of the aptly named Grand Buddha Hall. The psychic residue of the thousands…
Best Use of a Trash Can
This rolling, blaring work of art pops up at just about every social-justice event in town. Crafted out of a wheeled trash can, powered by a car battery and equipped with some big-ass speakers, the TAZmaniac Sound System has become one of the activist community’s most efficient means of raising…
Best Bureaucrat
For too many years, Houston school superintendents have depended on spin to save them from problems. Abelardo Saavedra, finishing his first year in the position at HISD, has shown a welcome ability to deal with controversy rather than just duck it. He addressed persistent stories about widespread cheating on standardized…
Best Vintage Burger
The Fifth Ward’s original giant hamburger was served at a bar and restaurant called Vivian’s Lounge on Market Street not far from Wheatley High School. Forty years later, Vivian’s grandson, Adrian Cooper, re-creates that vintage burger at his own place, Adrian’s Burger Bar, in the same neighborhood. Each hand-formed patty…
Best Sugar Job
The moaners and screamers are mostly men, Ati Shafik will tell you in her delightful Egyptian accent, as she applies a sticky paste of warmed sugar and lemon juice to your hairy parts. It’s part of a hair-removal process called sugaring, akin to waxing, but allegedly less painful and damaging…
Best Bookstore
So the last mystery you read involved one or both of the Hardy boys? Not a big fan, you say? Well, do yourself a favor and check out this store, now celebrating its 25th year of providing the best whodunits around. The folks at MBTB love their genre, and their…
Best Wine Tools/Accessories
We counted 20 varieties of wine bags alone at this chic boutique located in the Upper Kirby District. To say the least, it’s an oenophile’s wet dream. Wait, make that a person-buying-an-oenophile-a-gift’s wet dream. Wine charms, wine stoppers and books about wine abound. Need a bottle opener? But of course…
Best Place to Skip Dinner and Get to Dessert
Bruce Molzan has had a rough couple of years seeing his establishments at Minute Maid and downtown fold like…um, folding chairs or a deck of cards or something. But that doesn’t mean he’s lost it. We still think he has the best desserts in town. And while his hearty sandwiches…
Best Family Restaurant
Kids can run rampant at this family-friendly Tex-Mex joint located in an old house just off the Katy Freeway, with a large outside seating area and open-air bar. Since the wait can be excessive, the owners built a sandbox for the little ones to play in, and they invariably bring…
Best New Restaurant
Celebrity chef Noe Robert Gadsby made the big splash of the year with the opening of the Houston Noe, the sister restaurant of the original in Los Angeles, which is located in another Omni Hotel. Gadsby runs both of his playful, challenging restaurants with a whimsical touch. He defines his…
Best French Restaurant
Forty-two-year-old Philippe Schmit was born in Roanne, France, and apprenticed at several two-star restaurants in Paris before moving to New York in 1990 and taking a job as sous-chef at one of the best fish restaurants in the world, Le Bernardin. Schmit moved to Houston last year to open Bistro…
Best Place to Watch Wildlife in the Urban Jungle
We’ve got nothing against camping. Don’t get us wrong. It’s just that sometimes it feels artificial to pack up and pretend like you don’t have a house. But going to the arboretum, now that’s an authentic trip that’ll get you back in time to hit the bars. This 155-acre expanse…
Best Pedal Boats
Feel like getting away from traffic, construction and that freezing a/c in your office? Escape to Hermann Park and get yourself a pedal boat. These four-person beauties cost only $8 for a nice 30-minute cruise around the gorgeous park’s eight-acre McGovern Lake. All ages are allowed, but at least one…
Git’r Spun!
You gotta love the current music trend: Punk bands sprout from upper-middle-class suburbs, country music singers come from the inner city, and DJs like Mike Pendon are coming out of small rural towns. Pendon, a.k.a. DJ Jester the Filipino Fist, hails from West Columbia, Texas, population 5,000. In 1996 Jester…
Capsule Reviews
“Bill Traylor, William Edmondson and the Modernist Impulse” Bill Traylor and William Edmondson are two African-American artists whose work came to the attention of the art world and the broader public in the late 1930s because of its modern aesthetic. This Menil exhibition explores the modernist aspects of their work…
Best Artist Collective
Named after a pygmy who was brought to the United States in the early 1900s and placed in a zoo, Otabenga Jones & Associates consists of Jabari Anderson, Jamal Cyrus, Kenya Evans, Robert Pruitt and, of course, the spirit of the eponymous martyr, who eventually committed suicide after being released…
Best Montrose Bar
Sure, Poison Girl may have come along and seduced away some of this venerable bar’s clientele and staff, but Rudyard’s has kept on keeping on. Mike Simms has continued longtime booker Scott Walcott’s great tradition of quality music; the new outdoor seating area is the tops; and the beer, burgers…
Best CD by Local Musicians
No writer has yet encapsulated what this CD sounds like. Sure, it’s easy to broadly label it a “surreal pop-rock masterpiece,” but that doesn’t do it justice, nor do the comparisons to acts like the Shins, the Flaming Lips and Todd Rundgren. The album stands up to all that praise,…
Best River Oaks Bar
What’s wrong with classy every once in a while? This place provides a high-toned alternative to all those sports bars and trendy hipster hangouts that are so common. Elegant art on the walls, a knowledgeable bartending staff and a world-class selection of booze make Mugsy’s an option for your inner…
Best Landmark
As an amorphous blob of dishonestly named subdivisions, Houston offers drivers few signposts, greetings or markers of real meaning. One exception is the Law Office of Tim Hootman, which is as geographically appropriate as it is bizarre. Drivers exiting Interstate 45 at Pease for downtown will see, in front of…
Best Sake
Warm rice wine isn’t for everyone. In general, true connoisseurs like it cold — especially on a hot Friday night in Houston while a DJ spins Japanese house music. The staffers rock at this ultra-hip sushi bar, and they won’t mind letting you taste their many different types of sake…
Best French Fries
Ahhh, potatoes, hot grease and salt — the simple equation made so complex by so many. They aren’t all that hard to make, so how do many places manage to screw up french fries? You know the problems: too greasy, oversalted, heat-lamp limp. That’s why the Belgian eatery Cafe Montrose…
Best Karaoke
No, all karaoke nights are not created equal; some are populated by Houston’s most shameless hipsters. Grooving on the irony of doing something as magnificently unhip as performing off-key renditions of hackneyed hits, members of the cooler-than-you set make just as big fools of themselves as we mere mortals when…
Best Cheap Thrill
Speed, man. There’s nothing more exhilarating. But speed can get expensive: Mustangs, motorcycles, meth — that stuff adds up! So instead of saddling yourself with more debt (or, God forbid, another nasty addiction), head to Edwards cinema on Weslayan. You don’t even have to buy a ticket to ride the…
Best Vintage Cemetery
In this tucked-away glade of oaks, magnolias and granite markers, pockets of heavily manicured grass slump before the memorials of a thousand varieties. A grief-stricken angel is collapsed across a “Hill.” Above an eight-foot Celtic cross a mockingbird dances in the Spanish moss, singing lightly of those things the dead…
Best Civil Attorney
Our award for best civil attorney usually goes to some swashbuckling plaintiffs’ lawyer who’s racked up a big win. But let us now praise one who toils in a megafirm, defending public-minded corporate giants against all-but-frivolous suits (as defense lawyers would put it). Jim Sales has done a lot of…
Best Jellyfish Salad
In the Gulf of Mexico, they sting; on a plate at Tay Do, you get revenge. It is a sugary sweet revenge, tempered with the warmth of roasted garlic and the bite of fresh red onion. If you’ve never tried chilled jellyfish salad — or Summer Delight, as they call…
Best Adult Video Store
We don’t care much for porn. It debases both the performers and the viewers, if you ask us. But we’ve got this, um, friend, right, and this friend of ours has been to just about every adult video store in this sticky city, and that’s saying a lot, considering how…
Best Clothes for Your Dog
Dogs, to many of us, are like non-speaking children. We feed them, bathe them, buy them toys, shower them with affection and take them on walks and to the doctor. They may have fur, but isn’t that kind of like being naked? Don’t you want your best friend to look…
Best Car Wash
Ever paid someone to wash your car by hand, only to spend another hour at home erasing pesky droplet spots? Sometimes a task isn’t worth doing unless you do it yourself. We found a place that allows you, the driver, to dry and polish your car. It’s the best of…
Best Neighborhood Spot in the Heights
This is a pleasant, relaxing Heights-area spot that serves up tall cups of caffeine and pints of beer (not a short feat in this dry part of town) as patrons take in live music and DJs. At breakfast, loyal morning patrons inhale tasty croissants, bagels and kolaches, while lunchtime regulars…
Best Jamaican Restaurant
At this cozy little cottage, the chef is also the waiter, and all the food tastes homemade. Chef Neville Monteith grew up in rural East Portland, Jamaica, not far from the Boston Beach jerk shacks and the Port Antonio banana plantations. After training at the famous Trident resort hotel on…
Best Restaurant
If your definition of a great restaurant is a posh dining room where airhead waiters suck up to rich people, try the new Tony’s, or one of Tilman Fertitta’s high-end swank-aterias. But if you want to visit the epicenter of Houston’s food scene, go to T’afia, the minimalist restaurant in…
Best Neighborhood Spot Outside the Loop
Japaneiro’s is a fascinating fusion of Asian and Latino cuisines, with sushi, sashimi and tempura dishes living peacefully next to shrimp ajillo and churrasco steak. The tropical bar specializes in mojitos and caipirinhas but is equally stocked with sensational sakes, such as the raspberry-infused version. This is one high-energy spot,…
Best Rocket
He drains jumpers effortlessly. He explodes to the basket with the agility of an Olympic gymnast. When he’s on, he’s one of the few truly unstoppable players in the NBA. And during his first year in Houston, Tracy McGrady has been a model citizen. We admit we were concerned when…
Best Bowling Alley
If there were a kingdom ruled by a bowler, Palace Lanes would be the castle. This massive 44-lane bowling alley just inside the Loop treats league players like royalty from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. daily, when they’re allowed to occupy every lane. Casual bowlers, who are more familiar with…
Carlin the Shots
SAT 10/1 In real life, he’d be just another cranky old man. But armed with a microphone and an acerbic wit, 68-year-old George Carlin is known as an edgy performer. The caustic comic — who spent time in rehab this year thanks to a love affair with “wine and Vicodin”…
Our top DVD picks for the week of September 27
New releases available this week American Pie: 3 Movie Pie Pack (Universal) Beethoven: The Pooch Pack (Universal) Billy Jack: The Ultimate Collection (Ventura) Blind Melon: Live at the Metro (EMI) Bouncing Souls: Live at the Glasshouse (Fontana) Britney & Kevin: Chaotic…the DVD & More (Jive) Carlito’s Way: Rise to Power…
Best Band to Get Together in the Last Year
Though the name conjures up a utopia where families are created, God’s Temple of Family Deliverance is not a pro-life Christian rock band. In fact, it’s quite the opposite, the antithesis of both rock and roll and fundamentalism. What’s delivered by this brooding foursome is monolithic, 15-minute-plus songs of sheer…
Best Reminder that Houston Is Still in Texas
With the Inner Loop getting all cosmopolitan and whatnot, it’s often all too easy to forget that you’re in Texas. Thank our lucky stars for the Armadillo Palace, Jim Goode’s latest paean to all things Lone Star State. There’s museum-quality lore on the walls, twangy sounds on the stage, lots…
Best Circus
As with all of Cirque du Soleil’s fabulous shows, the gorgeous Varekai combined dizzying acts of death-defying acrobatics and soulful music with a loosely constructed story about a lonely wanderer. Without any forlorn circus animals, the Canadian group manages to make us all feel like kids again. And the fantastically…
Best Original Show
Tamarie Cooper has become an institution in H-town. Every summer for the past ten years, she’s treated the city to a brand-new musical episode of her ever-evolving, bust-a-gut-funny Tamalalia series, put on with the folks at Infernal Bridegroom Productions. And hip Houstonians have come to love her for it. Sadly,…
Best Nonprofit
For more than 20 years, the Houston Food Bank has been distributing millions of pounds of food annually to those in need. Efficiency counts for more than glitz, and the bank doesn’t stop with just handling food donations; chefs and nutritionists give their time to help kids and indigent families…
Best Tamales
While the average itinerant tamale peddler charges five or six bucks a dozen, Dona Tere’s go for $1 apiece. It only sounds expensive — the tamales at Dona Tere are Mexico City-style tamales that are around four times as big as Tex-Mex tamales. They’re also more imaginatively stuffed. The tamales…
Best Fried Chicken
Since 1969, Frenchy Cruzot has been consistently supplying the best Creole fried chicken in Houston. He’s also been turning out the tastiest greens, the most satisfying andouille-studded red beans and rice, and some of the best dirty rice and jambalaya the city has ever known — all sold in Styrofoam…
Best Radio Host
When it comes to sports knowledge, everyone in the city is sprinting for second place behind Charlie Pallilo. Much like his fellow sports junkies Marv Albert and Bob Costas, Pallilo is a graduate of Syracuse. It was the reading of Albert’s book (the aptly titled Yesss!) at age 12 that…
Best Court Ruling
Andrea Yates is obviously a disturbed woman, and no one can know what demons drew her to (at this point, allegedly) drown her five kids in a bathtub. But in their zeal to make a case, Harris County prosecutors threw away caution. They brought in a California psychiatrist expert named…
Best Vintage Houston Street
When J.W. Link, attorney and former mayor of Orange, developed the Montrose neighborhood in 1910 (or 1911, depending on whom you ask), he probably had no idea it would become a sanctuary for artists, hipsters, teenage runaways and gay nightclub owners. Named after a Scottish port town, the area’s eponymous…
Best Civil Court Judge
Say what you will about George W. Bush’s term as governor, one thing that can’t be argued is that he broke apart the good-ol’-boy network that previous Republican govs habitually used to fill judicial vacancies. One of the minority attorneys he named was Levi Benton, a previously little-known lawyer who…
Best Ice Cream
Grape Nuts, turtle cheesecake, orange-chocolate chip, mango madness and banana pudding are among the favorites at this vintage ice cream parlor on South Main. Hank and his wife make all the ice cream on site; they even roast their own pecans for their famous butter pecan. You can get yours…
Best Bike Shop
Thirty-five years ago, Dan and Joy Boone started refurbishing secondhand bikes in their backyard for extra grocery money. Today, they have one of the most popular bike shops in the city. The shop is still in the backyard, but they now have everything from $300 city bikes to a $4,000…
Best Farmers’ Market
Pity the fool who hasn’t browsed the rows of delightfully handmade and hand-harvested offerings at the Bayou City Farmers’ Market. As local jazz players weave their way around the musical scale, shoppers move through the stalls in the parking lot behind 3000 Richmond, checking out fruits and vegetables, cheeses, blended…
Best Comic Book Store
Whether you’re in the market for a collectible silver-age comic, an old Kurtzman Mad or the most recent “Vertigo noir” titles, Bedrock never disappoints. Not only is Bedrock City itself full to bursting with every imaginable example of the sequentialist’s art, but its Web site has a searchable database and…
Best Neighborhood Spot in Montrose
While many Montrose cafes and coffee shops attract a fairly intriguing array of customers — students with laptops, poets with notebooks, artists with sketchpads, wedding planners with engaged couples — few provide as comfortable a place to just “be” as Brasil. And the food is no slack job, either. Stunning…
Best Neighborhood Spot in the Southwest
One of Houston’s more intriguing shopping centers is located near West Bellfort and Chimney Rock, where Westbury Square tries, as it has for 30 years, to stay alive. The center’s New Orleans feel — brick paving, porches, a fountain — is so strong that Infernal Bridegroom Productions once staged a…
Best Salvadoran Restaurant
An upscale Salvadoran restaurant owned by the same people who own the El Pupusaton pupuserias, Sabor! makes a wonderful first impression with its polished granite tables, cafe-au-lait tile floors and cheerful butter-yellow walls. The restaurant is comfortable, charming and clean. The luxurious late breakfasts with fried plantains, eggs and homemade…
Best Thai Seafood Restaurant
While the former shrimping town of Kemah has been converted to an amusement park, crusty Old Seabrook, right across the channel, is still the home port of a small fleet of shrimp boats. Seafood delivery trucks are parked along the streets, waiting to take the fresh catch to Houston. And…
Best Beach
While so many beaches along our Gulf Coast tend to be less than desirable, this little oasis just down the road a piece from Freeport could make you forget you’re in Petrochemical Land. In Galveston, the constant whir of traffic along the seawall just steps from your beach towel almost…
Best Picnic Spot
Picnic Drive, in Memorial Park, is where the Man wants you to picnic. The Man will tempt you with postwar picnic benches and plenty of sweltering pavement, where you can fry eggs. But if your idea of a picnic leans more toward the version involving trees, grass, peace and quiet,…
Solitary Man
“My dad was a doctor,” says Randy Newman. “And one day when I was about 11, he came home from work and said, ‘Jesus Christ, I had this patient today who had no homosexuality in his background, and he’s taking a shower at the Y and all of a sudden…
Big Fun, Even Small
Robots (Fox) The story of a small-town ‘bot (voiced by Ewan McGregor) who bolts for the big city, Robots is the first non-Pixar film to compete with that studio’s razzle and dazzle. The thing’s stunning to look at — and, frankly, it’s better to stare at than listen to, since…
Best DJ to Skip Town and Make a Career
Sure, there are plenty of DJs who are well known in and around the city, but it seems few branch out and explore the world, let alone the state. Not so for West Columbia, Texas, native DJ Jester the Filipino Fist, a.k.a. Mikey Pendon, who left his tiny hometown to…
Best Place to Be Glad You’re Alive
The cell-phone tower a pistol shot away is probably frying your brain. Horns are honking. But once you’re inside Next Door Coffeehouse’s garden labyrinth, that world starts to disappear. This secret spot features short, teenage shrubs clipped into a sort of labyrinth, a meditative path. Somehow, it encourages you to…
Best Concert Venue
Go ahead, holier-than-thou hipsters, scoff at the choice of a corporate, commercial venue that you may view as an unholy alliance between a cell phone company and Clear Channel (um, that is, the now retro-christened Pace Concerts). But there’s nowhere better in town to see a mid-level to major show,…
Best Patio
Poison Girl’s got a strangely schizo feel to it. Inside, the narrow bar and hipster/rocker clientele reminds you of a dive in Brooklyn’s Williamsburg or San Francisco’s Mission District. Outside, though, the whole vibe shifts Texas-ward. There are picnic tables loaded with glasses of Bock beer, pebbly dirt on the…
Best Public Information Officer
Our pick for best flack is also the Houston Press Club’s “Communicator of the Year” for 2005. Espinoza-Williams produces a great monthly newsletter for the Houston Shriners Hospital, which offers free treatment to children suffering from a variety of serious conditions. Her stories not only reflect the innovative treatments the…
Best Shish Kebab
Three different kebabs are available here: beef, chicken and kafta. The beef and kafta are the best. All are served with a rice pilaf, pita bread and hummus or a salad. The skewered beef kebab has small cubes of prime filet interspersed with onion. The chopped raw onions and cilantro,…
Best Contemporary Jazz Dance Company
The Houston Met is constantly expanding its repertoire toward ever edgier contemporary jazz dance, and innovative dances full of kinetic thrills. You can count on a Met concert being both engaging and wildly entertaining. Director Michelle Smith has been savvy in selecting choreographers; the rep includes works by Robert Battle,…
Best Strip Club
There are just certain things you expect from a gentlemen’s club. Outrageous drink prices — check. Women interested in your money and your money alone — check. No sex in the champagne room — check. All these things apply at Gigi’s Cabaret, to be sure, but the drinks are a…
Best Criminal Court Judge
When the judge is the son of the county sheriff, it’s safe to say that criminal defense lawyers aren’t going to have the most optimistic feelings heading into court. But 338th District Judge Brock Thomas, son of Tommy, has dispelled any doubts about whether he can be a fair arbiter…
Best Vintage Local TV Commercial
Yes, it’s almost 30 years old, but you can still catch it every so often, and longtime Houston residents are sure to crack a smile when they hear the immortal line, “We put the YEEEE-HAWWW back in your motor and transmission!” It’s like a mini-movie: There’s romance, action, suspense and…
Best Community Newspaper
With a name that’s somehow both unassuming and boastful at the same time, The Brazosport Facts sets itself a high bar. And the feisty paper usually lives up to its moniker, providing colorful, comprehensive coverage of Brazoria County. It’s not afraid of taking on polluters or the state agencies who…
Best Bubble Tea Spot
There are two Tropioca shops in Houston, and while the downtown spot isn’t too shabby, the original Midtown location features something that adds a little spice to your pearl-filled smoothie consumption: the most beautiful customers in town. We don’t know where they come from, but if you’re in your early…
Best Convenience Store
All convenience stores are pretty much the same, right? Wrong. This place has all the basics — you know, candy, chips, sodas, cigs, forties — but it’s the extras that really make it a cut above the rest. There’s incense, faux designer sunglasses and weed magazines galore. (Seriously, we had…
Best Flea Market
You tried to just walk by, to leave the samurai weaponry and throwing stars alone this trip. Instead, you fondled a nocturnal flying squirrel from Tasmania and haggled a little too aggressively over a sofa set already priced beneath outlet prices. Hell, you handled every power tool in sight at…
Best Greeting Cards
The back room of greeting cards in Events is like an art gallery. You won’t find any run-of-the-mill images with sappy cliched limericks here. Most of the cards seem hand-made, using miniature cutouts and appliques. You might even pass them off as being homemade…we won’t tell. There are also plenty…
Best Comfort Food
Dishes like roast beef, chicken-fried steak and mac ‘n’ cheese rarely grace the cover of Gourmet magazine, but they’re at the epicenter of the collective American palate. And you’ll be hard-pressed to find a place that serves better versions of these favorites than Cleburne Cafeteria. The lines form early and…
Best Thai Restaurant
The hot larb salad with lime-juice-drenched ground beef tossed with chopped chiles, scallions, onions, mint and cilantro is electrifying. The drunken noodles — slick with lime juice, piquant with chiles and aromatic with purple basil — are spectacular. The milky-looking tom kha gai is a seductively gentle-looking chicken soup that…
Best Service
Aries owner Scott Tycer has been recognized as one of the nation’s top chefs. His crew shops and forages for ingredients that no other restaurant can offer, and Tycer hires farmers to grow things other restaurants have never heard of. But his restaurant suffered early on from the Houston dining…
Best Vietnamese Restaurant
Located in the beautiful space formerly occupied by Ba Ky restaurant, Jasmine is in full flower. Stop by for lunch, but don’t let the short list of $4 specials fool you. Sure, the noodles are excellent, but wait until you see the gigantic dinner menu. Seafood is the specialty at…
Best Bike Path
Most major cities in the United States feature some sort of sprawling green space near the epicenter where urban dwellers can find a bit of a respite from the daily grind — and in Houston’s case, the heat emanating from the concrete. Our most central slice of nature runs along…
Best Texan
After just two seasons, Andre Johnson has established himself as the Texans’ best receiver, a deep threat with Velcro hands who should get ready to make annual reservations for the Pro Bowl in Hawaii. He and quarterback David Carr may turn out to be Houston’s version of Montana-to-Rice or Aikman-to-Irvin…
So Long, For Now So Long
What was it about Frank Zappa and Third Ward guitarists? In addition to having been a huge fan of and repeat collaborator with the late Johnny “Guitar” Watson, Zappa was also on the record as saying that Gatemouth Brown — who passed away in Orange earlier this month — was…
Rita Beatahs
Seldom has Houston been more freaked out than it was in the Week of Hurricane Rita. Helped by disaster-loving local forecasters, fueled by the horrific photos from New Orleans (my God, what would happen if Houston’s levees broke?! Oh, that’s right — we don’t have any), people hit the panic…
Best Hotel Bar
The Whiskey is in a league of its own. Whether you decide on a Shiner or one of their $12-and-worth-it specialty martinis, you can’t help but feel cool in the dimly lit atmosphere, amid the muted reds and golds. You can drink at the bar, settle into one of the…
Best Radio Station
This is the last place on the commercial dial where the DJs still pick a lot of what they want to play. This is the last place on the commercial dial where virtually all of the DJs are natives of Houston and care about the city for its own sake…
Best Designer
Kirk Markley’s set for Craig Wright’s Orange Flower Water was not beautiful — it was devastating. The script told the tale of badly behaving married folks, most notable for their ordinariness. And Markley’s set, with its looming backdrop of to-the-rafters metro shelving, captured the terrible banality of their suburban world…
Best Performance Space
Infernal Bridegroom Productions’ home at the Axiom nightclub is the perfect atmosphere — it’s comfortable enough for those tentatively making a first foray into “edgy” theater, but it has a ramshackle warehouse vibe that won’t make the black-clad scenesters feel out of place. The large theater in the back is…
Best Mint Julep
At Under the Volcano, you won’t be burdened with tacky mint syrups or low-rent spirits. Here, they do this Southern drink right. Watch in amazement as your bartender meticulously crushes a heaping handful of mint into your glass with a long prod, splashes on some top-shelf Kentucky bourbon and kisses…
Best Stinky Tofu
Close your nose and open your eyes. Served atop a flame on a silver platter, the “double spicy stinky bean curd” at China Gourmet is beautiful. A steaming tofu mountain flowers with mustard leaves, leeks, jalapenos and garlic slices, all surrounded by a red moat of pepper sauce. It’s almost…
Best Director
Under the guidance of Euripides, one of the oldest playwrights in Western civilization, Charlie Scott, with Infernal Bridegroom Productions, became a directorial force to be reckoned with last season. His mercurial imagination and thrilling intellect shimmered in every aspect of his astonishing adaptation of Euripides’s Medea. Scott, who has been…
Best New Club
It’s Friday night and you’re looking absolutely fabulous, but your designer heels are giving you grief. Make Joia your destination — comfort is the top priority here, with good looks coming in at a close second. The club has plenty of places to kick back. Miami-style bungalows with couches and…
Best Democrat
It’s a cliche that politicians who are so eager to send other folks off to war sit safely behind their desks. Not Rick Noriega. He was sworn in for another term as state rep this January — not in Austin, but in a wooden barracks building outside of Kabul, Afghanistan…
Best Weathercaster
It’s a Houston tradition from June to November: You go to sleep knowing there’s a tropical storm or hurricane heading our way, and the first thing you want to know when you wake up is, Is it still barreling down on us, or has it sheared away? Some stations pile…
Best Criminal Defense Attorney
Tabbing Rusty Hardin as Houston’s best criminal defense lawyer is like naming Lance Armstrong as Best Bicyclist from Texas — it’s not exactly a groundbreaking pick. But Hardin proved again this year why he remains the name that should be on the speed-dial of every athlete or deep-pocketed Houstonian who…
Best Head Shop
With the Houston 420 chain taking over this town, we searched far and wide for a head shop with quality selection, good prices and a friendly staff. (And we’ll let you draw your own conclusions from that statement, thank you very much.) We found what we were looking for out…
Best Costume Shop
Halloween is but one time of the year to dress up and pretend you’re someone (or something) else. For example, you can go rampaging anytime. For the uninitiated, that’s when a group of friends all dress up in the same wacky style, be it as Santas, ballerinas or simians, and…
Best Grocery Store
Howard E. Butt knew a thing or two about designing grocery stores. According to the company’s Web site, his motto was “He profits most who serves best.” From the looks of them, some other supermarkets’ mottoes appear to be “sell crappy food out of sketchy buildings.” When you walk into…
Best Place to Buy Stemware
We’ll begin by defining the term “stemware” as wine-and-cheese-by-the-pool casual, not Thanksgiving-dinner-with-the-in-laws crystal goblets. This said, you just can’t beat Pier 1 for whimsical design at an astoundingly affordable price. Obnoxious drunk guy drops his glass? No problem. The same design is probably now available for half-price, or even cheaper…
Best Greek Restaurant
With its big open windows and lush plants, Mykonos Island seems plucked from its namesake spot in Greece. Try the Greek sampler platter, which offers traditional appetizers like meatballs and stuffed grape leaves. True to Greek island cuisine, psari (seafood) reigns supreme here, with fish like grouper and snapper arriving…
Best Vegetarian-Friendly Restaurant
At Hunan Village, you can order veggie substitutes so amazingly similar to the real deal, you’ll swear you’re being fooled with. Take the sesame “chicken.” We defy you to bite into a big chunk of its sweet, dark, chewy mass and deny it’s the same stuff Colonel Sanders is serving…
Best South American Restaurant
Self-taught, Nicaraguan-born chef Michael Cordua was the first to introduce Houston to South American cuisine when, in 1988, he opened his first Churrascos. This culinary pioneer showed us the flavors, aromas and dishes of lands such as Nicaragua, Peru, Chile, Argentina and Brazil, expanding our vocabulary with words like plantains,…
Best Italian Restaurant
Chef and owner Marco Wiles is Houston’s answer to Mario Batali. He loves to surprise you. He’ll start you off with his own freshly cured anchovies served over a cream-injected fresh mozzarella called burrata. And while you’re trying to figure that one out, he’ll blindside you with something like cold…
Best Weekend Trip to a Texas Vineyard
You don’t have to travel to Northern California or the French Riviera to enjoy great wine straight from the source. Texas, whether you know it or not, is home to many fine wineries, one of which is giving the big boys a run for their money. Messina Hof is located…
Best Coach
Houston Rockets fans were understandably a bit doubtful in 2003. Out was fan fave Rudy T, in was the droopy-eyed, balding Jeff Van Gundy, a coach who was more famous for hanging off Miami Heat center Alonzo Mourning’s leg during a playoff-game melee than leading the New York Knicks to…
Hurricane Mixtape
Well, unless we’re very unlucky and Rita stalls out over us like Allison did, Houston’s scariest hurricane in at least 20 years will have come and gone. By now, you’re probably feeling one of two ways: utterly devastated at the loss of almost all your worldly goods, or a combination…
Crispy Muc, Tender Bo
You dip the golden, batter-fried squid chunks into a little dish of lime juice, salt and pepper before you pop them in your mouth at Jasmine Asian Restaurant on Bellaire. The white squid flesh and pink tentacles on the inside are tender, while the crispy batter on the outside has…
Best Microcinema
Aurora is known around the country for its consistently challenging, cutting-edge shorts and feature films. The little theater, housed in a former church, shows animated and illustrated films as well as computer, video and other experimental works. Audiences often spill out from the pews onto the floor. Our favorite offerings…
Best Art Show
“Thought Crimes: The Art of Subversion” was a like a tent revival, a great awakening for subversive art in an America becoming increasingly more repressive. Curated by DiverseWorks visual arts director Diane Barber, the exhibition was rife with provocative art that dealt with everything from politics and social issues to…
Best Downtown Bar
Housed in Houston’s oldest commercial building (it used to be a freaking Pony Express station), La Carafe is a barroom-lover’s bar. We’re not talking a Bud Light-clock, gigantic-TV, supermodel-poster barroom, but a grown-up, no-bullshit place to sit down with a close group of friends and do some serious drinking. The…
Best Political Art Exhibit
This spring DiverseWorks looked less like a conventional art gallery and more like an illicit guerrilla bunker. It housed work from some of the most creative minds in culture jamming, the hit-and-run art of media intervention. The image of a baby strapped with TNT, below the words “Hamas Baby Bomb,”…
Best Vintage Kolaches
Can’t imagine hot coffee on Saturday morning without hot, gooey, fruit-filled kolaches? Then you owe an homage to the Original Kolache Shoppe. Fifty years ago, the fresh, doughy Czech pastries called kolaches were a treat you found in the homes of Eastern European immigrants and their ancestors, not in bakeries…
Best Mojito
What exactly is an Asian pear? We’re not sure, but we’ll take Asian pears over the regular garden-variety any day if they taste as good as they do in the mojitos at P.F. Chang’s. This twist on the popular cocktail will make you want to dig poor Papa Hemingway’s body…
Best Happy Hour
Happy hour is a salvation after sitting in a cubicle staring blankly at a computer screen all week. Six Degrees has the medicine to cure your work-weary woes. The lounge hosts the longest happy hour downtown, running from 5 p.m. to 11 p.m. Tuesdays through Fridays, which may not spare…
Best Drag Queen
She’s big, bold and beautiful, with more style than Vera Wang, Donna Karan and the entire Queer as Folk cast combined. Kofi hosts late-night events at JR.’s, including the male stripping and dance contests. On a recent Monday night, Kofi warmed up the crowd by lip-synching “I’m Every Woman” and…
Best 15 Minutes of Fame
Those of us who weren’t living in Houston when Tropical Storm Allison paid a visit seem to have missed out on the kind of bonding experience only tragedy can create. But thanks to TNT (“We Know Drama”), everyone got a chance to see how the courageous doctors at Memorial Hermann…
Best Zoo Animal
What is it? A sleek, striped donkey? A purplish-red zebra with round ears, horns and a long tongue? A furry dinosaur of some kind? Nope, none of the above. It’s the okapi, and its only living relative is the giraffe. Western science didn’t even know these five-foot-tall, leaf-chewing critters existed…
Best Mac ‘n’ Cheese
The French consider Mornay to be a mother sauce for a reason: It’s darn good. People used to the powdered, boxed macaroni and cheese may not understand, but one forkful of 17’s delicious truffled variety makes us moan. Fat chunks of blue cheese, a hearty handful of real Parmigiano-Reggiano, notes…
Best Tattoo Artist
Practically a living legend in the world of tattoos and piercing, Tiger John is a big enough authority to have spoken at the Houston Public Library on the history of tattoos and related health issues. Rather than opting for cookie-cutter stencil work like so many “artists” out there, Tiger John…
Best Place to Frost Your Cake-Hole
Six years ago rapper Paul Wall hooked up with Vietnamese jeweler Johnny Dang, and the mouths of the South haven’t been the same since. Dang’s skills with grills are legendary in the hip-hop community, as is evident by the man’s client list: Lil Jon, David Banner, Z-Ro, Mike Jones and…
Best Haircut Under $20
You don’t want to be dropping 40 or 50 bucks on a haircut, but somehow you’re leery of what you’ll look like after you walk out of one of those cheap strip-mall franchise operations. So instead head into L-N Hair Tech, where men’s cuts are $8 (more if you have…
Best Plants
The ecosystem as we know it is in crisis. Invasive species like popcorn trees are decimating our East Texas forests, and water hyacinths are clogging our streams. Bravely battling this trend one backyard at a time are the native-plant guardians at Buchanan’s Native Plants, gardeners fighting to ensure Texas will…
Best Mexican Restaurant
Did Hugo Ortega know he was creating the most cutting-edge Mexican food in town when he opened his eponymous restaurant? Or was he simply paying homage to the diversity and culinary gifts of his homeland? Either way, he’s at the forefront of 21st-century Mexican cuisine — both locally and nationally…
Best Vegetarian Indian Restaurant
Madras Pavilion is popular with Gujaratis, South Indians and other vegetarian denizens of the subcontinent, but never mind the wisdom of Lord Krishna — the real reason to go is because the food is heavenly. The palak paneer is the most perfectly spiced in the city. Filled with onions and…
Best Steak House
Vic & Anthony’s is a Houston steak house that doesn’t bow to New York, Chicago or anyplace else. The food here is on a par with the very best in the country. The USDA Prime New York strips and porterhouses are cut two inches thick. The Maine lobster, which comes…
Best Gym
So few gyms have personality. Padded floors run for thousands of square feet with machine after machine and line after line of muscle heads and gym rats waiting for their chance at three sets of ten reps. It’s a scene pulled from an Orwell novel. But FIT appears to have…
Best Cheap Seats
Baseball used to be the cheapest of all major-league sports, but those days have gone the way of the VHS player. The best seats now are not exactly impulse buys (paying $35 to sit next to the foul pole?). Luckily, the Astros are offering some cheap alternatives. The best of…
Best Taqueria
Laredo Taco Place isn’t much to look at from the outside, but the inside is decorated with metates and colorful pinatas. The waitress will scoop out cups of red and green salsas for you from two large ceramic bowls. Order from a substantial, cafeteria-style spread of Tex-Mex taco fillings, which…
The Morrells, with Brian Capps, Domino Kings and Bel Airs
At 2001’s South By Southwest, the Morrells, a group that had just released its first album in 18 years, seemed to set Austin ablaze, with its name frequently being intoned into cell phones or dropped during daytime panels. Veterans coming out of deep hibernation have become one of the festival’s…
Four’s Better Than Three
We know this, but we don’t know why. Otilia’s (7710 Long Point, 713-681-7203) cuatro leches cake ($3.95) is out of this world, but if you ask the proprietors the difference between their cuatro leches cake and typical tres leches, they clam up, refusing to divulge the mystery ingredient. Here’s what…
Best Curator
A recent article about Mari Carmen Ramirez is titled “The Evangelist for Modern Art.” It’s an accurate assessment — she’s caused a lot of people to see the light. Ramirez is the first director of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston’s International Center for the Arts of the Americas. Opened…
Best Band Stage Show
They always bring the rocenrol, but you never what they’ll be wearing when they do. Over the years, Chango Jackson has taken the stage in everything from dresses to gorilla suits to ruffled tuxes to cowboy duds to chemical suits and gas masks. They break stuff, throw tamales into the…
Best Recording Facility/Dance Club
The music that gets played in clubs has to have been recorded somewhere. This high-energy downtown watering hole and dance spot simply chops out the middleman. Boasting a 32-track recording console, a state-of-the-art speaker system and a narrow but friendly dance floor, Clark’s is unlike any other club, downtown or…
Best Spanish Radio Station
There was a general wailing, flailing and gnashing of teeth when Clear Channel radio pulled the plug on local rock institution KLOL. Here was the general complaint: How dare they pull the plug on my Walton and Johnson, AC/DC-Audioslave-Stevie Ray playlists and Mandatory Metallica and replace it with all that…
Best Burger
Once, there was a convenience store with the wonderfully cryptic name “Christian’s Totem” that was famous for its awesome burgers. Unfortunately, owner Steve Christian removed the convenience store shelves, expanded and renamed it Christian’s Tailgate Bar & Grill. (A religious sports bar?) But lucky for us, Christian didn’t screw up…
Best Oysters
Gilhooley’s is Misho Ivic’s favorite restaurant. And since Misho is the owner of Misho’s Oysters, one of the largest oyster processors in Texas, he personally picks his best bivalves to be sent to the restaurant. In the winter, when the oysters are sweet and plump, the ones at Gilhooley’s are…
Best Installation
Montrose has always been a good place to rubberneck, what with the punks, the goths, the trannies and the street kids (most of which are punks, goths or trannies). But the Art League Houston upped the brake-slamming quotient big-time with Inversion, Dan Havel and Dean Ruck’s magically surrealist installation in…
Best Cheap Date
Forget the unwieldy handle, and remember this about the UTMB-TAMUG 2005-2006 Classical Concerts series: It’s absolutely free. You can spend an evening at fine arts venues in Houston and fork over a pile of Benjamins for some of the same concerts that book dates for free in Galveston. Sure, the…
Best Local TV Anchor
The talent level among Houston television’s anchor desks has dropped precipitously in recent years, thanks to vapid newcomers and fading veterans. One longtimer has maintained his A-game, though: Channel 2’s Bill Balleza. Thoroughly familiar with our town (you won’t catch him mispronouncing “Kuykendahl”), Balleza also tries, as much as possible,…
Best Local Boy Gone Bad
Eric Andell had as shiny a reputation as any local Democrat, and he wasn’t afraid to flaunt it. As a juvenile court judge and later an appellate judge, Andell was savvy with the media and smooth at political gatherings and parties. He had a syndicated television show, Juvenile Justice, and…
Best Margarita
On a blazingly hot afternoon when you were but a wee Houstonian, nothing could satisfy like the one and only ICEE. Fast-forward 20 years, and the grown-up Texan’s frozen treat of choice has to be the margarita. We’ve found the perfect place to satisfy your craving: Teotihuacan (“tay-o-tee-hwa-KAHN”). The price…
Best Tobacco Shop
Wines, ports, lighters, pipes, chewing tobacco, pipe tobacco, and don’t forget the cigars. The folks at this convenient boutique in Rice Village don’t just work here. Ask them a question, any question, and they’ll fill you in on the details. What corona will best complement a Fonseca Bin 27 Porto?…
Best Spectacles/Glasses/Optometry
Nestled in the same strip center as Aries Restaurant and Zimm’s Wine Bar, Spectacles on Montrose is perfectly poised to make you look like a true Inner Loop hipster. Want a shiny, iridescent pair of exclusive Booth & Bruce frames from England? How about some paper-clip-thin, uber-chic, aluminum frames by…
Best Mall Alternative
What are you looking for? A $175 wedding dress? Mexican-flag boxing gloves? A 500-pound brass statue of Buddha? Sunglasses? Perfume? A car stereo? Or maybe it’s an action figure of dubious copyright, let’s say, “Superheroic Man,” a longhaired Superman riding a horse with a sword and a whip in his…
Best Art Supply Store
They win again. Texas Art Supply won last year, and there’s simply no reason they shouldn’t kick butt in 2005 as well. Established in 1948, this company offers it all: paint, clay, pencils, acrylics, markers, easels, desks — and we even heard they have paper. Of course, most art supply…
Best Middle Eastern Restaurant
Between the tangy Lebanese salad, fragrant tabbouleh, fluffy dill rice and creamy hummus, your plate is already full as you navigate the a la carte line at Fadi’s. As you eye the offerings, you’re given the choice of lamb, chicken of beef kebabs that arrive to your table sizzling, juicy…
Best Brunch
This one wins for sheer variety. One of the last all-you-can-eat brunch buffets, it’s a feast for the eyes and the belly. With well over 100 feet of offerings, the Hilton Post Oak brunch should satisfy even the pickiest of eaters. A good strategy is to bring the Sunday paper…
Best Place to Eat If You’re Bald
Being bald sucks. The sun burns your scalp, women burn your phone number, co-workers burn holes in their sides laughing about how you look like Dr. Evil. And after 12 easy installments of $19.95, you will probably still be bald. But at least you won’t be hungry. On the first…
Best Place to Canoe
Slide your aluminum craft in at the Houston Canoe Club and head upstream. You’ll soon find yourself in a verdant, wild tangle of green over blue, where deer still drink from the quiet bayou waters, gators still peek through the reeds of the marsh, and birds make dramatic and not-so-dramatic…
Best Skatepark
Houston skateboarders have two serious factors to consider before thrashing the concrete jungle. The weather is almost always an issue, since it’s generally either too damn hot or too damn rainy. Legality is the other issue, as public space is at a premium in this here town. Maybe that’s why…
So many toasts, so little time. The only problem: The more glass-clinking we do, the more forgetful we become, and so we neglected to highlight a few Houston classics. Luckily, our readers stepped in to remind us of the Categories We Forgot.
Best Buffet Todai Japanese Seafood Buffet 7620 Katy Fwy., ste. 300, 713-682-0009 Best Cafeteria Cleburne Cafeteria 3606 Bissonnet, 713-667-2386 Best Huevos Rancheros La Mexicana 1018 Fairview, 713-521-0963 Best Scrapbook Store Photos Forever 4061 Bellaire Blvd., 713-662-0200 Best Ship Battleship Texas Best Spa Bergamos Spa Retreat 2535 Kirby, 713-529-2444 Best Tortilla…
Tony Joe White
As Ray Wylie Hubbard is with “Redneck Mother,” so Tony Joe White will be eternally identified with “Polk Salad Annie.” Which is not too shabby, but it is a shame that it overshadows his other notable accomplishments. The deep-voiced king of swamp boogie has written some fantastic songs that made…
BEST OF HOUSTON® 2005
It’s been a good year for Houston — a vintage year, even. The world watched as so many of us opened our arms to the good people of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, who for now will call Houston home. Yao Ming dominated, Ken Lay did the perp walk, and major…
Best Place to See Vintage Flicks
The well-culled celluloid offerings this year have included the gritty realism of Soviet filmmakers Stanislav Rostotsky and Yuri Ozerov, Japanese masters Kenji Mizoguchi and Akira Kurosawa, a 75th anniversary of The Maltese Falcon — and yes, French New Wavers Jean-Luc Godard, Robert Bresson, Robert Aldric and Jacques Tati. If you…
Best Cigar Bar
Is that Rush Limbaugh in the corner? Probably not, but we figure if the neocon blowhard ever finds himself in Space City, it’s a spot he’d frequent (well, it and Coco Loco, of course). Huge and luxurious mahogany tables with raised ashtrays dot the room around a statue of famed…
Best Ensemble Production
Shadowy, dark and brutally haunting, the Alley Theatre’s mesmerizing production of The Exonerated was everything live theater should be. Deeply political and heartbreakingly moving, the stories told in Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen’s script — about a group of wrongly accused death-row inmates — were mesmerizing. But without the fine…
Best Sports Bar
This bar’s residential neighbors don’t seem too keen on its existence, but the people inside are too distracted by the 20-odd flat-screen TVs to give a damn. Here you can watch just about any sporting event imaginable, save for pro hockey (thanks, organized labor), and chow down on some of…
Best Vintage Milk Shake
With a five-station mixer constantly making shakes, malts and sundaes, the counter staffers at Yale Street Grill have their hands full. It is unknown whether they’ve been making shakes since 1923, when they opened, but the mixer sure looks the age. They start out with two or three generous scoops…
Best Plantain Chips
The plantain chips at the Amazon Grill are long — the entire length of a plantain — as well as thick, crispy and golden. There are lots of them, and best of all they’re free. You can choose from two dipping sauces; one’s a chimichurri (parsley, olive oil and garlic),…
Best Modern Dancer
When Yolanda Gibbs takes the stage, watch out. She dances like she owns the place, gobbling up space with her downright generous style. Gibbs possesses a rare quality in a dancer, in which her technique serves her artistry. Her pure, natural grace is evident in everything she does. With long…
Best Apartment Complex
In a city where not having a car is a death sentence for your social life, we’ll give the Bissonnet Village Apartments a nod for being strategically close to one of the hottest singles scenes in the city: Rice Village. Auto-challenged residents of “The BV” can stroll — if need…
Best Local TV News
While they definitely aren’t the sexiest staff of journalists, and they don’t have the eye-popping graphics and whiz-bang of the other stations, the veteran tried-and-true hands of KTRK consistently produce the best local newscasts overall. Staffed with a combination of virtual Houston landmarks that have been at the station longer…
Best Local Boy Made Good
Sam Farha didn’t win the World Series of Poker this year or last year, but that doesn’t mean he hasn’t made it big at the table. The Lebanon native, who’s called Houston home for 20 years, has made a very, very good living playing cards. A second-place finish at the…
Best Catfish
There’s an art to frying great catfish so that it’s greaseless and crispy on the outside, and moist and juicy on the inside. It also should be mild in flavor with no swampy taste. At Soul on the Bayeaux, they use a Cajun-spiced cornmeal batter that gives the fish a…
Best Video Store
Have you seen Comfort & Joy, the offbeat comedy about a popular Scottish DJ who goes through an identity crisis after his shoplifting girlfriend leaves him during the holidays and he gets stuck in the middle of a feud between two rival ice cream magnates? If you haven’t, you’re not…
Best Wine Store
The former Christopher’s Wine Warehouse may have a new name and a new location, but the selection, ambiance and expertise are as excellent as always. Christopher Massie has been in the business for 20 years, so he knows his stuff. And if you hang out long enough at his shop,…
Best New Record Store
Looking for that long-out-of-print Loretta Lynn/Conway Twitty duet album? The new Calexico DVD? A painting of an albino with an Afro bowling? Sig’s Lagoon, the latest musical addition to the thriving Continental strip at the Ensemble/HCC Metro stop, has all that and more. The shop takes its name from a…
Best Camera Store
Houston Camera Exchange boasts a 7,000-square-foot showroom of new and used cameras and equipment, including lenses, flashes, cases, tripods and more. As for cameras, you got your Canon, Contax, Fuji, Leica, Nikon, Olympus — you name it. They also offer digital and film processing, and their Web site has a…
Best Neighborhood Spot in Rice Village
With its artsy, brushed-aluminum tabletops, pastel walls and teardrop lighting fixtures, benjy’s looks every bit the swank hangout — and it is. There’s a separate upstairs lounge, and downstairs there’s Benjy Levit’s serious modern American cuisine. Chill on the comfy booths while you spy on Inner Loop scenesters, West U…
Best Creole Restaurant
Executive chef Randy Evans is putting his signature on Brennan’s menu with some ambitious new dishes and a fresh spirit of inventiveness. The Creole food served here is a culinary subgenre that Brennan’s calls Texas Creole. Derivative of New Orleans Creole cooking, the food here is the kind you’ll find…
Best Tex-Mex Restaurant
The owner of Los Tios, one of the city’s best-loved Tex-Mex chains, retired a couple of years ago. Gary Adair, who owns Skeeter’s and a couple of other local restaurants, bought the chain and made some changes. And Los Tios’s loyal clientele, which includes people who have been eating there…
Best Golf Course
A fixture on the island since the mid-1970s, the Galveston Island city-operated 18-holer is consistently ranked among the top municipal courses in the state — at least for now. Locals, gaudily clad sunburned tourists and Phil Mickelson wannabes gather here to play the par-72 course, which has seriously cheap green…
Best Aero
Ray Giroux has spent only one season with the Aeros, but the lithe defenseman has already made his mark. The former Ivy Leaguer is a consistent scorer on the ice, and away from the rink he’s proved to be just as valuable. Each game, he and fellow alternate captain Todd…
Bellini, with Mono
Formed several years ago by ex-Don Caballero drummer Don Che (who quit the band abruptly during a gig in Athens, Georgia, not long after), Bellini survives as a mesmerizingly abrasive quartet. Their latest CD, Small Stones, finds the band tilling its own private corner of the post-no wave/post-math-rock field. Lyrics…
Best Radio Talk Show
Houston talk radio tends to be nutty. On the commercial dial, you’ve got every shade of right-wing hot air, from Rush Limbaugh’s parroting of the Republican party line all the way to Michael Savage’s lunatic fringe rantings. (In between, you’ve got a bunch of locals like Chris Baker, Edd Hendee…
Best New Bar
This funky new watering hole in the Heights is the perfect hangout for hipsters, artists, slackers and the newly relocated yuppies who populate all the new town-home developments in the area. Located in the building that used to house Silky’s, which was one of the grungier blues joints outside the…
Best Club for Out-of-Town Acts
Though the Meridian has yet to hit its second birthday, it’s become the tour-de-force venue for national and international touring acts. Everyone from punk laureate Patti Smith and industrial pioneers Ministry to sought-after DJs like RJD2 and Paul Oakenfold has graced the same gargantuan stage in the lofty Blue Room…
Best Rapper
Who is Mike Jones? Who cares? Devin the Dude’s the rapper who matters most round these parts, a vintage-Cadillac-drivin’, blunt-smokin’, Bud-drinkin’, bitch-runnin’ fool who also happens to be a hilarious, stone-cold genius. Devin’s the rare rapper who never boasts in his rhymes — instead, he just lays out his life…
Best Theater Season
Any theater that can produce the cornball lovefest Steel Magnolias in the upstairs auditorium while running David Mamet’s darkly profane Glengarry Glen Ross downstairs in the basement deserves a huge round of applause. But that bit of artistic (and marketing) genius was just what came at the end of the…
Best Onion Rings
Conversation momentarily ceases the moment the towering pyramid of onion rings hits your table at Fleming’s. Then there’s the hesitation: Do you dare disturb the architecture of the thickly sliced Vidalia onions and flaky, crunchy batter? Of course you do. This side dish is an excellent group treat, though you’ll…
Best Pupusas
If there is a little El Salvador in Houston, it’s on Bissonnet. Hell, there’s a “Little Everywhere” along that endless stretch of road. Several pupusarias coexist in the 6000s or so, but this one ranks the highest with its yummy little Salvadoran street snack, the pupusa. The hole-in-the-strip-mall El Cuscatleco…
Best Movie Theater
If you’re going to be bombarded by yet another Hollywood blockbuster with computer-generated effects and a lame plot, there’s no better way to do it than with a couple of beers and a burger at Alamo Drafthouse. The setup is comfortable, the service is fast and friendly, and the burgers…
Best Place to People-Watch
If you want to get a real look at the people populating our hippest little multicultural area, just mosey on over to the Taco Cabana at the corner of Montrose and Westheimer, order a plate of nachos and a margarita, and pull up a chair. You’ll see transvestites hailing down…
Best Local TV Personality
When your own station’s Web site singles out your “off-beat delivery,” you know they’re not talking about the recipient of a bachelor’s of broadcasting degree. That’s exactly what we like about the quirky Scotty Kilmer, the car-care expert who hosts the twice-weekly taped segments. But it’s during his Saturday-morning live…
Best Local Girl Gone Bad
When Jeanne Parr ran for county treasurer in 2002, she told voters all about her experience as a lay minister and Sunday school teacher, her work with 4-H Club kids and the time she was named Outstanding Leader of Fort Bend County. What she didn’t mention was her gambling problem…
Best Ceviche
The owners of Lemon Tree are Peruvian, and ceviche — raw seafood pickled in lemon juice — is considered the national dish of Peru. And they know how to make it here. You can get either plain fish or a seafood mixture consisting of fish, shrimp, mussels and calamari served…
Best Dry Cleaner
We know it’s hot in Space City. For much of the year, venturing out on the streets is no fun because, frankly, the streets aren’t air-conditioned. Some days, it’s a shame we have to be outdoors for any reason, and this is especially true when we have to run mundane…
Best Tech Geek
Jay Lee, Houston Chronicle Help Line columnist and co-host of KPFT/90.1 FM’s Technology Bytes, makes understanding the oft-frustrating wired world of computers possible for even the most basic of users. Lee’s strength is in his simple instructions and advice. But if you want to get hard-core, he can also out-geek…
Best Organic Farm
Under a green canopy of trees, a stream meanders by a series of raised beds boasting a variety of leafy greens. Through the narrow aisles, volunteers’ sandals and work boots pad along. The stream feeding the Local Organic Outpost is one of the last that flows over mud and clay…
Best Place to Buy CDs by Local Musicians
You just witnessed an awesome set by one of Houston’s many local bands, and now you’re freaking out because there was no merchandise available. No fear, local music lover, Sound Exchange is here. This music hotspot lets local bands hawk their latest material. Beat freaks can find DJ Sun, Freedom…
Best Place to Bring Your Dog
The teacup toy poodles and rat-size Chihuahuas peer at each other from their owners’ purses. Stately Dobermans and German Shepherds mingle with crack-addict-hyper Jack Russell terriers. Posh Weimaraners that could model for Wegman stare down their long noses at bandanna-clad, all-American golden retrievers. It’s a veritable dog show on the…
Best Drive-Thru
In the battle to rule the drive-thru, the best weapon is smoke. A rich, heavy cloud of it floats across Washington Avenue every afternoon from El Rey, a small Cuban/Mexican restaurant that attracts a fleet of loyal subjects. They come for the chicken, which is skewered and baked for hours…
Best Vintage Atmosphere
About a hundred years ago, a French-Canadian carpenter built a log cabin on White Oak Bayou. Various residents since have expanded the building using logs and other rough-hewn materials. Today, that old building houses the French restaurant called La Tour d’Argent. The name means “tower of silver” in French; it’s…
Best Houston-Bred Athlete About to Hit the Big Time
H-town gridiron cognoscenti have known about Vince Young for a long time. In 2001, the sleek, gazelle-like quarterback put his outmanned Madison High School teammates on his back and carried them on a run that saw them knock out perennial area powerhouses North Shore and Katy and ended only at…
Best Astro
Okay, so it looks like semi-hometown boy Berkman (hey, he went to Rice) may not quite develop into the fearsome power hitter that his first few years with the club seemed to promise. Being an Astros fan means learning to deal with disappointment. Even without 35 homers a year, Berkman…
Two Gallants
It’s easy to love the quasi-folk duo Two Gallants. They’re superyoung — barely of legal drinking age — but in their own words “ain’t good-lookin’ from a quarter-mile,” which creates a kindred bond among the majority of youngsters who don’t look like the kids on The O.C. Native sons Adam…
Best Bar Food
Bar hoppers and pub crawlers alike still reminisce about the talent the Ale House’s kitchen had for sating the drunken munchies. We find the Stag’s Head does more than come close to matching the old classic’s mad skillz. It tops them. No need for a late-night Taco Cabana run when…
Best Dive
Quite simply, nobody does it better than Alice and her crew at the Tall Texan. Located on the northern edge of the Heights in a residential area that’s anything but hip, this little out-of-the-way watering hole attracts all kinds. From elderly barflies to middle-aged professionals to young movers and shakers,…
Best Dance Club Night
Forget the weekend. Houston’s best dance night happens right smack-dab in the middle of the miserable workweek. Close to 400 kids in haute couture fill out 1415 Bar & Grille every hump day to sweat and stomp their feet to an eclectic mix spun by the Boys and Girls Club…
Best Jukebox
When you walk in this joint, the last thing you expect is a killer jukebox. If you come in early, there’s a few old codgers watching Jurassic Park or Seinfeld, and the hip-o-meter registers zilch. You expect to find the juke stocked with plenty of Journey, Stevie Ray and Steve…
Best Traveling Show
Founded by Richard Montoya, Ric Salinas and Herbert Siguenza in 1984, Culture Clash made a name for themselves as performing sociologists. In the Alley Theatre’s Culture Clash in AmeriCCa, which came roaring into town last fall, the group brought to life everyone from an angry white Vietnam vet to a…
Best Salad
Call it the salad for people who hate salads. The “warm baked Texas goat cheese salad with apples and toasted almonds in a sun-dried tomato vinaigrette” — yes, this salad needs a nickname — at Ruggles Cafe Bakery seems like an hors d’ oeuvres tray on a bed of lettuce…
Best Salsa
Salsa is like beer: Some people timidly nip it, and others suck in the buzz. If salsa to you means getting lit, then thank the devil for Jarro Cafe, the flame-licked answer to the icehouse. Here, you’ll get a salsa six-pack. Each of six brightly colored bowls offers a different,…
Best Eastside Bar
Neighborhood joints don’t get very much more down-to-earth than this spacious, unpretentious quasi-shitkicker sports bar located on a lonely stretch of two-lane road in Highlands near Baytown. The staff is friendly, the TV screens are viewable from anywhere in the place, and the jukebox is great. The place is such…
Best Reason to Stay in Houston During the Summer
Many a balmy Houston night has been made cooler and more comfortable thanks to the efforts of the Houston Symphony. Beginning in June, when it first presented Summer Symphony Nights at Miller Outdoor Theatre, our skies have been filled with sweet sounds designed to make us forget that we’ve still…
Best Light-Rail Station
We know, we know…This one took these same honors last year. But let’s face it: It’s gotten even better since then, and most of our rail stops suck. With the exception of a couple downtown, they’re purely functional affairs — if they’re not slap-bang in the middle of a parking…
Best Local Girl Made Good
So far, the whole Houston “Third Coast” rap thing has been a largely male phenomenon. For every Beyonce, there are two or three Mike Joneses or Lil’ Flips. Brooke Valentine is trying to change that, and she’s gotten off to a hot start. She’s teamed with Big Boi from OutKast…
Best Dim Sum
The jellyfish salad and the ducks’ tongues whizzing by on the dim sum carts look exotic. But it’s the dumplings at Fung’s Kitchen that are extraordinary. Sure, the shrimp ones and the xiu mai are excellent, but how about dumplings filled with chopped snow-pea shoots and garnished with peas and…
Best Fabric Store
With the price of clothes these days, many DIYers are creating their own one-of-a-kind fashion masterpieces. And sewers in the know get their threads at High Fashion Fabrics. Within its gigantic 30,000-square-foot showroom, there’s a wide selection of patterns to choose from, as well as fabrics and materials of all…
Best Bakery
The pane pugliese at Kraftsmen is the ideal loaf — it can be eaten alone, dipped in olive oil or made into the perfect panini. The large, round, rustic loaf with a thick, extra-crisp golden crust and airy, chewy interior originated in the Puglia region in Italy. These hand-formed, artisanal…
Best Place to Buy Coffee Beans
Ah, the rich caramels. The hints of chocolate, the earthy aromas and the lingering taste of exploited labor. As so many addicted Houstonians know, a good cup of coffee can be a lifesaver. But what about the extreme poverty suffered by plantation pickers? FairTrade labeling organizations and the high-minded folks…
Best Place to Buy an Engagement Ring
Tell us where else in the city you can purchase diamond fronts for your teeth on the same trip you buy a diamond engagement ring, and we might just let you debate us. Till then, shut your frosted yapper and head on in to the 200-plus jewelry stores located on…
Best Seafood Restaurant
The seafood at this Galveston hideaway is absolutely sublime. But it’s the picture window in the dining room that elevates Clary’s above its mainland competitors. Through the window you can watch the pelicans and seagulls circle a glistening shrimp boat tied up at a tiny dock on Offats Bayou. The…
Best Greasy Spoon
Why are the best greasy spoons always by the airport? Open 24 hours, Dot is off I-45 just down from Hobby. At times, it seems like the entire restaurant and everything in it — including the hardworking waitstaff — is covered in a thin layer of grease. Everything comes in…
Best Vintage Barbecue Restaurant
The wood parquet pattern on the linoleum floors is wearing off. The menu hanging on the wall has been slow-smoked to a light brown. Inside the old wall clock above the bar, the Budweiser Clydesdales have been frozen midstride since Reid’s opened for business in 1968. Eddie Reid opened the…
Best Place to Release Your Rage
Bosses who take credit for your ideas. Fools who can’t talk on the phone and drive at the same time. Boyfriends who desert you for another city and say they’re “just changing addresses.” Plenty of things in this life fill us with murderous rage, ladies. But instead of slicing tiny…
Best Cheerleading Squad
At first glance, a hockey cheerleading squad makes about as much sense as a Zamboni in the outfield, but there’s no doubt about it: The beautiful, talented women of Sonic Boom will make a hollerin’ hockey fanatic out of the biggest sushi-munching sports snob. Not that the Aeros need any…
The Unseen, with A Global Threat, Career Soldiers and Johnny Switchblade & the Blackouts
The Unseen espouses a peculiar political platform. The group champions the poor, though it prefers that taxpayer-funded social programs ignore destitute drug addicts (“For over 40 years you broke your back / But they gave your money to some bum on crack”). Singer Mark Unseen says he’s “pro-violent against the…
Best DJ to Listen To While Eating Sushi
Friday nights at Zake are the place to be for raw fish consumption. That’s when Elaina “Lushus” Brown, a staple in the local sushi nightlife scene — yes, there is such a thing — hits the restaurant’s DJ booth to provide musical accompaniment to your evening of Japanese cuisine. We’re…
Best Bar Atmosphere
Since the 1940s, “fill’r up” has been a popular phrase at Washington and Yale. Nowadays, we aren’t talking petrol. Housed in what once was a gas station, this classy, uber-chic bar has a rich sense of nostalgia. The bar still has original tile work from the gas-station era, and its…
Best DJ
He’s the self-proclaimed No. 1 street DJ in the city, and no one will argue that fact. His club nights top out at over 1,000 people every Friday (Coco Loco), Saturday (Candy Shop at Max’s) and Sunday (Club Konnections), partly because he’s one of the few hip-hop DJs in town…
Best Local Music Radio Show
Every music scene should have a show like this weekly local hip-hop feast. Really, the rockers here need the equivalent: a show co-hosted by two guys — club spinner DJ Chill and radio DJ/journalist/lore repository Matt Sonzala — who know everybody and everything about the scene (note: Sonzala is an…
Best Actor
Playing the cuckold has never been easy. Just ask Josh Morrison, who played one such loser in Stages Repertory Theatre’s production of Craig Wright’s Orange Flower Water this past spring. Hard as it may be, Morrison was somehow able to make the ordinary meathead named Brad into the most memorable…
Best Steak Frites
Sure, you can get steak and fries at any steak house in the city, but Laurier Cafe’s version is this town’s best offering of the Parisian bistro classic. It starts — as it always should — with the steak, a glorious, 12-ounce Niman Ranch New York strip (Niman Ranch beef…
Best Vintage Enchiladas
You may think you prefer authentic Mexican enchiladas made with imported queso, but that’s only because you haven’t eaten at Larry’s lately. Sure, the American cheese-filled enchiladas here are relics of the 1960s. But the truth is Larry’s old-fashioned cheese enchiladas taste better than those earnest enchiladas made with real…
Best Heights Bar
There’s no equivalent to this place in heaven or on earth. Graffiti on every wall, chairs attached to the ceiling, zero regard for personal space. If the Cadillac Bar didn’t exist already, somebody’d have to invent it. They’ve got liveried waiters in the dining area, taciturn bartenders in the tightly…
Best Charity
Picking the best charity is harder than it sounds. What are the criteria: the condition of the recipients? The overall effectiveness? How the money is spent? Well, if you consider all of those, then Houston’s Shriners Hospital just might be the best charity to donate to this year. The hospital…
Best Organic Cemetery
George Russell is a colorful blend of genius and crazy. He founded his own religious group, the Universal Ethician Church, as a sanctuary for those fed up with the hypocrisy or greed they’ve experienced in mainstream organized religions. And he also created the state’s only “green” cemetery, where folks are…
Best Place for a First Date
When you have a first date with someone, it’s best to gather as much information about the person as quickly as possible. A date to the Houston Zoo should teach you plenty in just one visit. You’ll get answers to some major questions without having to invest in conversation. For…
Best Dumplings
The free-form dumplings at San Tong Snacks look like meatballs in floppy wrappers. The spicy pork stays snug inside the thick and chewy cloak of dough, and the pink pork is generously seasoned. But the real secret of San Tong’s amazing dumplings is their freshness. The proprietors run a little…
Best Magazine Selection
Has this ever happened to you? You head over to a huge magazine rack at a supermarket and are confronted with yards and yards of magazines, and every single one of them sucks. About one in five features the same celebrities; it’s a sea of TomJenAngelinaBradTaraParis. And then most of…
Best CD Store
At first glance, this midsize shop looks like any other mall CD store. The racks are arranged so that the person behind the counter can see all of the activities throughout the store, giving would-be shoplifters a hard time. But it’s what’s on these racks that sets this place apart…
Best Psychic Fair
For almost eight years, Marva’s Psychic Fairs have been a staple of Houston’s metaphysical community. The first Saturday of each month, a conference room at the Ramada becomes a veritable Galleria of the world beyond this mere dimension. There are astrologists, palm readers, reflexologists, iridologists, herbalists and tarot-card readers. (Here’s…
Best Salon
The way you style your hair can say a lot about your personality. But you don’t have to put up with the snooty stylists and chemical smells that permeate so many salons just to look in step. The friendly folks at Elements use only all-natural Aveda products that don’t hurt…
Best Breakfast
The breakfast tacos at Gorditas Aguascalientes include eggs with carne deshebrada, ham, bacon, chorizo and potatoes, and they’re all built on handmade flour tortillas. The sensational chilaquiles, which are served on the side of the huevos rancheros, are made with dark chile sauce and white cheese. Don’t miss the machacado,…
Best Indian Restaurant
The food at Indika is on a par with the fare served at the most innovative Indian restaurants in the United States. And unlike imaginative Indian chefs like Floyd Cardoz at Tabla in New York, Indika’s chef and owner, Anita Jaisinghani, doesn’t do fusion. Hence her menu, while impressively creative,…
Best Vintage Breakfast
The eggs over easy at Lankford Grocery are cooked slowly so they stay tender — the yolks are perfect, not too runny and not a bit hard. The patty-style sausage is a little spicy and a touch sweet. The home fries have lots of crisp corners. This place really was…
Best Franchise Owner
Sure, we admire Houston Astros owner Drayton McLane’s head-scratching luck (his team manages to win despite the loss of both some key players and Gerry Hunsicker, one of the best GMs in baseball). We also respect Houston Texans owner Bob McNair’s commitment to excellence on the field and off, and…
Best Climbing Tree
Tree climbers inevitably branch into two distinct species. The kiddies, the romantics and the novices want a docile tree, one that practically lies down for you. The tree nuts — who wear special clothes and would live in trees if they could — want a challenge. Both factions will be…
Tom’s Diner
Any thing can be anything to anybody, particularly in the case of David Cronenberg’s A History of Violence. If you want to believe that his new film, a loose adaptation of a little-known graphic novel, is a work of damning criticism aimed at the hypocrisy of Americans who believe violence…
Best Pool Hall
It’s been said that the family that shoots stick together stays together. Of course, Ted Nugent said the same thing about hunting elk, but that’s neither here nor there. We suggest visiting Slick Willie’s “Family” Pool Hall during the waking hours, before the downtowners get too knackered and the place…
Best Bar Games
At the Tavern, the shots keep coming. They happen when the Rockets are on TV, and when patrons down buttery nipples, but that’s just the icebreaker. The main attraction here is the bar games. Tavern denizens can shoot pool at a dozen tables inside this spacious sports bar. On the…
Best Art Gallery
Located on the campus of Rice University, Rice Gallery is off the beaten track of many gallerygoers. It shouldn’t be. Under the directorship of Kim Davenport, Rice Gallery is “all installation art all the time,” and it consistently brings in phenomenal shows from heavy hitters as well as newly emerging…
Best Midtown Club
The Houston offshoot of the fabled Austin Continental Club joins the ranks of The Godfather II and Superman II — all are that rare breed, sequels that live up to the originals. Patrons hear local and national blues, country, soul and rockabilly acts at the funky bar, which offers old-school…
Best Actress
The charming Annalee Jefferies can breathe life into the most ordinary tale. She made that clear last season when she played Haley in Theresa Rebeck’s silly play Bad Dates at the Alley Theatre. It was Jefferies alone, under Jeremy B. Cohen’s direction, who kept Rebeck’s one-woman show from sinking under…
Best Sushi
It’s the dish that sushi lovers and aficionados test any spot by: toro, or fatty tuna. Specifically, it’s the cut of fatty meat along the fish’s belly. A bad cut yields junk; a precise cut offers perfectly marbled flavor and a buttery texture. You’ll never be disappointed by the toro…
Best Vintage Fried Chicken
Barbecue Inn is frozen in time. At this place, it’s still 1946. Just take a look at the menu, and sample some of its old-fashioned East Texas diner cuisine. Some people come here just for the chunky french fries. Others adore the old-fashioned stainless-steel merry-go-round of sour cream, bacon bits,…
Best New Effort to Inject Culture into Houston
Dave Dove has a mission: to bring avant-garde and improvised music to our hallowed city. In a region where “jazz” is almost universally considered either slick background music for a steak dinner or outdated New Orleans brass party jams, Dove’s recently rechristened DLI (formerly the Pauline Oliveros Foundation) has done…
Best Local Blog
We waited for someone to step up and dethrone Charles Kuffner as the best blogger in town. We scoured the H-town blogosphere, reading what the pamphleteers of the 21st century had to say about sports, politics, music, art and breakfast. We wasted countless hours, time we could’ve spent paying our…
Best Place to Take Out-of-Towners
Tired of telling your out-of-town friends and family that Houston is an international city? Then show them on this driving tour. Drive west on Richmond from Loop 610 to Hillcroft. Hang a left and show them all the halal Chinese restaurants, Persian kebab shops, Latino hip-hop clubs, Indo-Pakistani curry houses,…
Best Place for a Last Date
It’s terrible to break someone’s heart, but sometimes a relationship just isn’t meant to be. If you’ve got dumping to do, make it happen somewhere luxurious. After downing a little liquor at the Whiskey Bar, order your date a delicious lamb chop at Bank — it will make the bad…
Best Mariscos
Seafood is to mariscos as the Port of Houston is to Puerto Vallarta: You need seafood, but your liver and libido need mariscos. No joint in the city understands this better than Tampico, the perpetually packed, fluorescent-lit outpost of la vida loca on pockmarked Airline Drive. Here’s the crazy concept:…
Best Mall
As you’re passing all those car dealerships on I-10 after a shopping trip to Katy Mills, the phrase “a little drive will save you a lot” will echo in your mind. Whether you just purchased a pair of designer shoes or those worn-and-washed jeans everybody’s wearing nowadays, most likely you…
Best Liquor Store
Known as the largest liquor store in the world — though we’re not sure that has been confirmed — Spec’s Warehouse fills 80,000 square feet of floor space with more than 40,000 labels of wines, spirits, liqueurs, beers and fine foods. Visit on a Saturday afternoon, and you’ll almost surely…
Best Record Store
This perennial favorite continues its stranglehold on this category for two simple reasons: They stock things you can’t get anywhere else in town, and the staffers know their shit. Whether it’s a Houston or regional title, import, long-lost record your granddad had, or an obscure EP by Death Cab for…
Best Service from a Car Dealer
Anyone can give you a good deal on a car these days, but when it comes to servicing it after the sale, things can get dicey. Not at Archer Volkswagen. Whereas some dealerships will go over the warranty with a microscope looking for a loophole, the guys at Archer just…
Best Sommelier
Sommeliers are often judged by how much profit they bring in. And the way to turn a big profit is to sell expensive wines. So the average Houston sommelier loads up the wine list with overpriced bottles and then tries to sell them with snob appeal. Italian wines are the…
Best Korean Restaurant
Green Pine Tree Bar & Grill looks a little like a Korean speakeasy. There’s a neon-lit sushi bar on one side of the room and a half-dozen dining nooks with semi-secluded tables on the other. The attractive dining room in between features two rows of tables separated by a room-length…
Best Vintage Burger Joint
The malt shop doesn’t sell malts anymore, but it goes through gallons of Kool-Aid every day. There is no sign on the building and no way to tell the address. In fact, the red building at the southwest corner of Lockwood and Mulvey looks abandoned. But if you pull into…
Best Comet
Not only is she the best Comet, she’s the best in the entire NBA. Sheryl Swoopes is simply untouchable — a new-millennium Hakeem Olajuwon, if you will. She ranks No. 1 in the WNBA in points per game, No. 2 in steals per game, No. 1 in minutes per game,…
Best Fans
The roller-coaster ride that the Astros have been on for the last two seasons has given some good insight into the tortured mind of the Astros fan. The best of times: the thrilling sprint to the playoffs in 2003, when the packed Minute Maid Park rocked as never before, intimidating…
She Spies
If there’s any certainty in contemporary theater, it’s that any work by Tom Stoppard is going to be a five-ticket ride. One of the foremost playwrights of the 20th century, Stoppard dazzles with verbal fireworks, elaborate plots, puns and games, and a love of theater that’s downright tangible. He tackled…
The Opposite of Suck
About once a year — twice, if we’re lucky — a first-time director shows up with something original, electrifying and humane, a film that shows us a new way to see, that presents complex and memorable people in whom we recognize ourselves. Last year, it was Joshua Marston and Maria…
Best Graffiti Artist
Every summer dozens of graff kids hit the streets, wielding cans with skills so lame their scribbles wouldn’t look out of place knifed on a park bench. Someone even tagged the Art League Houston’s Inversion house, messing up a highly original work. Whoever that hack is, he should take a…
Best Local CD Cover
From the title’s love-hate relationship with our fair city to the songs themselves, this CD compilation of abrasive Houston rock bands captures the mood of a town just a-fixin’ to explode. The skyline photo on the cover is particularly evocative: the twisted images reflected from what looks to be the…
Best Jazz Club
Houston is no Harlem, New Orleans or Chicago, but we still have a robust jazz following, especially in the urban smooth jazz markets. You can find these suave sound followers downtown at the Red Cat Jazz Cafe, where jazz happens not just on weekends, but every day of the week…
Best Modern Dance Company
Jennifer Wood, the choreographic engine behind Suchu Dance, has been toiling away crafting dance after dance for the past 11 years. It’s been said that Wood doesn’t make dances — instead, she creates worlds where dance happens. She has directed ten full-length works and seems remarkably comfortable in the form…
Best After-Hours Hangout
We didn’t know what to make of this place when it popped up last year right down the street from Cecil’s. With that graveyard mural on the front and a name like Resurrection, it had to be a goth club, right? Not quite. The title refers to the revival of…
Best Vintage Martini
Back when NoDo was just called downtown, and before Main Street had a rail system — or even more than one nightclub — there was Warren’s Inn. And there was the venerable Jose Serna, one of this city’s most memorable, classy and distinguished bartenders. For more than 30 years, Serna,…
Best Bloody Mary
Everyone is so darn picky. More Worcestershire, not enough Tabasco, blah, blah, blah. When it comes to making the perfect Bloody Mary, chances are you know your own tastes better than anyone else. That’s what makes Griff’s Sunday Bloody Sundays such a revolution. They pour a top shelf shot of…
Best Phoenix
Cecil’s used to be one of the stickiest places around, and we loved it for that. And then that baby burned to the ground. Three months later it rose from the ashes with a new look, one we were quick to dismiss as being a little too clean (see “We…
Best Parade
Beneath a giant chandelier hoisted above the corner of Montrose and Westheimer, float after float passes by every year in the nation’s original nighttime pride parade. It’s one heck of a party and a nonpareil people-watching opportunity. This year Gs, Ls, Bs and Ts lined the streets, hooting, hollering and…
Best Republican
Local Republicans are a pretty predictable lot — they’re against everything, and they’re against it loudly and insistently. Harris County Tax Assessor-Collector Paul Bettencourt is right with them when it comes to being anti, whether it’s light rail or the latest property-tax scheme. But instead of frothing at the mouth…
Best Political Victory
In the worst of ways, Talmadge Heflin looked unbeatable: Endorsed by the Houston Chronicle, he’d logged seemingly as many years in the Texas House of Representatives as Palpatine had commanded the Galactic Empire, and the flab in his double chin was exceeded only by the corporate flab in his war…
Best Pasta
Once you’ve eaten the fresh pasta at Giannotti’s Pasta Factory, you’re spoiled for life. Not only can you buy it in bulk, but you can also enjoy it at the restaurant. Try Giannotti’s simple, comforting red sauce over spaghetti or cheese ravioli. The place also has a passable pesto and…
Best Psychic
Newly arrived from Boston, the single-named Lai is already making noises on the local psychic scene. The Norwegian native has been featured on television here and in Canada, and she uses a full array of metaphysical tools to help her clients: tarot, past-life readings, “straight psychic” stuff. Remarkably perceptive, she…
Best Newsstand
It’s not just the smell of glossy, well-inked pages pressed by ever-crisp binding, the sensual peeling apart of the articles and images, or even the spacious, casual atmosphere. It’s all of the above. Issues Magazine Store gives enthusiasts a place to congregate without fear of the Frappuccino crowd and their…
Best Used CDs
Forking over $15 or $20 for a new CD these days puts a dent in the wallet of many music connoisseurs. Thankfully, there’s Half Price Books. Here, you can find used CDs of mainstream artists and popular indie acts priced anywhere from $5 to $8. Lesser-known artists show up on…
Best Mexican Bakery
The four-foot portly baker outside Arandas Bakery on Airline represents all things hot and yummy. Grab yourself a stainless serving tray and a set of tongs here at Jose Camarena’s first Houston bakery and start loading up. The fresh-baked empanadas, pig cookies, orejas and cream horns run the entire south…
Best Bistro
Award-winning chef and owner John Sheely is back behind the stove of his self-dubbed American-Provencal bistro. Despite a gothic interior left over from the previous owners that doesn’t give the place a bistro feel, the food is innovative and always superb. He is turning out such bistro staples as steak…
Best Late-Night Restaurant
It’s late, and you’re shit-canned. You need something to soak up all the booze in your belly so you can get home. Do yourself a favor and skip the drunken lovefest at “House of Guys.” Instead, head to this seedy Montrose eatery. We love Late Nite Pie for the simple…
Best Vintage Restaurant
When Felix Jr. announced that the city’s most historic Tex-Mex restaurant would close its doors for lack of business, he set off a near-riot. People came from hundreds of miles to eat one last meal at the restaurant they grew up in. Families who had been eating there for more…
Best Sports Talk
Helming the drive-time slot at SportsRadio 610, hosts Rich Lord and Charlie Pallilo boasted the best sports show in town for several years. The two Northeast natives brought a worldly perspective to pro sports and the issues surrounding it, especially when the topics fell to race and culture. Lord was…
Best Play-by-Play Announcer
Excellence in baseball play-by-play doesn’t take the form of shouting, wisecracking shills eager to run out their latest lame nickname or home-run call. No, excellence is better embodied by the likes of Bill Brown, Houston’s answer to Dodger legend Vin Scully. Understated and knowledgeable, Brown doesn’t feel the need to…
This Week’s Day-by-Day Picks
Thursday, September 29 You lost your innocence in the backseat of a beat-up Chevy Blazer at 16. Aside from your scandalous diary entry, nary a thing was afire. Chava, the protagonist of the film Innocent Voices, on the other hand, lost his at age 11, heralded by the eerie reverberation…
Artful Dodging
It’s almost impossible to watch Roman Polanski’s rendition of Oliver Twist without drawing parallels between the deprivations endured by the book’s young protagonist and the director’s own brutal boyhood. A Jew raised in Nazi-occupied Poland, Polanski first tackled the Holocaust head-on in his 2002 film The Pianist, but Oliver Twist,…
Best Latin Club
“Hip-hop” club Coco Loco’s main audience has always been a progressive, young Latin crowd whose collective ear stays planted firmly to the street. From the beginning, the club has featured Latin nights mixed in with more urban fare, but in recent months, Coco Loco has begun to lean more toward…
Best Artist
Jason Villegas is the Iron Chef of local artists. Put that man in a room with some random materials, and you can bet he’ll walk out with something interesting in his hand. For his “Beast Taxidermy” show at Commerce Street Artists Warehouse, he used cardboard, felt and tape to create…
Best AM Radio Personality
Sandra (not her real name) just kicked her two-timing renegade Romeo to the curb and is on the prowl for a “real” man who can satisfy her materially, emotionally and — yes, she was getting to that — physically. But this working woman can’t get anything spicy cooking. So let’s…
Best Museum
Okay, so Houston has some kick-ass museums. We’ve got the Menil, Contemporary Arts, Natural History, you name it. We’re not hurting for good — even great — traditional museums. But only Houston has the NMFH, where the motto is “Any day above ground is a good one.” From “fantasy coffins”…
Best Ballet Company
Sure, it’s a no-brainer. But you have to hand it to Stanton Welch for putting this company back on a streamlined track that just keeps moving upward and onward. Tutus off to Welch for Women@Art (the first ever evening of all-women choreographers), for bringing back the Cullen Contemporary Series and…
Best Loroco Dishes
We first tasted the Central American green flower bud called loroco a couple of years ago. It’s picked wild in El Salvador and has an intriguing flavor that’s something of a cross between asparagus and chocolate. Up until now, at Houston pupuserias, we could sample only the frozen variety. Evidently,…
Best Breakfast Tacos
The humble Naomi’s Tacos excels in the breakfast-taco arena. You can order yours made-to-order in as many combinations as your mind can muster — and you better believe they’ve got homemade tortillas. The owners of this modest, five-table taqueria hand-prepare the dishes themselves. If that’s not enough to convince you…
Best Place to Relive the ’60s
Every day at this place might as well be smack-dab in the middle of the summer of ’69. Jam bands such as the Hightailers rule the roost, noodling the night away while tie-dyed revelers kick it at wooden tables and flop around in front of the stage with their eyes…
Best New Magazine
While it’s not the most polished pad of pulp in the printed-matter pile, Hater magazine has a youthful exuberance all but lost in so much of the mainstream media. A free, digest-size, full-color rag, Hater is available quarterly, in limited supply, throughout the city. The mag’s credo states that “Hater…
Best Sanctuary from the Fast Track
The Rothko Chapel is nondenominational, and the various religious texts on the table by its door attest to that, but we can’t help feeling that in there everything is Zen. (Damn, did we just paraphrase a lyric from one of the worst bands ever? Sorry, we’ll try not to let…
Best Lawyer
Okay, this is technically cheating, since Barry Scheck is based out of NYC, but screw it: Scheck’s Innocence Project helped get two wrongly convicted Texans out of prison last year. One of them was George Rodriguez, a Houston man who served 17 years for allegedly raping a 14-year-old girl. (Since…
Best Pork Chop
The pork chop at Niko Niko’s comes on a disposable plate. It’s not sitting atop braised leeks or next to candied carrots, and it’s not even a thick cut of meat. But for flavor, it’s the best in the city. It has been dusted in spices and cooked to moist…
Best Vintage Furniture
Frustrated thrift shoppers at the Washington Avenue Salvation Army Store inevitably wander across the street to marvel at Mid-Century Pavilion’s mother lode of cool, retro furniture and find ways to convince themselves that Mid-Century’s prices won’t break their budget. (Most likely, the budget was left behind at the Salvation Army,…
Best Store in the Galleria
The consumer fire is dying down. You’ve searched through linens, leathers and all manners of finery during today’s Galleria hunt. But the fleeting thrill of discovery and possession is waning as the weight of your bags increases. Shopping is tiring, we know. What you need is a sugar fix. At…
Best Vintage Clothing
So, you want to dress as a naughty elf for that certain someone. Or you want to dodge the landlord (an inconspicuous glam metal wig and pair of Bono shades). We suggest you hit the full-to-bursting rooms at The Way We Wore, which offers an almost endless selection of everything…
Best Wine Tasting
So successful has been the first Tasting Room in Uptown Park that Jerry and Laura Lasco recently opened a second location in Midtown. The Uptown location serves about 200 different wines from around the globe, each hand-selected by the owners. Here, you can taste, drink and shop for wines in…
Best Chinese Restaurant
When Asian dignitaries visit Houston, they are most often entertained at our finest Chinese restaurant, Fung’s Kitchen. The palatial red-and-gold dining room can expand to accommodate over a thousand diners. The 400-item menu includes such exotica as thousand-year-old eggs, seaweed salad and pork-blood squares. And when it comes to Cantonese…
Best Pizzeria
The fabled pizzerias of the East Coast — the tiny smoky places with aged ovens and dusty pictures of wrestler Bruno Sammartino on the walls — are nowhere to be found in Houston. But if you take away the bright, airy feel — and, please, the “Take-Ah De Order Here”…
Best Vintage Steak House
German immigrant Lorene Brenner and her husband, Herman, opened the first Brenner’s Cafe in 1936. When their original eatery was bulldozed to make way for the Katy Freeway, the Brenners relocated to a little house with a big garden and changed the format. From the beginning, Brenner’s Steakhouse has served…
Best Driving Range
Look, if you’re going to spend your time hitting dozens of little white balls over and over again, you might as well do it in a nice setting, right? The Memorial Park driving range is so good, you’ll be feeling like Tiger Woods in no time. With 43 slots, there’s…
Best Urban Hiking Trail
Trekking through the great outdoors in Houston usually means crossing a mall parking lot on the edge of Tanglewood. For a taste of the real woods smack in the middle of the city, try the twisty paths of the Houston Arboretum, where water birds, dogwoods and armadillos healthily outnumber Escalades…
Hard Act to Follow
Could I do the same thing? It’s the looming question that consumes you as soon as you see the cover photo of Between a Rock and a Hard Place. Author Aron Ralston is perched on a rock, brandishing his prosthetic right arm, which he’s fashioned into a climbing tool. The…
Have Gun, Will Space Travel
Serenity, Joss Whedon’s big-screen spin-off of the 2002 TV show Firefly, which didn’t even last a dozen episodes, is already a cult phenom well before its opening. The show’s DVD boxed set lines the shelf of every fanboy who dreamed of gunslinging in space alongside preachers and prostitutes, and already…
Best Lesbian Tejano Bar
True, there’s not much competition in this tight niche — in fact, there’s so little, one might wonder how a watering hole like this could even survive. Yet owner Mela Contreras has kept her bar running in this little edge-of-Midtown nook for more than two decades. Tied into and proud…
Best Band
For a band to be the best in any given city, they should sound like that same city. Los Skarnales — that fearsome agglomeration of ska, norteno, rockabilly, punk, surf and even zydeco — sounds like Houston. Or at least the funky parts of town — places like Magnolia Park,…
Best Band Name
Sure, weed jokes are old. Most of them stopped being funny not long after Cheech and Chong busted out of the hippie underground. But this one works, because it tells you a lot about the band you’re gonna hear. That “Valley Boys” bit is the key — it tells you…
Best Museum District Bar
We define Museum District as being that area between Almeda to the east, West Alabama to the north, Rice Boulevard to the south, and Shepherd to the west, so if you think about it, there’s a fair bit of competition for this sporty yet intelligent nightspot. Here’s why we like…
Best Ballet Dancer
It’s no wonder Houston Ballet principal Mireille Hassenboehler graced the cover of the February issue of Pointe Magazine — she’s got star power. Hassenboehler triumphed as the weak-hearted village girl in Maina Gielgud’s magnificent production of Giselle, handling the famous “mad scene” with a light but convincing touch. There’s a…
Best Cheeseburger
The plainest burger on the menu at this rundown convenience store is the best bacon cheeseburger in the city. Get it “all the way,” and savor your half-pound, hand-formed beef patty on an oversize well-toasted sesame-seed bun topped with lettuce, tomato, pickles, mayo, mustard, red onions, two strips of bacon…
Best Cheap Sandwich
Delicious and inexpensive banh mi (Vietnamese mainstays jam-packed into classic French baguettes) can be found all over our fair city, but Cali brings the art of the cheap eat to new and awe-inspiring levels. A mind-boggling $2 buys you a big ticket to taste country. A foot-long, warmed baguette is…
Best Place to Watch Dance
Barnevelder may be named after a chicken, but there’s nothing chicken about managing director Louie Saletan’s brave leadership of this blossoming dance venue. In 2003, when Saletan declared his goals for the multi-purpose spot, with its sloping floor and the lack of heat and a/c, it was easy think this…
Best Tourist Attraction
No, there are no tours being offered at the moment. You can’t just walk in and see the exact spot where Ken Lay and Co. made the decisions and signed the papers that all but destroyed their faithful minions. But you can stand outside and gawk at this architectural masterpiece…
Best Sign
So you’re driving along U.S. 59 when, through the clutter of billboards, you see it: a grand piano, perched precariously on a pole 108 feet above the ground. Chances are, your first thought is “Does that thing really play?” And your second thought is probably “Either way, that’s pretty damn…
Best Place to Get Screwed, Blued and Tattooed
Taste is all in the mouth here in the land of “Beers, Babes and Waves.” Nearly naked women on carpeted pedestals along with massive drink specials are the main attractions for the backward-ball-cap crowd, but the thing that really makes the Surf Shack unique is the presence on the premises…
Best Spring Rolls
The word is out about the fabulous Vietnamese sandwiches they crank out of this small no-nonsense shop near Elgin. But the equally delicious — and cheap — tofu spring rolls ($2 for a pair) have a well-earned place among Houston’s best as well. The key to their success is in…
Best Builder
Anybody with a soul will argue that too many Inner Loop bungalows have been bulldozed to make room for that architectural atrocity of the 21st century, the McMansion. But like it or not, builders will keep at it as long as our fair city keeps growing. At least the folks…
Best Asian Strip Mall
One of the oldest Asian-oriented strip malls in Houston, Diho Square may not lure you with goldfish or pagodas, but for everything from hot-pot beef to the hottest Pacific Rim fashions, it’s still the best. The uber-cute Japanese shop girls in Harajuku Loft sell clothes that look Japanese (but they’re…
Best Vintage LPs
“Back in the day — 1977 — Houston was a sleepy cow-town, known mostly for petroleum-related businesses, serial killers with “Wayne’ in their name, and the Astrodome…” So begins the epic saga of Sound Exchange, as told on its extremely entertaining Web site. But here’s a spoiler alert: The saga…
Best Barbecue Restaurant
On Saturday afternoon, Burns Bar BQ is party central in Acres Homes. The crowds line up when the place opens, and they never let up until the ribs are gone. Burns Bar BQ serves their ribs well done under a sweet and subtle glaze of sauce and smoke. They’re the…
Best Expense-Account Restaurant
If you’re into testosterone-induced bragging of the “mine is bigger than yours” sort — referring, of course, to expense accounts — then this is the perfect place to show what you’ve got. In a wonderful atmosphere reminiscent of the art deco era, you can impress that important client and easily…
Best Neighborhood Spot in Bellaire
While Houstonians are lucky to have lots of high-end authentic Italian restaurants, we are equally blessed to have the free garlic bread and large Caesar salads at family-friendly little nooks like Nick’s. The Italian-American cuisine here doesn’t aim very high, but it seldom misses. The linguine pescatore, a huge bowl…
Best Atmosphere
Designed by David Rockwell, the hottest restaurant designer in the country, the Strip House steak house makes a double entendre of the restaurant’s name by using erotica as a theme. The banquettes are red leather. The ceiling is red. The sofas, carpets and throw pillows in the bar are red…
Best Local Sports Hairdo
Never have so many die-hard — and straight — football fans been so infatuated with pigskin and pomade. Last season, Houston Texans beefcake QB David Carr vowed not to cut his hair until his team won two games in a row. His flowing, male-model-style locks were finally shorn when the…
Best Yoga Studio
Julia Roberts started doing her downward-facing dogs back in the ’90s after declaring she wanted a “yoga butt” like the tight little packages found in the glossy health magazines. Her superficial attraction to the Indian practice was a sign of yoga’s Westernization. American studios evolving in tandem with the self-help…
