I’ve recently been chasing a very popular influencer for this Best Coffee in Houston series. We’ve traded emails and he’s already got three ideal spots in mind, but we haven’t been able to calendar a date for coffee talk, mostly because he’s busy and prolific in his work which, of course, accounts for why he’s so popular (he also has great taste, produces eye-catching content and seems like a nice person).
The point is, our schedules didn’t match once it was time to brew up the next installment of this column. In a pinch, I asked the most influential influencer and most dependable person in my life – my wife, Tish – to step in and step out for a few of her favorite coffees. She would be the first to tell you she’d be the last person to be featured in an article about Houston’s best coffees. She’s pragmatic and also is a true believer in “home is where the heart is,” so she started by saying her favorite cup of coffee is the one she gets most regularly, homebrewed by her husband, poured into an oversized mug, never a dainty teacup.
She said her favorite mug once had the University of Houston logo on it, when she first got it literal decades ago, a reminder of her alma mater and her first job, selling Coogs swag and textbooks at the UH main campus bookstore. But it might also be the black mug with the Rose Apothecary logo on it, a Christmas gift from one of the kids who remembered that Schitt’s Creek was Mom’s favorite TV show whichever year the gift was gifted. These days, she’s into trash TV like Love Island and takes her coffee black, just one massive mug to avoid a headache and get the day going, sleepily walked upstairs to the bedroom by me.
I come from a long line of husbands who woke up and made the coffee for their wives. My dad did it for my mom and my father-in-law did it for Tish’s mom. Tish and I have carried that on, partly because it’s nice to lean into those traditions but also because she’s logical and does the household budget. It just makes more sense to enjoy coffee at home where it can be brewed to her liking for a fraction of the cost of one specialty coffee at a café somewhere.
In every installment of this series, I’ve asked my fellow java junkies their coffee origin story, how they came to be super-powered by the power of coffee. Tish said she started drinking milk with a splash of coffee when she was about 12. In our early days, living together in her folks’ house ‘til we could afford our own place, we made the coffee for her parents. We’d fix it in an old school metal percolator, the kind with the clear hard plastic bubble up top and a basket and stem and we laughed remembering how much trouble getting that stem into place could be. Everything was more difficult to do back then, wasn’t it? We’d toss the grounds from the last pot into the compost out back and fill the metal basket with fresh Folgers or Maxwell House.
Tish’s coffee journey is reflective of our time together as a couple. We each held certain beliefs or tastes coming into our relationship. Over time, we’ve come to appreciate so many things about this experience, things we may never have thought we’d love, just because we encouraged each other to give something a try. And then, we tried those things together because that’s how marriage and – more important – how friendship works. As my ride or die and all-time bestie, it’s been my privilege and the highlight of my own life to see how things we’ve shared – even coffee – have turned my wife into the most beautiful being in the galaxy.
Sometimes, those ventures took true courage and trust. For instance, it was Tish’s idea to have kids. In my early 20s, I was a feather on the wind and floated whichever way. So, she directed me in some important ways and I followed because she was and remains smarter and braver than I. I never realized until she was pregnant that being a husband and a father was what I would cherish most about my life. I never knew I’d be good at that. But Tish did. And I trusted her because I love her. And also because she knows and trusts coffee.
I didn’t convince her to have kids, but I have convinced her to have a café de olla. Maybe not as life-changing, but still important. I’ve never known Tish to take cinnamon in her coffee, but she’s open to trying new things to see if they suit her. She’s quietly adventurous that way, adding items to her bucket list, like running a marathon or learning Spanish, a couple of her current obsessions. So, I recently suggested the café de olla at El Fogón Huasteco and it instantly became one of her craveable coffees.
The traditional Mexican brew is made with cinnamon and piloncillo and at El Fogón it’s “hecho con leña,” brewed over an open fire and served in clay drinkware. If you’ve not taken the trek to Brookshire, El Fogón is absolutely worth the drive. It’s outdoor dining, ranch style, with open areas, a playground and horses on site for the kids to pet. The menu changes each Sunday – the only day it operates, from 9 a.m. until “sold out” – but it always focuses on proteins cooked in firewood pits. The meals trend away from Tex-Mex and towards flavors common to the San Luis Potosí and Tamaulipas regions of Mexico. Besides lamb barbacoa or goat birria, there’s this elegant, silky café de olla, so good it made Tish a believer.
In the beginning, she always drank coffee one way – steaming hot with milk and a lot of sugar. Her first cup ever was mostly milk and sugar with a little coffee, encouraged by her folks, so common with many of the coffee aficionados – especially the women – we’ve met for this series. She doesn’t drink it that way anymore. The only time she’ll stir a little sugar and creamer into a coffee is if we’re having Mexican breakfast somewhere, a favorite spot like La Mexicana in Montrose, let’s say, and especially after a run. She’s training for the approaching Houston marathon and she’ll treat herself to an old school coffee regular if it’s accompanied by a protein-rich, post-run bowl of menudo.
In the beginning, she didn’t care for menudo but over time, she’s changed and her tastes have changed. Back in the 1990s, when our kids were just born and growing up, money was tight and her big indulgence was Nestle Coffee-Mate hazelnut creamer. When the kids were toddlers, she was a fulltime mom and those hazelnut coffees were her Calgon take me away moments, sipped slowly in any quiet moment she thankfully came across while raising two kids two years apart.
Not too long ago, she started enjoying iced coffees. Tish has always enjoyed slushy stuff. She’s a huge shaved ice fiend who would rather have Bahama Bucks than a proper meal some evenings. One day, she learned she could order a Starbuck’s frappuccino and get her coffee and slushy fix. It’s pretty rare but she’ll occasionally reach out for an iced coffee and that’s where her experience with Houston’s best craft coffees gets us out of the house and into the streets.
Her top iced selection is The Neopolitan, a signature drink at Coco’s Donuts & Coffee Bar in the Heights. The drink is a blend of espresso, sweet condensed milk, vanilla and strawberry cold foam served with a polvoron. When she was a kid, Tish loved homemade ice cream and The Neopolitan harks back to the days of piling scoops of tri-colored ice cream from a carton into a bowl to watch CHiPs (she was a big Erik Estrada fan).
Coco’s has been named in this series previously, so readers who chased the links back then may already know about the Latino-owned café, bakery and bar in The Heights. Besides tasty treats, Coco’s brews up lots of fun programming for patrons. Tish might have spent more time in the coffee cafes back in the child-rearing days if they’d had interesting programming.
Maybe because she’s frequently dragged to bars for “Houston Press culinary review purposes” (ahem), she’s the first of my Houston coffee travel companions to include a coffee cocktail in this Best Coffee search. Tish has always been an excellent date, all the way back to the very first one, a movie matinee and a sunset kiss – our first – on a playground merry-go-round. I planned the day and mostly since then she’s allowed me – the guy with FOMO – to do all the planning. If it’s something extraordinary being planned – exotic vacations, let’s say, or some celebration for family, friends or a personal milestone – she goes into full YOLO mode. We’ve been compatible that way since the start, back in October 1983.
We recently had some date nights at No Vacancy, the newish hotel-themed bar on Main Street which is wildly popular. Inside, the place is low-lit and sexy, with copies of the Kama Sutra on display, a vanity for the ladies to do real time fit checks, private speakeasy rooms rented by the hour (we got one for my bday!) and disco songs like “Ring My Bell” playing. While waiting on our cocktails, Tish told our company the song reminded her of teenaged nights at AstroWorld’s Boogie Fog, a dance club the dearly departed amusement park installed at the height of the Saturday Night Fever craze.
To get a feel for who frequents No Vacancy – besides a couple of party-crashing Gen Xers – no one else in the club would have known about the Boogie Fog and maybe just a handful would have heard of AstroWorld, mostly thanks to Travis Scott. If they were interested in Anita Bell’s greatest hit, they’d probably have needed Shazam to I.D. that banger.
In short, Tish highly recommends a visit and so do I. Like my wife, the people and the environment were smoking hot with a welcoming vibe. And – back to coffee – Tish recommends No Vacancy’s espresso martini. Normally a gin girl, she decided she need the extra oomph of caffeine near the end of a fun afternoon of day drinking in one of the world’s best bar cities (yeah, I said it).
The espresso martini was excellent but wasn’t Tish’s favorite coffee cocktail of all. For that, we’d have to shoot back homewards towards Richmond to Pane e Vino, a very cozy restaurant serving commendable Italian standards in a nice setting, particularly if you’re seated in the restaurant’s intimate wine room. Choosing a coffee from a restaurant is a pro move only the wife of a wannabe food writer might employ, but when asked for her top three coffees in the city, she didn’t hesitate to list Pane e Vino’s affogato martini.
The first sit-down date night meal we ever shared was at a Bennigan’s over near the Astrodome and that’s only if you don’t count the time my co-workers at Mr. Gatti’s helped me do a white-linen, candlelit dinner for her in the pizza shop after closing hours. Our pizza that night was free and made by Mike Grisaffe, my boss back then and the person who got me started on my own coffee journey. He’ll be featured in an approaching article.
At Bennigan’s, I remember hitting my head against one of those Tiffany-styled stain glass lamps which hung over the tables and getting a big laugh for my clumsiness. Unfortunately, I’m still clumsy all this time later but thankfully I can still get a laugh from my wife, which is awesome because she has a great laugh and the very best smile of everyone I know.
She was only 16 at the time so she didn’t have a cocktail with her Monte Cristo sandwich, but we’ve had a few drinks since then and the best ever to feature coffee, in Tish’s esteemed opinion, is Pane e Vino’s affogato cocktail, a decadent espresso martini poured over a creamy scoop of ice cream and enhanced by Italian liqueurs. It’s so well-executed you don’t know if you’re having a coffee, alcohol or dessert. As she said, it doesn’t matter, it just tastes fantastic.
Folks describe their favorite coffees in lots of ways. Silky. Rich. Bold. Maybe no one would ever use the word “glue.” But, if you’ve been reading this series, you’ve noticed (I hope) how coffee bonds us. From cherished family and friends to husbands and wives, it’s something that connects us and keeps us held together. Tish and I – and probably most husbands and wives – don’t need coffee to keep things in place. Years of life and love are more than enough. But, it’s still an honor and a joy to share cups in the morning, after I’ve sleepily walked them – one in a huge mug – upstairs to discuss the day, all the ones that came before it and all the ones yet to come.
