Texas Monthly just released it’s top 50 Mexican restaurants.
Top in Houston.
Hugo’s. 1600 Westheimer Rd.
Salsa: Thick and intense, this pureed dark-red chipotle sauce is medium hot and shot through with smoky-sweet-spicy flavor.
Vibe: A romantic, refurbished space with high ceilings, soaring windows, lovely tableware and goblets, and an enchanting patio; the contemporary dining room attracts a food-centric, inside-the-loop crowd.
Don’t pay more than $7-$8 a plate for Mexican. Go here, especially for breakfast, they’ll take care of you.
If you’re a space geek in even the slightest sense, Space Center Houston is JSC’s visitor center. The center itself is fairly small, but it does have two things going for it:
It’s the only place to have capsules from all three of the original programs. It has a flown Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo (17) capsule. Lots of history.
The bus tour through JSC is pretty good. You can see the Shuttle mission control room, and the old Apollo mission control room, and go up a catwalk to see a bunch of the training mockups (like a full-size ISS and a couple Shuttles).
They’ve also got a (free with admission) IMAX theater with two old IMAX space movies - they’re still good though, lots of cool shots.
SCH is not a full day activity, more like 5-6 hours tops, but it’s certainly unique.
If you do make it to Galveston, definitely go to Gaidos on the strand http://www.gaidos.com/index.html and get the bisque. Everything is good, especially the scallops, but the bisque is worth driving from Dallas for.
While I recognize the irony of posting here when I was giving recommendations a few years ago, any Houston natives have any food recommendations that we may not know about? We’re in town for the holidays, and while my wife has her favorites, it’s really been almost 2 decades since she lived here full-time, so there’s probably a lot that’s changed since then.
Our usual list includes:
Maybe some great fried chicken? A co-worker recommended looking for some Bun Bo Hue while we’re here, so we’ll probably do that. I think my wife’s old favorite Cajun place closed a while ago, so I don’t know that we have any particular place for that other than Papadeaux or something.
Try Dot Coffee Shop, for breakfast, the Houston Omlette is the size of a laptop. Pretty tasty, and good coffee.
Cenral Texas BBQ in Pearland on Broadway is really good, run by a Cuban family, and great sides. I’ll be stopping there for lunch this coming Friday.