http://www.gq.com/story/david-chang-houston-food-city ---- When you think of “places I'm dying to eat,” Houston may not be the first (or the 20th place) that comes to mind. It wasn't for David Chang, either—until he went there to taste it for himself. A few years ago, when Linsanity ended in N.Y.C. and Jeremy Lin signed with the Houston Rockets, I made a stupid comment on Twitter that I'd open a Momofuku in Houston just so I could see Lin play. Houston food people did not appreciate my dumb humor. After a handful of visits since then, I've realized the joke is on me: I wish I were opening in Houston, because it just might be the next food capital of America. I've always wondered where the food in a Blade Runner-like future would appear first and what it would taste like—and I genuinely believe it's here. Partly that's due to a demographic reality: By some measures, Houston is the U.S.A.'s most ethnically diverse city (a bunch of New Yorkers just choked on their halal kebabs reading that, but it's true), and when you get a collision of immigrants, the food scene is guaranteed to be bonkers. Houston also has cheap commercial and residential rents—oh, and no state income tax—which means broke-ass cooks and chefs can afford to live and open here. Zoning laws are more permissive than an Amsterdam brothel. And customers have cash to spend. Two chefs at the forefront of all things Houston are Justin Yu of Oxheart and Chris Shepherd of Underbelly. These guys would be successful anywhere, and it's amazing what they've done in two very different parts of Houston. Oxheart, in the Warehouse District, has one of the country's most original tasting menus. (When I was there, I had the mung-bean crepe and the savory porridge with vadouvan spice.) It's the kind of restaurant everyone wants to eat in now: amazing food and flawless service, but also a zero-pretense attitude—and a shock to the palate every time you sit down. If Oxheart is a sniper rifle, then Underbelly (in the artsy Montrose neighborhood) is a shotgun—it takes the same carefully sourced local ingredients and blasts them into something Shepherd defines as New American Creole. What that means is a fun and crazy (yet deadly serious) menu representing every bit of diversity in Houston: Mexican influences rub shoulders with Thai, Cantonese, Sichuan, Korean, Punjabi—and, of course, Texas barbecue. Yes, Houston has barbecue worthy of its home state. (Order the gigantic beef ribs at Killen's.) Houston also has America's best Vietnamese food. Pho Binh Bellaire is Justin Yu's favorite spot, and now it's one of mine. Even great ramen can't hang with the soup they're dishing up. All of this leads me to the one culinary mash-up that best embodies what I love about Houston, and that's the evolution of Vietnamese-Cajun food—think seafood, rice, and herbs, French-tinged but also very spicy. Crawfish & Noodles, the restaurant where I was indoctrinated into this fusion of cultures, makes me optimistic about gastronomy. It's weird in the best possible ways. There's nothing I enjoy more than the communal aspects of sucking down a cauldron of crawfish heads with friends. This is the dish I think about all the time. It haunts me. If I ever leave New York, I'm moving to Houston. This time I'm not joking.
Houston has always had exceptional food. I appreciated it even more when I moved to Los Angeles and then Chicago. I was amazed at how overrated the food in both cities were. If you ever end up in Ohio, just don't eat... the food is terrible, an Applebee's is a cherished site for locals.
