Houston restaurants show out!

Traveling food blogger for Southern Living decided to put together a list of 100 Places to Eat Now, and five of Houston's top restaurants made it onto this list. Now, I personally would add about 95 more, but that's just me giving praise to all the great, diverse & flavorful restaurants we Houstonian's get to enjoy.  Here are her top 5 restaurants and her comments ....

(See Mrs. Cole's complete list of must try Southern restaurants.)

#3 BARBECUE Inn.

What to Order: Chicken-Fried Steak. At a place named Barbecue Inn, you’d expect to order a lot of, well, barbecue. But the cooks at this 1946 Houston landmark know their way around a fryer. They turn out some mean yardbird, but it’s the superb chicken-fried steak that gets my vote: cooked-to-order, crispy, meaty, and shrouded in a cloak of country gravy

***Check out the Houston CultureMap review here. 

#63 OXHEART

What to Order: Tasting Menu. Justin Yu’s Houston hot spot is a champion of casual dining. Guests retrieve their own silverware and cooks double as waitstaff. But his tasting menus inspire. He has elicited tears of rapture with his deceptively simple beet salad, dressed with lemon blossom vinegar, quinoa, and almonds.

***Check out the Houston CultureMap review here.

#71 PASS & Provisions

What to Order: Cresta di Gallo pasta with Hen of the Woods mushrooms, roasted yeast, and Parmesan

***Check out the menu for Pass here.

#74 REEF

What to Order: Roasted grouper with braised collards, pecan-shallot cracklins, and potlikker jus.

***Check out the Houston CultureMap review here.

#95 UNDERBELLY

What to Order: Korean Braised Goat and Dumplings. Without a doubt, Houston is the most interesting, far-ranging, delightful food city in the South—strike that, in America—right now. There’s a confluence of a post-Katrina Creole population, traditional Southern staples (biscuits, barbecue, pimiento cheese), diverse multinationals (Vietnamese, Korean, Pakistani, Mexican), fertile farmland, easy access to the Gulf, and a general yearning to make a culinary mark. Chef Chris Shepherd of Underbelly might as well be the town’s pied piper, leading diners deeper into the flavors of the city. His Korean Braised Goat and Dumplings pairs tender braised goat with dense rice-flour dumplings, fiery with(red chile paste), moody with fish sauce, and flecked with toasted benne seeds. Also notable: Chris’ use of Gulf bycatch (often called “trash fish,” or the fish caught when you’re actually going after something else, say shrimp). A recent highlight built on bycatch was whole Vermilion snapper, fried as if midswim, topped with green chile-cilantro chutney, served over garam masala-scented green beans and okra

***Check out the Houston CultureMap review here.

If you're in Austin, the famous, hard to get in to Uchi made the list at #94. Don't forget, the owners opened up another restaurant here in Houston. 

You can follow Mrs. Cole on Twitter at @JenniferVCole.