Now that Houston has received the ultimate compliment from the Great Arbiter of All Taste on All Things, David Chang, as a city with good restaurants, let me say he’s a little late to the party.  Houston has been one of America’s best food cities for at least two decades now, and it gets better every time I go back.  (No surprise that the city’s modernist/molecular experimenters have either retreated or, in the case of  the eccentric Oxheart restaurant, due to close. Houstonians are just not that into microgreens.)
       Here’s one classic and one new place that make a strong case.

TONY'S    
3755 Richmond Avenue
713-622-6778 

    For 30 years I have returned again and again to Tony Vallone’s namesake restaurant in Houston, and in all those visits I doubt I’ve ever had the same dish twice.  Even back in the 1980s, when Tony’s was a red-walled society and celebrity dining venue and Tony himself was in a tuxedo every night, the basic menu was always appended with new dishes based on what was to be found in the local market or flown in from Maine, Seattle, San Francisco, the Outer Banks, or the Adriatic.  So,  while others were content again and again to order Tony’s justifiably famous osso buco or flambéed desserts, I always just asked Tony to feed me, and I’ve never been less than amazed at what was brought to the table.
    Tony’s began as a modest eatery in 1965, then evolved from a red sauce standby into a continental cuisine restaurant, and by the 1990s  into one of the finest Italian restaurants in America, with one of the foremost wine lists anywhere. Tony still makes frequent trips to New York and to Italy to see what’s new and how what was old is being refined, then, passing all his research on to his chefs—some of whom he invites along with him—while allowing them their own personal stamp, which always has a little Texas swagger in it.  And behind all that is Tony's wonderful wife Donna (right).
        The latest incarnation of Tony’s (its third) is as modern and at the same time as timeless as any in Houston, with an arched dining room with a high, skylighted ceiling,  a 12-foot, free-form sculpture—“The Three Graces” by Jesús Moroles—an intimate “Wine Library Room” with a spectacular Venetian glass chandelier, and a wine cellar that seats 60.   The award-winning wine list itself holds 20,000 bottles and 1,100 labels, all priced quite decently. 
    The current chef is the immensely talented Kate McLean (left), a Houston native and the first woman to hold that position at the restaurant, having risen from sous-chef.  While this is clearly Vallone’s restaurant and he has tremendous input as to everything that goes on the menu—he bounces from tables to kitchen all night long, checking everything—McLean has a clear charge to make Tony’s ideas into real dishes of quality and elegance.  Every dish looks as if could not be more appetizingly presented.
    In the past I’ve allowed Tony to kill me with his kindness, pleading with me to have “just a taste,” “a half portion,” “you don’t have to eat it all,” “you must try this.”  I go along and I end up happier and wiser about Italian food than when I sat down.  This last time, however, I asked him to go a little easy, which is not Tony’s idea of a good time, but he held back.  A little.
    First up were two superb pasta dishes—ravioli ascolani ($15) came stuffed with meat, nutmeg, golden raisins, walnuts and sage, graced with pecorino romano, and gnocchi ($12), made from buttery Kennebec potatoes, cooked in the oven with red Sicilian olives and Parmigiano-Reggiano (below).  In their simple flavors, all buoyed by perfect ingredients, the pastas display yet again what Italian food’s enduring appeal is—to be satisfying while being enthralling.
    Turbot is not a fish that travels well from Europe, and I registered that concern to Tony, but he promised a flawless product, which it was, just kissed with dry gin, with an incorporation of baccalà into a light tomato sauce with juniper berries to mimic the gin. The fish ($33) was served with a 2012 Massolino Chardonnay ($70). Next was a Milano salad of burrata, aged prosciutto, radicchio and sweet figs ($19). 
    America has some of the greatest veal anywhere, and Tony’s is as fine as any: the center cut of Provimi veal ($56) was graced with lemon and sided with watercress, cured heirloom carrots and dusted with rosemary, while luscious Colorado lamb chops ($68) joined it on the plate, with al dente vegetables that included fava beans, eggplant. A Wyoming-raised center cut elk chop ($64) with fava beans, eggplant and jus was a magnificent presentation.  Those meats were well married to a 2010 Torre Fosca Brunello di Montalcino ($120).
       Other restaurants in Houston might do similar dishes but none does it better, more succulently, with more natural flavor.
    For dessert there was an impeccably light apricot soufflé served with  caramel sauce and a tot of grappa ($15).

    Tony once long ago asked me to collaborate on writing his memoirs—he’s got more than almost any restaurateur in America—but as yet, he hasn’t slowed down long enough to sit down and get them on paper.  I’m still hoping he will, and I’m still hoping I’ll get to help pull them all together: Tony Vallone and his restaurant are unique parts of American gastronomic history and need commemorating.

 
Tony's is open Mon.-Fri. for lunch and dinner, Sat. for dinner only.

 LA TABLE
1800 Post Oak Boulevard
713-439-1000 

    Not too long ago in the vast, somewhat awkward two-level space of what is now La Table, a noted French chef was serving up a mongrel cuisine inelegantly coined as “French-Texas,” which showed the chef at his best with the former and wholly out of touch with the latter.
     Now,  amiably reconfigured as a more contemporary space, with its staircase lined with fashion and design books, La Table is easily the prettiest and most civilized restaurant to open in a long while in too-proudly-casual Houston.  The tables are generously broad, with thick white tablecloths and good place settings; there is space between the tables, and the sound level allows conversation to be as it should be.  Downstairs there’s a more casual bistro named Marché.
    A native of Morocco, Chef Hassan Obaye (right) put in his time at Michelin-star restaurants in Bordeaux and once owned a French-inspired Moroccan restaurant in Tangiers.  Most recently he was at The Four Seasons Hotel in Houston, and I sense that he has a sure instinct as to what the city’s real gastronomes want to eat, and it’s not French-Texan cuisine.  He toes a very classic line at La Table, showing the rigor of learning pure technique and passing it on to his brigade.  And it is wonderful to see tableside service restored; more on that later.
    La Table has the usual selection of raw bar items (a seafood plateau for two is $46 per person), and a well-worth-ordering selection of flatbreads, crispy and wonderfully varied, from tomato and mozzarella ($14) to yellowfin tuna with crème fraîche aïoli ($18).
    It’s good to find a chef willing to bring back a good consommé du jour ($12) to a modern menu, while the lobster bisque with lobster flan ($16) is ideal in winter.  Seared fresh “Prestige” foie gras comes with seasonal fruit ($29), and it’s so comforting to see a cheese soufflé back on a menu like this ($21), now done with parmesan emulsion and porcini mushrooms (below).  Lavishing bordelaise sauce and Parmesan emulsion onto mushroom ravioli ($19) is also a marvelous new idea.
    A section of eleven dishes “simply seared à la plancha” depends wholly on the excellent quality of the seafood and meats, which include Idaho rainbow trout ($38) and Colorado lamb chops ($55), and then there are the tableside (for two) dishes deftly carved with judicious flair.  These include a caramelized ribeye with caramelized onions, mushrooms, richly buttered potato purée and a peppercorn sauce ($55 per person); a Parmesan-crusted rack of lamb with spicy caponata,  potato purée, and lamb jus ($55 pp).  Always a pleasure to see, the carved roast chicken (below) with its golden skin comes with a rendered pinto noir sauce, wild and button mushrooms, onions, seasonal squashes and potato purée ($45 pp).
    I hope that the service staff has by now ameliorated the problem I faced that evening this fall, which was that while all the carving and plating was going on, the other dishes, like a poached 1.5-pound lobster with spicy green curry, roasted tomatoes, and baby bok choy ($55), and a yellow fin tuna with roasted Mediterranean vegetables, potatoes, green beans, olives, and lemon preserves ($45), grew cold.
    There is more flair in the grand chocolate soufflé for two ($24). Well worth applause, too, is the traditional poire belle Hélène with dark chocolate sauce, vanilla ice cream and almonds ($14), and the dense but moist opera cake with chocolate ganache, almond sponge cake and Arabica coffee sorbet ($14).
    Of course, what would a restaurant named La Table be without a selection of cheeses (three for $14)?
   Care has been put into a superbly comprehensive, 30-page wine list by wine director Michael Peltier and served with finesse by Sommelier Xavyer Burroughs, but mark-ups can induce a wince: Non-vintage Veuve Clicquot Rosé at $145, when you can buy it in a store for $55? Or Peter Michael Ma Belle Fille at $295 versus $95?  Nicely made cocktails run a reasonable $8-$13.
    As fine a city as Houston is when it comes to first-rate restaurants, examples like Tony’s and La Table are still few and far between.  So, while the former still maintains the highest standard of all, La Table is evidence that Houston’s fine dining scene is coming into somewhat better focus.

LADY GAGA PUT IN AN ORDER
FOR THE ENTIRE LINE

The Japanese company Fake Food Hatanaka has introduced the idea of fake foods as fashion accessories, called ii-Fake Hatanaka. You can now buy hair accessories like tsukimi soba with raw egg, spaghetti and meatball, and a lettuce-wrap; salami and shrimp earrings; and orange cake boots.