Friday, July 30. Not On TV In Houston. Whataburger. Brennan's. The television gig I had in Houston didn't pan out. It was only to be for one minute, anyway. The producer was apologetic, remembered my past appearance on the show, and said I'd be welcome any time in the future--with perhaps a little more notice than a week.
That was fine with me. The TV appearances were a sidelight of this trip, which was supposed to be for me to get away from my desk and relax for a while. But it's been little more than work, hard driving, and more work.
Mary Ann feels guilty about that. She said we should take a drive into the countryside today. She was thinking about going to Austin until I noted that this would require leaving immediately, blasting down yet another couple hundred miles of Interstate, and blasting right back. Mary Ann has many fine qualities, but A sense of distance is not one of them. She makes up for it by what would seem like maniacal driving were it not for the greater insanity of Mary Leigh's. Let alone Jude's scary, movielike, L.A.-forged style behind the wheel. But it's all relative. They all say I drive like a grandpa.
My idea for the day was to leave the center of Houston by way of Westheimer Drive, and to stay on it until we were in rural precincts. I did exactly that in the late 1970s or early 1980s. I remember passing dozens of new mirror buildings, then--after the last of them--suddenly being in rangeland. After miles of cows and big skies, I fetched up in a thoroughly non-urban little town called Fulshear, from which all roads were minor ones.
It's thirty-eight miles from the Four Seasons Hotel to Fulshear. The trip took two and a half hours. We weren't stuck in traffic. It was just like thirty miles of Veterans Highway, but with more traffic signals and attractions.
One of those was--at last!--Whataburger. The one we sampled was full of photos from the restaurant's past, which dates back to the innocent days of the 1950s. Even now, Whataburger is different from other burger places. They still cook everything to order. Ladies bring the food to the table on trays of condiments. A caller on the radio show once told me that Whataburger had the best ketchup. Made it themselves. They also make their own mustard. Wow.
All that notwithstanding, this is one dry, flavorless hamburger. That was Mary Ann's verdict, confirming mine from thirty-four years ago. At this rate, I will have my next Whataburger when I am ninety-three. That may be too soon.
The last mirror tower I saw thirty years ago on Westheimer is still the last one. But the range doesn't begin there anymore. Enormous, upscale housing developments by the dozen are squeezing what pasture is left, and few cows. So many people live this far out that a new toll road has been built alongside Westheimer for them. (On the other hand, I realize as I write this that these developments are no farther from downtown Houston than our Cool Water Ranch is from New Orleans.)
The new neighborhoods haven't quite made it to Fulshear. Westheimer finally ends there. You have to stop and cross an abandoned railroad grade to keep going. But there are discouraging signs. Fulshear now has an ice cream parlor that calls itself "gourmet."
It really was countryside after that. We meandered on down roads for many miles. After awhile, I had a general idea of where we were headed, but not exactly where we were. This is the holy grail for me when I go touring. So I guess the day was a success, even if it didn't last long enough.
I had to get back for the radio show. I had time for a nap while Mary Ann walked around downtown, looking for points of interest. She never stops moving. Which is why I need a nap when I'm with her constantly.
A week before we left, I got an e-mail from Alex Brennan-Martin with the news that the chef's table at Brennan's in Houston was back open. I arranged to have their chef Danny Trace join me on the radio. There was much to talk about. A disastrous fire right in the middle of Hurricane Ike two years ago shut Brennan's down for over a year, but the reconstruction is creating a buzz.
And Danny Trace? He was the chef at Café Adelaide after Katrina. Then the first chef of Commander's Palace in Destin. The chef's job at Brennan's in Houston opened up, and he got it. (Brennan's in Houston is connected with the Commander's Palace side of the family, not to Brennan's on Royal Street.
I almost always have dinner at Brennan's when I'm in Houston, and we had more reasons than usual to do it this time. Alex was out of town, but I know the general manager very well. Carl Walker was the chef here for a long time, as well as working a bit at Commander's. He has permanently exchanged his chef's whites for a management role. (More chefs are doing that lately. Another example is David McCelvey, of Emeril's restaurants.)
The restorations at Brennan's made the place even more stunning than it was--and that's saying something. The building, on the edge of downtown, is not only handsome and historic but patterned against classic New Orleans restaurants when first built. Mary Ann was wowed. Atmosphere is her big pleasure in a restaurant--not food. The main dining room's formality (jackets required at both lunch and dinner) offered a light touch: wildly oversize wing-back chairs surround the tables along the walls, making each table seem as if it were in its own private room.
The menu has less Southwestern flavor than I remember. And it's nowhere near as hip as Commander's. (That is a neutral statement as far as goodness is concerned.) The food is reminiscent of Commander's in the 1980s. A lot of the very same dishes from that golden era are here. Along with turtle soup, crab cakes, fish Pontchartrain, and a lot of even older standards.
I started with the turtle soup. It's not the Commander's recipe, but the older, better one from Brennan's on Royal Street. And nearly as good. The chef sent us big, beautiful seared scallops, which meant that I ate two of them. Mary Ann doesn't like scallops. And she was almost stuffed from eating the great garlic bread, anyway. She made an entree out of a crabcake, and that was that.
When I talked with Chef Danny earlier, however, he told me that unless I was losing my craving for exciting food I surely should try his wild boar chops. I did. Juicy, thick, bone-in rack chops had a sauce with big flavor, a little sweet coming from somewhere, a little pepper coming from somewhere else.
Brennan's in Houston has a bread pudding soufflee, but I wanted just the plain version and got it. Terrific.
We were served by Marcelino, a waiter who has been at Brennan's almost since it opened in 1967. He has a personable, polished style, and must be one of the most in-demand waiters there. I told him that Jimmy Brennan had died two weeks ago. (I only learned myself two days ago, when Ted Brennan called with the news while we were caught in traffic in East Texas.) Until the family split, Jimmy had run this restaurant. The waiter was shocked. He remembered working with Jimmy and thought highly of him. "People still come in here and ask about him all the time," he said.
"I think that's my favorite Brennan restaurant of all time!" Mary Ann said. Hmm.
Brennan's. Houston: 3300 Smith St. 713-522-9711.
