Friday, November 5. To Houston. A Great Hamburger. Del Frisco's. First thing in the morning, the Marys and I hit the road for Houston. My nephew Mickey Terrell is getting married tomorrow. Mary Ann, of course, built in a large ancillary plan for shopping, and it means making the trip today. It must be early, because I have a radio show to get on the air this afternoon.
MA said there would be no stops or other dawdling around as she blasted down the road. I brought a big mug of café au lait and settled in for the duration. Mary Leigh went to sleep. But as we neared Lafayette, MA said she was hungry. In order to have a food stop blamed on someone else, she asked me, "Wouldn't you like to get some boudin in Lafayette? What's that place people are always telling you about? Why don't we go there?"
That place was Best Stop. I knew to take the Scott exit, but not exactly where to go after that. We didn't see it anywhere near the exit. We got back on the I-10 and called our friend Chuck Billeaud, who is from these parts. He told us where Best Stop was, but we were much too far down the highway by then to turn around. He suggested we get off at Jennings, where a few miles south we'd find a place called Cormier's that he said was good.
Cormier's, a classic Cajun boucherie where several guys in back of the counter were cutting meats and making sausages. I bought two links of hot, spicy boudin. It was $7, which struck me as a little high until I looked into the container and saw two boudin sausages approaching two feet in length, each. Wow! I cut into it and found that it was pretty good, with a convincing but not overwhelming pepper level, and less pork liver flavor than I like. I ate about two-thirds of one of the sausages and could go no farther. Mary Ann didn't eat any of it. Wasn't she the hungry one? And wasn't this her idea?
We stopped for gas just past Beaumont. Purely by coincidence, it was the very same gas station where Jude and I experienced a Major Moment a few years ago. I'd hit a hole in the road at 70 miles per hour and blew out a tire. It was midnight and raining. Although I could and would have, Jude insisted on changing it. I was impressed. He was really a man.
Along the way Mary Leigh studied Texas Monthly's survey of the fifty best hamburgers in Texas. Coming in at #4 was a small Houston chain called Beck's Prime. ML found a Beck's in the swell River Oaks section of Houston--sort of on the way.
The tout was on target. (Texas Monthly's food coverage has always been good.) Although the place was small and antiseptic, the guy at the counter had brains and a sense of customer service. It was a chilly, sunny day, but we sat out on the patio anyway. After approximately the length of time it would take to properly grill a hamburger, we picked up the order. Thick, crusty burgers, done as per order (they even allow rare here), on toasted buns with fresh dressings and interesting sauces, with piles of fresh-cut fries. And iced tea all around: $41. No wonder upscale burger joints are the hottest category in the restaurant business these days.
We checked in at the Westin Oaks, right in the middle of The Galleria and all its shopping dangers. The Marys ditched me and began their safari. I went up, rigged up my portable radio studio, took a nap, and did the show.
Nobody was hungry when I got off the air. We went out in search of food anyway. Taking our lives in our hands, we walked across Westheimer Boulevard to another shopping mall to check out the possibilities. Nothing grabbed us. Then Mary Leigh said she was suddenly feeling bad, and wanted to go back to the room.
The danger passed, and ML resumed the watching of television. I didn't want to do that, and suggested to MA that we go downstairs and have a drink at Del Frisco's, the premium steak specialist in the Lone Star portfolio. The steak chain bought Del Frisco's Double Eagle Steakhouse in Dallas some twenty years ago for $23 million. Dale Wamstad opened that place after running two much smaller editions of Del Frisco's here in New Orleans. He was a unique restaurateur, about whom I will write at length elsewhere someday.
Mary Ann ate at the Del Frisco's on Times Square a couple of years ago. She said it was very swanky. So was the Houston venue. We pulled up at the bar. Above it was a slogan I heard Dale Wamstad say a hundred times: "Do Right And Fear No Man."
The usual drink order: Tanqueray martini up for me, Pinot Grigio for my wife. The martini was $14, but it was at least a double. We were handed the bar menu and were sold on the crab cakes and the pulled pork nachos. The latter were served not on tortilla chips but freshly-sliced and fried potato chips. I liked them better than Mary Ann did. The crabcake was also decent.
I looked over the regular menu. It looked almost exactly like the one from the New Orleans Del Frisco's, except for one details: USDA Prime beef is no longer their standard for filets mignon. That was Dale Wamstad's biggest argument with Ruth's Chris. But that's a long story.
We hug around for an hour and a half, then returned to the room. The Westin hotel chain has the most comfortable beds I've ever slept in. While we slept, the surplus boudin began rotting in its bag on the dresser.
