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Houston-Austin connection grows through food
In today’s food section, in addition to a fun profile by the indefatigable Ricardo Gandara of Tony Sousa, who is in charge of dry-aging meats at Lone Star Food Service in East Austin, you’ll find my most recent column about the growing food ties between Houston and Austin.
Uchi Houston and Farmhouse Delivery are opening in Houston within a week of each other, and within the next week or so, Houston’s Trentino Gelato will launch in Austin with eight flavors of gelato created by Austin culinary notables Bill Norris, Iliana de la Vega, James Holmes, Jack Gilmore, Plinio Sandalio (who moved from Houston to Austin just a few years ago), Laura Sawicki, Shawn Cirkiel and Ned Elliott. (You can find the gelato at both Central Market locations.)
The connection between Austin and Houston seems to me to be much stronger than that between Austin and Dallas or Austin and San Antonio, but it’s worth noting that Greenling Organic Delivery has expanded to Dallas in recent weeks, and the Hopdoddy owners recently announced that they’d be opening the first Hopdoddy in Dallas in October.
Two Houston restaurateurs — Joe Phillips, who went to school at St. Edward’s University and runs the Oh My Pocket Pies food truck, and Scott Tycer, who went to UT and owns Kraftsmen Baking — put the connection into perspective: Lots of people go to college in Austin and then return with a certain nostalgia for their college days in our little (but growing) city, and, for Austin businesses, there’s a lot of money to be made in these large metropolitan areas.
But Phillips hit the nail on the head when he acknowledged the importance of the “weird Austin” brand. “We love anything that says Austin. Anything with a funky, relaxed dining experience that is open and feels free and super casual.”
Photo by Adam Brackman.
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