H-town (Houston) | VeniVidiEdi

Roasted bone marrow is one of the many reasons I’m not a vegetarian. It’s practically “meat butter” that I spread on toast, then I sit back and appreciate how life has been good to me. Of course, my cynical side is wondering how many of these I can have before my closet will finally succumb to housing nothing but stretchy yoga pants….

Bone marrow dishes have been providing gustatory pleasures for mankind since the time when man was able to wield an axe and split bones open. Recently, it has surged as a delight to many culinary hedonists.

I’m featuring four Houston restaurants for this battle. I will start with the best and work my way down.

The General Public – I liked it so much, I went back after a week to order it again. The bone is humungous and cooked perfectly. The combination of marrow, mushroom and shallot is earthy and divine. I ignored the cauliflower. I don’t know what it’s doing there; probably some weak attempt to make the dish “healthy”.

Wanna Bone — beef marrow bone, mushrooms confit, pickled cauliflower, wild arugula & ale glazed shallots

2. L’Olivier Restaurant and Bar

Bone marrow persillade – sauce on top is a heavenly mixture of parsley, garlic , oils and herbs. Marrow is cooked perfectly and the size is impressive enough to serve singularly

3. Brasserie 19

This also comes with a parsley crust but bone is bit small. This puts the crust-marrow ratio off, but otherwise, a real good choice of appetizer in this super dependable, on-point restaurant that I’ve been to an easy twenty times!

4. 111 Forks

Full disclosure – an Instagram pic of this dish sent me frantically getting a reservation in OpenTable to try it asap. Positive: it is absolutely stunning, considerable in amount, will easily satisfy 3-4 foodies. Negative: cooking methodology might need tweaking, the marrow ran out of the bone so i’m suspecting too much time in the heat? They were nice enough to put the run-away marrow on a little jar so you don’t feel cheated. Might have been a fluke but that’s how it was served to us, so while absolutely delicious, it wasn’t perfect.

There, that’s the best of the bone marrows in the city as sampled by moi. Next up…toss between charcuterie plates or something decadently dangerous, bacteria-wise…beef carpaccio!!! Stay tuned.

Poitin (/ˈpʊtʃiːn/ PUUT-cheen) opened its doors less than 2 weeks ago. I would usually hold off a visit, allowing the new establishment to work out its kinks. But there hasn’t really been a blog-worthy restaurant that I’ve been to lately. So each time i pay my Amex and review my charges, I see my WordPress bill and i think of how I could have paid for a cute pair of sandals for that instead of a blog with no new entries…I have to start writing again!

So here’s a good one in what feels like forever in my food world.

The key words that I noted as the server was explaining the concept were: diversity and sustainability. Not words I would really want to hear to make me think of a fabulous restaurant, but were willing to give it a try. The good wine list which we initially perused was encouraging.

D had a reasonably priced Cahor on a reportedly good vintage.

…and I had an incredibly beautiful and delicious Key Lime Pie Martini

Appetizer selections were aplenty and reasonably priced. We were not sure of the portions so we ordered one for each.

Pig Skin!!! This was cooked perfectly. Had a tomatillo-guajillo sauce on the side.

D had a Tomato Burrata Salad, which I just learned, he forgot to take a picture of. Ugh.

The entree list isn’t much but they did have a couple of specials. So make sure you ask your server what they are because that night’s special )soft-shell crab) was a winner.