Monthly Archives: May 2011

“Nobody goes there any more,” Yogi Berra oxymoroned many years ago. “It’s too crowded.”

Hopefully, neither fate overwhelms the second day of the first annual Haute Wheels Houston Food Truck Festival, since the latter was certainly a fact of life today. Long lines, slow service and premature food outages were the order of the day, forcing many in the audience to admit that food truck purveyors lack the killer-instinct operational fortitude of the typical restaurant chef. Anybody who’s ever cooked for more than six people, though, could see that much more advance prep would be required to get through tomorrow.

One of the day’s bright spots was a behind-the-scenes visit with chef Ruben Ortega, who usually can be found somewhere in the vicinity of his brother Hugo at Hugo’s or Backstreet Cafe. As a seasoned professional, Chef Ruben was ready for the crowds in a truck touring the country to promote Camarena Tequila. All his beef, pork and chicken pieces were cooked already, requiring only assembly into something delicious.

Another chef who refused to get rattled by the smoke of war was Julia Sharaby of Fusion Taco. Though order tickets papered the wall inside her truck all afternoon, the Asian-influenced food kept a’coming. Here she’s building a kind of soft taco with Indian chicken tikka on naan, with a sauce resembling creamy raita. As they like to say at Red Robin: Yummm!

One of the day’s most popular food trucks was called Hit n’ Run, which uses more than its fair share of jalapenos to produce what it calls “killer street food.” Best bets include the killer burger and some very Texas-tasting egg rolls. Be sure you have something cool (or even better, cold) to wash this stuff down.

In general, the food served from food trucks in Texas tends toward the meaty, fatty and caloric. But at least one truck at the Haute Wheels Festival, called Green Seed, specialized in vegan items. And believe it not, they actually had a wait much of the day. It’s not clear how many customers came here on purpose, and how many thought the line would have to be shorter.

There are rumors that a fair number of local restaurant owners are looking into the food truck movement as a way of covering their bases while maximizing their profits. Here, for instance, is Sylvia herself from Sylvia’s Enchilada Kitchen - in her truck called No Borders with a string of orders above her head just like everybody else.

What goes up must come down. And those who waited to get one of these cupcakes for dessert may have been sorely disappointed. Next time they’ll eat their dessert first, just like their mother told them not to. It’s unclear what the food trucks will do overnight to prepare for Day 2 of Haute Wheels. But it had better involve lots of cooking in very large pots.

The idea, last night, was to tape a radio show with Arturo Boada before his new Houston restaurant got busy. As it turned out, we taped a radio show after his new Houston restaurant started to slow down. And the only way to bridge that gap, of course, was alcohol. That was okay, though, since Arturo was probably the first-ever chef friend I made in Houston - more than a decade ago, when his Solero was the joy of downtown and I still had to show up there for a Monday-Friday newspaper job.

The bitter split that recently took Arturo away from Arturo’s (as in Uptown Italiano) has been documented in the media; but last night, as usual, I was only interested in what was for dinner. Arturo Boada Cuisine is what Arturo himself is: half Latin and half Italian. Pizzas and pastas looked great as they flashed by, though the pizza I had was topped with crispy pork carnitas with such a delightful spice blend that one bite tasted like Latin America and the next tasted like India. The camarones en hamaca pictured above is a sure-thing favorite from Arturo’s Beso days, with sweet plantains serving as the ”hammock” for shrimp, crunchy hearts of palm and a soy-ginger sauce that isn’t from anywhere near Latin America. Like the Biblical Joseph, or even the one who shows up on Broadway, Arturo wears a coat of many colors.

The wines at Arturo Boada Cuisine, which somehow were forced to mix with St. Arnold’s Amber during my long ordeal, are also a mix of South American and Italian, with detours through California, Australia and, yes, even France. Those bottles on the left, Marques de Caceres from the Rioja region of Spain, figured in a Big Birthday of mine years ago at Solero. That’s all I remember about the event, except that today I’m happy to have such a nice place to come tape radio with such a good friend.

Arturo Boada Cuisine, 6510 Del Monte, (713) 782-3011

I can’t say I made it to (or even heard about) the first-ever Sandestin Wine Festival, staged then as now at the Sandestin Golf and Beach Resort on the emerald waters of the Gulf of Mexico. But I’ve followed its progress ever since, and even judged its red wines one icy winter day some years ago, when the judges kept busy daring each other to step outside into the wind. This weekend’s lovely spring weather full of warm sunshine and cool breeze helped the festival celebrate its 25th birthday.

As before, there were plenty of terrific red wines, gathered together with a boost from event founder Chan Cox, who owns a thriving retail wine business on the Emerald Coast. Yet with the bright sun and the suggestion of summer heat, there was a certain magnetism drawing celebrants to the event’s chilled white wines. What the folks at Spec’s back in Texas like to call “summertime wines for by the pool” proved very popular.

Unlike some “wine and food festivals” in places like Austin and Sugar Land - or indeed like the New Orleans Wine & Food Experience from which both learned a trick or two - the Sandestin Wine Festival is what it says. Still, each year (happily) features some kind of food presence, such as this weekend’s focus on Spain. This Destin area chef is whipping up a batch of paella.

One of the joys of a wine festival anywhere is learning about the making and selling of wine directly from those who do it for a living. The first-ever Sandestin event featured Peter Mondavi, whose father of the same name provided the vision behind Charles Krug. Now, 25 years later, Peter’s brother Marc did the honors - leading a tasting of some of Charles Krug’s best vintages.

With so much wine to taste, you gotta eat, right? - and that might well mean a grazing trip out along the area’s lovely beachside Highway 30A past stunning communities like Seaside. But it should also mean dinner at Sandestin’s own Finz Restaurant on the beach. If it’s Florida and you’re near water, you need to enjoy anything that goes by the name grouper, such as this creation by young and talented Finz executive chef Justin Stark.

And of course, this being Destin, at least once a day you have to find your way to someplace with a view of the gorgeous sunset. There are bells rung in some places and cannons fired at others; but really, there isn’t anything you can fire or bang on that equals what Mother Nature has up her sleeve. This is a beautiful piece of the American tapesty - and with Southwest’s new nonstop flights from Houston, the Sandestin Wine Festival is a great excuse to come enjoy it.