Restaurants and other activities in Houston

Highlights of Houston? That is a toughy. Houston isn't so horrible a place to be. There is a good job market and plenty of new business opportunities but not much in the way of tourist attractions. I suppose I feel like I am writing this guide for people who live here or are visiting on business--but I couldn't imagine anyone making a specific trip to Houston for vacation purposes. However, since Houston is apparently a "hot destination", I guess someone is vacationing here. The only major tourist attraction I can think of is the Johnson Space Center (which is pretty cool). The rodeo is a big deal (but you can see those in nicer cities which have other tourist attractions). There is good food available--Tex-Mex, steak and barbeque are local specialties.

Quick Tips:

Best Way To Get Around:

You need a car. period. The city is very big and very "spread out" and public transportation is a joke.

It was difficult for me to name a price range for Benjy's. You could easily grab a sandwich or a personal pizza with a non-alcoholic drink for less than $10.00 a head, or you can go all out and have an outstanding four-course meal with wine for a very reasonable $25-35 dollars a head. I am particularly drawn to this restaurant because it offers upscale meals at mid-range prices. However, whether or not you choose to go upscale, you will get a delicious meal for your money. Duck and scallop dishes are particularly tasty, as are the desserts, and all dishes are artfully arranged. A very tasty Sunday brunch (served 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.) is also highly recommended.

The decor is very modern and very urbane, and pretty impressive at first glance. However, it is also very noisy and the seats aren't particularly comfortable--well worth putting up with, though. Also, while dress is casual, there is a certain "hipness" to the place that might make you feel out of place if you show up in jeans and a tee shirt.

The restaurant recommends making reservations, but I have personally never made them.

Visitors to the Rice Village will literally be inundated with Thai restaurants. If you are trying to choose between them, my limited recommendation is Thai Spice. I say it is my limited recommendation because I only recommend it highly between 5:00 and 7:00 p.m. During these two hours there is an early evening special which consists of three courses plus rice for $7.95. With the exception of the desserts (which range from passable to nasty), the food is outstanding (as good as any Thai food in Houston) and the restaurant has a more elegant ambiance than any of its local competitors. I have found that, for an appetizer, most people prefer the spring vegetable rolls to the winter cheese rolls (this may have to do with the climate in Houston or the fact that the spring rolls are a healthier option). However, both options are tasty. I have found all of the entrees that I have tried so far to be excellent.

However, after 7pm, all items must be ordered a la carte from the menu so you can expect to pay $15 which is still not a bad deal, but not the incredible bargain you get if you arrive before 7:00. Lunches, however, are served buffet style and are not very good.

In a nutshell:

Early dinner: highly recommended
Late dinner: recommended
Lunch: not recommended

The first time I walked into this place it was completely by accident. A friend and I were going to meet a group at a nearby Italian restaurant which we had never been to and were equipped only with somewhat vague directions (and had no idea what the name of the place we were looking for was). We followed the directions, mostly, and walked into Niko Niko's (a block away from our destination), where we discovered a hugely unpretentious establishment (converted from an old gas station) with a huge line of people waiting at the counter to order-and leaving with some savory looking gyros and other standard Greek fare to eat at one of the many picnic tables crammed into the place.

We quickly realized that we were in the wrong place and left in search of the restaurant where our friends were waiting for us. Upon returning to the car my companion commented 'You know, that place looked pretty good.' I had to agree with him, so we agreed to come back here (We did finally find the place we were looking for).

The next week we returned, and much like on our first visit (and every visit since) it was crowded. However, the line moves right along so you never have to wait that long and it always seems like there are just enough tables-every time I visit here I feel like I am grabbing the last available table but I have never once discovered that there were no tables available.

I almost always order the gyro sandwich, less because it is delicious than because I am really cheap and the gyro sandwich provides a filling meal for $5.95 (it is really good, though). The gyro sandwich, as all of the meals, comes with a choice of French fries, rice, or boiled potatoes. Although I tend to wonder about people who order French fries (or hamburgers) at ethnic restaurants, the fries are really, really tasty and by far the best option of three in my opinion.

While I tend to order the gyro sandwich, whatever other entrees I have tasted there have all been excellent. The last time I visited, the friend who accompanied me ordered a roast chicken dish and it was particularly good. Although the gyro plate is my budget choice, prices are uniformly low and the more expensive dishes (mostly lamb) are between ten and twelve dollars.

Niko Niko's also does quite a lot of takeout business and is a good choice if looking for something to take home or out to a picnic.

House of Pies is often jokingly referred to as "House of Guys" due to its location in the predominantly homosexual area of Houston. However, in reality it is impossible to define a typical House of Pies patron. The nickname does have one thing right though, and that is that the people you find here are more interesting than the food.

Not that the food is bad. There is a wide selection of pies (as the name suggests) - all those old-fashioned icebox pies like my Great-Grandmother used to make. The non-pie food menu is pretty typical of what you find at comparable 24-hour greasy-spoon restaurants. While the food is of a much better quality than you find at most of them (like Denny's, for example), it is hardly the best meal in Houston. Of course, at three in the morning you can't be too picky.

Therefore, the rather remarkably varied crowd of people descend upon this place late in the evening (and I do mean a crowd, you will very likely have to wait in line to get a table at midnight). The place doesn't have, as its nickname suggests, a predominantly homosexual customer base, but the establishment's location in this area of the city may make it a haven for more open-minded types because you certainly see a lot of liberal-looking people. This in itself would be unremarkable if you didn't see so many conservative-looking types here as well (although they apparently aren't too closed-minded because they keep coming back).

Take, for example, the last time I visited here. My boyfriend and I were in semi-formal dress and had previously been at the theatre. We decided to visit House of Pies for some after-theatre pie and coffee. We, of course, had to wait in line to get a table because it was nearly midnight (on a Tuesday) so the place was naturally packed. To our right, a nice group of old ladies (who kind of reminded me of my Grandmother and the friends she goes out with) stopped to admire the dress I had worn for the musical that evening. They looked to me like they might have come here from a church function. My boyfriend then glanced to our left and commented, (discreetly in my ear of course) "Wow! His girlfriend looks really young and really hooker-y." I then looked to my left and saw a man in his late 30s accompanied by a teenage girl who very likely may have been a prostitute, also waiting to be seated. Later, over our food, he looked over my shoulder and asked "Does that guy have pigtails?"

The guy standing just outside the restaurant, apparently waiting for somebody, did in fact have pigtails. This seemed in many ways unremarkable here, but then again, he didn't exactly blend in either.

You never know who you are going to see at House of Pies, but if nothing else, you can depend on some good, if not particularly memorable, pie.

Some years ago my father had a temporary obsession with death. He read every book he could find on mummification, other embalming procedures, religious/philosophical and scientific theories on the end of human life, and pretty much any other non-fiction work about dead people. Then one Day he found an article in the Dallas Morning News about the National Museum of Funeral History in Houston.

At this point, my mother, brother, and I knew our fate. Sure enough, two months later, Dad drug us two hundred miles to Houston for a "family vacation". He made us some lame excuse about wanting to go to Astroworld, but we knew the truth. The trip was entirely motivated by his desire to visit the death museum.

We showed up at the office building complex which held the museum on a Sunday afternoon and found it mostly abandoned. We entered the reception area when where a strangely pale man with a strangely expressionless face motioned us to sign the guest registry book (which looked exactly like one you would see at a funeral, appropriately). I noticed as I was signing the book that I was approximately the tenth person to do so in seven days. Dad couldn't figure out why more people wouldn't want to see this place.

Then, the pale man led us down a long corridor as he asked us creepy questions like "How did you find out about us?" (think about how Dracula would say that and you'll get the picture). Dad chatted with the guy obliviously, but I later found out that my mother and my brother were just as freaked out about this as I was.

At the end of the hall we arrived at one enormous room where all of the exhibits were found. There was every type of hearse on display you could imagine from a Rolls Royce hearse to a small, wooden, very decorative, Brazilian horse-drawn hearse for children.

We also saw a wide selection of coffins. The most interesting of which was this enormous coffin for three people. The coffin was ordered by a couple who was so heartbroken by the death of their child that they planned to commit suicide and be buried with their son in this big coffin. However, by the time the coffin was completed they had changed their mind, so now it sits in a museum.

There were also, among other things, various displays of embalming equipment from different periods in American history and videos (fortunately not too graphic) explaining how they work and the history of the mortuary arts.

We saw one other guest during our visit. He asked my father, almost rhetorically, "So, are you in the trade" and was surprised when my father said that he wasn't an undertaker. He was just a death junkie.

Do I recommend the National Museum of Funeral History? Well, it certainly is interesting. Whether that's good or bad is up to you I guess. Definitely not for a first date.