Date Nights in Houston: Oxheart

Last month an article came out in the NY Times: "The 46 Places to Go in 2013." We were pretty excited, because Houston was #7, but then we looked closer and realized that the new museums they were talking about as the major selling points for Houston making the list? And the new restaurants? Yeah, we hadn't been to any of them. Oops.

When I'm home, we tend to be anti-social hermits, holing up in our house surrounded by cats and cozy blankets. We don't get out much.

I'd like to change that. I'm gone so much that it's hard to remember what the city has to offer outside the walls of our home, but Houston is a great city, and not only because of its low, low, very low cost of living.

So, I'm launching a new feature: Date Nights in Houston, in which CM and I try new things or rediscover our old favorites.

First up, one of those hot new restaurants mentioned in the Times: Oxheart. The dining room only has 30 seats, so early reservations are a must (they start taking reservations on the 1st of the month for the following month, so if you wanted a table in April you'd try on March 1st). Oxheart is in the Warehouse District, East of downtown in a historic factory space.

The menus are seasonal, focusing on local ingredients. There are 3 tasting menus to choose from—a 4-course vegetarian option, a 4-course option with meat, and a 7-course menu. We chose the 4-course "Winter Menu" (meat included) with wine pairings. Everything we ate was delicious, and Justin Vann, the sommelier who was also our waiter for the evening, did a fantastic job explaining what he brought to the table.

Including sunflower seed soup:

And housemade English muffins with lard:

And a fish course we ate too fast to photograph. And chicken cooked 3 ways:

And a delicious dessert:

And housemade marshmallows with our coffee, just because:




For such a trendy restaurant, farm-to-table mission statements and filament bulbs galore, Oxheart does not have an ounce of pretention. Every member of the staff we encountered was friendly and knowledgeable, each dish was served up with care and pride, and we felt immediately comfortable. We'll be back.

Houstonians, where else should we go for date night?