No, this is not a restaurant run by some boy band in the 90’s. Backstreet Cafe is a quaint little resto in the very nice River Oaks District in Houston. I’ve been reading about it for awhile and I’m glad that I finally got past it’s name and gave it a try.

We were planning on our usual Sunday brunch and we called for reservations. We were told they don’t take reservation for brunch. Dang. That means we need to brave it and hope we don’t have to wait too long for a table. I’m not very nice when I’m hungry.

As luck would have it, there was valet and we got seats right away. Yey! Most of the seating was outdoors. If you get seated indoors, there’s a band playing, and no, it’s not the Backstreet Boys. It’s some old people band playing cool jazzy tunes.

Today was low 70’s, very unlikely to last long so we were okay with sitting outside.

Cooking octopus is really no different from cooking any type of squid. You cook it too soon or long, it’s rubbery and chewy. Timing has be be perfect and this restaurant nailed it. Which is really good because there’s nothing that could ruin a beautiful Sunday brunch by having seasoned rubber slippers…

B is now in an age where he is able to sleep the day away so we can no longer readily grab his company for brunch. He would happily munch on left-over pizza at home in exchange for more sleep time. Too bad because this was really lovely.

And with all that, we have prepared ourselves for another long day in the garden. I’m so excited to have it completed. Will be posting about it really soon.

Happy Sunday!!!!

We had to change our plans for the weekend. We were going to Fredericksburg  to pick-up our second quarter wines (already? how time flies!), but weather didn’t seem very ideal. Weather channel said that it will be raining all weekend in that part of Texas so we opted out.

Deciding where to eat in Houston is not simple. There are so many to choose from. The Pass and Provisions has been featured in the Houstonian magazine a couple of months back but we never got the chance to try it. As we approached the resto, we noted that there was no valet, but the building was in such a way that parking was maximized. One of the things I don’t look forward to when dining in downtown Houston is the challenge in finding a parking spot. If there’s no valet, thats a deal breaker for me right there.

The table we had was covered in paper where the menu is printed. Nice touch!

Now for my confession. All this time, with all the years of eating around the world under my belt, I consider myself a foodie. But I never had to google so many stuffs they had in the menu! I knew I had “cava” in Spain but I forgot what it was. Google told me it was Spanish sparkling wine. Nice!

FYI, scamorza is an Italian type of cheese and guanciale is a type of Italian cured meat. Its been more than ten years since I had these and I didn’t expect to have it this weekend.

Obviously, I googled all these.  A financier is a French cake usually with almonds, so their take here is instead of almonds, they used pistachio. Armagnac is a type of brandy made in Southwest France. You can see from the pic how I can’t wait to devour it.

Despite my incessant googling of their menu, this place didn’t give the snooty or pretentious vibe. Believe me, in all my years of eating, I’ve been to such places, and thankfully, this is not among them. The service is excellent and despite the obvious freshness of all the food, we didn’t have to wait endlessly for our orders.

This was definitely a great start for our weekend. It will  keep us nourished as we head home and proceed with our garden project. Yup, I do gardening now. I will feature it once it’s done. I will need a lot of calories and it looks like we hit the jackpot in this restaurant. As I always say in my Yelp reviews, “Highly recommended, will definitely go back!”