Oysters at CAPS (photo by Gondola Picon)
Sushi by Hidden
Sushi by Hidden chef Jimmy Kieu (photo by Jenn Duncan)
From the creators of speakeasy sushi restaurant Hidden Omakase, Sushi by Hidden just swung open its doors in Rice Village. Expect limited seating (only 10 guests at a time!) and a menu of 12 sushi pieces chosen and delivered per course by the chef ($60). Leading the chef-driven experience is Jimmy Kieu along with a rotating roster of sushi professionals. Prepare for a bring-your-own-liquor policy in opening days, with a $20 corkage fee for bottles 720ml or larger. The restaurant will begin with dinner service and add lunch in the future.
CAPS Supper Club and Bar
Grilled octopus at CAPS (photo by Gondola Picon)
CAPS Piano Bar is being completely transformed into a supper club — with live music, a private room and a new chef! Chef Omar Pereney, former owner of Peska in Houston, is now at the helm. He plans on an ever-evolving menu with a focus on seafood. The proposed opening menu highlights crudos, tartare and oysters, while shareable plates include grilled octopus, a short rib grilled cheese, and chorizo and mango croquettes. Whole branzino, herb-roasted chicken, cacio e pepe, and a CAPS signature burger, as well as steaks and chops, round out the main plates. CAPS, owned by Venkata Diddi, is scheduled for a January opening.
MaKiin
Lukkaew Srasrisuwan
Co-owner of Kin Dee, Lukkaew Srasrisuwan, is bringing a new concept to Houston’s booming Upper Kirby neighborhood. MaKiin will debut this spring on the ground level of luxury high-rise Hanover River Oaks, and its sold-out pop-up is this week, offering a sneak preview of the menu. Pronounced “Ma-kin,” which translate “come to eat,” the upscale restaurant will feature a broad range of Thai delicacies. “With Kin Dee, we showed Houstonians Thai food can be fun and vibrant,” says Srasrisuwan. She adds, “MaKiin will deliver a more elevated experience to celebrate the artistry of my homeland’s authentic flavors, ingredients and techniques.”
Vibrant
Sprouted pecan amaranth granola
Montrose’s Vibrant is back after being on hiatus for the past year. Guests can anticipate a new food menu of similarly nourishing and beautiful dishes, as well as a small-batch retail line designed to take home. The beloved restaurant has been busy planning a redesigned kitchen, a new from-scratch menu, and intimate, design-driven interiors. “We want people to leave feeling inspired, stimulated, and satisfied by their meal and environment,” says founder Kelly Barnhart.
Executive chef Patti Delgado worked with a nutritionist to maximize the nutritional value of every dish with a focus on anti-inflammatory benefits. Menu items include sorghum waffles with coconut yogurt probiotic cream and elderberry syrup; braised beef tacos on a housemade sweet potato cassava tortilla; and activated pecan amaranth granola with blue spirulina milk. Vibrant has added a new tortilla press and expanded its coffee program beyond organic espresso. Its retail grab-and-go section offers a new line of vegan and gluten-free breads, coconut yogurt, cookie and pizza dough, pastries, bone broth, poblano mole, and more. Handy!Vinny's
Nutcracker pizzas at Vinny's
The Houston Ballet and Agricole Hospitality’s Vinny’s pizzeria have teamed up on a charitable pizza collab to celebrate The Nutcracker season. Vinny’s is baking up two dreamy limited-time themed pizzas designed by four Houston Ballet dancers through Dec. 31 — think Lucid Dreamz with sweet onion sauce, spinach and smoked pork loin, and Seven Gold Crowns, a cheesy vegetarian delight with a walnut pesto drizzle. Guests can vote on their favorite, which will be announced in the New Year. A portion of proceeds goes to the Lauren Anderson Young Dancer Scholarship Fund.
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A detail of 'Resist' by Mari Hernandez (photo by Chris Becker)
Curated by HMAAC’s Chief Curator Christopher Blay, Negative Women brings together the works of four Texas artists: Ciara Elle Bryant, Jordanian-born Tanya Habjouqa, Mari Hernandez, and Letitia Huckaby, who was recently honored by the Art League of Houston as Texas Artist of the Year. The title of the exhibition refers to both a “negative” photograph, in which the light and darks are completely inverted, and “negative” as it is used pejoratively towards women who dare to challenge the accepted patriarchy of our culture and the museum world. (“Oh, you’re just being negative!”)
Upon entering the museum, with light on a sunny day pouring in from the upper level, you might overlook the darkened gallery to your left where Huckaby’s photographs are on display. For this series, Huckaby traveled to Mobile, Ala., to photograph the historic community of Africatown, where in 2019, the wreckage of the slave ship Clotilda was discovered deep below the surface of the nearby Mobile River. Huckaby’s photos of overgrown foliage, broken sculpture, and churning water, with titles taken from African American spirituals (“Amazing Grace,” “Wade in the Water”), are beautiful, but eerie, even as they pay tribute to Africatown’s residents, some of whom are descendants of those who survived the journey on the Clotilda.
Meanwhile, in a separate, even darker gallery at ground level is Bryant’s mixed-media installation “Black Shines Like Gold,” an assemblage of projected and mounted images the artist has mined from the impersonal, algorithmic experience of online surfing to create meditative and devotional space.
Letitia Huckaby's 'Cudjo Lewis Bust,' pigment print on fabric
'Untitled,' by Tanya Habjouqa
'Pitted Brother Against Brother' by Mari Hernandez
Climb the stairs to the second floor, and you’re greeted by an oversize, inkjet print on silk-like fabric of Hernandez marching in profile, dressed in a late 19th-century-styled long-sleeved blouse and skirt, holding a flag emblazoned with the word “RESIST” in all caps. The antiquated look of the photo makes you wonder if it was lifted from a dusty archive, but look again, and you see Hernandez is wearing a prosthetic nose, an accoutrement of the archetypical trickster, and perhaps a warning to the viewer to resist complacency and question dominant and often inaccurate historical narratives.
Several more photos-on-fabric of Hernandez in historical costumes and wearing other various facial prosthetics are suspended around the parameter of the gallery, like banners of a nomadic tribe, and surround an enclosed area constructed for Habjouqua’s “Afro-Palestinians.” The installation combines embedded reportage with a theatrical, performative approach to photography to explore the lives of “a persecuted community within a persecuted community.” One of the first things that compels your eyes and ears is a looping video of students at the African Community Society in the Old City of Jerusalem learning Afro-Dabke, a hybrid-style of celebratory dancing, where the dancers hold hands and stamp their feet. A placard explains one of the girls in the video had just seen her older brother arrested by Israeli forces, giving the movement captured fleetingly on camera a layer of unexpected poignancy. It’s another example of several small but significant historical details each artist in Negative Women is giving due attention to with the hope that change can come, as Gloria Steinem recently said, “from the bottom up, like a tree.”