Cornbread Nation 7: The Best of Southern Food Writing

Friends and Families

49 Friends and Families Nikki Metzgar As big as Texas, as big as the world. That’s Houston. Especially now, since its character—and foodscape—is being shaped more and more by a growing influx of Asian immigrants. And that’s why Chris Shepherd has insinuated himself into the lives and work of a handful of Asian restaurateurs and chefs. To learn. To grow. Just like Houston. Seated in the stockroom of the London Sizzler, Mama is shelling runner beans piled in her apron. A mug of milk tea cools by her side as she laments to her attending family that if only someone in the kitchen could read her mind, then maybe she could retire. Chris Shepherd, chef/owner of Underbelly , one of Houston’s critically acclaimed marquee restaurants, offers to find her a guy who will sell the beans preshelled. While Mama is actually related to several of those who work alongside her, Shepherd simply calls the matriarch, Surekha Patel, “Mama” out of affection. Mama, her husband, Naresh, and her son Ajay (the great mind behind the sizzling brownie platter, but more on that later) make up Shepherd’s adoptive Indian family. A warm and demonstrative Oklahoma transplant, Shepherd grew close to several restaurant families while immersing himself in the immigrant food cultures that define Houston, which he now pays tribute to through his own food. Of the Patels, Shepherd says they’re the people who would take him in if he were ever in trouble, “and that’s family.” In the meantime, they talk about food. The London Sizzler is modeled after a British curry house, with all its attendant cultural influences and culinary evolutions. Seated at the bar on Diwali weekend, the Hindu festival of lights, with soccer playing on televisions overhead, Ajay explains how the restaurant’s special mogo is made. Mogo, or cassava, a dietary staple in much of Africa, is stir-fried with gar- nikki metzgar 50 lic, cumin, and green chilies before being doused with Manchurian sauce, crushed chilies, and cilantro. Starchy like potatoes, they’re about as addictive as French fries but with way better sauce. Mogo is their signature dish, although Shepherd would make an argument for the sizzling platter of skinless Jeera chicken wings, marinated in garlic and cooked in a tandoor. They’re the best wings in the city, of that Shepherd is sure. The Patels still cook with an old-fashioned charcoal tandoor in an age in which many restaurants have switched to gas. Elsewhere in the kitchen, a cook hand-pours the batter for jalebis, the bright yellow Indian equivalent of funnel cake, and another presses the crunchy snack sticks known as tikha gathiya into sizzling oil. Shepherd is prodding dough with his fingers, trying to divine its composition and asking questions about unfamiliar foods. Most chefs stage at high-end restaurants; he’s learning in the immigrant family-run spots in Houston’s far-flung strip malls. Back at the table, more and more food arrives, including fish, potato, and lamb samosas; goat biryani studded with bone marrow; and masala bhindi, stir-fried okra coated in spices. It would be impossible for anyone to eat it all, but breaking bread with family is ideally characterized by generosity, and so the plates keep coming until the dazzling final moment: the presentation of a sizzling cast-iron comal laid with three Little Debbie–brand fudge brownies crowned with three scoops of vanilla ice cream and bubbling Hershey’s chocolate syrup. Puffs of caramel-scented smoke envelop the plate. “Stupid, huh?” proclaims Shepherd, digging in. “It’s so stupid, it’s genius.” Ajay has been to Underbelly a handful of times. His mother hasn’t visited at all, because it’s a bit of a drive and out of her comfort zone. There are about eleven miles between the London Sizzler in Houston’s Little India neighborhood and the Lower Westheimer strip, where Underbelly and several of the city’s nationally recognized dining establishments dwell. Because the city is so geographically fragmented, it’s easy for residents of either neighborhood—chefs included—to go a lifetime without exposure to the other, and that’s the exact thing that Shepherd wants to eliminate from his platform as a chef. Between the ingredients used and the influences drawn upon, no dish served at Underbelly could have been conceived in any other city. The audaciously sized cuts of meat Shepherd has become known for throughout the years capture the cowboy swagger...