I have been blogging steadily here for about a month and I must say, the best thing I have done so far is join the Houston Food Bloggers Collective (HFBC)! It’s a great way to network with other bloggers and for interested parties to find you/your blog. On Tuesday, I attended my first HFBC event, a menu tasting at the new Houston steakhouse B&B Butchers. I brought my sister along as my plus one and we took a TON of pictures, so this post will be filled with pictures :). Here is my experience:
Setup: B&B Butchers is housed in a converted bakery on Washington street. The owner, Benjamin Berg, spoke with us about the great lengths they went through to update the space yet maintain some of the older aspects like the exposed brick. It is a beautiful space. When you walk in there is the bar and the dining area to your right. Our group was seated upstairs in a private area that has it’s own bar. This will be used by many folks for dinners and parties in the future I can already see it. From there, you can walk out onto their amazing patio which has great views of downtown Houston. Some of the best views I have ever seen in fact.
The dining room.
The downstairs bar.
The Patio
The view!
The room upstairs before it filled up with fellow bloggers.
The drying room, in the butcher shop.
The prep section in the kitchen!
Ignore my sister who inadvertently photo bombed.
That’s not all! B&B Butchers is really dedicated to producing a great meat for their customers, so much so that they have a butcher shop right in side of the restaurant! All of their meats are cut in house. The owner, Benjamin was extremely welcoming and took us on a tour of the kitchen. We got to see where the magic happens including the drying room in the butcher shop. I will be back for some meat!
All the yummy stuff in the butcher shop. Check out the bacon on the left.
The butcher shop from behind the counter!
Drinks: The drinks were definitely strong and a tad fancier than I am used to at restaurants in terms of the fresh added fruit. I ordered the 1903 and my sister had the Double Pigeontail.
Drinks
Service: Everyone was amazing from the moment I walked in until the valet handed me my keys to leave. Often I find that newer places are still working out the kinks with the staff, but things seem to be moving smoothly with this group so far.
Food: Okay, now to the good stuff. As I sit here writing this post hours later, I am still stuffed to the fullest! When we sat down, they provided us the menu for the tasting. My sister and I assumed that we would each pick one of the items from each course and go from there. We set up our game plan so we could try the most stuff. Well, this was a real tasting menu! They allowed us to sample everything on the tasting menu, which was great because there were so many great items to pick from.
The chef and owner explaining the menu and giving us some background about this brand new restaurant!
The menu.
Focusing on the menu.
Appetizers: Our servers started us out with a basket of bread, which was soft. That is all I ask for when it comes to rolls. For appetizers, our sampling included the carpet baggers, B&B Steak House salad and calamari. I’ll start with my favorite, the carpet baggers. This dish includes a cajun fried oyster, THICK bacon and bleu cheese. There is a cajun sauce that adds a little kick to it as well. I cannot stress enough how good this is! The bacon is so thick and the epitome of greatness. Best part is they sell it in the butcher shop. Now the salad appetizer was comprised of tomatoes and steak. It looked beautiful but I’m not a tomato fan, but the steak was great. Then the calamari. It was your typical calamari. I would call it a safe choice, if you are not feeling to adventurous. It had a good consistency and is seasoned better than most.
The bread!
Calamari
Carpet Baggers
B&B Steak House Salad
Sides: Our sides or “accompaniments” were Classic Creamed spinach, Pommes Puree (mashed potato) and B&B Mac and Cheese. It was a tough decision because I liked all of them! If I was forced to pick, I’d go for the truffle mac and cheese. I’m a mac and cheese fan though so I am probably a bit biased here. The other options were REALLY good as well! If I go back with a big group, I will convince everyone to order at least one of these options so I can indulge in all of these again.
Classic Cream Spinach
Pommee puree, or as the common folks say, mashed potatoes 🙂
Truffle Mac and Cheese
Entrees: B&B Butchers really outdid themselves on the main courses. Our options were Sliced Filet, Roasted Salmon, Chicken Breast and Chicken Fried Prime Pork Chop. The chef came and explained the courses. He gave some great explanations of each dish, but I was too busy eating or salivating to take good notes. The steak was amazing and was tender enough that I could cut it with a fork. The chef explained the process, but I cannot remember. The takeaway is that it’s good, just remember that. The chicken and salmon were run of the mill. I would not recommend ordering chicken at a steak house anyway so they do not lose points there for me. Last but CERTAINLY not least. The Chicken Fried Prime Pork Chop was straight from heaven. That thing was amazing! I will be coming back JUST for that and you should go just to try it.
Sliced Filet
I wasn’t able to get a pretty picture of the chicken, so here is a pic of my half eaten plate.
The salmon.
Another angle of the entrees.
The AMAZING pork chops.
Dessert: Yes some how I made room for dessert too. The offerings were Carrot Cake, Open Face Ice Cream Sandwich and Cheesecake. I have told you guys before that I am ironically a picky eater. Carrot Cake and Cheesecake happen to be on my list of nos. I had my sister sample the Cheesecake, she finished off our tables sampling, so I will say it’s pretty darn good. For the sake of this blog I tried Carrot Cake. Ummm the texture was good, very moist, but that flavor was a no for me. I imagine that if you like Carrot Cakes, you would like this. Now to what I liked, the open face ice cream sandwich. This basically is a cookie with a scoop of ice cream on it. I love a “creative, fancy name” :). Anywho, as simple as that sounds, that cookie was SO good. That was probably the favorite dessert among myself and my table mates. Add that to my next order when I return B&B Butchers!!!
The dessert tray.
Overall: I loveeeed B&B Butchers. It lived up to the hype and my own expectations. I highly recommend that everyone that loves food like I do, stop by to try. I would suggest making a reservation because for a Tuesday night, the place was pretty full. Oh and B&B Butchers will be on the Houston Restaurants Weeks list on a budget like myself, August will be a great time to try this place out!
One of the best parts was networking with fellow foodies! After our tour of the kitchen we took a pic with Benjamin Berg! Make sure you to check out their blogs/instagrams @superkeatzhtown and http://successeattravel.com/ and stop by B&B Butchers!
What a spread. Those pork chops look amazing!
They were so good! No exaggeration!
The food looks as good as you described it. It is a place I would love to check out.
[…] Butchers – Yes I want to go there AGAIN. Their menu does not include anything I had at the menu tasting, so it is a chance to try even more […]
[…] I made it back to B&B Butcher’s before Houston Restaurant Week ended as promised. Frankly, B&B Butchers is a budget buster (say that three times fast), SO I needed the budget friendly Restaurants Week menu to indulge once again. This time, my sister, mother and I went on a Sunday for lunch. I will just touch on what was different about this experience. For my full review, check out my last post. […]