Kosher Food and Drink

This review is part of a series of restaurant reviews conducted while my family was on vacation in Houston. It was an amazing opportunity to try many kosher restaurants in this growing Jewish community.

As part of our trip, we invited a non-Jewish work colleague/friend to join us for dinner at Casa Bar & Grill (5711 Bissonnet St, Bellaire, TX 77401; (713) 485-5361; casabarandgrill.com; under HKA supervision), located in the Bellaire neighborhood of Houston. Casa can be found inside a small strip mall. There is plenty of parking nearby. It was a little incongruous to find a nicer restaurant in a not-so-upscale part of the neighborhood, but I’ve found similar gems in the rough before (Ostrow Brasserie in Miami coming to mind).

Inside is a modern industrial ambience that was airy and adequately lit, but provided some level of privacy in the dining area through the use of line of sight barriers. The bar area was tasteful, but not necessarily the anchor of the room. Casa is proof that a clean, minimalist interior design can be highly appealing.

Service was prompt, responsive, and friendly. Our server was making use of some sort of device that gave her real-time availability on menu items, and she was entirely up front on what they had a lot of, and not so much of. The rehearsed process that the server went through was evidence of serious training. The entire service experience was on par with the higher end restaurants that my wife and I had dined at in New York City a couple months prior – and for a kosher restaurant in a smaller community, that is an outstanding compliment. It is not reasonable to expect them to be quite on par with a truly top end restaurant like Barnea (which also has multiple times the customer volume), but for the price point, they deserve nothing but praise.

Pricing is on the high end. Appetizers are in the $20-$40 range; entrees are $30-$70. Unless you’re in a much higher salary bracket than we are, this is probably more of a “special event” kind of restaurant than a weekly night out choice.

We ordered a lot of food and drinks. I can’t quite name all of the drinks. But here’s some photos of the appetizers and drinks.

For the appetizers, we had the tuna crispy rice, wagyu pastrami, and the BBQ short rib tacos. The tuna crispy rice was crispy on the outside, just slightly chewy inside, and the tuna was seasoned just right. The BBQ short rib tacos had a nice crunch and a bit of spice to go with the perfectly-cooked pulled short rib meat. Oddly, I felt that the pastrami wagyu was the weakest of the three appetizers: it didn’t really taste or look like pastrami, it was a little chewier than I expected, and it came out late – more of a thin slice of wagyu than a real pastrami. It was pretty good eats on its own merits, but for one of the more expensive appetizers, higher standards are appropriate.

After the appetizers, we moved on to the entrees and sides.

These were all a hit, and tasted great. My daughter had the New York strip steak (medium-rare), which was delivered to the right level of done-ness, and tasted great – the chimichurri being an excellent contrast to the well-spiced steak. I had the Dino Rib, which was tender but not TOO tender, with a delicious BBQ sauce on top. I didn’t taste much if any smoke in it, but even if they braised it, it was fantastic. My friend raved about his lamb burger. The chicken marsala got top reviews from my wife, and my son also really enjoyed his BBQ brisket burger (devouring it in a shockingly short period of time).

The sides that I tried were also given the attention they deserved. A stand-out favorite was the Mexican street corn, which my daughter stole from me after having one piece. But even the veggies were given their due, and tasted great. No detail was left out, as far as I could tell.

Was it a perfect meal? Pretty close. I think they didn’t quite nail one of the appetizers, and there wasn’t a lot of smoke flavor in things that were nominally smoked. But as higher-end dining experiences go, I was simply shocked at how close it came to some of the best kosher restaurants I’ve eaten at. If you are in Houston, keep kosher, and you can fit Casa into your budget, you owe it to yourself to do so, at least once.