COMMENT OF THE DAY RUNNER-UP: LONGING FOR LONG POINT 
“how long until the teardown trend crosses to the north side of Long Point?” [anonymous, commenting on Houston Home Listing Photo of the Day: Global Warming] Illustration: Lulu
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Long Point
COMMENT OF THE DAY: A NARROW, GENTLE EARTHQUAKE ZONE ON HOUSTON’S WEST SIDE “. . . The Long Point fault cuts straight through the area, hitting brittmore just south of I-10, crossing saint mary’s just to the west, then going through wycliffe and Wilchester, crossing Kirkwood just south of Memorial. It goes all the way down to around Whittington just west of Dairy Ashford. But if you don’t buy a house directly on the fault, you’ll be fine. Judging from the location of this house and where the Long Point fault map shows the fault, this house should be fine. Its neighbor to the west, maybe not.” [Lost_In_Translation, commenting on Yards of Yard in Britmore Oaks]
Maybe this is the industry that’ll bring in . . . all those bargain-seeking tourists from Austin?
- Houston Taco Tour 2009 [Vimeo]
- Previously on Swamplot: Houston Taco Truck Tour by Camera Phone
Video: Nelson Flores
So what’s new?
- Opening: There’s a big new Gallery Furniture taking over the old Pier One space in the Post Oak Shopping Center, across from the Galleria. Isiah Carey notes that there’s a (much smaller) “coming soon” sign out front. Also coming to the strip from Mattress Mack: a new and more upscale Kreiss Furniture store, where Pier One Kids used to be.
- Closed: Paulie’s restaurant reports receiving an undisclosed “offer we couldn’t refuse” to close its Holcombe at Kirby location, and dutifully complied on Monday. The original Paulie’s, on Westheimer at Driscoll, will remain open.
- Hoping to Spread: And Katharine Shilcutt reports that Otilia’s Mexican restaurant, the longtime Long Point standout, now “a bastion of the upper class yuppies who reside quietly in the nearby Memorial Villages and wash down their rice and beans with bottles of Merlot,” isn’t closing, despite rumors she had heard. But:
it turns out instead that Otilia’s is actively seeking to franchise their restaurant. A bright sign by the register blinked this advertisement every five seconds as we ate, while the waitresses sullenly confirmed this fact.
Then there’s that Main St. mulch . . .
Some rather positive reviews for the 53,000-sq.-ft. Super H Mart now open in the former Randall’s on Blalock at Westview, a few blocks north of I-10. Yelp user Therese S. calls the big Korean chain‘s Houston store an
Awesome, awesome Asian grocery store. They have pretty much almost everything. . . . I saw wansuy (cilantro), (Philippine–the best) mango juice, calamansi juice, halo-halo ingredients, even fish sauce, oyster sauce (albeit in HUGE bottles), sinigang mix, prawn crackers, mochi(!), kimchi (a whole chiller section), chopsticks, Yan Yan, Pocky, Koala, and on and on.
And this from the Food in Houston blog:
If you walk inside and don’t look too closely, you might think that you are in a state-of-the-art Whole Foods. Super H Mart has that same bright, cheery, contemporary feel. But instead of a cheese counter, Super H has a whole wall devoted to kimchi. . . .
The produce section includes fruits and vegetables that are rarely seen in Houston — even at Hong Kong market. The quality of the produce looks as good as Central Market or Whole Foods.
The seafood section may have the broadest, and most interesting, selection of seafood in Houston.
After the jump: A look at that wall of kimchi! Plus: a food-court surprise!
There’s just too much to take in from the latest rambling, illustrated walking tour by David Beebe and John Nova Lomax, narrated in harmony from their two separate corners of the Texan blogosphere. The pair’s latest venture — appropriately enough — runs along Long Point, through the heart of Spring Branch:
. . . primarily Long Point is a binary street combining Mexico and Korea. In contrast to the multi-ethnic riot that is Bissonnet, or the Pan-Asian explosion that is Bellaire, Long Point is binary. Some businesses fuse into MexiKorea. The Koryo Bakery, right next door to the only Korean bookstore in Houston, touts its pan dulce y pastels, for example, and it seems that many of the Korean-owned businesses aim at Spanish-speakers more than Anglos. (Someone should open a restaurant out here called Jose Cho’s TaKorea.)
The camera-and-tequila-toting duo guide us through a shady thrift-store nirvana they declare to be drab but safe, pointing out salient features along the way: cans of silkworm pupae in a former Kroger turned Korean supermarket, and the historic Hillendahl Cemetery (pictured above) carved out of one corner of a Bridgestone tire barn parking lot.
After the jump, more Spring Branch walking-tour highlights!
