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Neighborhoods: Chinatown

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Monday, June 30, 2008

Diho Square Jungle: Pokemon Pastries, Madagascar Macaroons

June 30, 2008 – 9:48 am

Jungle Cafe and Patisserie, Diho Square, Chinatown, Houston

Tasty Bits blogger Misha catches up with Diho Square on Bellaire:

Where else do you find Sichuan duck tongues, sushi, babh mi, bubble tea, vegetarian pork kidneys and French pastries within steps of each other?

On this (extended) visit: Sichuan Cuisine, Shanghai Restaurant, and the Pine Forest Garden Vegetarian Restaurant. But the Jungle Café & Pâtisserie warrants his closest attention:

I must have passed it a dozen times, but never thought to look inside. If I had, I would have found French-style pastries inflected with pokemon graphics, the likes of which I have never seen in Chinatown before or anywhere else in Houston for that matter.

After the jump: a few more photos from the scene.

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9:48 am | 1 Comment | Read more about Neighborhoods: Chinatown, Restaurants, Shopping Centers
Wednesday, April 30, 2008

The Journey Slideshow Is the Reward: New Photo Directions from Google

April 30, 2008 – 3:42 pm

Turn by Turn Directions with Google Street View

Google has just added street-level photos to the driving directions available on Google Maps. This means — if you’re headed through an area covered by Google’s Street View — you can now use photographs of each intersection to guide your journey, with helpful arrows superimposed to show your path.

Though the areas covered by Street View in Houston were recently expanded, most inside-the-Loop neighborhoods are still not covered. Let’s say you’re at the new Pagoda Vietnamese restaurant near Cottage Grove, trying to find your way to Chinatown — you know, that neighborhood on Bellaire in southwest Houston, where all those Vietnamese restaurants are. If you plot your trip using Google maps, the directions won’t show photos of your first few turns. From I-10 on, though, you get preview photographs of every intersection. And you can pan and zoom around them, as if looking for oncoming traffic.

After the jump: A video from Google, showing how Street View directions work . . . and what they’re good for.

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3:42 pm | Comment | Read more about Neighborhoods: Chinatown, Online Resources, Streets

New Home for Vietnamese Food in the West End

April 30, 2008 – 10:28 am

4705 Inker St., Houston

Discussing Vietnamese restaurants in Houston, Food in Houston’s Anonymouseater notes the upcoming launch of Pagoda Vietnamese Bistro and Bar — the latest addition to the agglomeration of restaurants off Shepherd and Durham, just south of I-10. But Pagoda appears to be struggling to gain its bearings. The restaurant’s website and menu claim:

We are the first authentic Vietnamese eatery west of downtown with a full menu comparative in traditional quality that can be found in Southeast Houston better known as Chinatown.

There’s more Houston neighborhood-related entertainment in Pagoda’s description of itself on its website:

Up and coming restaurant surely to be a neighborhood favorite to the Heights hippies, Midtown young professionals, Montrose eclectic crowd, Museum District artisans, River Oakies, and the Downtown/Allen Parkway industry professionals.

Anonymouseater provides a helpful summary — and preliminary verdict:

Translation: bringing Vietnamese food from Bellaire to a non-Asian audience with nice decor and high prices. Sounds like Vietopia? Those goals are not necessarily bad. But the food has to be compelling for it to work.

Photo of 4705 Inker St. (from 2006): HAR

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10:28 am | 2 Comments | Read more about Neighborhoods: Chinatown, Neighborhoods: West End, Openings and Closings, Renovations, Restaurants
Thursday, April 24, 2008

Exploring Chinatown: Noodles in Paradise

April 24, 2008 – 1:12 pm

Paradise Cafe, 9889 Bellaire Blvd No. 1128, Houston

A shopping center tucked off Bellaire Blvd. just inside Beltway 8 hosts a particularly intriguing restaurant row:

Within feet of Fu Fu Cafe are something like 7 or 8 eateries offering a bewildering range of options in just a single shopping strip. The gelato shop is right next to a bakery that sells French desserts, Chinese pastries and rice cakes that look like guerilla hand grenades. A restaurant a few doors down serves Braised Lion Head, a Shanghai pork meatball specialty cooked with Napa cabbage I have never come across and have yet to sample (no, it’s not made with real lion meat, I checked). Noodle House 88, which Robb Walsh swears serves some of the best Indonesian food in the country, is in the very same strip. If Indonesian food doesn’t suit you, you can order sushi from the same menu. A new dim sum place opened just days ago and already looks packed.

But some of these food establishments aren’t so accessible for newcomers, warns the author of the Tasty Bits blog:

Tucked in at the end of the strip Paradise Cafe looks almost impenetrable to a non-Chinese American. Other than the name and descriptive signs such as “noodles” and “soups”, the only real clue as to what is inside is a magazine article pasted in the window showing a chef pulling noodles by hand. I got a blank stare when I asked for a to go menu, making me even more curious. For all I know the article could have been about the importance of keeping a tidy kitchen, but the promise of hand made noodles was too much to ignore, so I made it my mission to figure out what was behind the iron curtain.

Keep reading for Tasty Bits’ lowdown on Paradise Cafe noodles!

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1:12 pm | Comment | Read more about Neighborhoods: Chinatown, Restaurants, Shopping Centers, Strip Centers
Tuesday, October 30, 2007

Park 8: The Land of Oz Comes to Houston

October 30, 2007 – 2:51 pm

CEO David Wu told the Houston Business Journal last year, “It’s the sort of thing you’d see in Taiwan or Hong Kong, but we’re putting it here in the U.S.”

That’s a good description of Park 8: The Land of Oz. Here’s another one, from the project website:

The Park8 is carefully designed over and over again, improving to its perfect design today. More important, it nicely put urban life and nature together with equal force. With it’s high quality exterior finish, and it’s splendidly designed floor plans, the Land of Oz emphasis on unrestrained openness and convenience. Every penny is well worth for its consideration on security and safety issues, recreational areas, leisure activity clubhouses and beautiful landscaping design.

Wow.

How about a third try: three 26-story condo towers and a couple of parking garages on 17 acres next to Beltway 8, south of Bellaire Blvd., bounded by Arthur Storey Park on one side and parking lots for two two-story retail strips on the other. Also part of the project, but not shown on the plans: a new Chinatown General Hospital.

The first phase is under construction. And condos are for sale! All come with good Feng Shui and karaoke, courtesy of the 3CmyBox included in every unit. If you like the project video above, you’re going to love the development’s website, which includes a “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” soundtrack and prominently features six videos for the feature-packed 3CmyBox in the Photo Gallery section.

The project’s tagline:

A union of Western an Chinese Culture. A combination of fantasy and reality.

After the jump, off to see the Wizard!

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2:51 pm | Read more about Commercial Real Estate, Condos, Highrises, Medical Buildings, Mixed Use, Neighborhoods: Chinatown, Parks, Proposed Developments, Retail, Shopping Centers, Strip Centers