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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!
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Read more about: 77055, Koreatown, Long-Point, Openings and Closings, Restaurants, Retail, Supermarkets
Robert Boyd ends his series of bicycle tours through the Memorial Villages with a ride through the west end of Spring Valley, and concludes:
Perhaps this is a good way to characterize the Memorial Villages. They will tolerate eccentricity, but only a very small amount of it.
These are wealthy folks, and I bet many of them consider themselves to be individualists. Let your freak flags fly! You live in the Villages–you’ve made it. So do something wild and unique with your house and yard that proclaims your uniqueness.
After the jump, a few more photo gems from Boyd’s Spring Valley travelogue.
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Read more about: 77055, Campbell Place, I-10, Memorial Villages, Spring Valley, Tours
January 31, 2008 – 5:38 pm
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!
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Read more about: 77043, 77055, 77080, Houston History, Koreatown, Long-Point, Pedestrians, Spring-Branch, Streets, Tours
January 29, 2008 – 4:00 pm
Robert Boyd rides north of I-10 and snoops around more Spring Valley homes in his latest bike tour. Highlights: The Voss mess, a cool carport, and the recent retail-Modern pad pictured above.
Photo of house on Cedarspur Dr.: Robert W. Boyd
Read more about: 77055, Home Design, Memorial Villages, Spring Valley, Streets, Tours
January 18, 2008 – 9:05 am
What makes Hilshire Village and Spring Valley different from the rest of the Memorial Villages?
Both these Villages are north of I-10, which for Memorialites is sort of the wrong side of the tracks. Indeed, if you look at the household income of 77055 in the year 2000, the zip code that encompasses Hilshire Village and Spring Valley, it is $36.7 thousand. The average household income in 77024, which consists mainly of the southern Villages, is $82.6 thousand. The two northern Villages, however, are probably far closer to the Southern Villages in terms of wealth. It’s simply that as you go north and east from Spring Valley and Hilshire Village, you enter more working class neighborhoods, with lots of Hispanic and Korean immigrants. They may not be rich, but they are strivers, and the area North of I-10 on the Westside is, I think, getting wealthier and more middle class.
Robert Boyd returns from his latest bicycle tour — through Memorial’s northern outposts — with photos of his finds: wobbly Metro bike racks, shed-roof seventies Modern Memorial classics, ivy art, creekside barbecue, Tae Kwon Do parking-lot attendants, low-calorie McMansions, plus a couple of misplaced Victorians and a faux Adobe.
Photo of house on Winningham Ln.: Robert W. Boyd
Read more about: 77024, 77055, Hilshire-Village, Home Design, Memorial Villages, Spring Valley, Streets, Tours
December 11, 2007 – 1:22 pm
Houston is such an international city! If you’ve been here a while, you’ve probably already found Tuscany in Houston and Hong Kong in Houston, and perhaps also Charlottesville, New Delhi, Versailles, New York, Mexico City, Cairo, Dubai, Atlanta, and maybe even some Lubbock in Houston as well.
Well, here’s a new one: Now you can discover Barcelona in Houston too. And it’s in Spring Branch!
Fortunately, for those of you tired at the thought of all that around-the-world-in-eighty-themed-apartments travel, this little bit of the Spanish Mediterranean comes in the familiar form of a Houston townhome six-pack: two rows of bright yellow tightly fit stucco-coated boxes facing a bare concrete driveway.
So really, it shouldn’t seem so foreign after all.
After the jump, more pics!
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Read more about: 77055, Development Strategy, Home Design, Homes for Sale, New Construction, New Construction: Residential, Real Estate Marketing, Spring-Branch, Theming, Townhomes
September 7, 2007 – 8:24 am
Houston’s demolition pace picks up, with new destruction sites at Westheimer and the Beltway. Read all the addresses in our daily report, after the jump.
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Read more about: 77007, 77008, 77019, 77024, 77042, 77055, 77056, 77063, Daily Demolition Report, Demolitions
Nine houses and three buildings leave Houston. Our list of the newly departed begins after the jump.
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Read more about: 77004, 77007, 77011, 77020, 77027, 77032, 77034, 77048, 77055, 77063, Daily Demolition Report, Demolitions
A lovely and diverse group of demolitions in today’s edition. See them after the jump.
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Read more about: 77004, 77007, 77018, 77019, 77042, 77054, 77055, 77056, 77057, 77072, 77081, 77088, 77091, 77098, Daily Demolition Report, Demolitions
More homes around the city turn to dust. Plus a baker’s dozen demolitions in Greenview Manor—all after the jump.
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Read more about: 77005, 77006, 77008, 77019, 77025, 77032, 77055, 77075, Daily Demolition Report, Demolitions
An all-residential edition of the demo report begins after the jump.
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Read more about: 77007, 77008, 77012, 77025, 77027, 77055, 77057, Daily Demolition Report, Demolitions
A fast food icon quickly devoured, plus the end of a house on an oak-lined Woodland Heights street. Details after the jump.
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Read more about: 77004, 77005, 77007, 77009, 77019, 77055, 77056, 77087, Daily Demolition Report, Demolitions
