On a literal level, the reply is very simple. The coronet of laminated pastry I scored from Koffeteria a few of Saturdays ago held a trove of gelled, spicy roux studded with hunks of sausage and rooster.
I experienced been not able to resist the concept when I went on the web to place an purchase the night time before — constantly the most effective way to make absolutely sure of having the most recent concoctions from chef Vanarin Kuch at this well known bakery-cafe in EaDo. It sells out of specific items swiftly, and the additional daring the thought, the more very likely it is to fly out the door with the early birds.
Which is how it goes in Houston these times. The foods-obsessed appear to be at any time more committed to conspicuously consuming the most outrageous examples of the genre-swapping that has come to be central to Houston delicacies. Instagram feeds are comprehensive of these hybrid dishes, daring us to consume them and then brag about them to our pals.
I am not immune. Just a number of weeks ago, I was drawn to sample — and then celebrate — the freewheeling quesadilla that has develop into a signature dish at Cobos Que, the birria and barbecue specialists who have established up store equidistant from downtown’s baseball, soccer and basketball venues. We’re talking barbecue brisket meshed with mac and cheese that has smoked boudin mixed in, folded into a flour tortilla and griddled until finally the cheese pulls and oozes in a remarkably fulfilling way.
Koffeteria
1110 Hutchins, Suite 102
It is a tiny nuts and mad excellent.
So, in its have fashion, was my Gumbo Danish, which supplied the taste profile of the Louisiana soup so beloved in this city as a space-temperature solid somewhat than a very hot soup. Yeah, I could have heated up the danish pastry when I got it dwelling and made a liquid effect, but I couldn’t wait that lengthy to test it.
It worked, in its have peculiar way. And it remaining me questioning how the Crawfish Rangoon Danish that Koffeteria showcased in its Instagram feed awhile back experienced tasted. It looked wild: its small, cylindrical foundation spouting two radically swirled claws of laminated pastry. It slyly referenced not just the Cajun and Creole strain of our regional meals tradition but Kuch’s possess Asian roots, as the son of Cambodian immigrants.
1 of past week’s specials, a Cambodian pesto roll, used French croissant pastry as a cradle for pesto based on Thai basil and meka leaves, or hog plum leaves, “which have a fragile citrus flavor,” the Instagram caption suggested, with peanuts as the nut foundation. A bit earlier, Kuch dipped into a bit of Americana that has come to be quintessentially Texan, thanks to our barbecue culture: a Tex-Czech kolache crammed with a loaded mashed potato fluff laced with both cheddar and Oaxaca cheeses.
Houston cooks have been mixing and matching the city’s foundational foodways with our abundant array of intercontinental cuisines at any time considering that the 1980s, as I bear in mind it. That cross-fertilization is essential to our unique regional cooking in the 21st century.
But these days I’ve been inquiring myself why the mixing and matching appears to have strike a feverish pitch right here in early 2022. What is seriously in that Gumbo Danish, or underneath it, contacting it into existence?
I have a few of theories, both relevant to the pandemic that is now getting into its 3rd grinding 12 months.
The very first is the way Instagram has fueled the recent surge of experimentation. In the course of the past couple of several years, the platform surged into prominence as a marketing and advertising device for battling places to eat, and instantly underemployed chefs and bakers and cooks of all types. The extra outrageous and swaggery the mix-and-match notion, the far more “OMG!” opinions and website traffic it attracts. Examine it out on the web and you are going to see — the experimentation fuels by itself.
My 2nd idea is that dishes that kick around the culinary traces, that jolt our sense of “normality,” make us sense a thing in a way that all the pandemic-friendly comfort food stuff in the environment can’t do. To take in a Gumbo Danish is to remind by yourself you are alive, if you will. It’s a promise that surprise and even astonishment can lie all over any corner.
At Koffeteria — and at Houston foods institutions of all stripes suitable now — they do.
alison.prepare [email protected]
