The Year Houston Restaurants Played With Fire

In 2024, Houston restaurants toyed with live-fire cooking, and many chefs say it’s here to stay

Texas has always loved to play with fire. The Lone Star State has built a reputation for grilling and smoking, with restaurants like Ninfas priding themselves on cooking their fajitas over coals on wood-fired grills and barbecue joints like Franklin’s Barbecue, the Pit Room, and Blood Bros. BBQ setting standards in Texas’s barbecue world. But in the last two years, newer establishments beyond the standard definition of “live-fire cooking” seem to be fueling the fire.

The latest emergence of the trend seemingly kicked off in April 2023 when Michael Sambrooks opened the live-fire steakhouse Andiron, where fire touches every dish in some way. Then came Baso in the Heights. Helmed by chefs Jacques Varon and Max Lappe, this Basque live-fire restaurant offers front-row counter seats to the heat as chefs fan the flames, sparks fly, and proteins sizzle.

In 2024, more “live fire” burst onto the scene. Houston-based restaurateur Ben Berg opened Prime 131 in the Heights in March, which gives a full view of steaks cooking in the center of the restaurant. In June, Choctaw chef David Skinner returned to his Indigenous roots with the opening of Ishtia, a Native American tasting menu in Kemah where he cooks pots of tepary beans and stew over an open flame and sets a smudge stick on fire. And in August, chef Levi Goode, the owner behind family-owned restaurant group Goode Company, opened his first solo restaurant, Credence, which, too, lets diners in on the action with views of its 12-foot custom hearth and wood oven where pan de campo is cooked, and hanging whole ducks are hung slow-roast.

Though “live fire” is seemingly just a buzzier, catchier way to say “cooking over fire,” this historic technique shows up in myriad ways. Many restaurants are also playing with smoke. Bludorn, for example, bought its own Mille smoker, which it uses to smoke its prime rib and impart flavor to its butter for its oysters. Its sister restaurant Bar Bludorn uses it for cabrito night, and even Mensho, the Michelin-recommended ramen shop that now has a location in Asiatown, makes smoke a central ingredient, using an on-site smoker to cook its char siu and Texas wagyu, which are thinly sliced over steamy bowls of noodle soup. The list goes on.

Chefs say much of the allure of cooking with fire starts is about returning to the basics. Live-fire cooking is a natural, convenient style in Texas, where people love barbecue and, often, the outdoors. “It’s a part of the culture,” says Sambrooks. “The more you can apply one of those things to a new cuisine, it’s a good hook to get customers to check you out.”

Sambrooks uses fire and smoke in all his restaurants, starting with the Pit Room, where meats are smoked over Post Oak wood. Candente, the so-called “smokeria,” takes traditional Tex-Mex dishes and features meats cooked over a live-fire grill at the Pit Room. Andiron, which fulfills Sambrooks’s dream of owning a steakhouse, digs deeper with more elevated plates like steaks, branzino, and grilled greens, ensuring every diner tastes something that hits the grill.

“Fire imparts a rich flavor that you can’t get with other kitchen equipment,” says Goode, who credits fire to growing Goode Company, which runs restaurants including Goode Co. Barbecue and Goode Co. Seafood. There, proteins have always been cooked over wood. At Credence, Goode’s ode to South Texas cooking “with some polish” incorporates fire as a central and historical theme. The restaurant’s hearth and wood oven serve as the focal point of the restaurant, giving diners an inside look at a theatrical cooking style, where at least one component of every dish — from the bread to the berries in its desserts — is kissed by fire.

Goode says Credence’s live-fire theme allows him to channel his love for cooking over the fire in nature and honor the traditional cooking methods in which Texas cuisine was founded. “It’s such a deeply rooted way to cook that goes back thousands of years,” he says. Diners seem drawn to it.

Brian Kennedy

Fire is part of the show, Sambrooks and Goode add. There’s something about the flickering flame that draws people in. At Candente, there are stations that allow diners to see their fajitas grilled over flames. Live-fire cooking offers a multi-sensory experience that diners can smell when they walk into a restaurant, feel on their cheeks if they get a little closer to the grill, and taste once their food reaches their plate. It also crosses cuisines — nearly every culture and cuisine has some form of cooking that incorporates fire. The trend only continues to grow with fusions like Vietnamese barbecue from places like Khoi BBQ and Mediterranean restaurants like Baso and Rosie Cannonball who find ways to make smoke and char a part of their menu. Sambrooks says he’s also seeing Houston restaurants incorporate smokers or wood-burning equipment into their kitchen buildout, resulting in even more smokey dishes on Houston menus.

Goode believes that some of the growing interest in live-fire cooking results from diners looking for more traditional and simplistic ways of cooking. “And fire just adds more nuance and complex flavor profiles,” which are imparted by different types of woods (Credence uses a combination of mesquite and Post Oak), equipment, and techniques, like cooking over indirect or direct flames, he says. “It’s creative and very versatile,” Goode says. “It’s the way we’ve been cooking since 1977, and it’s coming into its own in 2024 and beyond.”