Fearless Critic Houston Restaurant Guide (Fearless Critic: Houston Restaurant Guide) (Paperback)

by Robin Goldstein (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
The Fearless Critic is the definitive restaurant guide to the Houston area. Acclaimed critic Robin Goldstein has teamed with a secret panel of brutally honest undercover chefs to create a 528-page blockbuster of a book, fiercely independent, relentlessly opinionated, and exhaustively comprehensive. The critics dine incognito, accepting no free meals and no ads from restaurants. Prepare to be shocked by the results: this is a new breed of food writing.

The book includes more than 400 cheeky reviews, rigorous letter grades from A+ to D- (with no grade inflation), and helpful cross-referenced lists that cover every corner of Houston's vast dining scene, from the power steakhouses to the Tamale Man. It's an essential reference for anyone who eats out in the Houston area, from River Oaks to the Woodlands, Downtown to Chinatown.

Previous praise for Robin Goldstein's restaurant guides: "Pulls no punches...even icons get goosed" -Austin American-Statesman

"Talent for turning out zingers" -Boston Globe

"Scathing and scintillating" -New Haven Register

"Written with panache...compelling" -Jane and Michael Stern, columnists, Gourmet Magazine

About the Author
ROBIN GOLDSTEIN is the founder and editor-in-chief of the Fearless Critic series. He has authored four books of restaurant reviews and has written for more than 30 Fodor's travel guides around the world, from Italy to Thailand, Argentina to Hong Kong. Robin is a graduate of Harvard University and Yale Law School, and has a certificate in cooking from the French Culinary Institute and a WSET advanced wine and spirits certificate.

ALEXIS HERSCHKOWITSCH has written and edited for the Fearless Critic Austin Restaurant Guide, as well as Fodor's guides to Mexico, El Salvador, and Thailand. She is a graduate of the University of Texas at Austin, and has a WSET advanced wine and spirits certificate.

JUSTIN YU currently cooks at one of Houston's top restaurants. He grew up in Houston, and has cooked with James Beard Award winner Shawn McClain at Chicago's Spring. Justin is a graduate of the University of Houston and of the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York.

SHAUN DUFFY is a private chef in Houston. He has been sous-chef at Houston s Quattro, and has also cooked at Picasso in Las Vegas Bellagio hotel, and at Austin's Wink, Zoot, and Café at the Four Seasons. Shaun is a graduate of the School of Culinary Arts at the Arts Institute of Houston.

RYAN HACKNEY has written for the Let's Go travel guides to Britain, Ireland, and Ecuador, and has authored two nonfiction books on Irish history and culture. He is a graduate of Harvard University, and lives in Houston.

STEW NAVARRE currently cooks at one of Houston's top restaurants. He is a graduate of the University of Houston's restaurant management program and of the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York.

Product Details

• Paperback: 528 pages
• Publisher: Workman; 1st edition (November 18, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0974014346
• ISBN-13: 978-0974014340
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 5.1 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #509,745 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Provocative, witty, fun to read, and useful as well, December 3, 2007

By	Sue (MA) - See all my reviews

For the first time, Houston has a comprehensive restaurant guide that advises us on where to eat, and where not to eat. As business traveler who visits Houston several times a year, I've spent far too many evenings eating bad meals in bad restaurants--but no more! Unlike the usual travel guide or magazine restaurant reviews that paint all restaurants in an appealing light, this book actually has the guts to tell it like it is. And in a cleverly written, humorous style that can provide hours of sheer entertainment, aside from its value in pointing us to the best places to eat. It's especially fun to read this book if you're familiar with the usual suspects in the Houston restaurant scene, and even more so if you are "foodie" enough to appreciate intricate descriptions of stunning signature dishes, alternated with opinionated denouncements of culinary flops.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great gift, but take it with a grain o' salt, August 18, 2008

By	Shelley Ryan "Recovering book addict" (Houston, TX United States) - See all my reviews

I loved reading about some of the restaurants I've visited for years and laughing out loud at the reviews. Most are spot on!

Then I used the book to guide me to some unexplored destinations and was hugely disappointed. Their #1 rated restaurant (no, I'm not mentioning it by name) delivered fois gras charred beyond recognition, staggeringly overpriced wine, annoying waitstaff and pointless valet parking. The book's best Thai vendor proved to be inaccessible to those of us who can't speak the language to the counter people at the back of the store, so why would the editors bother including it in the book without that crucial detail?

I've given this book as a gift to fellow Houstonians who appreciated and seemed to absorb it, but based on my lousy experiences with the authors' "A" grades, I wouldn't necessarily use it myself to make decisions on new places to try.

Last comment: It's been almost a year since the book came out which promised an "all-new" website with updated reviews, a global food blog, and a searchable restaurant database at [...]. That content is still not there, which hurts the credibility of Robin Goldstein and his otherwise entertaining guidebooks. If they eventually pull it off, MOVE OVER, Zagat!

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars A good directory but not accurate at all, February 7, 2009

By	Juba Lee (NYC) - See all my reviews

Chalk this up to the era of "if i want to, i can, and then i should inflict upon others" publishing (thank you internet!)--this book serves as a noble effort in reviewing a lot of Houston restaurants, but is not accurate when it comes to anything off the beaten path or ethnic, to say nothing of the writing style. Perhaps the term fearless applies to its copy-editing standards.

Fearless has an amusingly "plebe vs. the Man," style when it comes to reviewing pricey, American cuisine, in that the expensive restaurants inevitably seem to get poor reviews whether they deserve it or not.

But when it comes to Chinese, Indian, or other ethnic cuisines, its reviews contrast starkly with conventional wisdom, other websites, and review books. While FearlessCritic being out of sync with just one of these other sources may be a sign that Fearless may be contrarian, Fearless being the outlier across all sources probably is an indication it doesn't know what it's talking about. Many good (and long-time) ethnic Houston restaurants, esp in the Asian and South Asian segments, don't even show up. And a few of the more execrable ones get shockingly better reviews than the ones most visited by the minority communities.

A cursory look at the masthead (writers, editors, undercover chefs, etc, etc,) reveal why this happened. Of the many reviewers, a handful are minorities. Now there's no reason why one has to be Chinese to review Chinese restaurants credibly, but when you have such lazy and inaccurate reviewing in these areas, and when Houston is stocked full of great small ethnic restaurants, perhaps one should consider incorporating more expert perspective. Or sanity check before hitting the press. After all, shouldn't the point of an alterno-Zagat's with grades(!) be to enlighten and tell us about new restaurants worthy of praise/patronage?

In short, the FearlessCritic feels like a college newspaper effort--full of passion, enthusiasm, expansive, and without much depth, thoughtfulness, or insight. That it is occasionally accurate (Da Marco, for one, as one of the Houston greats) is a pleasant surprise--but hardly worth celebrating. No one hopes for MFK Fisher or Brillat Savarin, but perhaps we can get to USA Today?