Houston

Houston's dining record is shaped by immigration and by the relatively late arrival of ambition in its fine-dining rooms. Ninfa Rodríguez Laurenzo, a widow whose Second Ward tortilla factory was failing, opened a taco stand on Navigation Boulevard in 1973; her tacos al carbon and chargrilled skirt steak are credited with popularizing the fajita in Texas and then nationally, and the Original Ninfa's on Navigation remains the city's Tex-Mex reference point. In the following decade Robert Del Grande, a biochemistry PhD who entered the kitchen at Cafe Annie in 1981, argued through dishes like rabbit enchiladas and coffee-rubbed tenderloin that Texas ingredients and Mexican technique belonged in a fine-dining restaurant — the movement then called New Southwestern cuisine. His 1992 James Beard Best Chef: Southwest award was Houston's first, and was not repeated until Chris Shepherd of Underbelly won in 2014.

Vietnamese resettlement built a parallel institutional history. Mai's, the city's oldest Vietnamese restaurant, opened with a Vietnamese menu paired with an inexpensive Chinese buffet to draw unfamiliar diners, moving to Milam Street in 1984; Kim Son followed in 1982 near downtown's then-Chinatown, working from recipes carried out of Vinh Long. As rents rose in the 1990s, these businesses shifted west along Bellaire Boulevard. From that Asiatown came Viet-Cajun crawfish in the mid-to-late 2000s, a garlic-butter and Southeast Asian-spiced revision of the Louisiana boil that food historian Robb Walsh called a hybrid, and which has since spread well beyond Texas.