Since 2012, when he burst onto the scene with Underbelly, his celebrated snout-to-tail restaurant, Chris Shepherd has been the best-known evangelist of Houston’s food scene. Houston, he contends, is the “new-American Creole city of the South.” And he should know—the ever-changing menus at Underbelly (which was one of the best new restaurants on last year’s list) are essentially odes to the city’s motley, polyglot Gulf Coast culture, where Mexican, Cajun, Mediterranean, and Southeast Asian flavors mix with Southern influences in a wild melting pot. Drawing inspiration from this bonanza of global cuisine, restaurants like Underbelly, as well as Oxheart, Indika, Reef, and many others, have made Houston one of the most interesting dining scenes in the country over the past few years.

Recently, we asked Shepherd to help us choose twenty dishes that represent his city. It’s a familiar task: for the past four years, Shepherd has been leading gastronomic tours of the city that highlight many of these same foods. We also roped in some of his chef pals (you know that saying about “too many cooks”? Totally inaccurate), and together we concocted this spread. Don’t be surprised if you’ve already seen elements from this list popping up on the city’s trendiest menus: these are the muses of Houston dining.