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Brace yourselves, Houston diners: chef Chris Shepherd has a New Year's surprise for the city, in the form of a brand-new steakhouse — Georgia James, named after his parents.

That's not the half of it. Shepherd will upend operations at Underbelly, one of the city's most prominent restaurants, downsizing it and moving it a few blocks up Westheimer to the former Poscol/Jimmy Chew's site, and rechristening it as UB Preserv.

Georgia James will open inside the old Underbelly space at 1100 Westheimer after an extensive re-model. The Hay Merchant, the adjoining craft beer gastropub, will begin serving lunch and will add a few of Underbelly's sacred favorites (those Korean goat dumplings, that cha ca snapper) to the menu.

Shepherd has one more unexpected switcheroo in his knife bag: He's ditching the upcoming seafood iteration of One Fifth, his revolving-concept restaurant further up Westheimer, in favor of a new enthusiasm — One Fifth Mediterranean.

Got all that?

"Yeah, I'll be opening three new restaurants in 2018," Shepherd said, sounding wry and a little bit disbelieving.

It's big roll of the dice, especially at a time when the Houston restaurant market has contracted in the wake of Hurricane Harvey, and people are holding their breath to see what (and who) shakes out as the tax year ends.

Back to Gallery Chris Shepherd to turn Underbelly into steakhouse 17 1 of 17 Photo: Julie Soefer 2 of 17 Photo: Julie Soefer 3 of 17 4 of 17 Photo: Julie Soefer 5 of 17 Photo: Michael Starghill, Jr., Photographer 6 of 17 Photo: Julie Soefer 7 of 17 Photo: Julie Soefer 8 of 17 Photo: Yi-Chin Lee, Staff 9 of 17 Photo: Julie Soefer 10 of 17 Photo: Julie Soefer 11 of 17 Photo: Julie Soefer 12 of 17 Photo: Julie Soefer 13 of 17 Photo: Julie Soefer 14 of 17 Photo: Julie Soefer 15 of 17 Photo: Michael Paulsen, Staff 16 of 17 Photo: Nick de la Torre, Houston Chronicle 17 of 17 Photo: Michael Starghill, Jr., Photographer

































Yet Shepherd, winner of the prestigious James Beard Best Chef Southwest Award in 2014, has seemed to relish rolling those dice lately. His format-busting One Fifth, the restaurant where he vowed to change concepts every year for five years running, involved big staffing shifts plus a tricky re-do of the former Mark's American Cuisine space, the high-vaulted nave of a 1920s church at 1658 Westheimer.

I remember thinking it sounded a little crazy when Shepherd first broached the One Fifth idea, and wondering if he and his team could pull it off.

They did. One Fifth Steak, the first concept out of the gate, was a smash hit that reimagined the same-old stolidity steakhouses tend to embody. My review in the Chronicle gave the place three stars, signifying one of the best restaurants in the city. When the time came to switch formats again in August — to the equally good One Fifth Romance Languages operating now — I didn't want One Fifth Steak to end.

Neither did Shepherd. "I really, really loved it," he recalls now. Before the end of the steakhouse's run, he already had started looking around for a permanent place to put it. Many of the sites he inspected would involve millions in cash outlays for buildout on top of the lease terms. At some point, Shepherd realized he already owned a steakhouse-sized space: his flagship, Underbelly.

As the restaurant where he carved out a national reputation, Underbelly has the kind of fan base and gravitas bound to make major changes a wrench. But Shepherd was feeling restless. His brainstorm to institute a Gulf seafood slant to the original meat-centric menu "didn't translate," he notes, although the restaurant stayed busy.

And his move to open One Fifth came at least in part because after five years, he had started chafing at the limitations of Underbelly's purist approach, from its whole-animal butchery to its strictly local and seasonal ingredient sourcing. Another itch was his desire, at age 45, to move into more of a teaching, mentoring role with staff. "I can be at my restaurants every single night, but when is that gonna change?" he asks.

While Underbelly had been his dream restaurant, the setup wasn't ideal, either. "I knew Underbelly was too big to begin with," he says. "We should have left it at 80 to 100 seats, not 180." Moving up to the cozy, low-slung Jimmy Chew's space at 1609 Westheimer gives him a chance to reconfigure the Underbelly idea of Houston-heritage foods from many cultures at a smaller scale: one "where consistency would be more of a sure thing," Shepherd notes.

"No reservations, dinner only, fun, fast-paced," Shepherd says of his plans for the new UB Preserv. The menu won't change daily, as it did at Underbelly, allowing the kitchen more time to perfect dishes and hone technique. He sees it as having a more casual, neighborhood vibe than Underbelly.

At the same time, Shepherd points out, gutting Underbelly to refit it as steakhouse will give him and his partner Kevin Floyd a chance "to figure out where we went wrong" originally.

He and Floyd are ditching the farmhouse look for a more contemporary glass and steel grid under the supervision of Collaborative Projects, their frequent design partners.

When will all this happen? Underbelly will close in its current location in March 2018. Buildout on the new UB Preserv already has begun and is scheduled to open mid-April. In August, the regularly scheduled switchover from One Fifth Romance Languages to the newly conceived Mediterranean concept takes place. Georgia James could open anywhere from mid to late 2018.

Hay Merchant will remain open during most of the building renovations, and starting in April, the restaurant will at long last open for lunch.

As far as Shepherd's current obsession with Mediterranean cuisine goes, he blames it on a beet salad — one that he made recently with cauliflower hummus, and which made him feel "just wildly and stupidly happy." He began thinking of the Lebanese steakhouses in Tulsa, where he grew up, and the tabouli and Middle Eastern sides they would serve. (Houston had just such a steakhouse, Jamil's, back in the 1970s.)

"Houston has perfect growing seasons for that kind of food," says Shepherd, who doesn't sound sorry about jettisoning his One Fifth Fish idea. The fish initiative at Underbelly never really took off, as he notes; and the recent closure of three ambitious Houston seafood restaurants — Holley's, SaltAir and Peska — has more than a few observers, including Shepherd and this reporter, questioning whether local diners really want upscale seafood restaurants that go much beyond the familiar Gulf Coast standards.

So Mediterranean the next One Fifth shall be, aided and abetted by what Shepherd says is "probably the oldest wood-burning oven" in the Houston restaurant world. A few months back, during a dinner at One Fifth Romance Languages, amid the Italian and French and Spanish ideas, Shepherd suddenly started slapping dough around and shoveling it into the fiery furnace. Out came puffy orbs of unleavened bread that resembled supernal pita. I didn't know it then, but I was already tasting Shepherd's wholly unexpected Mediterranean restaurant to come.