"You can turn an old porn shop into a restaurant." No Images? Click here Welcome to a special-edition newsletter from Curbed, a pop-up we'll send you twice weekly in advance of a project we’re launching on October 24th exploring four themes affecting California and Texas residents in the towns and cities where they live. Until then, we hope this interview series—with inspiring folks from those two states, and conducted by senior reporter Patrick Sisson—will provide you with some enlightening context. Chef Jean-Philippe Gaston uses food to explain his hometown of Houston. The chef of Izakaya , a well-liked Japanese spot in Midtown, believes dining offers a snapshot of the polyglot region, where oil barons, astronauts, and Nigerian immigrants—or maybe even a local Nollywood star—could end up eating at the same table. Houston has been derisively nicknamed “the blob that ate East Texas” for its unbridled development and lack of traditional zoning laws. But to Gaston, who has cooked here for more than a decade, the city’s thin land use controls and amorphous nature are its strength—a source of pride and potential. Restaurants and businesses bloom without the stifling rules found elsewhere; unfettered by conventional boundaries, they blossom. Add a constant stream of new arrivals bringing cuisines from around the globe, and you have the formula for a constantly refreshing restaurant scene: Dinner brings the city’s diversity into sharp, scintillating relief.

Patrick Sisson: How has zoning been an ingredient in the success of Houston’s dining scene? Jean-Philippe Gaston: In cities like New York or San Francisco, places are locked in by the sizes of buildings. There’s no room to grow. To find a profitable location, you need a tenant to leave or a restaurant to die out. You want your peers to fail, so you can take over. Houston is so great because there’s space—you don’t need to cheer for someone to fail. If there’s a plot of land, you can just build there. You don’t have to worry about normal laws for build-outs. You can turn an old porn shop into a restaurant. It gives places an edge. You don’t visit the same restaurant over and over. GQ and Food & Wine have called Houston the cool capital of the south and a dining mecca. What does the city have that Atlanta and New Orleans don’t? Ethnicity. We have way more global influence. Whatever food or drink your heart desires, you can find it, from Nigerian coffee to Ethiopian desserts. There are so many first-generation immigrants here who can start restaurants cheaply, in part because of the lack of zoning. Everyone wants to make the city blow up. What’s one of the weirdest intersections in zoning-casual Houston? On Westheimer in the Montrose neighborhood, there’s a cocktail bar called Anvil—one of the top 100 bars in the world. On that corner, there’s six tattoo shops, a tarot card reader, and some of the best restaurants in the country. Across the street from Anvil, there’s Boondocks, a metal bar. You’ll see headbangers there, a little more uppity people across the street at the restaurants, and taco trucks parked in the middle where everyone is eating the same shit. What are people missing when it comes to Houston culture? The art scene. People don’t think about our art scene. We have some of the best museums here, great ballet and orchestras that compare with New York, a giant theater community that rivals Broadway—and because people don’t know about it, it’s very accessible. At the Menil Collection, a tiny museum that holds some of the world’s best art, you can bring champagne, sit in the park, and hang out with your dog. There’s always something surprising. I’ll take a wrong turn and find a restaurant I’ve never been to. That’s my best advice: Don’t be afraid of getting lost in Houston. We're also talking Texas and California in a new Facebook group: Click to join. If you'd like to unsubscribe, please reply to this email, or contact us at newsletters@curbed.com . Unsubscribing using the button below will remove you from the other newsletters you receive from us. Photos by Cayce Clifford.