In recent years, the momentum has reached fever pitch: Seems as though everywhere we turn, Lone Star chefs and hospitality programs are shining in the national and international spotlight. Consider not only the highly regarded Culinary Institute of America’s new campus in San Antonio (the school’s third), but also Austin chef Paul Qui famously taking the prize in Season Nine of the Bravo series Top Chef, Houston restaurant wizard Michael Cordua taking a bow in FOOD & WINE magazine, and TV personality (and erstwhile New York bad-boy chef) Anthony Bourdain’s visiting Austin to tape a final episode of his travel-and-dining series No Reservations. (I curse him good-naturedly every time I visit my favorite neighborhood seafood joint, Quality Seafood, where business is still brisker than usual thanks to his glowing review.)

Texas is hot. I get it and am glad. (And some things, I understand, are too good to keep to yourself!)

I like to see creative Texas chefs enjoying the fruits of their labors. At April’s Austin FOOD& WINE Festival in April, amidst a lineup of national celebrities, a locals-only lineup on the Friday-night kickoff highlighted the skills of such chefs as James Holmes (Olivia and Lucy’s Fried Chicken, both of Austin), who served a smoked oyster with cilantro-bacon jam and jewel-like beads of jellied duck blood. Also interesting was a bite-size brioche, flavored with bone marrow and baked in a 2-inch chunk of beef shank, a singular dish dreamed up by chefs Terrance Gallivan and Seth Siegel-Gardner  of Houston’s Pass and Provisions. But may favorite treat—served in Austin and also at San Antonio’s grand food-fete, Culinaria, a few weeks later—was Chef Jason Dady’s “Mexican Street Corn,” which wasn’t Mexican corn at all. Rather, Chef Dady presented a lime half topped with a dollop of intensely flavored corn mousse, and instructed us to scrape the whole deal with our teeth and enjoy. Bright, earthy, and unbelievably suggestive of Mexican street corn, this deconstructed treat wowed me and other tasters. (The whole is more than a sum of its parts, in cooking and in life.)

I got to explore Chef Dady’s culinary inspirations at length at a fortuitous brunch as Culinaria wound down. I was staying for the weekend at hotelier Liz Lambert’s lovely Hotel Havana, and after a near-perfect weekend, the hotel lost my car keys. They weren’t at the valet stand, nor were they at the front desk, and the person who parked our car wasn’t on duty that morning and wasn’t returning the concierge’s phone calls. So, given the choice of wringing my hands in frustration and going to brunch with new friends, I chose the latter.   We met up at Dady’s Italian-style restaurant on Broadway, Tre Trattoria, which recently started offering a brunch menu.

San Antonio isn’t a big brunch town, one friend confided. But by the looks of the multigenerational families converging on Bin 555 that Sunday morning, that may be changing. After an appetizer of smoked house-made mozzarella and perfectly charred, buttery toast triangles, we dug into bites of griddled pizza scattered with arugula, braised beef-cheek “chilaquiles” with pesto and oven-dried tomato, French toast with Nutella and strawberries, and —because we were allegedly ordering on the light side after the previous night’s caloric indulgences—a sampling of Chef Dady’s antipasti. I especially liked the bright, nutty flavor of the Tuscan farro salad, the unexpected sweetness of roasted golden beets, and the salty earthiness of the rapini (a relative of broccoli) with anchovy vinaigrette.

Tre Trattoria—like other businesses on Broadway—will likely benefit from an initiative launched last week called the Broadway Reach. Comprised of the Brackenridge Park Conservancy, the McNay Art Museum, San Antonio Botanical Garden, San Antonio Children’s Museum, San Antonio Museum of Art, San Antonio Zoo, ad the Witte Museum, the Broadway Reach aims to unite the street’s diverse attractions for residents and visitors. Now that it’s possible to walk and bike along the River Walk from downtown sites all the way to Brackenridge Park, this stretch of the city seems poised for the limelight.

As for Chef Jason Dady, I’m eager to explore more of what he brings to the table, and fortunately, he has several other restaurants in San Antonio, including a wine bar known as Bin 555 and a barbecue concept called Two Bros. BBQ Market. I’ll stay tuned, and so should you. 

The celebration of the button-box will return to La Villita in San Antonio the weekend of September 14-15 following a one-year hiatus. Admission is free.

The lineup for the 2013 edition—the 12^th year of the festival—looks to be as diverse as ever, with bands representing styles ranging from zydeco to French, Klezmer, Dominican, Balkan, Peruvian, Conjunto, and Middle Eastern.

“To us, the accordion is a way that communities can come together that maybe wouldn’t normally, and to learn about different musics and customs through something that everybody recognizes and likes,” says Cathy Ragland, the festival’s artistic director and a professor of ethnomusicology at the University of North Texas.

I’ve attended about half of the previous editions of the International Accordion Festival. I keep going back because the festival is a rare opportunity to see an internationally diverse line-up of talented musicians playing roots-based music; the picturesque outdoor setting at La Villita with its plazas and historic adobe structures along the San Antonio River Walk; and the accessibility of the family-friendly event, which can draw sizable crowds but doesn’t get uncomfortably overcrowded.

For this September’s event, Ragland says she looked for both traditional acts and those offering contemporary interpretations on ethnic accordion music. To name a few, there’s the Petrojvic Blasting Company, a young and energetic Los Angeles band specializing in Eastern European music; Chicha Libre, a New York act that has revived a rural Peruvian cumbia that was popular in the 1960s and 70s; and Norbert Slama, an accordionist of French Algerian birth who plays classic Gypsy jazz and French musette.

Ragland says a few factors led the nonprofit festival to take a break in 2012. The festival’s finances suffered throughout the economic recession, including the loss of some sponsors. Also, heavy rains during part of the 2011 festival cut into attendance and the sale of important revenue-raising concessions, such as beer. Third, the festival underwent a transition in leadership as Ragland took a bigger role.

The 2013 festival will be smaller than years past. There will be two stages, down from four, and there will be no Friday night show.

Ragland says festival directors were motivated to revive the festival by an outpouring of public interest when the 2012 event was scratched.

“A lot of people didn’t want us to let it go, so we responded to that,” she says. “We’re working with the funding we have right now, but I think it will grow.”

As the site of this historic event, Galveston’s Juneteenth does it big with more than 10 days of events, ranging from contemplative exhibits and prayer meetings to lively parades and festivals. A detailed list of planned activities running now through June 19 can be found here.

This Saturday, Waco’s Juneteenth Family Fun Day features performances by nationally known R&B acts such as K-Ci & JoJo and H-town, as well as a parade and family activities. Gates open at 2 p.m. with live entertainment beginning at 4 p.m. in Brazos Park East.

Aside from the historical aspect, Juneteenth also is a time to celebrate the African American journey, which echoes the theme of an exhibit at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth. Romare Bearden: A Black Odyssey retells the Greek classic The Odyssey with black characters, reinterpreting the tale as a universal story of a traveler’s search for home. The exhibit runs through August 11. 

Other Juneteenth events across the state include:

Austin: Central Texas Juneteenth Celebrations , June 19

Austin: DiverseArts Juneteenth Celebration , June 22

Balch Springs: Juneteenth Jubilation , June 15

Bastrop: Juneteenth Celebration , June 15

Fort Worth: Juneteenth Celebration , June 19

Houston: Juneteenth Summer Celebration , June 19

San Antonio: Juneteenth Celebrations , June 19

San Marcos: Juneteenth Celebrations , June 21-22

The Dallas Maritime Museum Foundation is organizing a fundraising effort to build the $81 million project, says John Shellene, executive director. The foundation recently announced that it had secured a site for the museum—3½ acres on South Riverfront Boulevard along the Trinity River levee. The site is next to one of several lakes the City of Dallas plans to dredge as part of its long-term overhaul of the Trinity River corridor.

Shellene says the maritime museum would be a good fit for Dallas partly because the entire project is motivated by the U.S. Navy’s offer to hand over the USS Dallas, a nuclear-powered submarine, when it decommissions the attack vessel next year. The USS Dallas was commissioned in 1981 and is best known for its role in Tom Clancy’s novel Hunt for Red October. The Navy first approached the vessel’s namesake city in 2010, prompting Dallas to reach out to some Navy veterans, who then formed the museum foundation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, Shellene says.

“North Texas, the Metroplex, is the largest recruiting ground for our maritime services, including the Navy, of the entire country,” Shellene says. “So there’s a lot of interest here and a lot of history here when it comes to maritime services, which a lot of people don’t know about. We’re excited to be a catalyst for making that known and having that impact.”

The foundation’s plans call for a 30,000-square-foot, three-story museum. The USS Dallas would be exhibited in dry-dock, hanging over the water of the yet-to-be-developed lake, Shellene says. The foundation is also negotiating to bring two other vessels to Dallas, but details haven’t been released yet.

The schedule for the proposed museum revolves around the decommissioning of the USS Dallas, Shellene says. The foundation hopes to open the museum in 2017 or 2018, once the submarine is decommissioned, stripped of its classified components and nuclear reactor, and then rebuilt as an intact submarine.

“The museum itself will take 18 months to construct,” Shellene says. “So in essence we’ll break ground on the museum in three years and then have the museum and submarine and other vessels in place for public viewing in 4½ years.”

In the meantime, it’s all about money.

“We are putting together our capital campaign committee and starting to look for major lead gifts, which we hope to identify this summer,” Shellene says. “Then we’ll launch an individual campaign and large gift campaign beginning in the fall.”

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Photos courtesy of Dallas Maritime Museum Foundation

Just a few blocks north of the Lamar/US 183 intersection, on the west side of the street next to a Korean Presbyterian Church, is Tam Deli, which is famous for its banh mi and vanilla custard-filled cream puffs—dishes that are culinary reminders of Vietnam’s long French occupation. Drive north a quarter mile or so, and on the west side of the street, and in two strip malls between Peyton Gin Road and West Rundberg Lane, you’ll find an interesting assortment of options for adventuresome diners, including Mariscos Los Jarochos, a Mexican seafood joint with a menu in Spanish; a tiny, hole-in-the-wall Korean place called Together that serves a great smoked mackerel and beef bulgogi; two fascinating Indian grocery stores; Shalimar Indian restaurant, and a Vietnamese place called Thanh Ni.

Cross Rundberg going north, and you’ll find yet another mash-up of ethnic influences jammed together in a spiritless strip mall, including Agha, a narrow and spotless place that serves Indian and Pakistani smoothies, ice-cream desserts, and fruit juices; Lucky Bakery, a Hong Kong-style bakery that makes killer curry buns and does a brisk business in birthday cakes;and  the Cuban Sandwich Café, where a simple ham-and-cheese sandwich satisfies on a summer day.

Across the street from all of this wonderfulness, next to a huge disco called Rodeo and a Japanese karaoke parlor, is a tiny Indian grocery story called Taj Grocer and perhaps my favorite Indian restaurant in Austin, Swad.  You must forgive the plastic cutlery and greenish lighting, and instead marvel at a menu of Southern vegetarian Indian street food. My favorite thing there is the onion and potato dosa—a giant crepe made of rice-and-lentil batter, stuffed with onions and potatoes—all for less than $5.

Keep going north, and on the west side of Lamar, about midway between Rundberg and Kramer Lane, and you’ll find a place called T&S Chinese Seafood. I learned about T&S a few years ago, and back then the rumor was that chefs often visited T&S late-night after their own kitchens shut down. I don’t know if that’s true, but the food is really good here, and it’s open late. For dinner, I like the salt-and-pepper shrimp, but be sure to order a vegetable dish as well; I like the mushroom-and-Chinese broccoli combination. The dim sum on Sunday is also fun.

Finally, continue just a few blocks north, and on the east side of Lamar, you’ll find Chinatown Center. This is a shopping complex anchored by Austin’s largest Asian grocery store, MT Supermarket. I love going to MT for crazy greens, unusual fruits, and condiments from around the world. MT also has a huge selection of housewares, ranging from monstrous plastic bowls for preparing noodles for a crowd, rice cookers, pretty sake sets, and all manner of ladles, spoons, strainers, and other interesting items. Some of my vegetarian friends come here to stock up in the frozen-food section. I also like MT’s selection of Chinese and Japanese ice-cream products; in particular I’m addicted to these popsicles made of red beans; they’re sweet and great for dessert but also have 6-7 grams of protein.

Other interesting shops in Chinatown Center include a Chinese herbalist (the dried ginger here is terrific); a salon dedicated solely (pun intended) to Chinese foot massage; a dessert and sandwich shop called Short n’ Sweet (try the durian yogurt if you’re feeling adventuresome—it smells like a locker room but tastes delicious); two banh mi shops called Lily’s Sandwich and the Baguette House; a Korean barbecue place called the Korean Grill (go with a group and cook your meal at a tabletop grill); and a highly regarded Vietnamese noodle place called Pho Saigon.

Zydeco trail rides are festivals that celebrate African American Western ranching heritage and the zydeco music that flows out of southeast Texas and Louisiana. Along with zydeco concerts on Friday and Saturday nights, a band will play during Saturday’s trail ride through the roads of the Cheek area. There will also be a full rodeo on Sunday.

Don’t have a horse? No problem. You could potentially borrow one, or ride in one of the party wagons that follow the trail ride route.

“The overall purpose is to educate and let people know and be aware of the Creole heritage, food, and music,” says Acynthia Villery, the event producer. “What makes ours different is we have the rodeo. A lot of our cowboys cross over from trail-riding into rodeo.”

Born in Travis County in 1870, Bill Pickett was an African American cowboy who developed the bulldogging technique that became a popular rodeo competition (also known as steer wrestling). The Bill Pickett Trail Riders is a group dedicated to helping at-risk youth and youth organizations that participate in rodeo.

The upcoming event is “a historical weekend where we teach people who don’t know about our culture—the food, the music, how important the drives were back in the days,” Acynthia says.

Of course, the music isn’t a thing of the past. The bands on the Friday schedule are Leon Chavis & The Zydeco Flames, and Keith Frank & the Soileau Zydeco Band.

On Saturday, Brian Jack & The Zydeco Gamblers will perform along the trail ride, and Lil Nate & The Zydeco Big Timers will close out the night. On Sunday, J Paul Jr. and the Zydeco Nubreeds play after the rodeo.

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Photos courtesy of Bill Pickett Trail Riders

Lamar Blvd. Pedestrian Bridge

TH’s July issue features a day in Austin from three of our editors, each exploring some of the Capital City’s favorite tourist spots from a local’s perspective. I for one am experiencing Austin from a somewhat unusual vantage point: that of a longtime resident staying in a vacation rental while my new home is being completed.

My temporary home happens to be within walking distance of Barton Springs, Zilker Park, Lady Bird Lake hike-and-bike trail, Whole Foods Market, and the 6th and Lamar retail area. Not a bad place to live like a tourist!

Living close enough to walk to these Austin hotspots allows for some interesting observations on being a tourist in your own backyard.  For instance, I had no idea that a thriving neighborhood pedestrian culture exists near downtown. I walk to Whole Foods for small grocery runs (allowing myself to buy only as much as I can easily tote so as not to break my budget!).  On the plentiful, well-maintained sidewalks, I find I have plenty of company—with singles, couples, and families also walking and toting reusable bags to and from 6th and Lamar. Also, I see folks headed—either on foot or by bike—to the Lady Bird Lake trail, and some just taking a stroll along Lamar, many with dogs or strollers in tow. The recent development of apartments, condos, cafés, and shops have created a safe, friendly, urban neighborhood ambiance, similar to what I’ve experienced in more walkable cities like San Francisco and Chicago. Seeing the Austin I thought I knew at street level, I almost feel like I’m on vacation. And in the spirit of Austin Weird and Only-in-Texas, I even spotted a man in a black cowboy hat striding along on his horse on the sidewalk near Viva Day Spa on South Lamar one evening!

West is still recovering from the explosion, which killed 15 people and injured 200, but the tragedy isn’t deterring plans for this year’s Czech and polka festival. If anything, organizers expect the festival will grow stronger and bigger in the tragedy’s aftermath.

“We’re curious to see what it’s going to be like this year,” says Brian Muska, public relations director for the festival. “We’re expecting a pretty good crowd.”

Photo by Ben Ranzinger; Rabenwolf Entertainment/Courtesy Westfest.

The 20-acre festival grounds are on the opposite side of town from where the explosion occurred. In the hours after the blast, the festival grounds turned into a makeshift staging area for donation drop-offs and distribution, Muska said.

The volunteer board that runs the nonprofit festival is still working on plans for how the event will recognize the town’s tumultuous spring, including honoring the firefighters who died in the blast as parade marshals, Muska said.

The festival’s line-up is already set, with everything from polka band performances to a Miss Westfest contest, arts-and-crafts vendors, a kolache baking contest, and more.

Westfest’s purpose has always been to raise money for local community organizations, such as fire departments and scholarships. Muska says this year’s proceeds will likely contribute to the community’s recovery efforts.

“There were a lot of concerns that we wouldn’t have the festival, but that’s not true,” Muska says. “It will go on and will be stronger and bigger than ever.”

About a foot of rain fell in the Frio headwaters area on Friday and Saturday, with particularly good amounts over the west prong in northern Real County.

The downpour raised the Frio’s “floatability” level in Garner State Park from “below minimum” two weeks ago to “ideal water conditions for floating,” for the coming weekend, according to the National Weather Service’s Texas River Recreation Advisory released Wednesday.

“It’s a significant recharge and it fell right in the area that it was needing this time,” says Frank Roberts, interpretive specialist at Garner State Park. “It fell high on the headwaters and a lot of it fell, so water will run down hill, and it will continue to help. It wont’ last forever. … We’re hoping that now that we got some moisture it will trigger some more showers and help it out.”

The Frio River level in Garner State Park is up two to three feet.

“It wasn’t a big, big flood, like 2002, but it was a significant rise on the river,” Roberts says. “It’s good for floating. It may be a few days or a week or so, but for people coming in for Memorial Day weekend and starting the summer, it’s excellent.”

(Fireworks explode over Waterway Square at the Memorial Day Weekend Celebration in The Woodlands./Photo courtesy of The Woodlands CVB)

Memorial Day kicks off the unofficial start of summer with a full roster of hot events this weekend.

Just north of Houston, The Woodlands boasts two nights of dazzling fireworks displays in Waterway Square on Saturday and Sunday at their Memorial Day Weekend Celebration. Families can enjoy live music and other activities from 6-9 p.m. before the sky lights up.

Granbury officials say their big Memorial Day Celebration will go on as planned after a devastating tornado ripped through the edge of town last week. The Historic Granbury Square was untouched, and the city is welcoming visitors Saturday through Monday for live music, contests, arts and crafts, ceremonies and more. This year’s theme is “Balconies, Bands and Boats.”

And in Kerrville, it’s a great time to take in the local art and music scene while the Kerrville Folk Festival and several art shows cross paths. The Texas State Arts and Crafts Fair and the Texas Masters of Fine Art and Craft Show both stay only for Memorial Day weekend, but the music festival goes through June 9. If you go, be sure to make time for the Southwest Gourd Fine Art Show and other exhibits at the Kerr Arts and Cultural Center.

Other events coming up this holiday weekend include:

Anthony: KLAQ Balloon Fiesta

Dallas: Dallas International Festival

El Paso: Neon Desert Music Festival

Ennis: National Polka Festival

Farmers Branch: Liberty Fest

Fort Worth: Crowne Plaza Invitational

Fredericksburg: Crawfish Festival

Rockport: Rockport Festival of Wines

San Antonio: Memorial Day Arts and Crafts Show