Restaurants the whole world, one city

March is a small, serious restaurant on Westheimer where chef Felipe Riccio of Goodnight Hospitality treats the Mediterranean like a syllabus. Twice a year the kitchen closes, spends weeks researching a single region, and reopens with a new menu; past seasons have ranged from the North African Maghreb to southern Spain, Greece and Venice, and since August 7, 2026 the kitchen has been cooking Portugal. The evening opens with cocktails and first bites in a wood-paneled, art-filled lounge, then moves to a dining room of roughly 28 seats done in blush pink, brass and warm wood. It is now one set menu, four lounge snacks followed by seven courses, and take the pairing, because Master Sommelier June Rodil's beverage program is half the reason people travel here. Budget a long, unhurried night.

Hugo Ortega was born in Mexico City and spent part of his childhood in rural Mexico herding goats, and he credits his grandmother as the main influence on the cooking at Hugo's. He opened the restaurant in 2002 with his wife and business partner, Tracy Vaught, and it became the flagship of their H-Town Restaurant Group. The Montrose dining room hums with families, first dates and business dinners. Go for cabrito, roasted goat pulled from the bone in garlic salsa, or arroz a la tumbada, a brothy rice crowded with seafood and chorizo. Aguachile made with hearts of palm shows how well the kitchen treats vegetables, and squash blossoms arrive every spring. Ortega won the James Beard Award for Best Chef: Southwest in 2017, his sixth year as a finalist.

BCN is airport shorthand for Barcelona, the city where chef Luis Roger grew up and trained. Roger, who came to Houston from Girona, worked under Ferran Adrià at elBulli and taught cooking in Catalonia before taking over this kitchen. The setting is a 1920s white stucco bungalow on a quiet street near Richmond Avenue, hung with pieces from owner Ignacio Torras's own art collection, including Picasso owl jugs. The cooking respects tradition and then sharpens it: char-grilled octopus over silky pommes purée, Iberian suckling pig with a shattering crust, and a tarta de Santiago brightened with lemon marmalade. The wine list is all Spanish, and a whole section of the menu is devoted to gin and tonics.

Musaafer means traveler, and the menu began with one: executive chef Mayank Istwal spent 100 days traveling through India's 29 states, gathering recipes from home cooks and chefs, before owners Mithu and Shammi Malik of the Spice Route Company opened the restaurant in the Galleria in May 2020. The 10,000-square-foot space is divided into seven rooms modeled on spice markets and royal palaces, with decor custom-made in India, and the private Sheesh Mahal room glitters with about 200,000 hand-cut mirrors. The food is just as considered. Start with flounder ceviche in fermented coconut and rice water, then nihari birria tacos of pulled lamb, and a Malwani fish curry of Chilean sea bass with kokum and coconut. Save room for the desserts, which get the same careful attention as everything else.

Trong Nguyen learned to cook from his grandmother in Vietnam, came to the United States in the 1990s, and spent decades in casino marketing before betting everything on a crawfish pot. His restaurant, in a busy strip center on the Chinatown stretch of Bellaire Boulevard, became one of the places that defined Viet-Cajun cooking: Louisiana crawfish boiled, then tossed in a heady sauce of butter, garlic and his own spice blend, with heat from mild to blazing. Tables are covered, bibs go on, and conversation stops. Crawfish runs from late January into early July; the rest of the year, Gulf oysters, raw, chargrilled or baked with cheese, and crawfish fried rice keep the room full. Nguyen was a James Beard Award finalist in 2020.

Le Jardinier means the gardener, and the name is the philosophy. The restaurant lives in the Nancy and Rich Kinder Building of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and belongs to The Bastion Collection, which runs sister locations in New York, Miami and Geneva. Culinary director Alain Verzeroli trained under Joël Robuchon and cooked in Japan for 18 years, and that discipline shows in precise, lightly sauced plates built on peak-season produce, fresh herbs and sustainable seafood. Executive chef Felipe Botero runs the kitchen day to day, and pastry chef Tiffani Ann Gkaris sends out desserts as composed as anything on the museum walls. The room is calm and bright, and the menus rotate with the seasons, so no two visits read quite the same.

Benchawan Jabthong Painter, known as Chef G, started cooking at age six in her grandmother's restaurant in Nakhon Sawan, Thailand, then worked in Bangkok kitchens before moving to Houston in 2015. After stints at SaltAir and Justin Yu's Theodore Rex, she grew tired of Thai food softened for American palates and started pop-ups. In 2020 she and her husband, Graham, opened Street to Kitchen, and in 2023 she won the James Beard Award for Best Chef: Texas. That fall the restaurant moved into a larger space on Harrisburg Boulevard, where Thai hip hop plays and the kitchen draws on her grandmother's recipes and dishes from across Thailand's regions. Order the papaya salad, which bites even at medium, charred pad see ew, and the green curry.

Kaiser Lashkari came from Pakistan, earned a master's degree at the University of Houston's Hilton College in 1989, worked for Westin hotels and taught at Houston Community College before opening his own place. Himalaya followed in 2004 on the Hillcroft strip known as the Mahatma Gandhi District, and it has been a fixture on critics' lists ever since. The room is plain and cheerful, Lashkari greets tables himself, and the cooking is anything but timid. Hunter's beef, his Indian-style pastrami, is the signature; steak tikka and green curry chicken were on the table when Anthony Bourdain filmed here for Parts Unknown in 2016. Lamb shank and a buttery Punjabi dal fry round out the essentials. Bring your own beer or wine.

Mala Sichuan's founder was born and raised in Chengdu and came to the United States at 12, homesick for food that could not be found here. The family even carried Sichuan peppercorns home in their luggage in the years when the spice was barred from import. Not long after college the founder opened this restaurant on Bellaire Boulevard in 2011, and it went on to spread across Houston. The name is the mission: ma, the tingle of peppercorn, and la, the burn of chile, used with restraint so you taste the dish, not just the heat. Portions are generous, so bring a group. Get the kung pao chicken, which is far juicier and more balanced than the takeout version, lotus root in sweet and sour sauce, and pork belly with broccoli.

Ope Amosu is a Nigerian-American Rice University business graduate who left the energy industry to cook the food of his family. ChòpnBlọk began as pop-ups in 2018, moved into the POST Houston food hall in 2021, and soft-opened its own Montrose restaurant in late September 2024, then officially opened it on October 1, Nigerian Independence Day. The 3,000-square-foot room is layered with West African textiles and art, books and vinyl, and a cocktail list built on Black-owned and African spirits. Order the Golden Bowl, with smoky jollof jambalaya, motherland curry, yaji-spiced vegetables and stewed plantains, and add Polo Club suya, beef skewers dusted with peanut-pepper spice. Aunty Mawa's maafe, a Senegalese peanut curry, is a warm detour, and plantain bread pudding closes things out.