Alison Cook thinks Underbelly is worth it.: Alison Cook

Some diners prefer their restaurants predictable: turning out reliable standards, reliably executed, time after time. There’s a place for such stable institutions in my world view, but chef Chris Shepherd’s delightfully unpredictable Underbelly is more my style.

Seven months into this daring young establishment’s life, I still approach each visit with curiosity, wondering what surprises the day’s menu will bring.

There might be some brave new cut from the gleaming in-house butcher shop, the beating heart of the restaurant, where only whole locally and regionally raised animals arrive to be meticulously rent asunder. Racks of lamb with rib bones soaring up like Gothic buttresses might materialize; or a mighty, marbled Wagyu beefsteak, sent to the table with kale chimichurri and a glazed potato gratin.

The burgers at Underbelly are far from your average burger.: Alison Cook

Maybe last visit’s juicy beef meatballs done General Tso’s style, with a spicy hot-sour-sweet tang, will have morphed into lamb meatballs pooled in a glossy crimson bath of vindaloo curry sauce, wafting up cardamom and a red-chile prickle.

Perhaps a cured pork shoulder will have come of age in the glassed-in salumi room, to be sliced into thin slicks and rolled around goat cheese from Blue Heron Farm in Field Store. A bit of tart chow-chow pickle, a discreet scatter of habanero powder to pick up the coppa’s spiciness, and the small plate dances, so that friends tussle shamelessly over the last morsel, marveling over the candied garlic chips that add a playful Vietnamese twist.

It’s not all meat at butchery-conscious Underbelly. I never tire of tasting what Shepherd and company do with the season’s vegetables and fruits. In spring, it might be big lumpy fava pods, charred until the beans turn tender, and plunked on a wooden slab with Galveston sea salt, rough sourdough toasts and a ball of hand-thrown mozzarella.

Come last weekend, with fall setting in, that wooden slab might hold half of a long butternut squash, judiciously roasted, scented with home-brewed vanilla and strewn with crisped chunks of house-made bacon, to dazzling effect.

It’s a bold move to send out such a simple, vegetable-centered dish in a city that likes its meat and its myriad embellishments, too. But Shepherd, after stints at Brennan’s and his well-regarded Catalan, is now at the helm of a restaurant where, for the first time, he is truly free to do and risk what he wants.

He’s at liberty to pursue his interest in the ethnic cuisines that make Houston’s dining scene so distinctive, borrowing at will from the Vietnamese, Korean, Indo-Pakistani and Chinese repertoires. Our traditional Mexican and Southern and cowboy ideas figure into the Underbelly mix, along with the lesser-known Gulf species of the seafood bycatch movement so vital to the new style of Gulf Coast cuisine that’s emerging here.

Ryan Lachaine, sous chef, left, and Chris Shepherd, owner and executive chef of Underbelly.: Michael Paulsen/Chronicle

Shepherd is free to operate within his self-imposed strictures of time and space, too. If it can’t be raised or produced locally, right down to the olive oil and sesame paste, he doesn’t serve it. He’s even a couple of months away from producing his first house-made fish sauce.

When fruits and vegetables go out of season in our particular patch of the world, that’s it: they go off the short menu, which Shepherd edits anew each afternoon, punching away on his laptop. You may long for those pan-seared muscadine grapes, their tart-sweet tannins gently furring your tongue as they bump up against molten chunks of cheese, but after their brief time in the sun, they disappear.

So, inevitably, do the brilliant Texas peach halves brûléed so that a brittle crackle of caramel floats on top, to be eaten with seared sticky rice cakes and a scoop of subtly rice-flavored ice cream by local whiz Chris Leung. I may mourn their passing, but to my mind the transience of such a dish makes the experience of it more precious.

Not everyone shares my enthusiasm for Underbelly. Even some of my food-obsessed friends complain that it’s challenging to put together a conventional meal from the menu, which is divided between “Tonight’s Plates” (some smallish, some not-so) and a handful of big “Family-Style Servings.”

Others express annoyance with the restaurant’s branding as “The Story of Houston Food,” complete with photographic wall art of Shepherd’s local food heroes (annotated on the handout that encloses each tab). “Show me, don’t tell me,” groused one cynic of my acquaintance.

Where is the beef? Underbelly has plenty of meat.: Alison Cook

I’ve made my peace with these quirks. Although the food is smart and ambitious, nobody should go to Underbelly expecting a conventional fine-dining experience. (For one thing, the eternal scallops, lobster and sea bass just ain’t happening here.) It takes a meal or two to get the hang of the portioning, but the rewards can be great — although I will confess to a lingering hope that Shepherd will someday grace us with a daily market salad.

And as far as “The Story of Houston Food” goes, well, it’s right there on the plates, day after day after day. There is something so genuine and honest about Underbelly’s cooking that I can’t begrudge Shepherd his moment of  “This I Believe.” He’s earned it by creating an essential Houston restaurant, one that expresses who we are as a city at this moment in time.

We’re just as much tortilla soup with a soft murmur of masa flavor and a pop of pico de gallo as we are a platter of radishes three ways: raw with butter and salt; lightly pickled with green tomatoes, the rounds so thin they’re translucent; and braised in a pork broth so savory and deeply flavored I wanted to drink it like soup.

We can stretch our horizons with a dish of braised goat and seared glutinous rice dumplings, sticky and smooth against the tender, slightly gamy meat in the Korean red-chile paste Shepherd loves to use. (This is the only dish on the dinner menu that has been retained since the restaurant opened.) Or we can self-soothe with old-school lunchtime comforts: a skilletful of creamy, satin-smooth chicken under an herbed biscuit, as pure and mild as can be; or an epic grilled cheese on Slow Dough bakers’ sourdough, served with the daily soup. There’s even a burger, made of juicy ground Wagyu and stuffed with an Alpine-style Texas cheese.

Fat, bouncy tubes of bucatini made at nearby Paulie’s restaurant might show up at noon, smothered American-style in a shreddy braise of Wagyu shin, tomato and basil, with a soft-boiled egg on top. Not just any soft-boiled egg, but a rich farm specimen that has been barely filmed in flour, egg and breadcrumbs and then flash-fried, so that the deep-gold yolk oozes over the whole decadent pile.

Not every inspiration works. A few, like the mountain of Vietnamese-style slaw mined with gentle pulled chicken, are simply too big to wear well for a single diner and are better off split. (For that matter, Underbelly is best experienced as part of a big, convivial group.) Pulled pork might come off as too sweet, and a skewer of Wagyu sate might be too salty. A Thai green curry one night tasted bitter and forbidding, as much as I applauded the notion of house-made curry paste.

Underbelly likes to tell the story of Houston.: Dave Rossman/For the Chronicle

But even the blips can be redeeming here. My friend Al loves to talk about the “understory” of Underbelly’s dishes, by which he means the vegetable underpinning and relishes that complement the meats and seafood. So that too-salty Wagyu skewer might arrive with a small astonishment in the form of field peas and twangy amaranth leaves fashioned into a little salad; and that sweet pulled pork could be underlain by grilled green tomatoes, a move clever enough that I want to replicate it at home.

In the end, a meal at Underbelly is not just about the robust flavors and seasonality, or even the immediacy and excellence of all those carefully sourced local and regional ingredients. It’s about the whole experience in this casual yet theatrical room, with its serene silvery-gray woods, its illuminated salumi case chockablock with sausages and dangling haunches, its sweep of open kitchen designed with lowered counters to provide for the best views. (Yes, that’s chef-about-town Lyle Bento back there, and Ryan Lachaine, too.)

It all knits up into a satisfying package: the all-Houston music soundtrack; the paper-wrapped chopsticks poking from the tabletop utensil containers; the thoughtful wine list superintended by Matthew Pridgen. You don’t have to spend a bundle to drink well here, although there are some worthwhile splurges in the $75 range. Pridgen can guide you to such bargains as a 2007 Domaine de Deurre Vinsobres Southern Rhone, alive with anise and hillside herbs, for $38; or a $31 rosé of Chinon that once saw me through an entire meal. (I’ll admit I am relieved that Shepherd and crew departed from their local/regional strictures where wines are concerned.)

I revel in the small details like the Shamu Sea World coffee cup that lands on my table with dessert, and the show-stoppers like the giant black skilletful of the day’s “Crispy Bycatch,” a teeming surge of big-eye snapper, parrot fish and long, narrow sand tile on a recent evening.

Attacked with chopsticks, each delicately batter-filmed fish tasted only of itself: the parrot fish buttery and small flaked; the big eye firm and satiny; the sand tile underpinned with a slight minerality. The “understory” was a fish-sauced hash of roasted eggplant and okra, and I only wished for a charry lemon half or two to pick up the flavors.

But lemons aren’t in season yet. I’m going to have to live with that. And at Underbelly, Chris Shepherd makes me want to.

Underbelly ★ ★ ★ ★

1100 Westheimer

713-528-9800
Hours: L: 11 a.m.-3 p.m. Mondays-Fridays; D: 5-10 p.m. Mondays-Thursdays; 5-11 p.m. Fridays-Saturdays

Credit cards: all major

Reservations: recommended at dinner; community table first come, first served

Noise level: moderate to loud

Website: Underbelly

Key
★ a good restaurant that we recommend.
★ ★ very good; one of the best restaurants of its kind.
★ ★ ★ excellent; one of the best restaurants in the city.
★ ★ ★ ★ superlative; can hold its own on a national stage.