Kris Bistro uses students to offer first-class cuisine at bargain prices

[1]Click above for a photo tour of the food and classroom

The cold-smoked chuck tender had been braised in Ayinger Celebrator Double Bock beer, so that it came out rosy and smoky and tender, rimmed with a bit of char. A flock of twisty little pan-crisped spaetzle flew escort, along with a magenta dice of pickled red onion. A heady veal reduction touched with sweet and sour anchored the dish; and a leafy crown of cilantro and jalapeño finished it off.

Smoked Chuck Tender. Photo by Alison CookThis brilliant modern Texas take on Hill Country sauerbraten — one of the best beef dishes I’ve sampled in ages — could have come from any of Houston’s high-profile kitchens run by our current crop of young-Turk chefs. Instead I was enjoying it for the absurdly low price of $14 at Kris Bistro [2], the good-looking new restaurant located in a former walk-in cooler at the Le Notre Culinary Institute.

Restaurants inside cooking schools can be lots of coltish fun, but I don’t necessarily expect them to deliver the kind of accomplished thrills doled out by chef Kris Jakob, the San Antonio native and Le Notre instructor for whom the place is named. There are bumps here and there, but in general Jakob and his rotating teams of advanced-level students turn out surprisingly good food at very fair prices — all with a big window-wall view of Le Notre’s gleaming display kitchens that provide an entertaining floor show.

The dark-toned room by designer Jane Page is sleek and low-keyed, demarcated by handsome hanging lanterns. It must have been an awfully big cooler once upon a time. When you’ve checked in at the school’s front desk and been escorted through a corridor to the restaurant, manager Hossein Haddad — as civilized and debonair as any maitre d’ Houston has ever seen — sweeps you into his orbit, attended by his own student team.

The cuisine here is billed as “modern French bistro,” but it’s more complicated than that. Jakob brings to bear not only his Texas sensibility, which he honed at such restaurants as Ranch 909 in Marble Falls, but also his family’s German origins and his love of Belgian cookery, developed during a youthful work stint there. Best of all, perhaps, is that Jakob is modeling for his students careful sourcing of ingredients from local farms, ranches and producers. They won’t be ejected into the restaurant world thinking that cheap, mass-produced supply-house ingredients are the only way to go.

That’s why the wild Gulf shrimp here can be so glorious, served with their tails shelled but their heads still attached, the satin-black eyes bulging and the long antennae waving a little dance. They come, the menu informs us, from the boat of Mr. Fixo, a longtime Gulf shrimper who used to be a farmers market fixture.

Grilled Shrimp Americain. Photo by Alison CookIn Kris Bistro’s Gulf Shrimp Americain appetizer, four of these giant crustaceans arrive in a shellfish bisque that vibrates with shrimp-shell goodness and cognac. When the last of the pearly shrimp were gone, I was tempted to pick up the bowl and slurp the last of the sauce like soup.

Even the green salads have a fresh originality here. I particularly loved a Farmer’s Salad in which a sheaf of hydroponic lettuce hid a disk of fried creamer potato hunks, served room temperature and sparked with diced bacon and shallot. Wedges of medium-boiled Gunderman Acres farm eggs came alongside, and if there had just been a little more of the Dijon remoulade dressing on the greens, the effect would have been perfect.

I was delighted, too, by salad that sounded like it might be yet another clunky Greek variant and turned out to be a brisk, molded wonderment of poached Mr. Fixo shrimp, goat’s milk feta and cucumber. There’s life in the genre yet.

There’s life in the hanger steak genre too, in the hands of chef Jakob. Instead of allowing the advertised bone marrow embellishment to simply melt over the beef, dissipating its texture and effect, Jakob mounts it in a soft breadcrumb and persillade mixture, so that the rich marrow flavor and gelled texture continue to bloom. Factor in a beautiful, cordlike cut of beef (Jakob refers to it as “onglet,” as they would in France or Belgium) and you have another one of the best beef dishes in Houston: this one at a price of $24, which includes a fleet of carefully piped pureed potatoes, flavored with superfluous truffle oil and interspersed with lacy wafers of fried potato.

What’s wrong with that picture? Nothing, if you are a classically based French cooking school preparing your students to enter the world of old-fashioned hotel food. But the plate looks dated, the truffle oil tastes that way, and that hanger steak deserves better.

That disconnect between old and new is my sole misgiving about Kris Bistro at this stage of its young life. The meat entrees that get rolled and stuffed and garnished to a fare-thee-well (see: Pork and the Apple; or Chicken and the Olive) seem to inhabit a different universe than extraordinary smoked chuck tender.

The chicken dish was weighed down with salty seasonings and green and black olive applications, including dark meat rolled up in a sheet of black olive gel and stuffed with a cornbready mixture, so that it looked like an overgrown maki roll. Too busy, too vehement, despite a the innocent Eberle farms bird and an interesting green olive emulsion.

Such are the vagaries of a cooking-school restaurant. And that’s okay with me. The payoff comes in the reasonable prices, the palpable eagerness of the young staff, and the unexpected delights of the menu, which only promises to get better. Jakob says he is going to put his superlative torchon of foie gras on the menu, which will be one of the city’s better bargains at 10 bucks: as silky and delicate as you please, with cognac-soaked cherries as a counterpoint.

By all means, figure out a way to work some of Jakob’s beloved house-cured charcuterie into your meal — either as a shared first course or an unconventional entree. It’s that good, and the shaved meats are cleverly presented clipped to mini stainless “clotheslines.” There is always Serrano ham, sliced from a leg mounted on a dramatic tableside contraption (and the only meat that is not cured in house). But the real gems are the lilting, fat-marbled Saucisse de Lyon that you would swear came from France; or the smoky, chewy strips of duck breast rimmed in savory fat; or the intense little slices of peppery merguez, the Moroccan lamb sausage. At $7 per person, including a range of brisk relishes, the charcuterie is a deal.

So is the modest wine list. It’s a quiet document, with nothing flashy or geek-certified on it, but I have never ordered a bottle from it that did not give pleasure and suit the food.

Life and light. There’s plenty of both at Kris Bistro, one of the biggest restaurant surprises I’ve encountered in a long time.

Just one thing: if you go, take the time to book a table, lest the restaurant be swamped. And don’t plan to go this Saturday, because a big energy corporation has bought out the whole restaurant. I bet they’ll have fun.

Kris Bistro
ΩΩ
7070 Allensby
713-358-5079

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