Justin Yu at work at an all-vegetable tasting dinner. Photo by Alison CookIt’s early yet, but GQ magazine has already called Justin Yu’s Oxheart one of the five hottest restaurant openings of 2012. They describe the food as “vegetarian for non-vegetarians.”

"You've never heard of Justin Yu and vegetarian is not your thing," they write. "Last year, the same thing could be said of 90 percent of Houston, before Yu wooed diners with a series of sold-out veggie-centric pop-up dinners. His first brick-and-mortar will offer three tasting menus, two with locally-sourced meat and seafood, and one that may be Texas's most serious vegetarian meal yet."

Restaurants in Philadelphia, New York, Los Angeles and Chicago also made the list.

Oxheart, named for a variety of carrot, will be opening this spring in the Latin Bites space at 1302 Nance Street. Alison Cook wrote about the upcoming restaurant launch in December after eating at Yu’s pop-up dinners. Here’s some of what she had to say:

Starting out, Oxheart plans to be open for dinner 5 nights a week, from Thursday through Monday. Yes, Monday. "I think there's a need for good restaurants open on Monday," says Yu. (And of course, that's a traditional night for people in the industry to dine out.) The trio is toying with the idea of offering an a la carte menu on the slower nights (Thursday, Sunday and Monday, for instance), or offering an all-vegetable 7-course tasting by prior arrangement.

They're going to figure it out as they go, but one thing Yu insists is that he won't skimp on is initial training for the cooks and servers he hires. "We're not going to experiment on our guests," he says. "We don't want the customer to suffer on the first day. If we're asking them to pay full price, we want to give them the full service and quality."

He's not going to play it safe, either. "No point in that," he says. "The menu is going to be aggressive right from the start." Man notes wryly that "if you want a salmon entree, this won't be your restaurant."

Read the rest here.