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A crew shoots at St. Johns Fire.: Paul Galvani photo
The production crew from “Eat St.” was in town last month to shot footage for the Cooking Channel series.
Looks like, this time, Houston made quite an impression on executive producer Peter Waal. During the crew’s visit, it filmed segments for its fifth season (airing in 2013) that included the Modular, Phamily Bites, the Waffle Bus, the Rice Box, Stick It and St. John’s Fire food trucks. In between filming, we spoke to Waal about his stay here.
Q: How did this trip compare to the last time you visited Houston?
A: We loved it, this time. It was like night and day compared to two years ago. The first time we were here, we were kinda underwhelmed. For the fourth largest city in America, we thought we’d find more of a food culture. We found a lot of taco trucks and roach coaches, but this time the number of chef-driven trucks was incredible. We thought the food at five of the six trucks we shot was very good to great.
Q: Which truck was your favorite?
A: The Modular
Q: How did you select the six trucks you filmed?
A: We have a team of researchers that find the trucks for us. They’re looking at online reviews and such. We also need chefs with a big personality. Since they don’t have a lot of time on camera, they need to be able to make an impression quickly.
Q: Will you come back to Houston to shoot more food trucks?
A: That depends on the network and whether there is a season six. Clearly there were a lot more trucks than we filmed, (which) we would have liked to get to. So yes, we’re definitely coming back.
Q: Did you have the opportunity to try any Houston restaurants?
A: The restaurants we tried were awesome. The first night we tried Oxheart and that was incredible. But what blew us away was Kata Robata. I was not expecting good sushi in Houston. I live in Vancouver and there’s no shortage of good sushi places there and I would rate (Kata Robata) in the top 2 or 3 sushi restaurants. We also tried Feast and were disappointed there. I am a huge fan of Mexican food and thought Hugo’s was superb. We also tried Underbelly, which was a hit.
Q: Any thoughts on Houston?
A: It’s really becoming a foodie city, and it has a really great bar scene.
St. Eats instead of “Eat St.” ??? Did the headline writer not read the story?
I wonder which of the six trucks didn't impress.
Not much has changed in two years that would be this drastic. Food trucks do not make or break a city's foodscape and Houston's ethnic diversity has been here for decades.
The difference for scrappy was he and his myopic and biased crew didn't do their homework before coming to Houston the first time and it was a self-fulfilling prophecy. They wanted Houston to be the stereotype of Texas (boring, homogeneous, monolithic, and uncreative) and they found it.
Good comment.
Took the words right out my mouth. Sad that the interviewer did not correct him. Diversity has and always has been a big seller to people outside Houston. No need to get my viewership. They lost me on that first question alone.
These selections seem more novelty than foodie.