Only steps from where the Allen Brothers founded what would become a new Texas metropolis, chef Christian Hernandez is staking his own claim to the rich culinary landscape of one of America’s biggest cities with his first chef/owner restaurant project.
Barbacana (907 Franklin St.), set in one of downtown Houston’s most charming turn-of-the-century buildings, is situated only a block from Allen’s Landing, where Buffalo and White Oak bayous merge. That historic site of Houston’s birthplace is emblematic of Barbacana’s DNA. Like Houston, the casual fine-dining restaurant breathes astonishing multicultural vibrancy and international sophistication. The same could be said of 34-year-old chef Hernandez.
After working at a number of high-profile restaurants in Houston, New York and Mexico City, Hernandez is now dishing up his own interpretation of how Houston eats. Barbacana’s unique chef tasting menu (as well as a la carte dishes) is invested with distinctly Houston chemistry: culinary impressions of Texas foodways, Gulf Coast abundance and Bayou City diversity shaped by global flair and technique. Signature dishes include a savory buttered onion tart with jumbo lump crab; Texas Wagyu carpaccio with pecans, aged Gouda, and pickled strawberries; a Japanese donburi bowl featuring Koshihikari rice, hedgehog and king trumpet mushrooms, and puffed rice shichimi; dry-aged Rohan duck breast with pistachio dukkah spice and Medjool dates soaked in duck stock.
Born in Germany and growing up in Houston’s East End, the Culinary Institute Le Notre-trained Hernandez was informed not just by his own Mexican American neighborhood, but by the city’s delicious tapestry of culinary Texicana: barbecue, Tex-Mex, coastal and Cajun, and Bellaire’s miles-long stretch of Asian flavors. Barbacana, Hernandez says, speaks to the “palate of Houston,” an adventurous, modern interpretation of city’s vibrant culinary melting pot. His mother was his earliest influence.
“My mom Carmen played a big part in exposing me to different foods and igniting that curiosity in me,” Hernandez says in a statement. “As a young, adventurous single mother raising two boys, she wasn’t always able to cook the food she wanted for us, so she made a point of taking us to try interesting cuisines. The first time I ate sushi was with her. My first Pakistani, Salvadorean, and Cantonese meals are distinct memories with her.”
Before creating the 140-seat Barbacana, Hernandez was an integral part of some of Houston’s most influential restaurants over the past decade, including Pax Americana, BCN Taste & Tradition, Oxheart, Indigo, and March. Hernandez sojourned to Mexico City and New York City working under chef/owners Jeremiah Stone and Fabian von Hauske at Contra which earned its first Michelin star in 2016. In Mexico City, he worked at chef Luis Martinez’s Michelin-lauded Em in the historic Roma Norte neighborhood.
Hernandez took a wealth of knowledge from those diverse restaurant experiences and set out to achieve his dream with Barbacana. With a team mirroring Houston’s diversity, the restaurant aims to be a place of celebration and discovery – lighthearted yet serious, daring but familiar. Barbacana’s dishes are meant to be enjoyed with selections from a wine list of classic and modern producers employing organic and biodynamic practices.
Hernandez and his team have embarked on a mission to make the Barbacana kitchen a place where zero-waste goals intertwine with creative uses for elements that might be tossed. Similarly, bycatch seafood (unintentional catch not discarded but sold to restaurants) is highlighted in dishes such as grilled vermilion snapper seasoned with black lime and caraway.
Barbacana’s kitchen of freewheeling creatives includes pastry sous chef Priscilla Trevino, formerly of Georgia James and Bludorn, who works in tandem with Hernandez to bring her baking and pastry prowess to the tasting menu, which regularly includes several of her own creations. Hugo Castro and Mason Giles act as sous chefs, and general manager Jake Ho heads up the restaurant’s ambitious wine program. Bar manager Gustavo Perez, formerly of influential locales Anvil and The Pastry War, is constantly developing the cocktail offerings to match the output from the kitchen, along with evolving several fermentation projects to further Barbacana’s sustainability mission. Each team member expresses their own life experience through the menu.
“Our team is extremely symbiotic, and we’ve begun to act as one cohesive unit with a shared sense of core values, like our zero-waste goals,” Hernandez says. “Everyone is free to express themselves from top to bottom and there’s an immense sense of pride in every dish that arrives in front of our patrons.”
The restaurant’s clean, contemporary design from restaurant designer Carl Eaves makes great use of a prime corner location in the striking 1910 building now known as Bayou Lofts. The double-height space features a central dining room (with adjacent private dining enclave), a dramatic open kitchen fronted by counter seating, a snug cocktail bar, and dramatic windows with a vista to the heart of downtown. Charming brick walls are adorned with vivid artwork by Bayou City muralist Danny Anguilu and original, commissioned work from the Austin-based Xander Rudd.
Barbacana is open for lunch Tuesday through Friday from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. and open for dinner Tuesday through Saturday from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. Reservations are available through OpenTable and are strongly encouraged. Street and garage parking is available in the area.
