You understand a restaurant when you see one. Welcoming cubicles and counter feceses. A food selection starring home cooking’s best hits. Pleasant( ish), rapid solution. A clients comprised of brooding young adults, older pairs on their once a week day, and me anytime I require a dependable dish in a city I’m not thoroughly accustomed to. An excellent restaurant is an old buddy, also on the very first browse through.
Houston’s Agnes and Sherman, which costs itself as a contemporary Eastern American restaurant, places its very own spin on the traditional style yet most importantly maintains points comfy– and calming. Toss on your own right into among the red-leather cubicles that flank the room and appreciate the job of Eastern American musicians such as docudrama digital photographer Michael Jang and Houston-based painter Loc Huynh. Or perch on among the twirling feceses lining the counter at the front home window and drink a Lean Kwai Fong, a riff on an antique that has fun with the mixed drink’s medical background by including Pei Koa, an organic coughing therapy from China.
The laminated food selections include offerings that incorporate the accustomed to the unique– a wedge salad covered with Chinese sausage and Chinese donuts, a BLT covered in a scallion pancake. All meals are offered on durable multicolor ceramic plates rimmed with hunter-green red stripes.
Houstonians understand a great restaurant. Their city is the home, besides, of Home of Pies, the cherished neighborhood chain established in 1967. And it remains in the Levels area that cook Nick Wong, initially from San Francisco, and his organization companion, Lisa Lee, a Taipei citizen, have actually opened their very first dining establishment. Both pals have actually understood each various other given that they went to the College of The Golden State, Berkeley, greater than twenty years back, where they satisfied in what Wong calls “an extremely unpopular Eastern American cinema team.” While he operated in dining establishments consisting of New york city’s Momofuku Ssäm Bar and Houston’s UB Preserv (both have actually given that shut), Lee went after an occupation in the technology market.
They had actually lengthy dabbled the concept of opening up a dining establishment with each other. After Lee transferred to Houston a number of years back, they started placing points moving. As opposed to going after Michelin prestige, however, they looked for to be spirited while recognizing their heritages, Houston’s foods, and, naturally, the simple restaurant.
American restaurants have actually constantly mirrored the social histories of their owners, whether Greek, Jewish, or Chinese. Wong’s uncle Robert Fong opened up Fong’s Coffee shop, in Oakland, The golden state, in 1981; the dining establishment, currently run by Wong’s relatives, offers shrimp fried rice along with hash browns and cheeseburgers. Agnes and Sherman, which is called after Wong’s moms and dads, is a development of that custom, not a feat.
Yet it is enjoyable.
The ideal supper meals I tasted on my summertime check outs incorporated restaurant price with both Eastern and Texan ideas. As opposed to support, the dining establishment offers a scallion waffle with a honey butter surged with house-made sambal. A meal of al priest fried rice includes all the punchy, pineapple-y dampness of its taco loved one. The shrimp-toast starter is an use the traditional Cantonese meal of honey walnut shrimp, with Texas pecans rather. An extremely spiced shared plate of summertime squash and peppers integrates the Mexican squash meal calabacitas with a Sichuan completely dry frying pan stir-fry.
The egg foo young particularly is pure wizard and would certainly be virtually silly if it weren’t so damned excellent. The Chinese American meal normally includes egg patties full of veggies, meat, or shrimp, covered with a full-flavored brownish sauce. Below, Wong lightens it, spices it, and Cajuns it by covering white rice with a crisp, classy Thai-style omelet and snuffing the entire point in crawfish gumbo. A couple of dashboards of Crystal warm sauce include level of acidity and warm. It’s an enormous stack of food that is likewise thoroughly managed. Wong has an unbelievable capacity to check what might be regarded as newfangled meals simply sufficient for us to take them seriously, yet not a lot that they shed their feeling of playfulness.
Agnes and Sherman isn’t open up throughout the day, 7 days a week, like even more typical versions of the restaurant. Rather, it’s open from 10:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. Thursday via Monday, providing lunch on the weekdays, breakfast on weekend breaks, and supper from 5 to 10 p.m. Thursday via Monday. This offers Wong the versatility to offer French salute instilled with vanilla-
esque pandan leaves in addition to meals such as the cutely called Kim-chilaquiles– which includes kimchi right into the prominent Mexican morning meal– and the General Tso Young boy, a deep-fried poultry sandwich that’s a riff on the Chinese takeout fave. There’s no hamburger on the food selection, yet there is cheeseburger fried rice.
Regardless of Agnes and Sherman’s unique mash-ups, the spirit of a restaurant is quickly well-known right here. The dining establishment comes and trusted. Crisp, effective solution maintains points relocating along; you will certainly not need to flag a person down for a water re-fill. You can come right here prior to an evening out or on the early morning after. You can reconnect with an old buddy or quietly take pleasure in a dish on your own. Yet while you’re stashed in the acquainted, Agnes and Sherman, with its panache for the unanticipated, will certainly likewise take care of to shock and appeal you.
Agnes and Sherman ★ ★ ★
Address: 250 W. Nineteenth, Houston
Phone: 713-965-6088
Hours: Thu– Mon; L Thu, Fri, Mon; B Rested– Sunlight $$
Opened April 17, 2025
This write-up initially showed up in the October 2025 problem of Texas Monthly with the heading “A Reimagined Restaurant Looks At Easy.” Subscribe today.
