A Houston’s on Houston

For all its protestations of humility — it’s just a little “corner store” — the Corner Store has, in short order, become basically out of reach for the average diner. Good luck popping in. By 5 p.m. on a recent night, a line had formed down West Broadway filled with people hoping for the mere possibility of cancellations or no-shows, and when I’d tried my luck around 5:15 p.m. on a Sunday evening not long before, a polite but firm security guard stationed at the door informed me that there would be no cancellations at all. I begged to hear that from the hosts inside, who might have let me at least leave a phone number. The guard let me in, but the hostess, similarly polite, similarly firm, regretted her inability to help. There was, she said, literally no way to take a number, a name: no wait list, no nothing. All she could do, with the serenity of a Kafka bureaucrat, was watch as I opened Resy on my own phone and added a “Notify” alert.

Such is the power of any place Taylor Swift visits twice in its first five weeks in business, a hot spot reverse-engineered to be a restaurant. The Corner Store, which occupies a former Dos Caminos on West Broadway and Houston, is a joint effort of the Catch Hospitality Group and Tilman Fertitta, who owns both the Houston Rockets and a broad portfolio of casinos, restaurant groups, and chains under the umbrella of Landry’s, Inc. Catch brings a somewhat faded but nevertheless celeb-y cachet — an insulting mention of the Meatpacking location was bleeped out of last season’s The Real Housewives of New York City — and Fertitta brings, among many others, Bubba Gump Shrimp Co., the Palm, and Houlihan’s.

If Catch Steak married a Houlihan’s and borrowed some grilled artichokes with a vat of luxury spinach dip from Houston’s, the result would likely be something like the Corner Store. Its steaks and Caesar salads are as approachable as its tables are not. The long, windowless dining room is paneled in wood, brass, and mirror, and hanging are framed photos of stylish celebrities of yore. If the Corner Store were merely an ersatz Polo Bar — masculine, impregnable, reassuring — it would have been enough.

But the Corner Store’s stated intention seems to be something odder still: adult cuisine as imagined by children. Nostalgia is a key driver of the menu, for chef as much as for clientele. “I was a latchkey kid,” Michael Vignola, the amiable culinary director of Catch, said when he strolled by my table one night. “I exploded a lot of eggs in the microwave.” His technique has improved, but the same after-school spirit animates the menu, like viral five-cheese pizza rolls stuffed with pepperoni, popular enough that one cook’s full days are devoted to rolling them. (A foie-gras-and-jelly Uncrustable, meanwhile, died in development.) The spinach-and-artichoke dip, despite being presented in a French-made copper braiser, is served with carrot sticks and celery, and there are seven martinis on the menu, with none so popular as a sour-cream-and-onion version, cream-washed and plush, with a sidecar of Zapp’s potato chips.

Well, it’s fair to say, so what? When dissension reigns, plenty of people go in search of comfort, the kiddier the better. Shortly after 5 p.m. on Election Night, there wasn’t a free seat in the house. The menu is filled with gimmicks, but gimmicks in the service of fun. That leaves us grumpy critics holding the bag, forced to run on a losing platform: “Down With Fun.” Not fun enough to get in, not fun enough to have fun once we — through some indirect, but still regrettable, string-pulling, let me confess — do. We should probably let the funstaurants exist in peace — reserving the mild charge of dining adjacent to Antoni Porowski, whom I passed at the bar on one recent visit, or Jane Krakowski, who beamed out from a side table on another, for those who enjoy it, as perhaps it’s best enjoyed, with a hot side of Totino’s (Taylor’s Version).

Aside from a Caesar salad I found truly objectionable — decorated (why?) with fried balls of cream cheese and everything-bagel croutons — the food at the Corner Store is no better than it needs to be and no worse than that of many other places. Vignola and his team make a serviceable, if overcharred, steak with some very decent frites: Not the McDonald’s style that proliferate elsewhere but hand-cut, skin-on, and ready for dunking into an imitation of McDonald’s ultrasweet secret sauce the restaurant calls, for reasons unclear, McOli Sauce. (The “Oli” character, an imaginary avatar of vibes, pops up all over the menu.) I enjoyed them more when dragged through the garlicky, peppery butter of a lobster-frites, a two-pounder removed and then repatriated to its shell, a recipe Vignola has made since his days at 12th Street’s Strip House (also a Fertitta property).

There’s no burger on the menu, which comes as a surprise until one realizes — as Vignola did — that if there were, he’d sell nothing but. Instead, there is a squishy French dip of rib eye, so beefy and salty after its au jus dunk that I longed for a little onion, or anything, to adulterate it.

If the Corner Store annoys me, and it does, it’s not because it doesn’t want me there. Impenetrable scenes with so-so food are a tradition in this city, but counter to the name, this store feels like it could be exported to any corner, anywhere. Which, naturally, seems to be the point. On Catch’s corporate website, the Corner Store isn’t described as a restaurant at all; it’s a “concept.” Catch has already proliferated (Dallas and Scottsdale are coming soon), and the Corner Store will doubtless follow in its path. It’s built for it, right down to the restaurant’s mascot, a bow-tied little waiter carrying a martini over his shoulder like a bindle and stick. A man on the move — he’s ready to go.

Scratchpad

The Corner Store

475 W. Broadway, at W. Houston; thecornerstoresoho.com

How to Get In
Need a seat without connections? I never saw any openings on Resy, but you, too, can add your name to the “Notify” list and hope for the best.

What to Drink
Among the seven premade martinis on the menu, stored at zero degrees Fahrenheit, my group preferred the chamomile Vesper to the others.

And Where to … Go
Looking for the bathroom? It’s behind the bar and down a narrow service staircase, on which you’ll have to dodge all the Caesar salads coming up. Good luck.

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