We’ve been wait­ing for the open­ing of the Hous­ton out­post of the Cal­i­for­nia restau­rant, Straits, for a while so we were exited to be going there. It’s located at the bot­tom of a hotel in front of a grassy court­yard, so good loca­tion and nice frontage.

The restau­rant has a nice con­cept. It is part lounge, part bar, and then a mod­ern din­ing room. All seat­ing is mod­ern and very classy. The kitchen is stain­less steel, includ­ing the back splashes so it feels very clean. Most south east Asian restau­rants in Hous­ton are dives or smaller so Straits will imme­di­ately seem dif­fer­ent. You would not know this is Singapore/Malaysian restau­rant from the out­side or inside dec­o­ra­tion i.e. there’s not mask, teak wood, or kites hang­ing from the walls. Sit­ting in the din­ing already you can hear the DJ inspired music from the bar but the din­ing area con­tin­ues to feel as a part of the larger space.

I don’t typ­i­cally gripe about the next thing that I have to gripe about, so I will keep it short… Please loose the the dancers (or dancer out­fits); it’s not nec­es­sary to make the place cool, it cheap­ens the expe­ri­ence and clashes with the “fam­ily style din­ing” — this is not Patpong.

We started with the lol­lipop chicken, which are frenched drum­mettes, fried, and cov­ered in a dark caramelized soy based sauce. We liked the spice level, but thought the heavy sugar appli­ca­tion of the sauce was a lit­tle bit too much. Once you started bit­ing in, a rude taste of cayenne came at the same time. This dish looks beau­ti­ful, but I would not order it again.

For our mains, we ordered the ren­dang tamales and the Sin­ga­pore chili crab. You can actu­ally order this dish with lob­ster or crab. I was sur­prised that it was a fixed price. Usu­ally crab or lob­ster is mar­ket priced. The crab was smaller than I expected but the taste was won­der­ful. Very well bal­anced spicy, with sweet­ness com­ing from the pep­pers, and a crab broth. I love thi dish, but at $38, arghhh.. I’ll have to think about it. The ren­dang tamales we actu­ally a corn husk topped with cream maid polenta infused with kef­fir limes, then short rib ren­dang on top. I’ve been ren­dang for years, but never had it non-spicy. The short ribs are a good intro­duc­tion for any­one new to ren­dang. They had all the taste of ren­dang with­out being spicy. At home I usu­ally use bone­less short rib to make ren­dang, so the taste was very famil­iar. I would have liked the dish bet­ter with some kind of sauce. Ren­dang does not always have a sauce, but this dry ren­dang on top of polenta really needs one to liaise it. A fried or grilled polenta would have been much bet­ter. Since the tim­ing on the food is still com­ing together, a sauce will help to keep the dish tasty after it has cooled too much.

Ren­dang Tamales

The dessert has a few stand-outs, we opted for the coconut tres leches. It was nice, but needs more height and more coconut flavour — maybe roasted shred­ded coconut in the cake. I was sur­prised not to see iced kankang or a coconut pud­ding or jelly dessert. With all the kef­fir lime on the menu, maybe kef­fir lime pie or kef­fir lime ice cream. 

Our wait­ress was atten­tive and quick, but still learn­ing the restau­rant. Her friend­li­ness more than made up for any mis­takes. The wait­staff in gen­eral was help­ful and pro­fes­sional. This restau­rant is suf­fer­ing from what most suf­fer from a week or 2 into open­ing… Kitchen tim­ing, unfa­mil­iar­ity with the menu, run­ning out of ingre­di­ents, staff who has not yet tasted enough of the items on the menu. All of these can be worked out; we’ll be back in a month or 2 as we do expect improve­ments, but we will be rec­om­mend­ing this place to friends. All in all, we had a great time and I think this one is a keeper — just drop the Pat­pong décor.

Straits

www.straitsrestaurants.com

800 West Sam Hous­ton Pkwy N
Hous­ton, TX 77024