Lindale Park’s Indigo is One of the Country’s Best New Restaurants

For the past several months, Eater’s national restaurant team has been surveying the country’s best new eateries, and Houston’s own Indigo is one of the country’s most compelling new places to dine.

Eater dropped its annual list of the country’s best new restaurants on Wednesday, and it’s not surprising to see chef Jonny Rhodes’s Lindale Park restaurant join 15 stellar spots from across the United States on the list, including hotspots like Los Angeles’s Nightshade and Verjus in San Francisco. It’s one of three Texas eateries on the list, joining Khao Noodle Shop in Dallas and the Jerk Shack in San Antonio.

Here’s what Eater restaurant editor Hillary Dixler had to say about Indigo:

Rhodes and his wife and co-owner, Chana Rhodes, aim to challenge systemic racism and oppression in America with their restaurant. Rhodes delivers monologues between courses on weighty topics ranging from mass incarceration to the Great Migration, but even without them, Indigo’s very existence is part of the work: a fine dining restaurant in a historically underserved neighborhood, serving food that unabashedly claims its purpose. In a more equitable dining culture, none of this would be revolutionary, but today it is; diners simply don’t see restaurants like this very often.

It’s been a big year for Rhodes and Indigo. In May, the restaurant landed on Food & Wine’s list of the country’s top ten restaurants, and before that, Rhodes won Eater Houston’s 2018 Chef of the Year trophy. In between winning all that acclaim and serving meals, he’s been hard at work on the community initiatives he’s got planned for Lindale Park, including a community garden.

• Chef of the Year Jonny Rhodes Battles Soul Food Stereotypes at Houston’s Indigo [EHOU]
• The 16 Best New Restaurants in America [Eater]