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Welcome to AM Intel, a (mostly) daily round-up of Houston’s hottest bits of dining intel.
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Pho Binh opens inner loop location at Finn Hall
One of Houston’s favorite pho destinations, Pho Binh, is now open at Downtown’s Finn Hall food court, at 712 Main Street. The restaurant, run by chefs Kevin Pham and Di Nguyen, is an extension of Pho Binh by Night, the Bellaire restaurant that’s been lauded for its silky pho, bone marrow, spring rolls, and banh mi. It officially opened today, July 19, and will be open weekly, Monday through Saturday, from 11 a.m. until 5 p.m., or until they run out of food.
Third Ward Tex-Mex restaurant Spanish Village will not close after all
Houstonians mourned with the news last week that Spanish Village, one of the oldest restaurants in the city, would be closing for good. Turns out, it’s not closing after all. On Wednesday, owner Abhi Sreerama shared in a Facebook post that a buyer had been found for the restaurant.
Sreerama and his wife chef Ishita Chakravarty originally took over the 70-year-old restaurant in 2018. In a message on July 5, he said the couple would be closing the restaurant for a myriad of reasons, primarily due to the age of the building. In the new message, Sreerama writes that Spanish Village will be closed for two weeks, reopening August 1 under new owners. Other details are scant, including whether the institution’s Tex-Mex recipes will stay the same.
Houston restaurant says that Uber owes them $20,000
A Houston mom-and-pop restaurant that recently opened its first brick-and-mortar location says that Uber Eats owes the business for more than three months of unpaid delivery orders. The restaurant, Birria Los Primos, opened in Downtown food court Underground Hall in March, according to the Houston Chronicle, and has taken about 700 orders through the food delivery app since then. Emily Garcia, who manages the restaurant owned by her father, said that those orders amount to nearly $21,000, which has yet to be paid by Uber.
Garcia told the Chronicle that the restaurant already had an account with the app service for their food truck, and that she’s been in back-and-forth conversations with Uber trying to set up an account for the new location. Uber told the Chron that they are awaiting personal details from Garcia and her father, including personal identification information. Garcia said she’s never had to provide personally-identifying verification information with a third-party service before, only business details and IRS tax forms. In the meantime, Garcia has paused orders through Uber, which she says is also cutting into the restaurant’s robust delivery business.
