First trip to downtown Houston
I decide to wake up and be adventurous last week! Why not make the most of living 90 minutes from the ocean and check out downtown fish markets! Funny enough I got mixed responses from friends in Houston...all over the age of 30 said things like..."what is making you enter the jungle" and "be careful! why in the world are you headed down there?!? Funny enough the two people I had texted that were younger said "oh yay! have fun!" and "very cool! I'm so jealous!!." I thought that contrast was very amusing!
So my first stop: Blue Horizon Seafood Market. A really cool girl runs the counter and answered all my crazy questions like what fish they actually get from the gulf (probably should have paid attention during...would that be geography, or biology) and how fresh it was. Most of it was swimming the morning I came in. It was a super small little room with 2 short cases of seafood. She said they could pretty much get whatever I want they just display what the have in addittion to the bulk orders for restaurants. I bought blue crab claws and a pound of large gulf shrimp. (BTW these made two excellent dishes the next night....num num)
So more venturing out I tried one more market. This one had rave reviews for locals who wanted fresh fish but let me tell you it was a completely different environment! It smelled to high heaven of a fish (I know you might think...well duh, but I thought if it smells super fishy like that it is old/bad fish) and there were 4 cases laid out. 3 young hispanic guys ran the counter and you could tell for just the short time I was in there they knew their local customers.
I just had to take a picture of this ridiculously cool duplex:
Next since I had the fish I figured before I headed back home (soon after lunch time because the traffic is RIDICULOUS) that I needed fresh produce to go with it. I found online that there is a popup farmers market in the downtown square once a week during the day on Wednesdays.
This ended up being more food vendors and products then produce...but this just gave me a reason to sample!! (like I needed a reason lol) I ended up with some amazing dumplings and a Hibiscus agua fresca (I swear it had some sort of vinegar in it, not horrible but definitely different). All in all a very adventurous couple of hours and I headed back just before 2pm so I didn't get the insane traffic, just the normal annoying traffic lol.
So one step closer to embracing my new home :)