THE BIG PICTURE
FRIENDS AND FAMILY HAVE A HARD TIME BELIEVING ME when I tell them I love Houston. Maybe it’s because I lived in New York City for fourteen years and it didn’t seem like I was exactly roughing it. I dined at restaurants and wrote about them for a paycheck. Every other month, I slipped on my Gucci loafers and attended New York Philharmonic concerts. My tennis team practiced on the same courts as the pros vying for the U.S. Open title. For my fortieth birthday, I flew to Paris because it was cheaper than a flight to L.A. Are you feeling bad for me yet?
This snippet of my Big Apple life, however, while true, feels like it’s been run through an Instagram filter. One year I made so little money as a freelance writer that I received food stamps for a few months even though I wrote about Michelin-starred restaurants, including for a certain national newspaper. I only stepped into the halls of Lincoln Center because I used my outdated grad school ID for a student discount (I only got caught once). Yes, I did hit tennis balls across the net at a world-class venue, but it was usually late at night for the more affordable rates. The month in Paris for my milestone celebration included two bleary-eyed weeks of working East Coast hours.
Since moving to the Lone Star State last summer, I’ve never questioned my decision to live in the country’s fourth most populated city, and, according to a 2021 WalletHub study, its most diverse. I’m now much closer to Paris, Texas, than the City of Light, but my first meal as a Houstonian tasted (and felt) like a homecoming. I arrived during what would rank as the city’s hottest July on record and proceeded to order a steaming bowl of pho, the noodle soup many consider Vietnam’s national dish. At Pho Nguyen, a blink-and-you-miss-it restaurant nestled in yet another strip mall overlooking a freeway, I savored each sip of the broth a server told me simmered throughout the day. This feeling of arrival was about more than slurping noodles. To find a Vietnamese establishment flanked by a barbershop and a craft beer bar is nothing special in Houston. If this spot had opened in my Minnesota hometown, many would have considered it “exotic.” In downtown Manhattan, it would’ve been just another restaurant to check off the bucket
