Ideas from the Underbelly

Ideas from the Underbelly | The Generous Brilliance of Chef Chris Shepherd

By Cary Wong

After being born in Nebraska and growing up in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Chef Chris Shepherd has now planted his roots firmly in Houston, Texas. As the chef and owner of Underbelly Hospitality with UB Preserve, One/Fifth, Georgia James, Hay Merchant, Georgia James Tavern, Blacksmith Coffee, a few more yet-tobe-named concepts and co-founder of the Southern Smoke Foundation, he never felt a strong career direction as a young person until he started cooking.

Back in the early ninetys, I knew I didn’t want to work on computers, and I knew I didn’t want to do taxes or what have you. So, I enjoyed cooking for friends and then I got a job as a dishwasher in a sushi bar and peeled shrimp and scrubbed pots,” says Chef Shepherd.

His then-boss showed him everything possible and told him to go to culinary school. “I (said) ‘I don’t know what that is.’ And he was like ‘that’s where they teach you to cook.’ I was like, ‘yeah, I like that a lot.’ And so, I moved to Houston,” he says.

Working through the ranks from the bottom of the industry all the way up to executive sous-chef and sommelier at Brennan’s and executive chef at Catalan Food & Wine, he got more informal education before opening his own restaurant in 2012.

Going to culinary school, it’s just basically French technique: baking and searing and sauteing and braising and all of these proper French culinary things,” Chef Shepherd says. “And what really enthralled me (was) after dinner service, we go to Mai’s and it was, still is, this beautiful little Vietnamese restaurant in Midtown.

The opportunities to try different ingredients like nước chấm (a Vietnamese condiment that features fish sauce) and the peanut sauce were the beginning of a whole new culinary world opening up to him.

“Once you start to understand your palate, and understand flavors that are important, the freshness, the herbaceousness, the funky, the spicy, the sweet, the salty, that (helped me) to progress as a cook,” he says.

After experiencing such exciting food, he kept expanding his horizon. He recalled an experience at a Thai restaurant where he ordered something that Don, the owner, refused to serve to him.

“(He said) that’s for the Thai. That’s not for you,” said Chef Shepherd. “And I was like, but I want that. And he was like, alright, fine… It was a dish called naem which is pickled, preserved sausage. Raw. But it had a lot of onion and ginger and peanuts and herbs and fish sauce and it was delicious. (After that,) I wanted everything else that I’m not supposed to eat. And he’s like, all right. The door opened… I started eating around the city.”

At the same time, he was working on a culinary tour with the Houston Convention and Visitor’s Bureau. This gave him even more opportunities to understand the immigrant restaurant scene.

The initiative was for tourists. People were going to read about our restaurants and come anyway, but they really need to see the underlying part of the city,” he says. “They need to see all the people live in Houston because Houston is the most culturally diverse city in the country and it’s through its food as well. And so I said, let’s just take people to where we go to eat.

As Chef Shepherd visited these various restaurants, he would start talking to the owners and the conversations often turned to ‘Hey, can you show me how to do that?’ There were a lot of no’s until they were finally worn down.

“So, I’d go and stage (like) people go stage all over the world in these fancy restaurants. I went staging in Vietnamese restaurants and Szechuan restaurants and Thai restaurants and Indian restaurants. And these people became my family,” he says.

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