Perry's Steakhouse Surprise

When I left Long Island in 2008, I didn’t think I would miss much – after all, I’d left to come back to Texas without having a job, so I was serious about leaving New York. As the years have passed since my cross country move, I realized that one of the few things I missed from New York was the pizza. The pizza there is luscious, fresh, and ubiquitous. Unlike Houston, you can pull up to most any mom and pop pizza shop and get a slice of doughy Sicilian, or a slice of crisp and crackery thin crust spread judiciously with fresh sauce – notice I said judiciously, not slopped on - and any number of great toppings. The outside edges of the slice were always crusty and burny-tasting, and great pizza always leaves a dusting of flour on your hands as a reminder of your good fortune at selecting a genuinely excellent slice.

In the seven years I’ve been back to Texas, I’ve yearned to eat a slice like this again – to wait anxiously as the pizza purveyor prepared his perfect masterpiece and slid it gently onto a paper plate. I wanted to smell the fresh tomatoes and basil, and to fold it ever so gently just to bite into the tip end of the triangle. Until now, nothing had satisfied my pizza yearning – but now, I’ve found a local restaurant that has genuinely great pizza and so many other fine points that I wanted to start my new blog with a review of this restaurant – Perry's Steakhouse and Grill in Memorial City.

I know, I know, this is a steakhouse, so why do they have great pizza? I have it on good authority (my friend Angela) that the Perry family comes from an Italian heritage, which may explain how this family taps into the essence of what makes a great pizza. Sit down at the bar at happy hour and peruse their bar menu, and you’ll notice the New York Strip Pizza. For $7.95 (Happy Hour price), you get a pizza that covers a good size plate and excellent fresh ingredients. The crust is cracker-thin and burny, and leaves the tell-tale flour dusting behind on your hand. The amount of sauce is just right to give the pizza a flavor boost without making the crust soggy. The pizza is topped off with Italian sausage (sweet) and a chiffonade of basil. We usually split the chopped salad ($9.95), so for just over $20.00, you have a delicious meal in one of the nicest restaurants in the Energy Corridor.

Oh, and did I mention there’s live entertainment? Every evening starting at 6, Perry’s has live music, usually a piano player, which adds a great ambience to the already beautiful surroundings of Bar 79. Happy hour runs from 4 to 6:30 every evening, so no need to pack your bags and move to New York to get fine pizza!