Ambitious New Bakery Café Opens in Memorial

Cinnamon Rolls

Covid shutdowns haven’t stopped the owners of the Memorial area’s new White Elm Bakery from throwing open the doors of a bold new eat-in bakery café. The new spot — channeling old-world charm with bricks accents and gilded mirrors — opened last week.


A joint effort of Chico Ramirez of Dinner Table Investments, Bread Man Baking owner Tasos Katsaounis, and Chez Nous owners Scott and Stacy Simonson, White Elm is a nearly 3,500-square-foot space with a patio that offers walk-up coffee and pastries in the morning and lunch and dinner daily. They also do weekend brunch.

White Elm Pastry Case

“We look forward to becoming an integral part of the community by not only offering a chef-driven, dine-in menu,” says Ramirez, “but also a grocery aspect for quality baked goods and the perfect place to grab a pastry and coffee on-the-go.”

Led by Katsaounis, White Elm’s bakery program will feature multiple type of fresh bread everyday, as well as such staples as croissants, scones, tarts and muffins. Also expect Greek specialties nodding to Katsaounis’ Greek upbringing, and recipes learned at his mom’s apron strings growing up on White Elm Street in Dallas.

Elsewhere the kitchen, the Simonsons with make dishes like charred octopus with Muhammara pepper sauce, sandwiches such as curry chicken, duck confit pizza and filet mignon with bone marrow butter. Expect also vegan and vegetarian options, as well as cold-pressed juices.

AT TOP: Cinnamon Rolls

Food+Travel

Rachel Willis-Sorensen (photo by Olivia Kahler)

THIS WEEKEND, ON June 1 and 2, the Houston Symphony celebrates the work of Richard Strauss with a concert of two very different works: An Alpine Symphony (Eine Alpensinfonie), an epic tone poem completed by Strauss in 1915 that depicts a dawn-to-dusk Alpine mountain ascent and includes subtle references to the music of his close friend Gustav Mahler, who died in 1911; and Four Last Songs, which Strauss completed in 1948 at age 84 and was destined to be the composer’s final completed work. HGO Studio alum Rachel Willis-Sørensen, now one of the world’s most in-demand operatic sopranos, joins Music Director Juraj Valčuha for a performance of these majestic, sublime compositions for voice and orchestra.

Keep Reading Show less
Art + Entertainment

Októ will have a lively bar like the one at Doris Metropolitan, pictured here. (photo by Kirsten Gilliam)

AFTER YEARS OF operating solid, Israeli-influenced concepts — Doris Metropolitan on Shepherd, and Badolina and Hamsa in Rice Village — Sof Hospitality is set to debut its latest concept in Montrose Collective this summer. Surprise, this time it’s Mediterranean cuisine!

Keep Reading Show less
Food