Chef Paul Friedman and business partners Thomas Nguyen and Michael Tran were supposed to have had some big-time help getting their first fast-casual restaurant, Peli Peli Kitchen, open after their win on CNBC’s Restaurant Startup. On the show, restaurateur Elizabeth Blau pledged a $1.25 million dollar investment. Afterward, the deal soured – but the group of ambitious restaurant owners managed to get the place open anyway. Frankly, it doesn’t really look like they needed any help after all, as Peli Peli Kitchen is off to a promising start.
It’s located at 9090 Katy Freeway on the first floor of an office building and is far more interesting and ambitious than most fast-casual concepts. The first thing that will strike patrons is the edgy and colorful pop culture artwork by artist Jon Garner. On one wall is a bright painting of Friedman with the quote, “No Act of Kindness, No Matter How Small, Is Ever Wasted.” Down the hallway painted on reclaimed wooden slat frameworks are familiar icons like Han Solo and Jimi Hendrix.
Fans of the trio’s previous restaurants should not expect the same fare as at the full-service Peli Peli restaurants. The dishes at Peli Peli Kitchen (or PPK for short) are entirely new creations that pull from many types of cuisine. However, there are nods to Friedman’s South African roots here and there, such as in the slices of sweet, slightly spicy peppadew peppers that regularly show up in dishes.
In other cases, classic Peli Peli dishes show up renewed and reinvented. For example, the excellent sticky toffee pudding now takes the form of an equally excellent sticky toffee cupcake with cream cheese frosting.
Another difference is that Peli Peli Kitchen is open for now from 11 am to 10 pm but plans to offer breakfast eventually (possibly next year) are already in the works. When that happens, we’ll happily go traipsing back for another taste of the remarkable smoked salmon rosti (photo below), a warm wrap made with the Indian bread naan and garnished with goat cheese, fried onions and a lush poached egg drizzled with silky hollandaise sauce.
In the meantime, there will be plenty of interesting lunch and dinner dishes to keep diners intrigued. That includes the tender chunks of oxtail (much of it already deboned) and gravy served over a South African-style yellow rice that gets much of its sunshiny color from tumeric. The $12 plate comes with two sides; choices include grilled cauliflower, truffle fries and candied sweet potatoes.
The oxtail is also offered on a brioche bun, as is the Huguenot Pork Belly (photo below). We appreciated that instead of the pork belly being served in one big fatty slab, Peli Peli Kitchen slices theirs thinly. Much more emphasis lands on the meaty part of the cut. The sweet Huguenot sauce was a little overpowering for some but not all of us at a recent media dinner where we sampled the various dishes. This one is just a matter of taste. Leaves of arugula and fried onion slivers add exactly the texture and fresh pop needed to round out the sandwich.
It’s easy to envision groups of diners dashing in for The Peli (photo below), the namesake chicken dish that’s both cooked on a rotisserie and deep-fried. The skin is spicy from an infusion of peri peri peppers, also known as bird’s eye chilies. They may be small in size, but they pack a wallop if not used carefully. Fortunately, Peli Peli Kitchen knows how to balance it out and describes the dish as a South African take on Jamaican jerk chicken. A whole chicken with four sides costs $28, which seems very reasonable. To temper that spice, there’s small selection of South African white and red wines as well as some favorite Houston beers, including offerings from Karbach and Saint Arnold.
Peli Peli Kitchen will be a fun, reasonably priced and tasty addition to the Hedwig Village and Spring Valley area that has been in need of some fresh dining options. Don’t expect this dining group to rest on its laurels now that PPK is open, however; a full-fledged Peli Peli is under construction currently in Katy, and an Austin location—its first venture outside of Houston—is also in the works.
Peli Peli Kitchen, 9090 Katy Fwy.at Campbell, 281-257-9500, pelipelikitchen.com