As you may know, since getting our Covid vaccines, we’ve been on something of a travel jaunt here at Mrs. Millennial, visiting both Fort Worth and Napa in recent weeks. But the first week of May I got to take my most important Covid trip yet: visiting my mom, grandmother, and aunt’s family in Houston, Texas, now that they’re also all fully vaccinated!
The Points-And-Miles Strategy:
Since we drove to Houston (it’s about a 3.5 hour trip from Dallas) we didn’t require a flight or rental car this time. But rather than sleep on a blow-up mattress fold-out couch at a family member’s house (let’s be honest, they’re never comfortable) we decided to just book a hotel for the weekend.
The hubby was sitting on ~35,000 IHG points he’d built up from work travel dating back to 2019, and thanks to the Covid policies of most major hotel companies, these points hadn’t expired, despite him not having a qualifying stay in the past year. This worked out great for us, as we were able to redeem 24,000 of these points for 2 nights at the Holiday Inn & Suites, Houston West – Katy, which was located just a few minutes from my aunt’s house.
The average April price at this hotel is about $130 a night, which equals a redemption rate of 1.1 cents per point — that’s more than double the average IHG redemption rate, making this a great deal. (It is worth noting that this excellent redemption rate was likely the result of a recent change in the dynamic points pricing model IHG users; it’s unclear how long sweet spots like this will be available.)
The hotel wasn’t anything fancy, but it was clean, quiet, and the staff was friendly. The on-site restaurant/bar wasn’t operating because of Covid, which was a bit of a bummer (the hubby had been looking forward to the pancake machine at breakfast). Still, we weren’t really there for the hotel amenities, so it wasn’t a big deal for us; a free room is a free room.
The Trip:
We drove down to Houston on a Friday morning but decided to stop just shy of actually arriving in Houston in the town of Spring. Spring is a cute little suburb with a historic downtown, and that downtown is also the home of Corkscrew Barbecue. Corkscrew first came on my radar when it was ranked by Texas Monthly as the #7 barbecue joint in the entire state. So clearly, we needed to try it.
And the verdict? It was good. Damn good. I’ve tried 4 out of the 6 places ahead of it on the list, and would be willing to say it’s definitely better than at least 2 of them. We got the brisket, sausage, and some sides, and while the sides weren’t super impressive, the brisket was basically perfection.
By late afternoon, we arrived in Houston proper and put in a few hours of family time (and also barbecue settling time) before eventually checking into our hotel. Then, we headed to another highly-rated culinary powerhouse of the Houston suburbs, Tobiuo Sushi & Bar.
And for a suburban sushi restaurant, it has some serious credentials. Their previous chef, Mike Lim, trained under Morimoto in Napa. Current chef Sherman Yeung is an Uchi alum. So we decided to try their omakase tasting menu, and overall we were pleased, though I probably would focus solely on their sushi offerings (rather than their kitchen offerings) if I visited again. Some of the flavor profiles for the kitchen items were just a little “off” to our palates, like they were trying to do too much and needed a bit of editing. (The header image of this post is also a course from the Omakase menu.)
The next day we spent the morning once again with the family before venturing into Houston proper in the afternoon. It was a beautiful afternoon, so we headed over to the St. Arnold’s Brewery Biergarten. In addition to serving delicious beers, the biergarten is also a great spot from which to check out some of the surrounding murals and St. Arnold’s interesting collection of art cars.
That evening, we went to a new restaurant that had recently opened also in Katy, called Pearl and Vine. And it was a fantastic choice! We started with charbroiled oysters and duck confit fries, then for my main course, I enjoyed some of the most tender grilled octopus I’ve ever had. (The secret is apparently to sous vide it before grilling…)
Our final day in Houston also happened to be Mothers Day, which meant we had a lot of ladies to celebrate! My whole clan — all of whom are fully vaccinated — got to enjoy a meal together for the first time in over a year at Babin’s Seafood House. It was the first time we’d all been together since our trip to New Orleans in December 2019, so Cajun food seemed appropriate. And after a year many of us would rather forget, it was really nice to be together.
