Foodies and Friends - HAMSA

All right, y'all. Happy HRW. If I look like I'm happy and smiling, it's true. I'm in one of my most favorite places here in Houston. We're at Kamsa in Rice Village. This is one of our Incredible Houston Restaurant Week participants that is so busy every year. Y'all have been crazy. Stephen Ripley, General Manager here. How are you? I'm doing well. How are you? How busy, how tired? Are you hating us right now? No, no. It's just a great, great cause, and it actually instills a lot of good sales for us as well, so it's a win-win for everybody. But everybody's on their way out of town vacation. Still got less than a week left. One more week to dine out and do good here in Houston to support the Houston Food Bank, because y'all know, and it's because of you, this is their largest annual fundraiser, and that is a huge deal because Houston Food Bank, and I don't know if you know this, Stephen, largest food bank in the world by distribution. See, you didn't even know that. Right down the street, and what that means is Houston Food Bank has figured out better than any food bank in the world how to get more food to more people on a daily and annual basis, and so I think that Houston is the best city in the world because once a year, the entire city comes together, and we dine out and do good. We support the food bank, and we also support the local restaurants, and it's been great for you guys. Tell me how the month has been. It's been busy. It's been great for lunch, our brunch, and our knitter. It's like through the whole month, it's been a fantastic class. I've been hearing about that lunch from y'all. All right, let's go right on over to the foodie cam because we've got a lot to show y'all. We've got the whole shebang to show y'all, and if you don't know what that is, y'all got to come on down to Hamsa and take a look at that menu, and this is what gets me so excited. These dishes. Stephen, what are we looking at here? So this is going to be our first course for our lunch HRW menu, so we have some butternut squash tahini, and then of course, bishbash salad, which is going to be shaved fennel with sumac and lemon juice, but you have a choice of all of our 10 different salad team, which is going to be the assortment of different dips and salads that you can choose from. These are just two I picked, and then of course, we have complimentary pita for everyone with our hummuses or salad team, and then for anyone who's gluten-free, we have cucumbers and carrots that we offer as well. Okay, so y'all are hearing a lot of hummus, a lot of salad team, we see some pita, so tell everybody what kind of restaurant Hamsa is, what can the diners expect when they come here, because you probably are meeting a lot of new diners. Oh yes, definitely. We have a lot of first timers coming in, so we're an Israeli restaurant, so we have typically, you know, some Mediterranean food, specifically from Israel, but you know, we kind of encourage sharing, we encourage just having a whole bunch of food, tons of spread all over the table, oh yeah, definitely, and it's all about freshness here, so like for our hummus instance, we make that three times a day, daily, it literally is fresh every single day, and that's how we have one of the creamiest hummuses in Houston, oh yeah, you want to check it, oh it's good, it's good, so we do make our pita in-house as well, every single day, so our pita chef back there, pita oven, you have a pita chef, yes, pita chef, pita chef, he'll be working doing our pitas this morning, and then when he's done, he goes to our sister restaurant, Badalina Bakery, which is right next door, Badalina, right there, shout out, pita for the next day, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute, I did not know, how did I not know that a pita chef, that's a, like that's his real, yeah, he's the, he's the baker, he basically does all the pita for us, I had no idea, because we've heard of sous chefs, we've heard of pastry chefs, we heard, we hear of Soms, sommeliers, but y'all have a pita chef, oh yeah, no, he works fantastic, he's a great person, and his pita's a little tricky, you have to be able to cook it on both sides evenly, or you'll have a crispy side, and you want to make sure it's fluffy all the way through, and be able to have that pocket whenever we open it up for our sandwiches, yeah, for lunch too, because we have a falafel and a chicken shawarma sandwich that we use our pita and put it in as well, so, oh, it's even better with dips, you were, he was telling me, he was like, his daughters love, they go crazy for this pita, and I'm like, oh great, my son, he's never been here before, I've been here many times, oh yeah, my son has never been here, oh my goodness, so your pita chef, is he very, like, he knows what he's doing, don't mess with him, yeah, because it's a wood fire grill, so it's really temperature controlled, you really have to be, you know, on it every single day, yeah, for consistency as well, how long does it take to do, like, a whole batch of pita to supply, like, let's say one day in the three thirty or four, yeah, and he's there sometimes till eight o'clock in the bakery making pitas, for the next day, for the next day, because it's always fresh, oh yeah, oh, okay, yeah, so that's gonna be our butternut squash tahini, butternut squash tahini, all right, let's go back on over to the booty cam, we are at Tamsa with Stephen Ripley looking at their Houston Restaurant Week menu, 2026, only one week left to dine out and do good, I've got that tahini in my mouth still, pretty good, what are we looking at here, Stephen? So this is going to be one of our bowls for our second course of our HRW lunch menu, and so this is going to be our chicken thigh skewer, that's going to be grilled over charcoal, and then it comes with a veggie skewer, that's going to be on the top there, some pickled red onions, and then you have a choice of a green salad, Israeli salad, and our rice, the Israeli salad is going to be just a fine dice of cucumber, onions, and a little bit of tomato, seasoned with lemon juice, and olive oil, super fresh, super healthy, so this is one of my favorites, yeah, I love that, and very, very authentic Israeli food, so a little bit of traditional, a little bit of modern in there too, but talk about the mix between the, oh yes, this is what I'm talking about, and that y'all, this right here, this is like chocolate chips for me, oh it goes so well with everything, but talk a little bit about how your dishes kind of interact with Houston, and bring in some other flavors, or is it more so just really super traditional Israeli, it's pretty traditional Israeli, I mean of course we use fresh ingredients here, and so we have to have Houston vegetables, like our mushroom skewer we have for dinner, and for HRW dinner, yeah, is with gray oyster mushrooms, they're absolutely beautiful, yeah, it's one of my favorite vegan dishes we have on the menu, especially because it almost has a consistency of like a chicken thigh, once we charcoal grill it, it has that nice little, you know, roasty, smoky, almost like a chicken thigh, but it's completely vegan, completely vegan, wow, and your dishes are plated for sharing, is that kind of the idea with this restaurant? We have multiple ways you can order, of course you can have your single all-in-part plate, but we do have something called build your own board as well on the menu, that you basically can just throw most of our either vegetables or proteins all on a board to where everyone can share, you have tongs, and so it's a little bit about sharing a lot with the salad team, especially when you have the whole shebang, which is all ten, the whole shebang, you said, you see, he said it, we got to talk about the whole shebang, I dream about this dish, oh it's fantastic, I do, I like to recommend it for anyone with a four-person table or more, if you do too, it's a quite a bit of food, or if it's your first time, or if it's your first time, you want to try all the salad team, it's really good, so tell them what this whole shebang is, because you can see it, if you come to Hamsa, you can look at it, you can see it on the menu, that's the name of the dish, so tell everybody what the whole shebang is, so basically on our menu, we have the open the table, which means start of the whole experience, you have a choice of a single salad team, choice of five, or a whole shebang for 35, and you basically get to get every single small salad team, which is going to be there, and so there will be 10 little bowls of this all over the table, like with pita, cucumbers, carrots, whatever you like, and it's really fun, because I've come here with my friend before, Eric Sandler, who is the editor of Culture Map, and we argue, I'm like, yo, give me that one over there, because he'll get his favorite one, and he'll keep it like over here, so I can't reach it, I'm like, yo, you push that over here buddy, I need some of that, it's meant to be passed more than afforded, but we do want sharing, and especially like, you get to taste a little bit of everything, and that also, you know, attributes to the healthiness of it, you get a little bit of all the nutrients from every single different one, what's the most requested replenishment in the whole shebang, I've never asked that, and I want to know, there's a few, so the, you know, the shaved tomato and feta, that's what I was going to say, that's mine, very delicious, baba ganoush, it's super smooth, we roast that in the pita oven, so it has a little slight smokiness as well, but then the lemon tahini, or the squash tahini, yeah, so you can ask for replenishment, and they won't think you're crazy, it's a normal thing, all right, let's go back on over to the foodie cam, we're with Stephen Ripley down here in Rice Village at Hamsa, taking a look at their Houston Restaurant Week's 2026 menu, but what are we looking at, so this is going to be our petty bear, it's going to be similar to like a, I would say tiramisu with chocolate instead of espresso, so it's going to have shortbread cookies called petty bears, it's going to have some cream in between each layer, then we top that with some shaved chocolate, this looks just absolutely divine, but this is a dessert, yes, I mean, I could just do this as my starter, Stephen, yeah, this is probably our most popular dessert we have, most popular dessert, so we're running out of time for Houston Restaurant Week's 2026, just a few more days left to get these incredible desserts and dishes to support the Houston Food Bank, what is happening with Hamsa and Octo in the fall, do y'all have any special events coming up or wine dinners, yes, we have a few different things, we're doing a, we're gonna have a Israeli band come in, that's going to be late September, Israeli band, we're doing some Mahjong as well, so, that sounds so fun, yeah, if you follow us on Instagram, all our different events and stuff are going to be posted on there, what, tell me about the Israeli band, what kind of music is it, Israeli, I mean, I'm so, I'm new to it as well, so I'll be able to witness it when I see it, so, and it's probably, they're speaking another language, and it's so, I won't be able to understand, but it'll be, yes, it'll be new, it'll be new, we are selling tickets, it comes with a complimentary glass of sparkling cava, and it's going to be sold, tickets on opentable.com, just go to experiences under our Hamsa Open Table, you'll be able to see that, yeah, and shout out to Open Table, those experiences, those are very helpful for diners in planning, not only their Houston Restaurant Weeks visits, but also visits in general, it's just a very functional piece on the app, it's gotten really good over the years, and it's definitely helped us to sell more HRW meals to support the Houston Food Bank, so, shout out to Open Table, y'all, but let me just stop, Stephen, Stephen, it's delicious, right, this is unlike any dessert in the city. We sell this also at our sister bakery next door, Batalina. Batalina, okay, it is truly, like, the layers, the texture of every layer, because we've had a lot of cakes, everybody's had a lot of cakes, but not every cake is the same, right, and every layer tastes different, but this is what I'm saying, all of those layers, this is a very intricate design, and I'm tasting every single one, and I'm able to respect every single flavor in that, that's probably intentional, y'all have some pretty serious bakers next door. Oh, no, we have very talented bakers next door, yeah, I mean, from croissants to the sourdough, it's fantastic, the cream, and the cake, this is like, do people do birthday cakes, can you do, we do sell birthday cakes, we have an assortment of different cool molds and stuff, but check us out Batalina Instagram, we do have pictures of the cakes you can order as well, and then if you want to dine here and have a cake, we can pre-order with Batalina and have it served to you here. Yeah, that's so great, I never even thought of that, because you're right next door, and there's a beautiful patio right here in front, so is this, you could do really, have a brunch party, really, even like a lunch party, get some croissants from next door, get the whole shebang over here, people do that? Oh yeah, and we definitely, you know, encourage using our, you know, coffee that we have there, we have fantastic, you know, espresso that we make, lattes, cappuccinos, hopefully the weather will get a little bit cooler, so the patio will start, you know, getting busy, but yeah, right now it's a little hot. Well, this is a great area right here in Rice Village, we're right on Morningside, Black Walnut Cafe, right across the fabulous Houston Restaurant Week participant. All right, let's go back on over to the Foodie Cam, we're still with Stephen Ripley at Hamsa in Rice Village, taking a look at their Houston Restaurant Week 2026 menu, just a few more days to dine out and do good, what are we looking at here, Stephen? So we have the most popular one, the shaved tomato and feta, so that's gonna be shaved tomato with a little jalapeno and feta on top, of course you can remove the feta if you're dairy-free, on top we have the baba ghanoush, which is one of my personal favorites, that's gonna be roasted in the pita oven and it's gonna be pureed smooth, and then lastly we have the amba pickles, which are gonna be cabbage, cauliflower, carrots, jalapenos, red bell peppers, that we are going to pickle with a fermented mango sauce called amba, and so we make that all in-house and basically it's a super delicious, nice little bright acidity to add to your meal. And I love this because this reminds me of, and you can speak a little bit to kind of what the dining culture is here in the restaurant for when y'all come here for the first time, but it's very, it's not like a party, it's still dining, but there's a little bit more energy at the table because so many of the entrees and the dishes are served in a, you know, smaller plate, sharing is incentivized, and they just keep coming, you know, it's just like okay what are we gonna do, we gotta put it in our left ear, normally the first course fills the table, it totally like covers the table, and so talk a little bit about the energy in the room, like families, kids, groups, brunches, like what is it, what is it good for if you're thinking? It's kind of all around, especially for the weekend brunches, we have a lot of whole families coming in with kids, we have a lot of cool options, the salad team is great, some kids like the hummus, you know, chicken, we have schnitzel as well, which is really good for the kids. They probably like your hummus too, because it's so creamy and smooth. You have pita bread, what kid doesn't like bread? Yeah, yeah, my son loves hummus. But we have all walks of life come in here, we have a lot of people from the medical center, so we have a lot of people coming on their lunch break as well, so that's why lunch is so busy here. We do encourage reservations, but walk-ins are always welcome. I have yet to turn down a walk-in in a while. Oh, that's great, well, and especially because you have this nice patio, and it is shaded, there's fans, so I was sitting out there today, and it was fine, because you had the fans on. Yeah, we have tons of fans, we actually have another big fan out there that, you know, cooled down a little bit more, but we have umbrellas as well, and tree coverage. Okay, this is one of the dishes that caused arguments at my dining table at Hamsa, because, tell everybody what this is. So it's gonna be our shaved tomato and feta, so we have basically shaved tomato, so it's gonna have a lot less of the actual juice if you just pureed a tomato, and then we have some jalapeno in there as well, and then we top that with a little bit of feta cheese. You see, and this is why it goes away so fast. It's super refreshing. Because I just eat it like a salad, like, they want you to put it on feta, they want you to take little bites, but I literally just take the whole thing, I'm like, oh, this is my salad. Yeah, and again, super healthy for you. And there's literally nothing else in here, there's no sugar in here, there's nothing fried, there's no bread even. It's very simple. It's like four ingredients or something, like three or four ingredients, and I can taste the freshness, and that's, that is another reason why y'all are so popular during lunch and brunch. People don't want to be so tired after eating a bunch of food for lunch, that's overly heavy, so nice light bites that we have, and something that keeps you refreshed. Especially today, and we'll talk about that a little bit with, there's been some recent diner habits that have changed, we'll talk about that in a minute, but let's talk about this dish first. So this is going to be our second course for the HRW dinner menu. So this is going to be one of our dishes, the falafel. So we make our falafel in-house, and it's going to be on a bed of tahini with a little bit of sumac on top as well, where you get three falafel balls, and so it's really good. This is probably the best falafel I've had in the city. That's what I was going to say, I remember your falafel is out of this world. Yeah, a lot of falafel you get is like, I guess, overly cooked, a little dry, too hard, too dry. Ours is fantastically perfectly moist. I love it so much. It's really good with the tahini. And I'm a big falafel salad fan. I love putting falafel, like chickpea, get me some pickled something, you know, like that's like pretty much a lot of what's like, throw some of this in there, you know, just the whole shebang. I'm good, I'm good with the whole shebang with some falafel on the side, like, you know, that's, that's okay. All right, so a few more days, Houston Restaurant Weeks, wine dinners coming up, any special fall programs that you'd like to let our diners know about? Really just the Mahjong and the concert we have coming up pretty soon. Of course, we have the holiday season coming, so we'll have a bunch of different other things. Oh yeah, talk about what are the holidays like here at Hamsa? Is this an option for holiday dining? Oh yeah, so Christmas is one of our busiest days. So Christmas is a busy day and also you're open. Yes, we're open. Rosh Hashanah is coming up, and so we're doing pre-orders for that as well. We do Shabbat to go orders as well, and so you get a whole ton of food for four people, it's 140 bucks, and you have tons of choices. Again, that's on our Instagram. Oh yeah, it's super fun. So it makes Shabbat really easy, and then also for Rosh Hashanah, it makes it easier on anyone who wants to not really cook in the kitchen and let us take care of the food for them. Oh yeah, no, I love Shabbat. My son went to JCC for preschool, and we got to do Shabbat every Friday. Oh, that's awesome. And it was amazing, and he loved it, and he loved just the challah. That's like his, one of his first loves is challah bread because of Shabbat on every Friday at the JCC, Margate, New Jersey. And we make our challah again at the bakery next door. We have a bunch of, you know, fresh bread that you can do. You can do pita or challah, whatever you like. All right, look at this dish. Oh my goodness, what are we looking at here? So this is one of the third courses that you get out of the four courses we have for dinner. This is going to be our shrimp skewer covered with a little bit of chimichurri made in house, a vegetable skewer, and pickled onions, and the vegetable skewer, the pickled onions come with all our skewers. And so for mushroom skewer, the hanger, or sorry, the ribeye skewer, chicken skewer, they all come with that accoutrement as well. Yeah, I love that because it goes so well with everything, but it's also, you know, it's, it's a cultural piece of the dish as well, right? Like it's very, it's, it's been around for a long time. And so we have it on the super large skewer because we do cook this over charcoal grill. And this is how it comes to the table. Comes to the table, and we de-skewer it as well. So that means it stands up. So we normally do it. Yeah. Oh, okay. We grab a knife and then we just slowly take them off as we go. And you do it for us. Yes. Yeah. We don't want you stabbing anyone. That is kind of like, it could be a rather large weapon of some sort. Yes. No children allowed near the skewers. Oh my goodness. All right. So we've got wine dinners, we've got possibly, we've got music, we've got brunch in the off season. Oh, we have brunch all the time. Every Saturday and Sunday, 1130 open till three, we have brunch menus. And is this a popular fall and spring brunch spot? Oh, definitely. Okay. Give me some brunch tip. So, I mean, we have an herbed omelet. That's fantastic. It's almost like build your own. So you have your omelet, but then you have a bunch of different accoutrements with sourdough bread that you can like kind of build your own little experience with that. We have another fantastic one called Babka French toast. So we make Babka next door. We make French toast with that. And we have a creme anglaise as well that goes with that. And it's fantastic. We have a sourdough bread appetizer that's made with sumac butter that we make in house. It actually is, we mold it in the shape of a Hamza as well, which is really neat. How fun is it just having this bakery and a culinary? It's so convenient. Because as a chef, like you want it all. You probably want like, I want that flavor. I want this flavor. And you just kind of walk next door. Oh yeah. Yep. All right. Let's go back on over to the foodie cam. What are we looking at Steven? So this is Basbousa Malabi. So this is going to be a marina cake and the bread is going to be a rose syrup. And then on top is going to be some crushed pistachio. And so this will be the fourth and final dish for HRW dinner. I love this. Oh my goodness. What is the bottom part? Is it like, looks like a little red. Is it a red? Rose syrup. Rose syrup. Oh, you'll try it. You'll like it. It's fantastic. Wait a minute. I'm already getting ideas for the rose syrup to go in a drink. Yeah, you could use that. Like a cocktail. Mimosa. Tell me about, do you guys have good cocktails here? Mocktails? Oh, we have a fantastic cocktail program. So we do all the juicing, all the, you know, additions, like when it comes to infusions, fat washing, all that stuff. You're doing fat washing? Yeah, we're doing that in the house. That's a big thing, y'all. Not every restaurant can do the fat washing. But we juice plums, pears, pineapples. We make our own cranberry juice for our cosmopolitan on the menu. We use a lot of the ingredients from the kitchen as well to, uh, for, you know, for our cocktails. Like we have a sugar side story that was made with sugar, which is going to be like a cilantro and Thai chili puree. Stop it. No, no, no. Stop. No. Try this. You have, oh my gosh. This is, this should be illegal. This is, yeah. Just dig right in. This is. And it's super pretty. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. This is maybe the best thing I've ever tasted in my life. This should go in like a cocktail. It should go as a drizzle on a sundae. Oh yeah. This could be on your pancakes for brunch. We don't have pancakes, but we have yeah. All right. Y'all I'm getting too excited. This is what happens when I come down here. All right. Only a few days left for Houston restaurant weeks. 2026. Y'all have been doing a fabulous job dining out and doing good supporting the food bank and our local restaurants. They have been busier than ever. So thank you so much for helping to support the food bank. And of course our restaurants Houston restaurant weeks runs for another few days. You can always check us out on YouTube and stay tuned to Fox 26 and Fox local for all of the exclusive Houston restaurant weeks coverage. We'll see y'all next time. You want to do a happy HRW cheers. Cheers.