Wondering where Houston's in-the-know crowd is eating and drinking? It's easy to spot lines out the door, but some underlying trends are harder to see.
We took a data-driven look at the question, using Yelp to deduce which restaurants have been most discussed this month.
To find out who made the list, we looked at Houston businesses on Yelp by category and counted how many reviews each received. Rather than compare them based on number of reviews alone, we calculated a percentage increase in reviews over the past month, and tracked businesses that consistently increased their volume of reviews to identify statistically significant outliers compared to past performance.
Read on to see which spots are worth exploring, right now.
Café Bustelo
Whether or not you've been hearing buzz about Neartown - Montrose's Café Bustelo, the pop-up restaurant, which offers coffee and tea and more, is a hot topic according to Yelp review data.
While businesses categorized as "Coffee & Tea" on Yelp saw a median 4.4 percent increase in new reviews over the past month, Café Bustelo bagged a 32.1 percent increase in new reviews within that timeframe, maintaining a mixed 3.5-star rating.
Open at 3615 Montrose Blvd. since March, Café Bustelo offers espresso-style coffee and Latin flavors like cafecitos, coladas and cortaditos. On the food menu, expect pastelitos and empanadas.
Little Matt's
Little Matt's is also making waves. Open since 2009 at 6203 Edloe St., the well-established Tex-Mex spot, which offers burgers and sandwiches, has seen a 4.3 percent bump in new reviews over the last month, compared to a median review increase of 2.5 percent for all businesses tagged "Tex-Mex" on Yelp. However, on a month-to-month basis Little Matt's's review count increased by more than 1,900 percent.
Little Matt's caters to kids and features a menu that includes salad, chicken sandwiches, Tex-Mex platters, pizza and eight signature burgers. Over the past month, it's maintained a superior 4.5-star rating among Yelpers.
Velvet Taco
Neartown - Montrose's Velvet Taco is the city's buzziest New American spot by the numbers.
The well-established New American and breakfast and brunch spot, which opened at 907 Westheimer Road, Suite A, in 2015, increased its new review count by 8.2 percent over the past month, an outlier when compared to the median new review count of 2.7 percent for the Yelp category "American (New)." It outperformed the previous month by gaining 1.6 times more reviews than expected based on past performance.
Velvet Taco serves taco in creative varieties like the Picnic Chicken (rotisserie chicken, avocado crema, honey-Dijon potato salad, crispy chicken skin and cilantro) and the Cuban Pit (gruyere cheese, slow-roasted pulled pork, honey ham, peppered bacon, grain mustard and house brined pickles). Click here to view the full menu.
This story was created automatically using local business data, then reviewed and augmented by an editor. Click here for more about what we're doing. Got thoughts? Go here to share your feedback.
