A Mexican celebrity chef known for judging Top Chef Mexico and starring in his own cooking shows is bringing his talents to a seafood restaurant on Houston's Gulf Freeway corridor. Aquiles Chávez has signed on for a three-year collaboration with Pochitos Mariscos y Más, the Southeast Houston restaurant near William P. Hobby Airport that's been open since 2024, to overhaul its menu starting September 3.
Chávez isn't new to Houston. As reported by CultureMap Houston, the chef opened La Fisheria in 2012 inside a brightly painted converted bungalow on Inker Street in The Heights, according to Visit Houston. At the time, dedicated Mexican seafood was largely absent from the city's dining scene, a gap that Chávez's concept helped fill and that later opened the door for high-profile coastal restaurants like Hugo Ortega's Caracol, per Houstonia Magazine.
From Tabasco to Texas, and Back to Mexico
Chávez's original move to Texas in 2011 followed a violent home robbery and an attempted kidnapping he survived in Villahermosa, Tabasco, he shared in a 2012 interview with the Houston Press. He later shifted his focus back to Mexico around 2014 to manage multiple restaurants and television projects, and La Fisheria relocated to Downtown Houston in January 2016 under executive chef Vidal Elias Murillo while Chávez stepped back from daily oversight, the outlet's reporting shows.
That downtown location at 213 Milam St. would go on to suffer its own setback: floodwaters filled the space with four feet of water during Hurricane Harvey in August 2017, forcing a complete rebuild before it reopened in 2018, according to PaperCity Magazine. Meanwhile, Chávez built out an acclaimed career back home — his flagship family restaurant, Sotero Cocina de Oficio in Pachuca, Hidalgo, ranked 5th among Mexican restaurants in La Liste's 2024 global guide and won national awards for culinary sustainability, per Latank Media. In 2025, he also earned a Michelin Guide recommendation for his Mexico City restaurant Aquiles and was named a finalist for Chef of the Year by CANIRAC, Mexico's national restaurant chamber.
A Musician's Restaurant Gets a Culinary Overhaul
The man behind Pochitos, Juan Antonio Hernandez, is also the lead singer and composer for Houston Tejano/norteño group Obzesion, and that musical background shows in the restaurant's design — the space integrates a stage, DJ booth, and high-end AV system that reflect Obzesion's influence. Hernandez recruited Chávez for the three-year term, saying he wanted a partnership in which the chef would challenge everything Pochitos was doing in the kitchen. Located at 11130 Gulf Freeway near Hobby Airport, Pochitos currently keeps late-night weekend hours until 2 a.m.
Starting September 3, the new menu will roll out Sinaloa- and Pacific-inspired ceviches, aguachiles, and crudos alongside Gulf Coast fried seafood, Cajun-influenced boiled seafood, Mexican-inspired sushi, and grill and asado preparations. Chávez said the goal is to unite different techniques and traditions while keeping the food fun, generous, and flavorful. He added that Houston brings many cultures together at the table, especially around seafood.
Betting on Southeast Houston as a Destination
Hernandez hopes Chávez's involvement will turn Pochitos into a destination restaurant capable of drawing diners not just from nearby suburbs like Clear Lake and Webster, but from Houston's inner loop as well. He said the restaurant should give Southeast Houston something worth driving across the city to experience. Alongside the menu overhaul, Pochitos has upgraded its dining room seating, tables, and plateware, added fold-up windows connecting the indoor and outdoor spaces, and introduced a dedicated kids' menu.
Beyond the new dishes, Chávez will also oversee seasonal updates to Pochitos' cocktail menu going forward. Whether Houston's inner-loop diners will make the trek down the Gulf Freeway for his cooking remains an open question, as does how hands-on the celebrity chef will stay over the course of the three-year agreement given his extensive restaurant operations back in Mexico.
