My Table Magazine Has Strong Rice Connections

Dinner
with the
Family

Houston’s My Table Magazine Has Strong Rice Connections

BY PHILIP MONTGOMERY

Rice News Staff

Jan. 21, 1999

The 4-year-old magazine My Table covers the Houston restaurant scene with chatty reviews, notes on chefs and restaurateurs, the spice of wit, and help from people with Rice connections.

Teresa Byrne-Dodge, editor and publisher, started My Table as a 12-page newsletter with 65 subscribers. Now, the well-illustrated magazine has 64 pages and can be found in newsstands around the city. She was a restaurant critic at the Houston Post and later at the magazines Houston Metropolitan and Houston Life . She is also the editor of the Zagat Survey of Houston restaurants.

She admits being surprised at the strong showing of Rice people or people with Rice ties working with the magazine. She herself has been teaching feature writing through the School of Continuing Studies for many years. My Table’s wine columnist Charles “Bear” Dalton also has been teaching a wine course at Continuing Studies for about 11 years.

“We have more people than I ever dreamed of,” said Byrne-Dodge about the Rice relationship.

That connection also includes Jen Cooper ’90, assistant director of media and student life at Rice, who serves as the principle designer of the magazine; restaurant critic Patricia Martin, formerly the associate vice president for Student Affairs and director of international education; photographer Deron Neblett ’91; intern Karin Pearl, a Lovett senior; and free-lancer Christof Spieler ’97.

“We pride ourselves on the wit of our magazine,” Byrne-Dodge said. “I think that it is kind of reflective of Houston’s best-known upper education facility. It just turned out that way. It is a meeting of the minds.”

“It was fate,” Cooper chimed in, with a laugh.

Cooper is responsible for bringing most of the Rice talent to the magazine, although Bryne-Dodge and Martin had known each other since the former was a writer for the Houston Post and Martin was the director of Continuing Studies. Byrne-Dodge learned through Cooper that Martin retired from Rice last summer and immediately recruited her to write restaurant reviews.

In the last three issues of the magazine, Martin has reviewed Mi Luna, Pignetti’s, and Sullivan’s Steakhouse. For the latter review, she evokes memories of a young man in days gone by who makes a big impression on his date by seducing her with T-bone steaks and baked potatoes. The review is typical of My Table, fun, lighthearted, but serious about food.

“I had been interested in food and cooking all my adult life,” Martin said. “I’m one of those people who reads recipes or gourmet magazines or a biography of Julia Child before going to bed.

“I strive to let a visitor to a restaurant know what he or she can expect. For that reason, I much prefer and have been fortunate enough to do reviews in which I get to dine as an anonymous diner,” Martin said. “I want to give the reader basic information about what to expect at that restaurant, information about that cuisine or if it is a different procedure, as in ordering sushi, and then some guidelines on dishes that one might enjoy or perhaps avoid.”

Pearl, who is majoring in French and English, held an internship at My Table last summer. The stint at the magazine was all part of her plan to gain experience so she can land a job in book publishing in New York City after graduation.

She wrote articles for the magazine including a story on the varieties of methods for cooking fruit in pielike desserts. Her toughest assignment, though, was editing a cover story on Houston’s restaurant boom. The author, a food service consultant, knew the city dining scene inside and out, but writing was not his strong point. So Pearl had her work cut out for her.

“Most of it was fun,” Pearl said, but she admitted that she had to rewrite and ask a lot of questions to turn the copy into a cover story.

Byrne-Dodge praised Pearl’s ability to work with the author while maintaining her equanimity.

“She basically made the story readable, she made it lively,” Byrne-Dodge said.

Another new addition to the magazine staff is Deron Neblett ’91, a free-lance photographer who is taking photos for a one-page section entitled “Dishing It,” which features an individual prominent in the Houston dining scene each issue. Neblett’s first assignment for the December-January issue featured Tony Vallone, who is probably the most influential restaurateur in Houston.

Claire Smith ’87, executive chef and owner of the Daily Review Cafe, said Houston needs the magazine, which she described as “a People Magazine of the restaurant industry. It is how I find out that certain restaurants have closed or that they’ve opened or who’s involved in them.”

Smith was also the focus of one of the magazine’s promotions, a 1999 calendar featuring the “Houston Chefs Who Sizzle.”

“I’m Miss April,” she said demurely.

One of Cooper’s favorite promotions is the Haiku-sine contest.

The annual Haiku-sine contest attracted about 500 participants. Haikus are 14 syllable poems. The top Haiku winners were announced in the December-January 1999 issue of the magazine. The staff of My Table encourages entries from the Rice community for the contest next fall. At least one early submission appeared at the Rice News.

My table, a feast

of many succulent foods

with a taste of rice