In the 1980s, Houston was an oil boomtown that went bust. The big hair and the ten-gallon hats were cut down to size. The city’s surfeit of space and lack of zoning laws had made it cheap and easy to build anywhere during the boom times. With the demand gone, these buildings became even cheaper and easier to rent. New communities were drawn in, and the city became one of America’s most ethnically diverse. 

For Houston’s food scene, all of this has meant two things. First, restaurants – good ones – can appear anywhere. ChòpnBlọk is one of the hottest names on the block right now. It’s a fast-casual West African place that started at a food hall inside an old post office. Musaafer is a Michelin-starred Indian in America’s second-largest shopping mall. You can also settle into a tech hub (that used to be a department store) for the nine-course Afro-Mexican tasting menu at Late August.

Those are the most recent developments. The most exciting ones are a little more low-key, and a little further out of town. You’ll need a car, but they’re worth the trip – and, anyway, the freeways will give you an intoxicating sense of this most American of cities.

Somewhere along Bellaire Boulevard, Chinatown runs into Little Saigon. You can get brilliant banh mi here (try Don Café) or there’s rarer mid-Vietnamese to try at Nam Giao – pork and shrimp rice cakes wrapped in banana leaves, delicate mochi, spicy beef trotter soup, and iced drip coffee with condensed milk.

In Little Saigon, you can also eat Viet-Cajun for the first time in your life. Like the Blood Bros boys, the chefs at Cajun Kitchen introduce new flavours to good local ingredients. Louisiana-style seafood boils of shrimp, snow crab and crawfish are deepened by a layer of Vietnamese aromatics on top of the Cajun spices. You’ll need a bib, and you’ll want them all.

There’s Viet-Tex BBQ in the city too. Don and Theo Nguyen, the founders of Khói, are cooking out of their family home in Northside when we visit. They’ve got an offset smoker that looks like an Industrial Revolution factory in the back garden. They’re catering for 200 that evening, but can still squeeze us in. The colossal dino ribs, the perfectly burnt ends and the marvellously spiced sausages won’t be forgotten, but there’s one dish that encapsulates the value of fusion cooking. It’s a pho. Deeply, richly umami, the broth is topped not by greying slivers of beef, but by a thick slice of 18-hour smoked brisket. Vietnamese and Texan together, and better for it. Don tells us Khói’s restaurant should open this summer. It’s the first place we’d go to next time.  

We’d go back too for some of the other BBQ joints. It’s never too early to join the queue for prime brisket and candy-glazed pork ribs at the original Pinkerton’s site in Heights. Official hours might say something like 11am-9pm, but BBQ places close when they sell out – and that can be much earlier. We arrived before noon one Friday and were only just inside when the sign no one wants to see was tacked onto the front door. If the worst had happened, there would still have been the rosemary bacon mac ‘n’ cheese – get it ‘baller style’ with chopped brisket on top. The side to try at Truth is the corn pudding. At Brisket & Rice, there’s a clue in the name, while The Pit Room does some great brisket tacos.

In the midst of all the meat and the ingenuity, if ever you crave something delicate and European, Nancy’s Hustle is a buzzy bistro with a talented kitchen team or there’s Little’s Oyster Bar for you guessed it. There are some drinking dens to know too. Hidden within the Four Seasons hotel, and accessed via a service entrance, Bandista is a forward-looking speakeasy where it’s easy to lose a night. Anvil, a recommendation from Don’s cousin, was everything we hoped it might be – and a little bit more, because Refuge sits right on top it. Start below with a Guinness Flip, then move upstairs for a bitter and rich Redhook. Two bars, quite different, quite brilliant, under one roof. Another wonderful Houston fusion.

BA and United fly direct from Heathrow to Houston’s George Bush Intercontinental airport. Flight times are around 10 hours 30 minutes. We stayed at the Four Seasons Hotel Houston and would go back for another night in Bandista. For a cycling tour of Downtown, we know of no better guide than Tour de Brewery.