Bravo’s Top Chef Alumni Feast at a Top Houston Restaurant — Bludorn Gets Another Spotlight Moment

Chef Driven Charity Dinners Are All the Rage, and Aaron Bludorn is All In

BY Shelby Hodge // 05.12.21

Save Article

Chefs Byron Gomez, Aaron Bludorn, Sasha Grumman and Dawn Burrell and friends sharing a table at the wildly popular Bludorn restaurant.

Chef Byron Gomez catches up with his pal from Café Boulud days, Chef Aaron Bludorn, in the latter's namesake Houston restaurant.

Chef Byron Gomez, Chef Sasha Grumman,Chef Dawn Burrell, Bludorn GM Cherif Mbodji at Bludorn

Bludorn's Baked Alaska (Photo by Julie Soefer)

The Baked Alaska is filled with a layer of pistachio ice cream and centered with berry ice cream. (Photo by Shelby Hodge)

The Bludorn dining room is filled to COVID-19 capacity as the new restaurant's popularity grows. (Photo by Shelby Hodge)

Chefs Byron Gomez, Aaron Bludorn, Sasha Grumman and Dawn Burrell and friends sharing a table at the wildly popular Bludorn restaurant.

The close-knit fraternity of culinary talent was on display at Bludorn Tuesday night when three toques from Bravo’s Top Chef Season 18 sat down for dinner in the wildly popular Houston restaurant where Chef Aaron Bludorn reigns. Nine dishes including three desserts later, the trio was feelin’, as my grandmother’s cook used to say, “fat and fine.”

Chef Byron Gomez of 7908 Aspen had been in Austin cooking with another Top Chef contestant Gabe Erales for a charity dinner at Austin Proper. Chef driven charity dinners in which the talents partner with kitchen mates from years past have taken hold across the country including in Houston where Bludorn has hosted two since the start of the year.

Gomez and Bludorn met while both were working at Michelin-starred Café Boulud in New York. (Boulud, Bludorn. I know it’s crazy.) Sadly, Daniel Boulud announced last week that his namesake Upper East Side restaurant is permanently closed.

The Aspen-based chef invited his fellow Top Chef contestants Dawn Burrell, whose Late August restaurant is expected to open in late summer, and The Fierce Chef Sasha Grumman to join him for dinner at Bludorn. Aaron could not have been more pleased. And as you might imagine, when a chef puts on the dog for fellow chefs, the results are nothing less than spectacular.

The thing is, every dish on the Bludorn menu is spectacular so there was no real need to step it up for this culinary power table.

IMG_2068 (Photo by Shelby Hodge) — The Baked Alaska is filled with a layer of pistachio ice cream and centered with berry ice cream. (Photo by Shelby Hodge)

Aaron Bludorn’s Top Chef Worthy Menu

Round 1: The Royal Seafood Tower piled high with fresh finds from the Gulf including oysters; shrimp cocktail with avocado, horseradish and cucumber; tuna with uni, radish, sesame and ponzu, and a fresh lobster tail.

SHOP FOR MOM

Swipe

Appetizers: Tarte Flambe with fromage blanc; Brussels sprouts and bacon; octopus with red pepper, almond and chermoula; and maitake mushrooms with cashew and charred scallion vinaigrette.

Entrees: Bludorn’s famous Lobster Pot Pie; spaghetti with sea urchin, blue grab and garlic chips; and quail with bacon, jalapeño, cheddar Swiss chard, and polenta.

Dessert: The absolutely to-die-for Baked Alaska; Coconut Panna Cotta with almond crumble, mango-passion sorbet; Strawberry Shortcake with crème fraiche and condensed milk ice cream; and a tray of Chef Alejandra Salas’s scratch-made ice creams and sorbets.