New All-Day Restaurant From Beloved Female Chef Quietly Opens at The Menil — Your First Taste Of the Ambitious Chrôma

While Houston’s cultured art aficionados were cooling off in Aspen, London and coasts of California this summer, there was a quiet change afoot at one of the city’s most notable museums: The former restaurant space of Bistro Menil on The Menil Collection campus found a new occupant. Houston chef and restaurateur Claire Smith (of the dearly departed Houston restaurants Daily Review, Canopy, Shade and Alice Blue) quietly made the 2,900-square-foot space her own, opening the new Chrôma.

The name Chrôma originates from a Greek word meaning the purity or strength of a color.

“We see it as a reflection of the art inside and outside of the area museums and galleries. The color that surrounds us all the time,” Smith says. “We aim to serve colorful, fresh and well-crafted food. The circumflex on the letter O is a nod to the bungalow where Chrôma exists, in concert with many others throughout the Montrose neighborhood.”

Smith and architect Dillon Kyle, a longtime friend, installed an undulating 30-foot bar at the entry crafted from seven varieties of marble sandwiched together like a butcher block, while the sunlit main dining room features a coffered ceiling with burnt-umber-colored foliage. The banquettes that encircle the room are upholstered in a grassy green hue with playful hooked and needlepoint throw pillows, each crafted with a happy floral motif.

In keeping with its Montrose neighborhood, Chrôma’s art collection includes local artists’ work such as a geometric abstraction from Aaron Parazette and a neon word piece from the late Tim Walker.

Ambitiously open from 7 am to 9 pm seven days a week, Chrôma offers global comfort food.

“I want the menu to feel diverse, unpretentious and internationally influenced,” Smith says. “Rather than committing to one culinary tradition, the menu draws inspiration from many, driven more by flavor and curiosity than geography.”

Diving Into the Chrôma Menu

Breakfast at Chrôma means bracing coffee drinks, the roasted beans care of Houston’s Cruiser Coffee, as well as pastries. Heartier food such as quiche, a holdover from the Daily Review days ($11); chicken flautas ($18); a granola parfait with Greek yoghurt, nuts, dried fruit, and berries ($11); and an avocado tartine built atop toasted focaccia with eggs over easy ($16) also entice.

With continuous service throughout the day and into the evening, the all day lunch and dinner menu feels like a light cafe menu built with straightforward, familiar dishes. In a fact, fans of Smith’s former Houston restaurants will recognize quite a few dishes such as her campechana appetizer ($18) and pan-seared red snapper bathed in a piquant red curry. Each is reimagined from Shade.

A sliced tomato salad ($16) mingled with burrata and spiced pumpkin seeds dates back to Canopy, while the double patty ($19) burger with fries is her nod to Smith’s days of Alice Blue.

Although the familiar is comforting, I hope Claire Smith will bring us more dishes such as her wonderful Moroccan lamb kefta ($16), a popular Lebanese dish, often skewered, made here with ground lamb redolent with the fragrance of cumin, cinnamon, paprika and turmeric and served over a tzatziki sauce studded with dried cherries, toasted walnut pieces and fresh mint.

The concise wine list features a good number of selections available by the glass, and a fair number of bottles from producers you’ve seen before and can readily purchase at retail.

Chrôma can be found at 1512 Sul Ross in Montrose. It is open 7 am to 9 pm seven days a week.