Houston’s New Theater District Restaurant is All About Chemistry — and Letting the Show Go On: Inside the Mind of the City’s Most Scientific Chef

When it comes to the menu for The Hobby Center’s new restaurant, it’s a little bit organic, a little bit chemistry.  There has to be magic alongside the mechanisms of science.

At least that’s what Diana American Grill’s chef Robert Del Grande will tell you. Want to solve the mystery? All you have to do is ask.

The James Beard Foundation Award winner blends his background in biochemistry and his experience spearheading Cafe Annie at the new restaurant at the Hobby Center, which replaces Artista. It’s a creative culmination. Del Grande’s not so much a scientifically driven skeptic as he is curious about cuisine.

“From my scientific standpoint, I started to absorb the myth and magic. The witchcraft, the little voodoo that everybody does that they’re not sure why it makes a difference,” Del Grande tells PaperCity.

The chef sits at a table by the window of the revamped restaurant, looking out over the Houston skyline. He wears his Cafe Annie chef’s coat and a large pair of glasses that look to be the distant, mature cousin of the typical hipster frames. If not for the coat, you’d easily believe he were a liberal arts professor.

But Del Grande’s a pragmatist as much as a philosophical type. Diana’s dishes are straightforward but creatively executed. Think Red Snapper dressed in a Gulf crab cioppino sauce and saffron rouille, a nod to the Italian theater district tradition. And take Cavatelli pasta with Maine lobster and lobster-infused marinara sauce sprinkled with Ricotta cheese.

And there’s more. Rainbow trout with bacon, roasted corn and lime butter. Texas pimento cheese with sharp cheddar and smoked paprika. Gulf crab cocktail with remoulade sauce.

His Diana menu is classic but inventive, a twist on the traditional theater district restaurants of New York and Los Angeles.

“The starting point — it’s going to sound silly, but turns out to be very true — was, ‘We’re going to buy a really good product and try not to ruin it.’ I wanted it to sound more sophisticated. But look, that’s a really good piece of snapper, don’t ruin it,” Del Grande says.

“That’s the starting point. That’s where the grill room starts.”

A Chef Scientist

The chef’s interests stem from STEM. He received his PhD in biochemistry at the University of California at Riverside. He moved to Houston a little bit later with his then-girlfriend, now wife. In the early days, he was dreaming of pursuing a postdoc in Switzerland.

“I got involved with Cafe Annie just for fun. My wife’s sister and her husband started the restaurant,” Del Grande says.

He was highly motivated, wanting to be on the cutting edge of everything — including cooking. “I thought ‘Come on, we can do stuff, we can do this, we can do that.’ So I sort of drove the whole thing. And that’s how I ended up staying,” Del Grande says.

While the adjustment from chemist to chef came naturally, Golden State to Lone Star State took a little longer — but not by much.

“It’s a little transition. But I think Houston has the ability to make you feel at home a little faster than other places,” Del Grande says.

He melded his biochem with his fascination for cooking. “I think most, if not all of chemistry, if not all of science, is that things happen for a reason,” Del Grande says. “In science the general motto is you can’t use magic to explain something. There has to be solid proof, theory and reason.”

Those restrictions didn’t satisfy this chef in the kitchen.

“We want the magical,” Del Grande says. “That’s what I’m looking for. In contrast to science, I love the idea that you can do something that can’t be readily explained.”

He worships different gods at Diana than Annie. Theater district restaurants are all about coming and going.

“I always sort of felt the magic in New York, when you’re down in the theater district. The whole culture of it. Even inside the Hobby Center is its own district in a way,” Del Grande says. “I’m still trying to figure out exactly what I mean by theater district food. I think it’s a style of cooking.”

He’s taking inspiration from the East Coast. “Italian places were sort of the street-level, convivial public house, eating place that ended up quite a bit in the come and go of the theater district. They all tend to be a little more Italian-American,” he says.

It’s no surprise, then, that Del Grande skewed Italian with Diana, his menu heavy in steak, seafood and pasta — that’s surprisingly not too heavy itself.

“Quick cooking techniques, really good product, really simply done and nothing too ceremonial. Lighter, quicker, convivial. At a three-star French restaurant, the 12-course tasting menu tends to be the show. In theater-type restaurants, dinner is not the show. The show’s over there,” Del Grande gestures to the theater.

That means the kitchen has to be conscious of the timing, while making sure the food is compelling enough that diners aren’t nervous and checking their watches, or more likely iPhones, with each bite.

Del Grande goes for an unexpected analogy when it comes to the hard-stop nature of theater district dinners.

“This is like airport timing,” he says. “What time is my flight? They’re not going to hold that flight, are they?”

And Del Grande wants to make food that people come to associate with the theater. Airplanes have Bloody Marys, he says. Ballparks have their hotdogs. Your television set even has its own cuisine. He wants Diana to find and fill its niche.

The chef accomplishes the speedy-but-not-sacrificing-what-makes-it-special feat with his “do things simpler” attitude.

“We want complexity of flavor without complication,” Del Grande says. “How do you add a little thing that just makes the whole thing wow?”

With the seared salmon, it’s the surprising, richer mustard sauce with a touch of lime butter. With the steak, it’s not a simple salt-and-pepper take. It’s got a dash of signature mushroom and garlic red sauce. For the snapper, you can thank San Francisco memories for the cioppino sauce. You’ll find bison in the Bolognese.

But it’s the lobster pasta that really steals the show. “I just did it for fun. It turned out to be one of the biggest sellers,” Del Grande notes.  It goes back to having that essential, head-turning product. In this case, lobsters straight out of Maine.

“It’s kind of funny in the kitchen,” Del Grande says. ‘They’re alive!’ Yeah, they’re alive. When you’ve only seen frozen lobster tail before, you’re like ‘They’re alive!’ ”

The chef uses the lobster shell to flavor the marinara sauce. “Again, that griller approach. Hey, we have a great lobster. Cook some pasta, make a marinara sauce, add the shells. One, two, three. There you go,” Del Grande says.

This simplicity dates back ages.

“If you think about marinara sauce, for example — so what does that mean, marinara sauce?” Del Grande asks. “Marin, the sea, that’s sort of the history roughly. This could be somewhat apocryphal, but it’s poetic enough to work. It’s the sauce the fishermen’s’ wives would make.

“They never knew when they were coming home, and it was quick. I like some of those histories, where there’s some mythology that ties it together.”

The Real Diana

It’s all in honor of Diana Hobby, the American grill’s namesake.

“I think she was a William Butler Yeats scholar. I always kind of likes Yeats, I thought that was fun. I just sort of think of her vision for the sense of place and for the arts, and contributing something to Houston,” Del Grande says.

For now, you can enjoy Diana for lunch, or dinner on nights there are shows at the Hobby Center. Hours may just be expanded later.

“I want it to be a dynamic place reflecting everything that’s going on. I want to see how it plays out,” Del Grande says.

Chemistry, cooking and a dash of magic thrown in. Robert Del Grande is being careful with it — and it’s what he wished for.