New Heights Restaurant Brings Louisiana Flavors To an Old Gas Station — Graham Laborde Makes Sure Little Bird Takes Off

Calling all Louisiana transplants hungry for a taste of the familiar food they miss from back home. Chef Graham Laborde, a Louisianan born and raised in Lafayette, has opened Little Bird, a cool neighborhood restaurant in The Heights built around his comforting take on Southern coastal cuisine.

Cooking at high profile New Orleans restaurants from Commander’s Palace to Boucherie, Laborde made his way to Houston and opened Bernadines’s (which closed in 2017). Bernadine’s was named for Laborde’s beloved grandmother, nicknamed Birdie, who continues to inspire the cuisine of his childhood, as well as the name that graces his new Houston restaurant.

Laborde lives in The Heights and he’s also a major part of Winnie’s, the Midtown bar and restaurant he shares with partner Benjy Mason.

Little Bird takes overt a former filling station. The old gas station space has been transformed into a 168-seat restaurant (with lots of outdoor seating). And it features charming interior details such as the hand-carved wooden oyster bar. Several murals, created by Houston artists Whitney Garrett-Yarbrough and Dayle Booth, depict references to Laborde’s colorful life and culinary journey, adding to the fun.

Little Bird enlisted award-winning mixologist Justin Ware (of Johnny’s Gold Brick and Winnie’s) to conjure its clever cocktails and beverage program. Sticking to the theme, Ware has clearly had fun creating elixirs (each costing $16) that include the Creole Margarita, the dessert-like chess pie milk punc, and a vodka-spiked peach sun tea. There are also wines (think sparkling and white) that pair well with those Gulf oysters and don’t break the bank.

Diving Into the Little Bird Menu

The Little Bird menu, overseen by trusted chef de cuisine Matt Staph, features flavors both familiar and dishes with a twist of the delightfully unexpected. Take the campechana verde ($18), a melange of shellfish mingled with fresh avocado in a tomatillo sauce sprinkled with a salsa matcha seasoning that gives everything a swift kick. Then there’s the New Orleans BBQ shrimp toast ($16). The famed Worcestershire and garlic butter sautéed shrimp dish, spread across spears of sliced French baguette, is a lighter take on the classic that finishes with a welcome zing of lemon.

One of my unexpected favorite starters is the charred okra ($14) with rings of onion and a seeded dukkah sprinkled atop with a herb-tinged buttermilk dressing. And on the subject of okra, Laborde and his crew have pickled it too. And added it to their Gulf Coast wedge, a head of crisp baby iceberg dressed with chunks of smoked blue cheese, fried shallots and a slab of bacon ($18).

“Little Bird feels like a natural evolution for me,” Laborde tells PaperCity. “This is the food I love to cook and the way I love to host. When guests walk through our doors, I want them to feel like they’re dining in my home.”

The chef often can be seen weaving though the dining room greeting diners and asking them how their food is.

Procuring the best local ingredients is something of an obsession for Laborde. Much of the brown Gulf shrimp used to top Little Bird’s shrimp and grits ($24) actually comes from longtime shrimper Kurt Evans whose father Jimmy Evans, Laborde bought from for years. The mighty ribeye au poivre ($75) that fills the plate from end to end owes its beef (as does the $33 pork chop on the menu) to Red Field Ranch. Laborde once worked as a butcher at Red Field, which is all about pasture raised, heritage pork and beef.

All those food connections matter.

Reuniting with longtime friend and chef Julia Doran (of Nancy’s Hustle, Tiny Champions, Bernadine’s), Laborde’s Little Bird features Southern style cozy sweets. These include a triple layer chocolate cake, an apple hand pie with brown sugar and cinnamon scented ice cream and a cheeky hurricane snow-ball. That’d be passionfruit tinged shaved ice crowned with marshmallow sauce.

Little Bird is located at 1815 N. Durham in The Heights. It is open from 4 pm to 10 pm seven days a week. It also serves brunch from 10:30 am to 4 pm Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays.

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