The late great Michel Richard, the famed French-born chef and restaurateur, believed that the best chefs are pastry chefs. It’s hard to argue with the man whose flair for tasteful and astonishingly creative food blurred the boundaries between sweet and savory in storied kitchens from New York to Los Angeles. Chef Luis Robledo Richards, executive chef of the new Houston modern Mexican restaurant called Mayahuel, shares more with Richard than a similar surname.

Standing behind his Jade range at Mayahuel in the Autry Park mixed-use development, Robledo Richards has partnered with Culinary Khancepts owner Omar Khan (the man behind Leo’s River Oaks, The Audrey Restaurant & Bar, River Oaks Theatre, State Fare Kitchen & Bar, Liberty Kitchen & Oysterette and Epicure Cafe) to create this sophisticated new restaurant, where traditional Mexican flavors and ingredients blend with refined, innovative techniques.

“At Mayahuel, we’re not just preparing food — we’re honoring time, place and process,” Richards says. “Our ingredients are chosen only when they’re at their best. We don’t force nature to fit our schedule. We follow its lead.”

The chef, a native of Mexico, has spent more than 25 years in the culinary world, many of them on the sweets side. He was schooled in pastry at the French Culinary Institute in Manhattan, then further refined his craft at École Lenôtre outside Paris, the school founded by French pastry legend Gaston Lenôtre. Stateside, he has worked in and led the pastry kitchens of New York City’s Restaurant Daniel, Sirio Maccioni’s Le Cirque and the Four Seasons Hotel New York. And that was all before Richards conjured Tout Chocolat, his artisan pastry shop in Mexico City; served as a judge on Netflix’s food competition show Sugar Rush: The Baking Point; authored a cookbook; and received beaucoup awards too numerous to count.

But back to Mayahuel. Diners enter through copper-clad doors, the doors’ artful custom handles shaped like the branches of the maguey tree. Inside scalloped breeze blocks divide the back of the bar area from a series of curved banquettes that open to the gleaming stainless-steel open kitchen set in the center of the dining room. The intimate space is awash in earthy neutral hues with hand-carved woods, natural stone, sculptural lighting and a mural from local artist Olga Saldivar, commissioned by interior designer Laura Loreman, who designed the entire Mayahuel restaurant.

The sweeping painted mural is made with formed plaster elements from the maguey tree to add dimensionality and spans two stories.

Diving Into the Mayahuel Menu

We enjoyed dinner à la carte on this visit, but there’s also a chef tasting menu ($145 per person; with wine pairings bumping that to $265) composed of nine courses (if you count the amuse bouche and shaved-ice palate cleanser) that lets the kitchen flex its muscle.

Come for dinner and start with pan y tortillas — a freshly baked boule of sourdough bread made in-house from a sourdough starter lovingly fed for 40 years, along with miso and salsa macha-laced butters and warm handmade blue corn tortillas de Nixtamal crafted with heirloom corn ($14). The elegant oysters and caviar starter sandwiches the delicately fried mollusk between diminutive toasted brioche slices napped with serrano-spiked beurre blanc and capped with a dollop of ossetra caviar ($25). The tostada of bluefin tuna, perched on a crisp blue-corn tortilla, is sprinkled with fried leeks and microgreens, drizzled with fresh uni cream ($26), while the salmon aguachile is dressed simply with sliced fennel, cucumber, mint and pickled onions ($26).

Tacos y masa, of which there are five to choose from, have their own special place on the à la carte menu. Highlights include the tacos mar y tierra, where Gulf shrimp are bathed in adobo and layered with a confit of beef cheek, avocado and a crunchy cheese crisp ($23). Then there’s the tacos de maitake al pastor, a vegetarian option made with hen-of-the-woods mushrooms (maitake) in the style of the traditional pork al pastor, dressed with fresh pineapple and scented with vanilla ($23). Larger main courses range from sea bass with boulangère potatoes and salsa veracruzana ($48) and fideo seco, a vermicelli pasta tossed with chicharrón, avocado, seasonal mushrooms and queso fresco ($35) to carne asada made with New York strip and tender beef cheek ($95).

Desserts — a stunning highlight — focus on Mexico’s foundational flavors of vanilla, cacao and coffee ($22 each). Take, for example, Richards’ cacao confection centered around a single-origin chocolate. The evening I dined at Mayahuel, the multi-component dessert featured a chocolate puff pastry created with cacao nibs — a rustic but buttery bark-like presentation layered with chocolate cremeux, milk chocolate and lime-scented ice cream, with a compote of passionfruit.

Mayahuel is located at 811 Buffalo Park Drive in Houston’s Autry Park development. The restaurant is open Mondays through Thursdays from 3 pm to 10 pm, Fridays from 3 pm to 11 pm, Saturdays from 10 am to 3 pm and 5 pm to 11 pm, and Sundays from 10 am to 3 pm.