In the days leading up to Red Sauce Italian, his summertime pop-up Italian-American restaurant opening, Houston chef and restaurateur Chris Shepherd makes a startling yet heartfelt admission. “I have bratwurst for fingers and I suck at making pasta!” he yells at me over the phone. We laugh, then get on to the serious business of talking about lasagna, pizza, and meatballs.
All of these things are on the menu at One Fifth: Red Sauce Italian, which opened earlier this week in Houston. It’s the latest and final iteration of his revolving restaurant concept, which started five years ago with a limited lease and will end early this fall. In the space, Shepherd and his team have devoted a year each to a theme: Steak, Romance Languages (where he included Italian dishes that he now deems too “fancy”), Mediterranean, Gulf Coast, and Southern Comfort.
With a few months left to spare at One Fifth, he’s devoting a bonus theme to a cuisine that he says was near and dear to him while growing up in the Midwest, and which he relied upon heavily during the pandemic. Though he’s not Italian-American, Shepherd says that he was raised on his mother and grandmother’s lasagna, spaghetti, meatballs, and other Italian-American classics, long before he became the acclaimed chef-restaurateur behind Underbelly, Georgia James Steak, and other Houston restaurants that have emphasized locally sourced ingredients and Texas and Southern flavors.
Chicken parm from One Fifth Red Sauce Italian. Photo: Taylor Hall
Besides the pandemic cooking routine, Shepherd says the spark for Red Sauce Italian came one morning when he woke up thinking about the wood-fired oven at One Fifth. “We've cooked thousands and thousands of pieces of pita, roasted chicken and fish and oysters in it. But we've never physically cooked a pizza for sale out of it,” he says, adding that it’s one of the few restaurant wood ovens in the city that is not gas-assisted, which makes it challenging to control the temperature.
Shepherd and culinary director Nick Fine decided to restrict the pizza service to one type. Visitors to Red Sauce Italian can order a pie, listed on the menu simply as “The Pizza: Pepperoni.” What about vegetarians, I ask Shepherd. “They don't get pepperoni,” he replies. “It's cheese.”
Elsewhere the menu at Red Sauce Italian reads like a greatest-hits of the genre. There’s chicken parm (“It’s massive,” he says); spaghetti and meatballs, made with a blend of veal, pork, and beef; rigatoni alla vodka (subtitled on the menu “Might be my favorite”), clams casino, and Georgia’s lasagna, a tribute to his mother.
One item that might be unfamiliar to Italian-Americans without ties to the Midwest, and that would surely confound an actual Italian, is something called “toasted ravioli.” Invented in St. Louis, the dish involves breading and frying cheese or meat ravioli and serving it with marinara sauce. Born in Nebraska and raised in Oklahoma, Shepherd grew up eating toasted ravioli at what he calls a “legendary” restaurant called Mr. C’s in Omaha.
Toasted ravioli from One Fifth: Red Sauce Italian. Photo: Taylor Hall
That restaurant inspired another dish on the Red Sauce Italian menu, “Mr. C’s Special,” which is based on a combo meal that his mother would order featuring steak, spaghetti, and a side salad. Shepherd laughs at the memory, noting that his mother liked sirloin steak and the spaghetti in red sauce. “And the red sauce is terrible,” he says, emphasizing the word. “But it was supposed to be!”
Of course, Shepherd is known for fanatically sourcing ingredients from respected farms and purveyors and providing diners with crowd-pleasing portion sizes. His take on the combo features a beef filet, spaghetti made with fresh pasta in a marinara sauce made with local tomatoes, and a green salad.
He also looked to Houston for inspiration reviving a favorite Caesar salad from the sadly shuddered Pass and Provisions, made with fried capers, white anchovy, and toasted breadcrumbs, and to Chicago for “The Monteverde,” a tomato-braised pork osso buco, meatballs, sausage, fusilli, and broccoli rapini dish that he borrows from his friend, Monteverde chef Sarah Grueneberg.
Of course, there are other pasta dishes besides those mentioned above, and while Shepherd and his bratwurst-sized fingers won’t be making it, Red Sauce Italian is serving fresh semolina pasta prepped by fellow Houston restaurant BOH.
For dessert, pastry director Victoria Dearmond offers an Italian classic, tiramisù, alongside an Italian-American classic, New York Cheesecake, as well as hazelnut panna cotta, and a chocolate torte.
Tiramisù from One Fifth: Red Sauce Italian. Photo: Taylor Hall
While it sounds like a lot of work and thought went into creating One Fifth’s final installment, Shepherd doesn’t sound stressed out about it. Before opening the restaurant this past Tuesday, he was still finalizing the menu and toying with baked pasta recipes. (When I ask his advice for how to avoid the common mistake of making a dried-out baked pasta dish, he advises, “Make sure it’s over-sauced and the pasta is undercooked,” meaning to use dried pasta and let it finish cooking in the oven.)
Perhaps it’s not surprising that the prospect of starting a whole new restaurant in a few days doesn’t faze the active Shepherd, who also created a foundation, Southern Smoke, which has grown into a major source of aid for people in the food and beverage industry during times of crisis, distributing more than $8 million over the past few years and now employing its own staff.
As for One Fifth, it’ll close up shop in September or later—the ending date is listed as a question mark—as soon as Fine completes work on his forthcoming restaurant Wild Oats, where he’ll be chef and partner. The team will migrate from One Fifth to the new restaurant, which Fine says will be dedicated to the history of Texas cuisine.
Shepherd notes that One-Fifth spawned Underbelly Hospitality’s steakhouse, Georgia James, so perhaps there’s a chance for Red Sauce Italian to resurface somewhere else in the future. Just don’t expect him to hand-make the pasta.