In 2011, Shepherd opened a restaurant in a former lesbian nightclub that he calls Underbelly. He subtitled it “The Story of Houston Food.” The menu changes every day, depending on what is available from the local farms, Vietnamese bakeries, the catch that day from the Gulf, and the whole animals that are brought to his in-house butchery. His wine list is annotated by the local rapper Bun B. He folds all of these influences into a cuisine that reflects the city that Houston is now. “I wanted to go from simple regional cooking to hyper-regional,” Shepherd told me.
