After Houston chef Benchawan “G” Jabthong Painter’s James Beard Award win this year for Best Chef: Texas, it was only a matter of time before her East End Thai restaurant, Street to Kitchen, moved into a space big enough to accommodate all of the buzz stemming from its chef’s new laurels. Currently housed in a tiny space in a gas station strip across the street from an overpass, the restaurant will be moving into the much larger former home of Louie’s Italian American in Second Ward this November. The new space will accommodate up to 100 guests, a marked increase from the 36 the restaurant has room for at its current location.

“We’ve been kind of bursting at the seams since G’s James Beard Award win,” says Graham Painter, Jabthong Painter’s husband and business partner. “Although we love the space we are in now and love that it has a speakeasy vibe to it, the writing has been on the wall since we’ve gotten back. The restaurant is packed constantly.”

Hearing about the merry-go-round of restaurants Street to Kitchen’s new space has hosted over the past year may give you a bit of whiplash. Located in a mixed-use development known as The Plant, the property is owned by Concept Neighborhood, a local real estate firm seeking to turn that stretch of Second Ward into a walkable neighborhood. It was originally the home of Cafe Louie, a lauded restaurant by brother-sister duo Angelo and Lucianna “Louie” Emiliani that Houstonia named one of the best new restaurants of 2022. Seven months after opening the cafe, the Emilianis rebranded the concept as Louie’s Italian American, a dinner-only restaurant serving refined red-sauce cuisine. But by April of this year, Louie’s closed again. The team announced that by this summer, the space would reopen as Angie’s Pizza, a pop-up concept Angelo had started prior to opening Cafe Louie that had originally put him on the map in the city’s food scene. (Still with us? There’s more.)

In the meantime, Angelo had started selling his pizzas from the kitchen of How to Survive on Land and Sea, the wine bar a few doors down in The Plant. In tandem with Street to Kitchen’s announcement on July 20, it was also revealed that How to Survive on Land and Sea has closed, and will be the new home of Angelo’s pizza concept, now rebranded as Neighbors Pizza Bar. The spot will serve 18-inch New York–style pizzas by the slice and whole, and feature a beverage program with cocktails, wine, and beer, as well as Italian ice. 

Concept Neighborhood’s managing principal, Jeff Kaplan, is a regular at Street to Kitchen. When the Painters returned from the James Beard Awards, Kaplan approached them to let them know that the former Louie’s Italian American space was available. The Painters were already familiar with it, as they had been huge fans of Cafe Louie. “We went back and looked at the space and we were, like, ‘Oh, dude. There’s so much we can do with this space,’” Painter says. 

While Street to Kitchen is slated to move into its new spot by early November, the Painters are planning on doing a lot of work to the space before it opens and are still in the process of meeting with potential designers. The current restaurant’s furnishings are spaced out, but the couple wants to create more of a communal vibe. Thai people like to socialize with people they don’t know, notes Painter, who spent several years living in Thailand, where he met his wife. The duo’s goal is to create a space where people who may not know each other have the opportunity to become friends—even if it’s only for the duration of their dinner. To accomplish that, the Painters are planning to have a large communal table, similar to the one they have at their new Kemah restaurant, Th Prsrv. The restaurant will also have banquets along the walls and more emphasis placed on bar seating, since Street to Kitchen 2.0 will have a full cocktail program that will be overseen by Painter.

“What we’re really going for is the feeling of being invited to a party at someone’s house, someone that you like, and you know that the people there are cool and you’re a part of it,” Painter says.

While much of Street to Kitchen’s food program will stay the same after they move into the new space, they’re planning on having more nightly specials on the menu, like their tiger cry (grilled steak with dipping sauce) and Jabthong Painter’s famous durian crab meat black truffle curry, a dish that won her many accolades at the 2020 Houston Truffle Masters competition.

While they’re going to miss their old space, the Painters are excited about the new chapter they are about to open at The Plant. “Our philosophy with restaurants and bars is that you have to let the space speak to you a little. Street to Kitchen was next to a gas station, a dive place. It made sense that G and I just kind of breathed our lives into it. It was rough and ready and it worked,” Painter says. “We want to think really carefully about The Plant because it was an old warehouse from the 1940s. It has such cool industrial touches to it, and that needs to be listened to.”