Nino’s chef/owner Elton Hyndman. Photo courtesy Don Kadair for Business Report
Chef Elton Hyndman says new menus are his most avant-garde yet
Customers might notice a few changes to the menus at Nino’s Italian Restaurant.
Chef/owner Elton Hyndman says he made some big changes to the restaurant’s dinner and lunch menus a couple weeks ago. Hyndman says the dinner menu has been paired down, and that all the dishes save for two have been tweaked, updated or redesigned. The lunch menu has also expanded with a few new salads and sandwiches.
“This is the menu where we stretched the most,” he says. “We tried some new things and went for it. [Everyone in the kitchen and at the restaurant] is getting better at their jobs. We always want to keep challenging ourselves and our customers.”
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In 2009, Hyndman and his wife, Randee, bought the restaurant at 7512 Bluebonnet Blvd. in the Bluebonnet Village Shopping Center. Hyndman says he has more time to focus on Nino’s since selling Oscar’s Pizza & Ice Cream Joint, which is now Souga Pizza Factory. Businessman Trey Matassa and his fiancée, Holly Hatzis, acquired Oscar’s and its recipes from Hyndman earlier this year.
Among the redesigned dinner items at Nino’s is the Carbonara, which is now topped with a whipped sweet cream and poached yolk, and the Pescatore, which features fresh mussels, Gulf shrimp and scallops in a brown-butter tarragon sauce.
On the pasta side, Hyndman has also added black linguine, a squid ink pasta with local green beans, heirloom tomatoes and Gulf shrimp, topped with a smoked scallop mousse, cured citrus zest and Parmesan.
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For the entrées, the chef has replaced the ever-popular lasagna with Timpano, an Italian dish made of fresh pasta sheets stuffed with homemade Italian sausage, grilled vegetables, fresh spinach, boiled farm egg and ricotta-stuffed rigatoni set in oven-roasted marinara and topped with Parmesan.
“We’re proud of this menu,” Hyndman says. “It’s some of the funnest food we’ve come up with.”
Editor’s note: The article has been updated since its original posting.