Top Houston Restaurant Calls Off Its Anniversary Party to Feed Hospital Workers Instead — Bludorn Shows Its Heart

Only days before a first anniversary celebration, chef Aaron Bludorn called off the festivities at his namesake restaurant. The very virus that had challenged Bludorn’s successful entry into the Houston restaurant arena was responsible, via the Delta variant, for cancelation of the festivities as he reconsidered the wisdom of such a large gathering.

The pivot, however, has a bright side. Funds that had been earmarked for the party would instead provide Bludorn’s notable hamburgers and chicken sandwiches to the ICU staff at Texas Children’s Hospital for free.

“This year’s been all about making lemonade out of lemons and I think this year’s anniversary is a great example of it,” Bludorn tells PaperCity. “In my mind, that will be money better spent.”

Since its opening last August, in the middle of the pandemic, Bludorn has seen unprecedented success. Dinner numbers run between 200 and 250 nightly. On the most recent Saturday night, those covers topped 300. That crazy success surpassed the chef’s expectations, if not his hopes.

“I didn’t realize how busy we could get and how packed we could get,” he says. “Of course, that’s always the goal — to pack the house every night. But I never knew we would do it and as consistently as we have. I didn’t expect the energy of the dining room, the energy of the kitchen.

“It’s just fun. I think that if I’m having fun and Cherif (Cherif Mbodji, Bludorn’s partner and the restaurant’s GM) is having fun, I know the guests are having fun as well. That I definitely could not expect.”

While Aaron Bludorn might not have anticipated Bludorn’s immediate popularity, he had exact expectations of the food he planned to serve.

“What I could see and glad that my vision came through was the food, being able to avoid being too pretentious with our techniques,” the chef says. “We’re not unapproachable which is exactly what I set out to be.

“I wanted a restaurant where people could enjoy lots of sharing but then also the ability for it to be a business dinner, more formal.  You can have oysters at the bar , oysters at the oyster bar, oysters anywhere, burgers anywhere, to have that flexibility was exactly what I envisioned and that’s exactly what happened.”

The contribution to Texas Children’s is merely the latest in philanthropic missions that Bludorn has undertaken. Just last week, the restaurant rolled out an ice cream special benefiting Buffalo Bayou Partnership and recently joined the Galveston Bay Foundation’s oyster reclamation program. Bludorn goes through a mind-boggling 80 gallons of oysters each week. Those shells are now being returned to the bay. His partnership with Chef Chris Shepherd’s Southern Smoke Foundation was established in the early spring and has to date raised more than $26,000 to aid restaurant workers affected by the pandemic.

“Here in Houston with the pandemic going on, we were very conscious of the fact that we were a busy restaurant and there were a lot of other restaurants around us and around the country that were not,” Aaron Bludorn says. “We felt the best way to leverage that success was to get involved with Chris’ Southern Smoke Foundation.”

Bludorn’s Keys to Success

How did he gain such popularity in the middle of a pandemic? Aaron Bludorn believes that in some ways COVID-19 might have worked to his advantage. Spacing tables and adding plexiglass partitions between booths were jut part of the protocols.

“We doubled down on our safety,” he says. “We wanted to make sure that when people walked in they knew they were safe. We wanted to make sure that we were at the forefront of all the safety protocols and we did as much as possible. So when our guests walked in they didn’t have to worry.”

Bludorn admits that he can’t fully explain the remarkable success. Perhaps it’s because Houston likes risk-takers as in a chef landing from out-of-town and cashing in all his chips in one gamble. Then there is the cadre of local investors, whom he claims are his real public relations machine.

Such success, he shares is based on “good people. It’s all about the people that we have working here and they’re the ones that make this happen . . . people that are inspired, excited and passionate. That’s the trick right there,” the chef says.

Bludorn credits the charming Mbodji with a good deal of the restaurant’s appeal. The two were together for five years in New York before taking the leap, hand in hand, to Houston.

“It feels so awkward calling you a GM because you are so much more than I am,” Bludorn says as his business partner drops by our table. “You’re more the face of this restaurant than I am. It’s awesome. I would give it to you every day . . .  I couldn’t wish for a better partner, that’s for sure.”

What’s Next?

“The sky’s the limit. I don’t know,” Bludorn says. “I’m just waiting to see what opportunities present themselves. Obviously, you can imagine that I’m no planning on this being my only restaurant. So there will definitely be something going to happen here. But I have nothing to announce.”

In the meantime, tonight’s dinner service will have an element of the planned-for celebration. Bludorn has a 9-liter bottle of Bollinger champagne that will be passed around the dining room. The menu will include fan favorites such as the uni (sea urchin) spaghetti and prime rib with truffles and foie gras.

“It will be a very festive vibe. It’s just going to be a fun night,” Bludorn says.

The burgers and sandwiches will be delivered to Texas Children’s on Monday.