Cullum's Attaboy

Christopher Cullum sells royal osetra by the gram and a $7 caviar setup because he wants his street eating it. Patricia Sharpe watched his kitchen throw out a broken hollandaise, remake it, and produce one of the best omelets she had eaten.

Why go

Cullum started with an Airstream he towed down from Houston in 2012, and the brick-and-mortar version landed in Tobin Hill during the pandemic.2 His father, the jazz musician Jim Cullum, chose the name Attaboy, and Cullum was fifteen when he told him he wanted to open a hamburger stand.2 The father is still in the room: the dining-room music comes off Live from the Landing, the NPR program that ran from 1989 to 2015, and the brass light over the door was rescued from one of the River Walk clubs his band played.2 1 Cullum is self-taught and the food is French, which Sharpe called proudly contrarian in a counter-service room with an automatic gratuity and almost no sign.1

Order this / avoid

Order: the omelet. Sharpe, 2022: The texture is somewhere between scandalous and celestial, a miracle of perfectly set egg and God knows how much butter.1
Order: the escargots out of the deli case, baked till their shells overflow with a compound butter that includes Scotch, garlic, and parsley.1
Order: the taramasalata. Cullum learned it from a woman he knew as Miss Salazar at La Louisiane, then the city's top French restaurant: It's basically their recipe.1
Order: the caviar setup at $7, or trout roe from $1.50 a gram. Cullum: I want this neighborhood to eat truffles and caviar! I want to demystify all these ingredients.1
Order: the îles flottantes, quivering scoops of meringue adrift on vanilla-scented crème anglaise hiding a dab of blueberry compote.1
Avoid: the burger unless you like it cooked through. Sharpe's arrived medium-well, a sad fate for good ground beef from Peeler Farms.1

What locals & experts say

Texas Monthly, Patricia Sharpe, November 2022: I have had very few omelets as good as this one, and never one I enjoyed more.1
MICHELIN Guide USA, Bib Gourmand: One unexpected sleeper hit is the breakfast potatoes, which outclass all other versions by miles.5

Good to know

Hours: Wednesday to Sunday, 8am to 2pm and 5pm to 9pm.5
Two different services, two different rules. Breakfast and lunch are counter service and walk-in only; dinner takes reservations through Resy.6
The tab includes a 20 percent staff gratuity, added automatically.1
The review has a year on it. Sharpe ate here in 2022, five months after the 3 June opening, and the dishes above are hers from that visit.1
Look for the sandwich board. Sharpe: The only sign is a sandwich board on the porch of a small converted house.1

Verdict

must-visit — Patricia Sharpe watched a hollandaise break here and then wrote that she had rarely eaten a better omelet, which is the kind of line a critic only writes when the kitchen has standards it will hold up a table for. The MICHELIN Guide gave the room a Bib Gourmand in its first Texas selection and has kept it there, and Christopher Cullum was named in the 2024 James Beard Awards. What makes it worth crossing town is his pricing argument: trout roe from $1.50 a gram and a $7 caviar setup, because he wants his neighborhood eating the stuff.