OUR STORY & PEOPLE
A tribute to a legacy of culinary excellence started almost a century ago. Lucille’s is a nationally acclaimed restaurant in the heart of Houston’s Museum District, which specializes in well-refined Southern cuisine with infusions of international techniques and flavors. Co-founded in August 2012 by brothers Chris and Ben Williams, the restaurant is a tribute to the culinary tradition began by their great-grandmother, Lucille B. Smith, who was an educator, culinary innovator and successful entrepreneur who founded her own food corporation. Today, James Beard Award Finalist Chef Chris Williams and Chef de Cuisine Khang Hoang continue to pay homage to her by replicating some of her most famous recipes while embellishing others to create innovative takes on Southern food classics.
Lucille Elizabeth Bishop Smith, African-American entrepreneur, chef, educator, inventor, and food corporation founder and president, daughter of Mary (Jackson) Bishop and Jesse Bishop, was born in Crockett, Texas, on September 5, 1892.
At various times, Smith attended Wiley College, Prairie View A&M College, and Colorado State College. She graduated from Samuel Huston College (now Huston-Tillotson University) in Austin. In about 1912 she married Ulysses Samuel Smith and moved to Tarrant County. They had three children: two sons and a daughter.
Lucille Smith worked for several years as a seamstress and also as a cook for various private clients. In 1927 she became the teacher-coordinator of the Fort Worth Public School District’s vocational education program for black students. The program trained students for domestic service jobs.
A dinner that Smith catered in Fort Worth led to an opportunity to manage the cooking at an exclusive girls’ summer camp near Kerrville—Camp Waldemar. Lucille’s husband, Ulysses, himself a renowned chef, was widely known as the “Barbecue King of the Southwest” and catered for William Thomas Johnson’s traveling rodeo. The Waldemar Cookbook stated, “Except for two years in the early 1930s, either U.S. or Lucille or both were responsible for Waldemar’s food from 1928 until the summer of 1973.”
In 1937 Lucille Smith was recruited to initiate a domestic service training program for professors and instructors at Prairie View A&M College. In that job, she developed the first college-level Commercial Foods and Technology Department that incorporated an apprentice-training program; she also created five service training manuals. In 1941 Smith wrote a cookbook in the form of a card file box of recipes. The cookbook, entitled Lucille’s Treasure Chest of Fine Foods, went through multiple editions and was a rare collectors’ item by the twenty-first century.
While recovering from a serious illness in the 1940s, Smith invented Lucille’s All Purpose Hot Roll Mix as a fundraiser for her church, St. Andrews United Methodist Church of Fort Worth. Within thirty days, she was able to donate the profit of $800 to the church. Orders continued to pour in. It was the first hot roll mix to be marketed in the United States. A 2004 article in the Cleburne Times-Review reported: “Grocery stores began placing orders for cases of the mix. By April of ’48, the orders were for more than 200 cases per week of the 14-ounce boxes. Twenty-one different products [recipes] could be made from the base. The product paved the way for the convenience cooking we know today.”
Chef Chris Williams
Chef / Owner
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Chris Williams has made a name for himself serving up well-refined Southern food with international infusions at his nationally-celebrated restaurant Lucille’s, opened as a tribute to his great grandmother and culinary pioneer Lucille B. Smith. A decade in the making, the namesake restaurant has since morphed into Lucille’s Hospitality Group — a culmination of concepts that channel the matriarch’s historic ingenuity. Williams' most recent endeavor — his non-profit Lucille’s 1913 —functions as the restaurant group’s conscious community collective, providing more than 600,000 meals to Houstonians in need.
A 2022 James Beard Award Finalist for Outstanding Restaurateur, Williams continues to make a name for himself as a community builder within the culinary world and beyond. He is part of Restaurant Hospitality’s 2021 Rising Star class; Bon Appetit’s inaugural “Heads of the Table” Awards List; Nation’s Restaurant News’ 2022 Power List; a Houston Area Urban League Quentin Mease Community Service Award recipient; and has served as a culinary cultural ambassador for the USA, advancing food diplomacy in destinations like Slovenia, Croatia, and Ukraine.
Chef Khang Hoang
Chef De Cuisine
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Chef Khang Hoang began his culinary career at just 19-years-old, working behind the sushi bar at Houston neighborhood restaurant Tenshi. The experience ignited the discovery of his lifelong passion for all things culinary, honed as he watched the customers enjoy his different creations. With his sights set on a permanent profession in food, Hoang enrolled in the culinary program at the Art Institute of Houston. Upon graduation, Hoang joined the team of the formerly celebrated Houston hotspot, Chef Robert Gadsby’s Bedford Restaurant. It was there that he first met Chef Chris Williams, developing what would prove to be an important friendship that magnified a mutual admiration for one another’s cooking styles.
Hoang later cut his teeth in acclaimed kitchens from Houston sushi and Japanese tapas restaurant Kata Robata to celebrity chef David Chang’s Momofuku Noodle Bar in New York City before returning to Houston to help Chef Chris open his inaugural eatery, Lucilles. As Lucille’s Partner/Chef de Cuisine, Hoang continues paying homage to the restaurant’s namesake by creating innovative takes on Southern classics via infusions of international flavors and techniques.
5512 La Branch St
Houston, Texas 77004
713.568.2505
Copyright 2020 Lucille's
All rights reserved
Monday - Closed
LUNCH
Tuesday – Thursday 11am - 3pm
DINNER
Tuesday & Thursday 4pm - 9pm
Friday & Saturday 5pm - 10pm
BRUNCH
Friday*, Saturday & Sunday 10am - 3pm
(*Friday starts at 11)