Not your usual Burger Friday: Októ

When I saw that Októ was serving a Burger à Poivre on its new Sunday brunch menu, I had to have it.

Anything à poivre or au poivre—the French cookery classic involving peppercorns of various stripes and a buttery cognac sauce— gets my attention, whether it's a steak version at Bar Bludorn or the swordfish at Navy Blue. But what I found at Októ, the 7-month old Montrose Mediterranean restaurant from Sof Hospitality (the Doris Metropolitan brain trust), confounded my expectations.

Their Burger à Poivre must be Houston's fanciest hamburger steak. No bun, a curly topknot of potato strings, cascades of melted Gruyère and Gorgonzola cheese, a veritable slosh of warm golden sauce. I was offered the option of adding a lobe of Hudson Valley foie gras to this indulgent pile, and heaven help me, I went for it.

I blush to report that sent the burger tab up to 50 bucks. I'm pretending it was my birthday. Or that I made a killing shorting stocks this week.

There was no way to evaluate this extravaganza using my time-honored Burger Friday format, so I've ditched it. But rest assured that the non-burger was fun to eat, a rosy medium-rare inside just as I'd ordered it, and powered by lush umami in the form of beef, goose liver and two-count-em-two assertive cheeses.

Granted the à poivre sauce was a bit of a letdown; salt was the dominant flavor, which left me longing for more pepper and cognac to kick in. (Easy to fix, and it should be.) Still, the crisp potato strings made a happy mess, and a glass of earthy Sardon Tempranillo made it all click. It all counted as a gratifying splurge, if not an earth-shaking one.

I found a few things to love unreservedly, too. Best deal on Októ's upscale menu turns out to be the $9 appetizer board centered on Frena, a fluffy orb of Moroccan bread that chef Yotam Dolev bakes on river stones to give it a mottled crunch of crust. A staffer snips the globe open before you, the better for you to view steam pour forth. Then you eat the bread with a delicate pistachio butter, briny black and green olives, and gently pickled strips of piquillo pepper like the ones Dolev's grandmother used to make.

Add a glass of wine and that's supper, in my newly frugal opinion. Or a bargain way to experience a sleek, comfortable setting that I had mentally written off as probably too much of a clubby, Montrose Collective bar scene.

Yes, this past brunch-kickoff Sunday featured a deejay who accompanied some of his picks on saxophone, no less, but the vibe felt relaxed and plenty casual.

Half the brunchers around me seemed to be eating pounded chicken schnitzels strewn with Caesar salad. (I guess schnitzel is officially a Thing in Houston now.) Stylish couples, Montrose gay gentry and young families kept filtering in. A pair of Aperol influencers showed up to pass free Aperol spritzes around, cruising the aisles with a towering edifice of goblets that made me nervous but occasioned no spills.

They were fun to see. So was the personable chef Dolev, whose work I so admired at Hamsa in Rice Village. He told me it has been a bit of an uphill battle to convince the Montrose Collective crowd that Októ is not a "Greek restaurant," but a mesh of culinary ideas from all over the Mediterranean basin.

I was cheered to see that the cocktail guru is none other than Himanshu Desai, known to his fans as Himi, who first came to my respectful attention during the early days of Musaafer; and that the GM running the floor for this inaugural brunch was Steven Ripley. (Burger Friday regulars may remember that I gave him a rare A plus once upon a time for his burger at the Monkey's Tail bar.)

What else? I wished the Greek salad I sampled had been less aggressively tart. (If you know me as the Queen of Tart, which I kind of am, that's saying something.) But I loved Dolev's tender crêpes Suzette version with its hillock of black-peppered ricotta whip.

I'd come to brunch on those crêpes alone. Just add a glass of champagne.

Clockwise from upper left: Burger à Poivre; the Októ bar; Frena service; Frena board with pistachio butter, olives and pickled piquillo peppers; crêpes Suzette with ricotta, black pepper and orange rind; Frena board; brunch menu.