Houston's on Houston

The Corner Store is like an upscale chain for downtown scene-chasers.

- MATTHEW SCHNEIER

FOR ALL ITS protestations of humility-it's just a little "corner store"-the Corner Store has, in short order, become basically out of reach for the average diner. Good luck popping in. By 5 p.m. on a recent night, a line had formed down West Broadway filled with people hoping for the mere possibility of cancellations or no-shows, and when I'd tried my luck around 5:15 p.m. on a Sunday evening not long before, a polite but firm security guard stationed at the door informed me that there would be no cancellations at all. A hostess, similarly polite, similarly firm, regretted her inability to help. There was, she said, literally no way to take a number, a name: no wait list, no nothing. Such is the power of any place Taylor Swift visits twice in its first five weeks in business, a hot spot reverse-engineered to be a restaurant. The Corner Store, which occupies a former Dos Caminos, is a joint effort of the Catch Hospitality Group and Tilman Fertitta, who owns both the Houston Rockets and a broad portfolio of casinos, restaurant groups, and chains under the umbrella of Landry's, Inc. Catch brings a somewhat faded but nevertheless celeb-y cachet-an insulting mention was bleeped out of last season's The Real Housewives of New York City-and Fertitta brings, among many others, Bubba Gump Shrimp Co., the Palm, and Houlihan's.