Ishtia

Smoke at the center of the pass

The fire does some of the seasoning before David Skinner, chef-owner at Ishtia in Kemah, sends the course into the room. He works from the Gulf-side edge of the city with Choctaw heritage held close to the plate, not as decoration, but as structure. Squash, corn, beans, spice, and smoke give the kitchen its grammar. Skinner’s formal base came through Oklahoma State University, and the discipline of that training shows in the way the menu keeps older foodways legible inside a modern tasting-menu frame. At Ishtia, his station is not built around nostalgia. It is built around control: what gets roasted, what gets smoked, what stays cool, what carries texture, what has to be read before it is tasted. His own description gives the work its range: “We’re using components and spices from North and South America to tell the story of how Indigenous people and their cooking techniques influenced every cuisine around the world.” The sentence matters because the kitchen follows it course by course. The plate carries information as well as flavor, and Skinner keeps the origin present even when the finish is fine dining.

Three Sisters in a modern register

The clearest statement is Three Sisters with diver scallop, Skinner’s reading of the agricultural triad of corn, beans, and squash. The dish brings a fresh Maine diver scallop together with shredded acorn, spaghetti, and zucchini squashes, black tepary bean gel, and corn butter. Nothing in that construction treats the old form as a museum object. The triad stays intact, but the handling belongs to the pass: cut squash, controlled temperature, a gel for depth and line, butter for gloss and carry. The restaurant’s format gives Skinner time to let that language accumulate over a 3-hour journey. Courses can speak to cultivation, movement, influence, and the long reach of Indigenous technique without turning into explanation. The beverage program is curated rather than incidental, serving the tasting menu as another part of the structure. The house does not turn its theme into a motif; ingredients drawn from Indigenous cooking do the work through placement, restraint, and sequence.

An 18-seat room around the fire

The room is small enough for the bench to stay visible. Ishtia is an 18-seat restaurant, and that intimacy changes the register of service: chefs cook and serve, the fire crackles in the center of the experience, roasting and smoking move from back-of-house process to part of the room’s rhythm. The atmosphere stays quiet, formal, and close. A counter or pass in a room this size does not let the kitchen disappear; the hands have to answer for each plate as it lands. Smoke becomes more than flavor here. It is a material in the air, a timing device, a reminder that technique can be ancient without being static. The close scale also suits Skinner’s larger project. A dish like Three Sisters can arrive with its references intact because the room gives it enough stillness to be read.