5 New Venues in Houston/San Antonio for Summer 2024 Meetings and Events

The 227-room Hilton San Antonio Hill Country announced the completion of an extensive renovation project in June, revealing a new look from Texas-based design firm Studio 11 Design that incorporates hues from the surrounding countryside and vast Texas sky. The guest rooms now feature modern Western-inspired furniture and artwork that reflect Hill Country. The presidential suite includes a living room area, a dining space, a wet bar, and top-floor views of the Hill Country. The hotel's more than 12,500 square feet of flexible meeting space is also included in the renovation. Among the meeting spaces is the 4,290-square-foot Oaks Ballroom, which can accommodate 425 for receptions or 300 for banquet-style events. Adjacent to the Oaks Ballroom and Foyer is the Hill Country Courtyard, where there's room for up to 225 guests on an outdoor terrace studded with large limestone fire pits and surrounded by oak trees.

Whimsical team-building destination Holey Moley Golf Club opened in April in Houston, equipped with three nine-hole mini-golf courses, two private karaoke rooms, and a full-service bar and restaurant. The venue is from Australia's Funlab, and each hole in the course is decorated with over-the-top themes. Think a "Parber Shop" hole set up like a salon complete with reclining barber chair and black and white floor tiles, or a hole called "Connect Fore" that looks like a giant game board. The 104-seat bar and restaurant called The Caddy Shack serves up fun dishes like prosciutto-topped pizza, grilled elote corn ribs, and chopped brisket salad alongside cocktails served in upside-down acrylic cowboy hats, disco balls, and bathtub-shaped cups.

Houston's recently opened Blossom Hotel added a new restaurant from two Michelin-starred chefs this April. Molihua pairs chef Ho Chee Boon with chef Hideki Hiwatashi to create their own take on contemporary Japanese and Asian cuisine. The restaurant can seat up to 100 people, including in the lounge, and features three separate private dining rooms that can seat 12 to 25 people each. The name means "jasmine" in Chinese, a flower that is incorporated into the restaurant's design. The menu includes sushi rolls, iron pot rice dishes, hand-pulled noodles, and wagyu steak seared tableside. Molihua is from the restaurant group behind San Francisco's popular Cantonese outpost Empress by Boon.

Popular Houston Sichuan restaurant Duck N Bao opened a new location in May, adding an outpost in the city's Rice Village neighborhood. Duck N Bao is known for dishes like crispy-skinned, Peking-style lacquered duck and soup dumplings. New additions to the menu include duck fried rice and Sichuan-style rice-battered beef shank. The 2,600-square-foot dining room seats 100 diners while the 1,000-square-foot patio seats an additional 22 diners. The space is decorated with tufted leather banquettes, wood paneling, and built-in display cases featuring a collection of Chinese teapots and serveware. Diners can peer through a viewing window into the kitchen to see Peking duck being carved and plated or dumplings being whipped up by hand.

A Los Angeles pizzeria with a chef from Naples and a Hollywood connection just branched out to Texas. Pizzana opened in Houston in March, serving up chef Daniele Uditi’s "neo-Neapolitan"-style pies. The chain is backed by Candace and Charles Nelson, the founding couple behind Sprinkles Cupcakes, and actor Chris O'Donnell and his wife. Pizza varieties range from Margherita to vegan mushroom or cacio e pepe, plus a special Tex-Mex pie topped with porchetta, salsa, and serrano chiles just for the Houston opening. Pizzana's Houston location in River Oaks can seat 59 in the dining room and six at the bar.