A Love Letter to Houston, With a Princeton Twist

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Courtesy of Jennifer Roosth ’02

As a fourth-generation Texan, who’s lived and traveled all over the world, I wanted to offer something different for those looking to travel to Houston. I am a Princeton grad, after all.

When I started reflecting on Houston, it was its clichés and contradictions that came to mind. And the thing is, Houston has earned its clichés. In a city where cowboy hats coexist with James Turrell installations, and where taco trucks line the street next to skyscrapers built on oil wealth, Houston offers lots of surprise and delights. 

Even though the Houston metro area has more than 7 million people, I still find ways to be charmed by its diversity, western culture, and contradictions. So, let’s lean into every Texas cliché unapologetically to explore the best the city has to offer. See y’all here.

This Ain’t My First Rodeo

Let’s begin with the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, because, of course. RodeoHouston is the largest rodeo in the world. It’s not just big, it’s spectacular. For three weeks each spring (will be March 2-22, 2026) more than 2.7 million people gather to celebrate Texas heritage on an almost surreal scale: bull riding, mutton busting, barrel racing, rodeo clowns and covered wagons, carnival rides, fried Oreos and funnel cakes, and nightly concerts from some of the biggest names in music. 

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Houston livestock show and rodeo.

The energy it creates is electric, the tradition sacred, and the execution flawless. It’s the Houston equivalent of Princeton Reunions; tightly choreographed, ambitious, and impossible to ignore. It all makes for one helluva great time. First-timers and fourth-generation small town ranchers share space, where rhinestone hats meet sincere, corporatized barbecue reverence. It’s parody of itself with no punch line intended.

Pro Tips:

• Come early to visit the World Championship Bar-B-Que Contest and cookoff, the Champion Wine Garden, and the Uncorked Best Bites and Wine Auction, which all take place the weekend before the rodeo launches.
• Check out the 1932 Cattleman’s Club for dancing and photoshoots.
• Look the part by getting a custom hat at Shorty’s Hattery where they shape, steam, and brand it right in front of you.
• Pray with the cowboys at Cowboy Church on Sunday mornings during the season. 

Everything Is Bigger in Texas

The art in Houston is world-class. The Menil Collection, a free museum with an array of Warhol, Magritte, and Picasso, sits quietly in a bungalow neighborhood as a cornerstone of Houston’s intellectual and aesthetic legacy.

The Rothko Chapel, nearby, offers a hushed sanctuary. Fifteen brooding panels invite silence and awe. Rothko’s paintings are meant to make you feel the visual weight of deep emotions. Houston’s answer to Parisian introspection, it’s almost guaranteed to draw a tear.

The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH) is “Texas-sized,” with tens of thousands of works spanning eras, cultures, and styles. The Kinder Building houses over 1,200 works of modern and contemporary art, including pieces by Yayoi Kusama and James Turrell, and Latin American modernist treasures.

Pro Tips:

• Go underground. MFAH’s buildings are connected by underground tunnels that double as art destinations. My favorite Turrell tunnel, The Light Inside (1999), is a raised walkway that guides visitors between buildings, giving a floating sensation, and lights that change from blue to red to pink.
• See an alumnus’s work. In the Kinder Museum, you’ll encounter a piece by Princeton’s own Frank Stella ’58 (Damascus Gate, 1970), works by Calder and Picasso, and an awe-inspiring Ai Weiwei LEGO installation recreating Monet’s Water Lilies (2022), which was conceived in prison.
• Check out Le Jardinière, which has its own Michelin accolades and a swanky outpost connected to the New Kinder Building.
• Don’t forget outdoor installations. The Cullen Sculpture Garden right outside the museum has a vertical version of architect Anish Kapoor’s Chicago “Bean” (2006), called the “Cloud Column” (2018).

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Anish Kapoor's "Cloud Column" sculture located near the Museums of Fine Arts in Houston.

Jennifer Roosth ’02

Houston also has a quirky art side. The Houston Art Car Parade organized through the Orange Show, transforms streets into rolling masterpieces. The airport’s art program turns layovers into immersive experiences with exhibits in partnership with NASA, FotoFest, and the Houston Botanic Garden. The Bayou City Art Festival fills Memorial Park and downtown with outdoor exhibitions.

The James Turrell “Twilight Epiphany” Skyspace  at Rice University is a pyramid-shaped art installation with a rooftop opening that frames the sky. At sunrise and sunset, a precisely choreographed LED light sequence interacts with the changing natural light, creating a meditative, otherworldly expereince.

Y’all Means All With Diversity and Food

Houston is the most diverse city in the U.S., with more than 145 languages spoken and a larger immigrant population, by percentage, than New York City. Nigerian markets, Vietnamese, Cajun crawfish boils, and Iranian cafés are all part of the creative fusion of the city’s food scene, which is dynamic, multicultural, and endlessly inventive.

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A margarita from Ninfas. 

Jennifer Roosth ’02

The city boasts more than 13,000 restaurants serving cuisines from over 70 countries. But with queso as our unofficial religion, margaritas, barbecue, and Tex-Mex are not to be missed:

Pro Tips:

• For barbecue and comfort try Goode & Co. Barbeque or Armadillo Palace; bring your cowboy hat and two-step.
• For Tex-Mex try El Tiempo Cantina for a frozen margarita that will knock your socks off (they will add any flavor you want, and they are robust) and some steaming fajitas. Ninfas is another great Tex-Mex choice, or visit Armandos for people watching and dancing on a lively Thursday night.
• If you love steakhouses try Pappas Bros. Steakhouse, home to a Michelin-starred sommelier and one of the largest wine collections in the state, and Doris Metropolitan, an Israeli-inspired spot pairing dry-aged beef with Mediterranean flavors.
• Looking for fine dining? Visit Le Jardinier aforementioned at the Museum of Fine Arts, Tony’s for classic, old-school Houston elegance, or March, a one-star Michelin tasting menu restaurant known for museum-quality art presentations of food.

A City of Reinvention and Resilience

Houston is famously unzoned, and it shows. This is a city that reinvents itself repeatedly: oil booms and busts, natural disasters and floods, and global innovation. This city is always changing and showing how cool evolution and reinvention can be.

The city’s parks and bayous tell that story. Buffalo Bayou, Memorial Park, Hermann Park, and Discovery Green blend recreation with flood mitigation. The recovery and rebuilding after Hurricane Harvey in 2017 demonstrated not only the city’s resilience but also its capacity for innovation in urban planning, flood buyout plans, and environmentally sensitive solutions. 

Pro Tips:

• For any astrophiles, Houston is the home of human space exploration. Known as Space City, Houston’s Mission Control at NASA still guides astronauts on the International Space Station, while Axiom Space is building the first commercial space station. Even the James Webb Space Telescope has Houston collaborations.
• Houston is also a major hub for medicine. The Texas Medical Center (TMC) in Houston is the largest medical complex in the world. Spanning over two square miles, TMC encompasses 61 institutions, including 21 hospitals, eight academic and research institutions, and four medical schools. It’s the home of the first mechanical heart implant and the first silicone breast implant and continues to innovate in cancer care, transplants, and biotechnology.