Hedwig Village Restaurants on Gaylord Drive: A Closer Look

The Houston Chronicle reported that before 9061 Gaylord Drive served fried chicken with peanut butter gravy, it served Jonathan's the Rub. Aaron and Victoria Bludorn used to eat there when they were dating. The restaurant later moved to a bigger space on the other side of I-10, the building came open, and the couple built Bar Bludorn in it. It opened on Friday, March 29, 2024. Victoria grew up in the Memorial and Spring Branch area, so the address had history for the family before it had a menu.

On Friday, October 2, Bar Bludorn opened a second room at 25 Waterway Avenue in The Woodlands. The date has already moved once. Earlier announcements pointed to September 26, and the restaurant's latest notice and PaperCity's preview both say October 2. The Woodlands room has a private dining room and a patio. CultureMap reported that neither exists at the Gaylord Drive original.

Anyone who has eaten on that street can name where those two things already exist. Latuli, at 8900 Gaylord, has a covered patio and an upstairs private space. Read together, the two restaurants and the new Woodlands room show how this stretch of Hedwig Village fits together.

What The Woodlands Room Adds

The Woodlands location is the first Bar Bludorn outside Memorial. Bludorn Hospitality Group calls it the first restaurant it has opened outside Central Houston. The Chronicle describes it as the group's first outside Beltway 8. Aaron Bludorn told PaperCity that "we've done all that we can in Houston for now," and that The Woodlands was the place to start the group's growth.

The menu looks familiar. CultureMap reports that the signatures carry over, including the country ham beignets, the short rib pastrami sandwich and the fried chicken with peanut butter gravy. The seasonal pastas and salads differ between the two locations.

The rooms differ more than the menus do. The Gaylord Drive building is about 5,000 square feet and was designed around walnut paneling, forest green banquettes and terrazzo floors. The Woodlands space is about 6,500 square feet. It is the former Baker Street Pub & Grill, which closed in March 2024 after an 18-year run as an original Waterway tenant. The extra 1,500 square feet gives the Bludorns room for the patio and the private room that the Memorial building never had.

The Street Where Old Errands Became Dinner Reservations

The table's fourth column has an odd feature. Latuli occupies the former site of a Gorman Cleaners, which The Buzz Magazines describes as a Memorial-area institution. Bar Bludorn occupies a former restaurant that outgrew its space. Both dinner rooms sit in buildings that were doing something else a few years ago.

Hedwig is the only one of the six Memorial Villages that allows commercial development inside its borders. Its buildings turn over in a way the other five villages' streets do not. When a dry cleaner or a restaurant leaves, the site is one of a few places in the villages where something else can go in.

Both restaurants also faced the same siting question, and both answered it the same way. Bludorn told the Chronicle that he liked the standalone building and the fact that it sat a few streets in from the frontage road, which gave him a chance to build a real neighborhood restaurant. The Chronicle reported that Latuli was built from the ground up for a neighborhood setting, as opposed to freeway frontage. Neither restaurant chose the Katy Freeway frontage road, which is the obvious choice for a large dining room in this part of town.

How Latuli Fills the Room

Latuli's owners describe it as a place made for regular visits. Allison Knight told CultureMap, "We want people to come multiple times a week." Her background is in commercial real estate and finance, and she moved to the Memorial area about five years before the restaurant opened. She is a Hunters Creek Village resident, according to The Buzz. She partnered with chef Bryan Caswell, whose past restaurants include Reef, Stella Sola and El Real Tex-Mex Cafe.

The design serves that goal. Alfredo Paredes Studio laid the restaurant out as five separate spaces. The ground floor holds a covered outdoor patio, a main dining room, a smaller secondary dining room and a bar and lounge. The private lounge and event space is upstairs. According to CultureMap, the small dining room's tables were booked every night in the months after opening, which surprised Knight. Bar Bludorn's Woodlands room has added the private-room format that Latuli built from the start.

The menu leans on Caswell's earlier restaurants. It brings back the pecan-smoked pork chop and Shiner Bock steamed mussels from Reef, the Wagyu beef barbacoa from El Real and the wild boar ragù from Stella Sola. Steaks come from Rafter K, the Knight family's ranch, along with RC Ranch and 44 Farms.

The Houston Chronicle's Bao Ong reviewed Latuli earlier this year. He praised the wild boar ragù and had reservations about how far the wide-ranging menu stretches, especially with entrées starting near $40. Anyone deciding where to book a dinner on Gaylord can weigh that against the dishes above.

One Exit Over, and Saturday Morning

Credence, the live-fire restaurant from chef Levi Goode of the Goode Company family, sits one exit over at The McKinley in Memorial City. The address is 9757 Katy Freeway, Suite 170, which places it in Memorial City and outside the six villages. It opened in 2024, the same year as Bar Bludorn. The Houston Chronicle reported that Bludorn credited "visionaries like Levi Goode" when he announced his Hedwig Village tavern, so the three kitchens share a line of influence.

Dinner dominates the Gaylord Drive conversation. The daytime routine sits elsewhere. The Memorial Villages Farmers Market runs every Saturday from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., year-round and rain or shine. It is held at First Congregational Church, 10840 Beinhorn Road, in Hunters Creek Village. The market is hosted by the church in cooperation with the City of Hunters Creek Village. It has live music, a playground and a pet-friendly policy. According to the market's Facebook page, it has run since October 2015.

Vendors have included Swede Farm Dairy, Plant It Forward and Lil' Emma's Seafood, though the lineup changes and the market's own page is the place to check for this week's.

Hours and menus at all three restaurants have changed since they opened, so confirm them with the restaurant before you go. The Hedwig Village restaurant guide for 2026, which the city posts on its website, is a good reference for the wider list.

If you'd like to talk through how a street like Gaylord Drive changes, and what that could mean for a property nearby, the team at Wheless Realty would be glad to hear from you. Let's Start a Conversation.