Texas seems to be following me around. I don't mean in a scuffed-boots-wearin, rifle-toting, big-hair, scary kind of way. More like a "howdy, ya'll!" kind of way. Let me explain. About a month ago I returned to Texas for the first time in 12 years, on my very own Texas Tour 2005 (I hit my hometown of Dallas, as well as San Antonio and Austin where I went to college). But those details are for another time (trust me, there's enough fodder there to last a lifetime). Suffice it to say, when I was there I was reunited with a whole slew of college friends, some of whom I hadn't seen since graduation.
You might be wondering what all this has to do with Maverick, the teensy little restaurant in the Mission which opened in July to big buzz. Well, I'm getting to that. When I returned from Texas, my close friend Trey (also a college buddy) had taken it upon himself to plan an SF gathering of a handful of our college friends who lived in the area, something we'd been trying to do for quite some time.
Not only was it appropriate to have a reunion of Texas friends at a restaurant called Maverick, but it also just so happened that Trey had designed and built all of the ambient lighting, which set the warmly colored dining room aglow (you can check out his work here). The most memorable aspect of Maverick's swanky design, in my (completely unbiased) opinion, is Trey's modular map of the U.S., set over the family-style table in the front dining room.