The New Tenant at 2231 South Voss Says Something About How Briargrove Eats Now

For eight years, the building at 2231 South Voss Road was a steakhouse. Killen's STQ served the kind of dinner you dressed for, the kind you booked ahead for a birthday or a closing or an in-laws-are-in-town occasion. Then Ronnie Killen announced the restaurant would close after that eight-year run, and the space sat quiet while Briargrove residents wondered what would take its place.

What moved in was not another steakhouse. It was Tacos A Go Go, a Houston taqueria that opened its first location on Main Street back in 2006 and has spent the two decades since building a reputation on breakfast tacos and family packs, not tasting menus. The Briargrove location opened in February 2026, and it came with something the chain had never offered at any of its previous spots: a full bar.

That single fact, more than the tacos themselves, tells you something about what Briargrove wants from its restaurants right now.

Eight Years of Steak Night, Then Nothing

Killen's STQ had been the address people mentioned when they wanted to name a place for a serious meal without leaving the neighborhood. Its closing left a gap that wasn't really about square footage. It was about what kind of dining Briargrove could support inside its own borders. For months, the building sat empty, and the question wasn't whether something would fill it, but whether whatever filled it would try to be Killen's STQ again.

It didn't try.

The Replacement Doesn't Do Occasions

Tacos A Go Go's Briargrove location is open every day from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m., which is a schedule built around breakfast tacos and weeknight dinners, not reservations. The menu, developed over the years by chef and co-owner Maribel Gomez, runs through street-style tacos filled with carne guisada, al pastor, picadillo, and barbacoa, alongside breakfast tacos served all day and heavier plates like grilled shrimp and smoked brisket. None of it asks you to plan ahead.

The bar is the part that changes the math. To build it, founder Sharon Haynes brought in Bobby Heugel, the Houston bartender behind Anvil Bar & Refuge and Better Luck Tomorrow, and a two-time James Beard Award finalist. Heugel's cocktail program for the new locations leans on tequilas and mezcals from family-owned distillers, reworked around Mexican spices and ingredients. One of the standing drinks is a Mole Espresso Martini, built with vodka, espresso, coffee liqueur, and mole spices, which is not a cocktail you'd expect to find next to a taco counter.

A few practical details worth knowing if you haven't been yet:

• Briargrove location hours: daily, 7 a.m. to 10 p.m.
• Happy hour: daily, 2 to 5 p.m., with $5 margaritas
• This is the first Tacos A Go Go location in the chain's 20-year history to include a full bar

What This Buys You on a Tuesday

Here's the part that's easy to miss if you only clock this as "new restaurant opened." Before this year, a serious cocktail program in Briargrove meant driving toward Montrose or Uptown. Now it sits inside a taqueria that's open on a Tuesday at 6 p.m. for tacos and $5 margaritas, no reservation required. The occasion-restaurant model that Killen's STQ represented didn't get replaced with another occasion restaurant. It got replaced with an everyday spot that happens to have a bar program built by one of the city's most credentialed bartenders.

That's a different kind of dining infrastructure than the neighborhood had a year ago, and it changes what a regular weeknight can look like without changing your address.

Restaurant Weeks Is Actually Useful This Year

If the new taco spot covers the everyday end, Houston Restaurant Weeks covers the occasion end, at least through Labor Day. The 2026 program runs from August 1 through September 7, 38 days total, and it's the mechanism by which a Briargrove household can sample a wider slate of restaurants at a fixed, lower price before summer ends. Palazzo's Cafe, the neighborhood's longtime Italian spot on Briar Forest, is participating this year, and its listed Restaurant Weeks dish is a capellini-crusted snapper with artichokes, tomatoes, and capers in a beurre blanc sauce.

The pricing structure is the same across nearly 400 participating restaurants citywide, and it's worth knowing because it maps directly to how much of your bill becomes a donation:

Every dollar from those per-meal donations goes to the Houston Food Bank. The program was founded in 2003 by the late Cleverley Stone and is now run by her daughter, Katie Stone, through the Cleverley Stone Foundation. If you've been meaning to try Palazzo's, the next week and a half is the moment to do it at a fixed price with a clear end date.

The Late-Night Option That Isn't New

Not everything in Briargrove needed to change to still matter. BB's Tex-Orleans, on Westheimer Road, has been the neighborhood's answer to a late dinner for a while now, and it stays open later than the new taco spot down the street, past midnight seven nights a week. During peak season it serves live crawfish, and it's set up for the kind of night where you want a table, a game on the TV, and no rush. If Tacos A Go Go's 10 p.m. close leaves you wanting one more hour, BB's is where that hour goes.

A Short Drive for the Bigger Show

For an evening that calls for something other than dinner, Queensbury Theatre, a short drive from Briargrove at Town & Country Village next to CityCentre, is staging Mean Girls this summer, the stage adaptation of the Tina Fey film. Queensbury has operated as Houston's professional theatre company from that location since 2015, and its Main Stage productions run alongside the Tribble School for the Performing Arts. It's not inside Briargrove, but it's close enough to be part of the same evening as dinner at any of the restaurants above.

What It Adds Up To

None of this reads as one big renovation. It reads as a neighborhood quietly trading one kind of restaurant for another and picking up a seasonal reason to try what's left. The steakhouse that used to anchor special occasions is gone, and in its place is a taqueria that's open every day of the week with a bar program built by a James Beard finalist. The occasion dining hasn't disappeared, it's just moved to a 38-day window each summer where a fixed-price menu makes trying something new low-stakes. And the late-night option that was already reliable, BB's on Westheimer, is still exactly that.

Taken together, it's a small but real shift in what a regular week in Briargrove can include without anyone having to drive very far.

If you're a longtime Briargrove neighbor and any of this changes how you'd think about staying or trading up in the area, or if you know someone weighing a move into this part of Houston, Caroline Bean is always glad to talk through what's changing on the ground here. Let's Connect.