Houston’s loss is Tomball’s gain. It’s also Providence’s, Boston’s, Chicago’s, San Francisco’s and a host of other world-renowned city’s loss. Nationally-recognized chef Randy Rucker has returned home in part to help his mother open one of Tomball’s newest restaurants, Bootsie’s Heritage Café, but perhaps also to show local citizens what they’ve been missing.

Rucker has earned the praise of food critics and his mentors across the nation with his nearly obsessive approach to fresh cooking. Rucker insists he’s not a chef, but instead “just a cook.” However, a glance at his menu reveals there’s more going on in his kitchen than a deep fryer and a conveyor belt.

Rucker’s career as “just a cook” began in Providence, Rhode Island, where he enrolled at the noted Johnson and Wales University to pursue culinary arts. After school, Rucker returned to Houston, but found that “it’s different up north than what’s going on here.”

In 2005, at the age of just 25, he and his mother opened Laidback Manor in Houston, a project he called “extremely ambitious.” The spot earned critic’s praises, but Rucker admits his style of “modern contemporary cooking” was perhaps not something Houston was ready for.

He later initiated a private supper club, which soon became the hardest meal ticket to get in Houston. With Rucker’s meals pricing at upwards of $100 a plate, reservations often sold out in less than an hour.

But at Bootsie’s Rucker is starting out with a simpler approach, hoping to get customers into the restaurant with familiar dishes only to earn their trust and a return visit for perhaps something more advanced.

“If I can get them in to have chicken fried steak, maybe they will come back and try fish or something they normally wouldn’t try,” Rucker said. “But also, we’re not going to try to force anything on anybody.”

His menu changes every day, and what he creates is based entirely on what local farmers and sellers bring to his door. Rucker explained that the vast majority of the food her purchases is from farms within 15 miles of Tomball and that often the vegetables “still have dirt on them” when they come into his kitchen.

Rucker is fanatical about his ingredients and places strong demands on his sellers to provide him with the freshest possible goods. He explained that by having food at the peak of their freshness, he is able to “find ways to feed the bug of creativity.”

“If you want meat and potatoes, I can give you that. But to be creative is to present old stuff in a new way,” Rucker said.

His energy in talking about food is apparent in talking with Rucker.

“I’m passionate, I love what I’m doing,” he said.

Bootsie adds that there could be more in store on the menu in the future.

“Randy’s got much more to offer than what our menu has,” she said.

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