Jump to: Details | Reviews | Ruggles Green: The Soul Singer

Welcome to Groupon Houston! For our inaugural deal, $15 gets you $35 worth of grub and guzzle at Ruggles Green, located at 2311 W. Alabama St. You're probably thinking, "That sounds great, but I've never bought a car or a computer without first reading the Wikipedia definitions for car and computer—I'm not about to buy a Groupon either without a briefing." Well neither would we, and since this is everyone's first Groupon, allow us to briefly explain how it works.

How Groupon Works

Groupon is a combination of the words group and coupon. Each day, we offer an unbeatable deal on the best of Houston: restaurants, spas, sporting events, theater, and more. By promising businesses a minimum number of customers, we get discounts you won't find anywhere else. We call it "collective buying power"!

If you want to get the deal, just click BUY before the offer ends at midnight. If the minimum number of people (20 for today's deal) sign up by the end of the day, you'll get a printable gift certificate in your inbox the next morning that you can use whenever you want (well, at least until the deal expires—today's expires in six months). If not enough people join, no one gets the deal (and you won't be charged), so invite your friends to make sure you get the discount!

It's nice to wake up to something new every day. Some people get their daily fix from desk calendars with a cute puppy and a funny caption every morning. Groupon is like a desk calendar, except the puppy is an unbeatable discount and the funny caption is a profound reflection on the flowers and needles growing from life's cactus. We selflessly share our deep insights, hoping that you will join our mob of consumers, thus strengthening our collective buying power and commanding even better deals.

Details

Today's Groupon gets you $35 worth of organic and all-natural food for 57% off at Ruggles Green, Houston's first certified green restaurant. Ruggles Green, a casual bistro in the Upper Kirby area, serves organic and all-natural food made from quality ingredients. The menu is a collection of comfort food that keeps omnivores and carnivores content; try spicy fish tacos, warm goat cheese salad, 98% lean buffalo burger, tomato basil soup, or wood-fired pizzas (organic margherita pizza and more).

Eating organic reduces the amount of pesticides and chemicals in the environment (and in your food), and it tastes better because organic fruits and vegetables have higher levels of antioxidants, lower average crop yields, and flavor crystals.

Ruggles Green's hemp-draped staff is fast and friendly—even during lunch when the place is packed. The clean, well-lit space has free WiFi and comfortable booths. Chef Bruce Molzan ('the cook') and buddy Federico Marques ('the green guy') started Ruggles when they wanted a Houston restaurant with healthy, organic food and fine wines that taste great. They worked with the Green Restaurant Association to build the restaurant out of sustainable materials. Ruggles Green has energy-efficient lighting, booths made from bamboo, and nontoxic paint on the walls. They recycle everything (fryer oil is turned into biofuel; old coffee grounds are composted; plastic, glass, paper, and cardboard waste is recycled; and old menus are made into steel-toed boots) and they don't use any Styrofoam products.

Reviews

DINE WRITE says Ruggles Green's organic eats taste great:

• Ruggles Green is good – like Al Gore good – but in more ways than just that. Sure the kitchen uses over 50% organic, all-natural ingredients, but even if you're more brie-hugger than treehugger, you have to agree that food just tastes better when made from high-quality, chemical and preservative-free ingredients. – Jenny Wang, DINE WRITE

Yelpers give Ruggles Green four stars; Citysearchers give it an almost-perfect 4.5:

• I first went here on a business lunch and was a little worried that the food would be to [sic] healthy and weird. The food was awesome. Ruggles Green has found a way to make normal, great food that is healthy. – floydjunkie, Citysearch
• The food was delicious... The atmosphere is very comfortable and I felt like I was visiting a friend's home. It is so nice to have smiling faces serving up yummy food in a beautiful environment...using sustainable products and organic ingredients! – ecriner, Citysearch
• One word: tasty. It's so nice to have another healthy, eco-conscious place to eat in the Upper Kirby area. – Katie F., Yelp

Ruggles Green: The Soul Singer

Soul singer Ruggles Green was born in Baltimore in 1945. At the age of 17, he scored his first hit record, "R-U-G-L-E-S," which introduced the young singer to America, though the beat of the song made proper spelling of his name an impossibility. As the '60s faded, so did America's interest in music, and Ruggles spent the next decade in a funk, until 1977, when he became obsessed with the original film version of The Island of Dr. Moreau. Ruggles spent 20 years attempting to recreate the film's human-animal hybrids, but gave up by the mid '90s and financed a remake of the film instead. After that film went on to become the highest-grossing film by that title in history, its success inspired a restaurant in his honor.