Houston is a sprawling metropolitan area, time of year does not seem to make a difference how crowded any part of the area may be, or how much traffic you might have to deal with. At least that's my experience visiting regularly at all times of the year over the past 35 years. All that has really changed is that the suburbs keep sprawling further out along each of the expressways, but what has remained constant is that traffic growth has stayed well ahead of expressway expansion.
There may be a Spring Break crowd at Galveston, but Spring Break is pretty much over at the end of April. Summer vacation starts in May in the South, but that doesn't much matter for travel to Houston.
Restaurants? Houston has dozens of great restaurants, hundreds of good ones (including some local chains), and there are thousands in the area when you start including national chains. I always let the people I was visiting (friends or business associates) take me to one of their favorite places, seldom went to the same place twice in maybe a hundred meals. But you don't have that advantage.
One of the exceptions has been Ninfa's, that one is good enough that I keep going back. That cuisine is Mexican, and Houston has a lot of good Mexican restaurants, including the popular Pappasito's chain.
For seafood, I like the Pappadeux Seafood Kitchen, which has grown to eight locations in the Houston area and branched out to Dallas and San Antonio, maybe also Austin. That's another repeat for me, not always the same location because I may be visiting different parts of the city on different trips, and I've found the food consistent at the locations I've visited. But for atmosphere as well as food, I recommend the Landry's Seafood on the boardwalk at Kemah. Landry's (now a national chain with 500 locations and at least a dozen different brands) started with a Seafood House in Katy, and we still go there when visiting friends in Katy, but the one in Kemah is special, worth the drive if already on the SE side of Houston or in Galveston.
If looking for steaks, one of the Brenner's locations (another Landry's brand gone national), or one of the South American beef restaurants like Chama Gaucha or Fogo de Chao. I've been to Brazilian steakhouses only as a guest of someone with a bigger entertainment budget than mine, the meals are quite expensive.
For Texas barbeque, I can recommend the Goode Company on Kirby, have been there several times for lunch, although when our office was in Bellaire we would more often go to little neighborhood place just as good a short walk from the office on Bissonnet. It may no longer be there, that neighborhood has changed greatly, all the houses torn down to build gated enclaves. Similarly, my favorite Vietnamese restaurant in a strip mall on Richmond is gone, the strip mall is gone.
Things to do in Galveston? I think you can fish in the surf without a license, although it may cost something to use one of the fishing piers. Fishing is the main reason my Houston friends go the Galveston, as the beach is sometimes kind of nasty, depending on what is in the water and what the wind direction has been recently. I like to revisit the Lone Star Flight Museum. Other attractions include the Ocean Star drilling rig museum, tall ship Elissa and Moody Gardens. Kids like to go to the Schlitterbahn waterpark. Not too far from Galveston is the Kemah Boardwalk.
Tom Test
Itasca Spirit 29B
