Hotel Daphne is the latest boutique property from hospitality brand Bunkhouse Hotels. It opened in early December in Houston’s Heights neighborhood, following the group’s Hotel Saint Augustine and its Perseid restaurant, which opened in January 2025 in Houston’s Montrose area. Bunkhouse also operates hotels in Austin and Mexico.
The five-story, 49-room Hotel Daphne features an Italian-style restaurant called Hypsi, which takes its name from an ancient Greek settlement that served as a sanctuary for the gods. It’s inspired by the Heights’ private supper clubs that thrived during Prohibition, and it channels some of those speakeasy sensibilities in its design.
It features deep hues, velvet seating, vintage accents, and a cozy lounge that’s outfitted with a blueberry lava-stone bar and a fireplace. There are 49 seats inside and another 49 in the vine-covered courtyard.
Chef Terrence Gallivan, known for his work over the years at popular Houston restaurants including The Pass and Provisions and Elro Pizza & Crudo, leads the kitchen.
His menu merges Italian and Gulf Coast cuisine, with handmade pastas, shareable plates, Italian wines, spritzes, and cocktails.
Select starters include roasted prawns with pepperoni butter and toasted sourdough, lamb meatballs, and grilled octopus. A couple of standout pastas are the squid ink radiatori with rock shrimp and the cavatappi with duck Bolognese.
Larger plates include braised beef short rib, a whole roasted chicken, Duroc pork Milanese, and roasted snapper with salsa verde.
Gallivan said the prawns with pepperoni butter are one of his personal favorites, and notes that the snapper has also been very well received since the restaurant debuted.
There’s also a mozzarella cart stocked with rotating cheeses, pickled fruit, aged vinegars, cold-pressed olive oil, and focaccia that weaves through the dining room to serve guests tableside.
“The idea of bringing back some classic service styles to the dining experience inspired our mozzarella cart,” Gallivan said. “Our menu at Hypsi puts a lot of focus on really nice ingredients being presented in simple ways, but with thoughtful techniques. The mozzarella cart is very much part of that.”
The beverage program leans into Hypsi’s Italian roots with spritzes, boozy Italian sodas, and signature cocktails. A few of the more creative drinks include a negroni made with tomato and black olive-infused Campari, a whiskey sour laced with Calabrian pepper jelly, and a pepperoncini Martini garnished with coppa salami.
Working with Bunkhouse Hotels has been a slight change of pace for Gallivan after years helming the kitchen at independent restaurants, but he said that it allows for more voices in the room — in a good way.
“We have a lot of great people who bring excellent experience to help bounce ideas off of and provide guidance with a project of this scale,” he said. “We also have more resources to access, especially when it comes to the hotel side. At the end of the day, restaurants are restaurants, though. I like to think of it as the same language with a different accent.”
Hypsi is open now for breakfast, dinner, and room service, with lunch to launch in January.
