Dinner before claiming baggage

I assume you are travelling to IAH on a domestic (or pre-cleared) flight. [Otherwise, you will not have a chance to find a restaurant until you have passed through US Customs, and you'll have to take your bag before customs or you will find it very difficult to retrieve later.]

Your baggage will remain on the carousel for some time. If the same carousel is subsequently used for another flight, then your bag may end up mixed with other bags. Alternatively, the baggage staff may remove it and store it at baggage services: they know people can be delayed claiming their luggage for many reasons. However you will appreciate that in this day and age, unattended articles can cause suspicion.

Leaving your bag unattended also slightly increases the chance of theft (the domestic baggage claim is open to the street) or a mix up where someone honestly takes the wrong bag. However, it is probably not too much to worry about in the grand scheme of things.

You are probably better off travelling light and keeping a small bag in the cabin with you. If you have to "gate check" a slightly oversized bag it will be returned to you at the gate when you arrive at IAH.

All that is supposed to happen is that it revolves sadly around the baggage carousel until a porter from the luggage office comes and puts it behind the luggage desk, where you can wait in line later and retrieve it from a sullen clerk.

But a million other things might happen. Someone might, innocently or not, walk off with it. The space reserved for storing such bags might be full and your bag will be dispatched off to some remote part of the airport. The bag might never arrive and you won't get much sympathy from the lost-luggage people.

My point is, you are leaving a lot to chance. If your bag is so gigantic and wheeling it to a restaurant is such a burden that this sort of risk makes sense, consider packing more lightly.