Bam. Anile's gone. That fast. With the opening of Jeroboam--the brasserie set to crystallize in the Kirby building downtown--just a couple of weeks away, Jim Anile, the former Melrose Hotel executive chef who was set to commandeer the menu, has flown west to work at a new hotel resort in Santa Barbara, California, called Vacara. "He got the offer of a lifetime," says Whit Meyers, vice president of food and beverage for the Entertainment Collaborative, Jeroboam's parent. "They offered him much more than any independent restaurant could afford unless you're Voltaire." But Meyers isn't distraught. He says Jeroboam was originally drafted to exploit the culinary talents of Garreth Dickey, the chef who left the Green Room for greener grazing at Bistral. Dickey is in the process of composing a new menu that should be ready in time for the August opening.
"Like North Dallas erections, things are getting smaller...but there's a lot more of 'em." This is how publisher Eric Kimmel explains the philosophy behind the peewee dimensions (4 inches by 5 inches) of his new Dallas party-varmint manual Ouch in the publisher's note, or whatever it is. But how does the inaugural party he threw at the Gypsy Tea Room featuring a group of drag performers fit in? "You cannot believe these men up on stage dressed as women, and one of them was pulling, I kid you not, golf clubs and crutches out of her dress," says a guest who spoke on condition of anonymity. "Then there was the spandex and really, if I had eaten dinner, I would have lost it." Yet there's a theme here. Kimmel, who once operated the fashion magazine Haute and enjoyed 18 months in a French prison for a drug violation, boasts that his little mag will take readers "inside the pants of the maddest places in Dallas." The inaugural Ouch has interviews with Phil Romano and Jeannie Terrilli plus reviews of Abacus and Milkbar, all of which read suspiciously like teeny advertorials (many with corresponding full-page ads), which I suppose is one way of getting into the pants of the maddest places in Dallas. If you're careful not to put a hurt on your nose when they sit down.
Mark Moberly, onetime Mediterraneano/ Voltaire chef who most recently fled the searing grill at Venus Steakhouse and Supper Club, is cooking on the line at The Mercury...George Grieser is taking a leave of absence from Fish. But there's a question as to whether he will return. If he does, he says, it will be sometime after Labor Day.
Mark Stuertz
E-mail Dish at [email protected].