Chick Pea Smirk

If there's one thing Café Izmir founder Ali Nazary is passionate about, it's donar k-bobs, at least for now. Though it may sound like a fund-raiser for a thousand Roberts, donar k-bobs are actually the Greek treat known as gyros (not pronounced like the term used to denote a whirligig). And Nazary plans to show them off via a glass-enclosed display case of the hand-stacked meat on a vertical spit at his new restaurant downtown called Izmir Mediterranean Tapas in Stone Street Gardens near Metropolitan and the new Campisi's location. "It'll be right in the window, so as you walk on Elm Street, the first thing you're going to see is these two big pieces of meat cooking," Nazary says. He adds that the new restaurant, which will feature tapas, sandwiches and a variety of kabobs, will also have a small lounge above the restaurant, so you can sip to take the edge off any donar k-bob wait. To stoke interest in the new Izmir, set to open in September, Nazary (with his brother Beau) is hosting a hummus challenge this summer open to any restaurant or individual who has the hummus chutzpah to make Nazary and his Izmir recipe sweat. And while challenge logistics have yet to be determined, Nazary is promoting Izmir's hummus with a card featuring him wearing a hummus stripe above his upper lip with the headline "got hummus?" Got a napkin?

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Jeffrey Yarbrough, the Club Clearview complex and Liberty Noodles founder, just opened a new Deep Ellum club called Open. Said to capture "the eccentricities of Manhattan [what's wrong with the homegrown ones?], the sounds of European electronic music, the tastes of the world...", Open will feature a "shocking red futuristic booth shaped in a half pipe" (a what pipe?) as well as nibbles (caviar cream dip with sesame rice crackers and Grand Marnier chocolate fondue) crafted by Liberty Noodles Executive Chef Greg O'Neill...James Rowland, the lauded one-time Crescent Court chef who grabbed more accolades with Greenville Bar & Grill, has surfaced at Cape Buffalo Bar & Grill in Addison. Rowland says he may be a Buffalo staple through the end of the year. "You never know what transpires out of this stuff," he says...Scott Freeman, former executive sous chef at the Mansion on Turtle Creek, has salsa-ed over to Cuba Libre. "Dean [Fearing] sent him over, man--God bless 'im," cracks Nick Badovinus, chef/partner of Cuba Libre who is himself a Mansion alumnus. Freeman will take over as executive chef of the Latin bar-restaurant while Badovinus focuses on other Cuba brethren such as the nightclub Sense and the upscale restaurant Hibiscus, all taking shape in Cuba's Henderson neighborhood.