Funk Spunk

Three's company for trio coming to Mockingbird Station

Comments (0) By Mark Stuertz Thursday, Jun 5 2003

It takes a peculiar form of eccentricity to staple a gelato hut, a Hawaiian fast-causal joint and a nightclub into one concept, but that's what Dallas entrepreneur Ben Dai did. By mid-July, Dai and general manager Lon Goodwin will be operating a triplicate joined at the hip in Mockingbird Station: Gelato Paradiso, Ollie & Lei's Luau and Spike. Gelato Paradiso will serve parfaits, pastries, ices and Italian ice creams (18 flavors) tossed with a twist: options from an assortment of liqueurs and other spirits plus a broad wine list (bubble gum and cabernet sounds compelling). Ollie & Lei's Luau is "an upscale Café Express" steeped in authentic foods from the Hawaiian Islands plus Thai bubble teas--sips with tasty tapioca balls floating near the bottom and extra thick straws through which to suck them (bring a Heimlich cheat sheet). Spike rounds out this quizzical culinary discourse with a late-night loungy demeanor and world cuisine served on little plates. "We want to take all of the good qualities of Crú and Sense and Paris Vendême and Dragonfly, and we want to make it consistent and inviting without being so trendy that people lose interest in six months," Goodwin says. How? "By not being snotty, not being pretentious...by being very approachable...Everything we're doing is funky." And every nose is wiped.

Location Info

Map

Cru: A Wine Bar

3699 McKinney Ave.
Dallas, TX 75204

Category: Bars/Clubs

Region: Uptown & Oak Lawn

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Dragonfly Restaurant at Hotel Zaza

2332 Leonard St.
Dallas, TX 75201

Category: Restaurant > Eclectic

Region: Uptown & Oak Lawn

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Mirabelle owner Joseph Maher has plucked former Pappas Bros. sommelier David Russell as wine director for his new wine cellar, which has a capacity of some 6,000 bottles--a relative bucket compared with Pappas' on-premise storage capacity of 40,000 bottles, but Hulkish when you consider Mirabelle has only 40 seats. Maher says he and Russell will buff his wine holdings from 300 to some 3,000 selections in the near term...A study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition reveals that guzzling more than three drinks per day contributes directly to weight gain and obesity among men age 40 to 59, irrespective of the type of alcohol consumed. More than 7,000 men from 24 British towns were probed for the five-year study. The most famous 20th-century Brit (other than the Mop Tops) anecdotally confirms the meat of this study. Sir Winston Churchill was said to begin the day in bed with a scotch and soda, nurse a bottle of champagne for lunch capped with several double brandies, sip beer in the afternoon, ditto his lunch intake at dinner before moving on to port and sip Johnny Walker Red in the evening. Now we'd be the last to suggest Churchill was svelte, but he arguably saved the world from a vegetarian crypto-sadist with a bad moustache, and he lived to sweat out his beverages to the age of 90, keeping his spare tire inflated the whole time.