Noted chef Robert Auston all but slipped off the edge of the metroplex after he shuttered Ianos Trattoria in Richardson last August. He has since resurfaced as a chef/partner in My House of Fine Eats & Catering, an upscale catering company launched in 1996 by former Mi Piaci chef Mark Morrow. Auston says he struggled to keep his restaurant open in the wake of his troubled brush with Tim Hager of Shared Vision, the company that now operates Mediterraneo. "We were makin' money," insists Auston. "We just couldn't pay the damn taxes."...Seems a stint at III Forks is so trying, it can drive you to the bowels of McKinney Avenue in search of a fix (of caffeine, that is). At least that's what happened to Joe Knoblich (a III Forks alumni) and his partner Gregory Moreux (current sous chef at III Forks). Their stress jitters got so bad, they hobbled over to McKinney Avenue and settled in to open Java Junkeez in the former home of Enigma, a slot that has had at least a trio of near births and quick deaths. That history doesn't phase Knoblich. "We know what we are," he says. "We're a coffee shop and a deli. That's basically all we are." We hope they have plenty of cold turkey...Editing is not the kind of activity one would normally consider romantic. It fact, we tend to think of it as birth control. But Darryl Beeson, sommelier for Voltaire and former wine maven for the Mansion and The French Room, thinks otherwise. While in the final edit of an article on marriage proposals in restaurants he penned for D magazine (with helpful hints such as never surprise your intended by hiding a yellow diamond in her Scotch on the rocks, and never ever slip the ring around a cocktail shrimp), Beeson scrawled a proposal to Patty Marriott, a meeting planner at Frito-Lay. Once the February issue was published, he put the article in front of her while preparing her a dinner of leftovers. She accepted. What the hell does Beeson put in his leftovers anyway?