Damn Yankee

Daddy Jack Chaplin, the Dallas restaurateur who turned his back on Texas citizenship and hightailed it for Connecticut, just struck a deal with Tim Dorsey of Fairmount capital to bring more Daddy Jacks restaurants to the Dallas area. The deal, which calls for one Daddy Jacks restaurant each year over the next three years, nets Chaplin an up-front fee plus ongoing royalties. How's that for a long-distance financial affair? The first of the restaurants will open at the Dallas North Tollway and Haversham in Plano. But Chaplin isn't only messing around in Texas. He just opened a 65-seat restaurant in Bozrah, Connecticut, called Daddy Jacks, A New England Eatery. "It's the only municipality in America called Bozrah," Chaplin says. His new restaurant serves lunch and dinner plus weekend breakfast and features a few hybrid creations such as a Tex-Mex Philly cheese steak sandwich in a tortilla. "It's like a burrito almost," he says. "When I was down there [Dallas], I took New England down to Texas. Now I'm trying to bring Texas up to New England."

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Former Voltaire Executive Chef George Papadopoulos is back in Dallas scouting locations for a new restaurant. It seems his stint in Philadelphia working for what he called one of the largest country clubs in North America ended after just a couple of months. "It was kind of a stepping-stone stop," he insists. "I was eager to get back, actually." In addition to locations, Papadopoulos is also looking for partners. "I'm always looking for investors," he says. But Papadopoulos is tight-lipped about what exactly they'll be investing in. "I have it all in mind, and that's where it's going to stay."...Café Asian Restaurant & Bar has opened on Greenville Avenue in the space that most recently housed the bar and restaurant called M Streets before it shed the restaurant part and became M Streets Velocity Lounge. Café Asian serves things like teriyaki and noodle dishes served in an interior that marries hardwood floors and a circa early-1900s stamped tin ceiling with "fabulous chandeliers" and "multicolored dynamic optic bar lights" with "sexy, soft backlighting." We don't know how that sounds, but we like Café Asian's motto: "Asian food with a Greenville attitude." Maybe that means you can pee outside after dinner...The Wall Street Journal reports that Zagat Survey LLC, the company that publishes those thin restaurant guides, is poised to publish a guide on the top movies of all time. Dubbed Zagat Survey Top Movies, the guide will solicit viewer opinions in various genres, including film noir, epics, silent films and Porky's sequels via online voting.