Just when you thought it was safe to raise your cholesterol level without the simultaneous blare of baseball, volleyball and extreme wrestling from 30-plus TVs, along comes Cape Buffalo. Cape Buffalo is diversionary neurosis expressed in building materials and electronics--a multiuse venue with live music Friday and Saturday nights, billiard tables, a dining room and lots and lots of private party space. "We've got 4,000 square feet devoted to private parties," says Willie Stewart, who owns the yet-to-be-completed complex with his brother Cooper. "It's definitely a lot nicer than anything we own right now." Those other assets include the cavernous Pugsley's Library, an edible amusement-plex carved out of a former six-screen movie theater on Walnut Hill Lane, and Wizard's Sports Café in Richardson. But Cape Buffalo is the Stewart brothers' most ambitious project yet. Situated near the intersection of Addison Road and Trinity Mills, Cape Buffalo will cost the Stewart boys and their partners some $3.5 million and change when the doors open. Yet for all of that dough, the menu is wisely less than ambitious: burgers, pizzas, vegetable plates, brisket and salads. "I'm not going to go out there and try and compete with III Forks and P.F. Changs," says Willie Stewart. "We're going to have good American, affordable food." Cape Buffalo will also feature housemade barbecue sauce, which Stewart says was once credited with saving their barbecue sandwiches. Cape Buffalo should break by mid-July.
Kent Ingram, the veteran restaurant manager who has stops at Voltaire, The Mansion on Turtle Creek and Stephan Pyles' Baby Routh on his résumé, recently exited his latest management slot at Steel Restaurant & Lounge, the upscale Japanese/Vietnamese restaurant launched by ex-Voltaire managing partner Khanh Dao. "He just wanted a change of scenery," says Khanh. "It was a mutual thing." Ingram was replaced by Rex Calentine, who was elevated from beverage manager to general manager...Slipped down low in the latest Del Frisco's Double Eagle Steak House press release is the bold claim that the Dallas version of this vaunted red-meat temple is the highest-grossing dinner restaurant in Texas, racking up gross sales of more than $10 million (based on data from the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission). With all of this red meat gathering so much green, it's interesting that Del Frisco's fussing over its latest menu introductions: stone crab claws and "fish-of-the-day with an exotic sauce." In the end, no matter how much money your meat makes, you eventually swim with the fishes.
