Tim Penn, chef of Mi Piaci before he was groomed to fill the opening slot at Phil and Janet Cobb's defunct Salve! before Ms. Cobb's son Brian Black diverted him to fill the opening chef slot at his incipient Il Sole, before he took the post of executive chef at Bay Leaf in Deep Ellum, before he landed at Jeroboam, before he worked with a traveling caterer, has now landed as chef at Mi Piaci...Triple R Group, the Royce Ring-Russell Hayward combine that parented Tom Tom Noodle House and Nikita lounge in the West Village development, has completed plans for a second Tom Tom Noodle House in Preston Plaza, a venue that will be twice the size of its West Village sibling, which means you'll now have room for your date. The new Tom Tom should open in early 2003...Minneapolis-based Oceanaire Seafood Room, a tiny upper-crust seafood chain with installations in Seattle, Minneapolis and Washington, D.C., opened its fourth unit in the Galleria this past weekend. Chef Brian Dietz, who scaled fish at Newport's, Nicholini's Seafood Grill and Café Pacific, heads the kitchen proceedings...Daxx, the Lower Greenville bar that Sipango owner Ron Corcoran just opened with bartender Smokey Hill, features a tight menu with just 14 items including rock shrimp tacos, Tokyo tempura market fish with wasabi lemon tartar sauce and a shrimp BLT quesadilla. To help wash down all of this Tex-Mex exotica, Corcoran says Daxx will offer stirred fruit martinis, which, if they stick strictly to seasonal fruit, means a prune version (make it dirty) isn't far off. Crafting the Daxx menu is Sipango chef Kelly Hightower, the Tei Tei Robata bar/Mansion vet who recently replaced chef Dennis Deckard. Corcoran, who has been promising a radical recast of Sipango for months now, concedes the evolution of this Cal-Ital restaurant bar will occur in dribs and drabs--not an unusual dynamic when prunes are involved.