FoodStar burns-out Sputtering on the brink of fizzle for several months, FoodStar Restaurant Group was euthanized just before Thanksgiving when U.S. Judge Steven A. Felsenthal allowed it to slink into bankruptcy. The company had been locked in a tug-of-war since October 7, when former FoodStar President Michael Caolo attempted to…
I’m not sure I understand the thinking behind Citizen, the new preciously hip Asian restaurant launched by the M Crowd Restaurant Group, the same folks who birthed Mi Cocina, The Mercury, Taco Diner, and Mainstream Fish House. The menu, another one of those Pan-Asian blends glued together with a little…
Big hair hazard It’s little more than a steel-studded brick bunker garnished with bright flashes of pink insulation, but Phil and Janet Cobb, owners of Mi Piaci Ristorante Italiano in Addison, were itching to show off their next restaurant. Salve! Ristorante, a $2.5 million upscale Italian eatery scheduled to open…
Question one: Why Abacus? Why name a cutting-edge restaurant for an ancient calculator made of wood, wire, and beads? Longtime Dallas chef Kent Rathbun says he and partner Robert Hoffman, a former Coca-Cola distributor, ruminated over and ran trademark searches on a long list of names before arriving at two…
Dog bites Not long after Club Babalu owner Alfredo Hinojosa announced plans to transform the disheveled and shuttered Arcadia Theater on Lower Greenville into Liquid at the Arcadia, an upscale Latin dance club, a neighborhood group calling itself the Barking Dogs of Lower Greenville raised its leg. Barking Dogs founder…
Swimming from the goldfish Do managers at AquaKnox fear the glare of public life in a Fishbowl? Fishbowl is the new hip “’60s pan-Asian” (don’t ask us what that means) noodle-wok-sushi joint set to flood the AquaKnox lounge later this month. But shortly after the concept was announced, Executive Chef…
It’s Halloween weekend, and orange cones jut out of the Cedar Springs pavement like little fluorescent warheads peeking from their silos. The street is wet, and droplets of drizzle swirl like gnats. Maybe that’s why we didn’t make reservations. Who goes out to eat at a fine restaurant on a…
“The superfluous, a very necessary thing.” — Voltaire. Scott Ginsburg rejected an earnest request to bring a photographer. No pictures capturing the momentous opening of his multimillion-dollar restaurant, Voltaire. Then again, this isn’t really an opening. It’s a dry run, a complimentary private viewing, a guinea-pig tasting, as Ginsburg calls…
In 1981, when Laura and Oscar Sanchez opened their Mexican restaurant in an old house on 12th Street in Oak Cliff, few people traveled to the neighborhood, recalls Jesus Sanchez, Laura’s brother. Still, La Calle Doce (Spanish for 12th Street) mowed a certain swath of culinary distinction, even if it…
Emerald Mist seems little more than an Irish pub that’s been homogenized and stuccoed; stuffed with burgers, Caesar salads, and pastas; and slapped into the ‘burbs. Yet it’s more than that, though you’d never know it from owner Patti Russell. Wedged into a former Street Talk Café location at Campbell…
PoPoLos reanimated PoPoLos is getting mouth-to-mouth. And once it’s breathing, it will get a desperately needed facelift and tummy tuck and will reopen in mid-December. At least that’s what old/new owner Maury Jaffer plans. Jaffer just purchased the Preston-Royal restaurant after selling it to the now desperately troubled FoodStar Restaurant…
It was Scout Day at Old City Park. Lots of kids were running around in uniforms, and ugly ones at that. Why do we make kids dress like soldiers from a third world Junta and then force them to sell us cookies and garbage bags? No wonder they’ve discovered lawyers…
One of the most successful dishes served at Susie Priore’s restaurant Suze (it rhymes with ruse) was pilfered. “I stole it from this restaurant in Santa Fe,” she admits. She figured she had no choice but to lift it, once pleadings cloaked in compliments didn’t work. So she wrestled a…
Beeson goes After nearly two years as The Mansion’s wine-cellar master, Darryl Beeson was shown the door. Well, maybe not shown the door. Beeson says the decision was mutual. (The Mansion did not return calls for comment). But a day or so after his departure, the thing that struck Beeson…
Michael Cox is 40 years old, and that’s hard to swallow. His face is full and smooth, his movements infected with adolescent bounce. He shows none of the harsh etchings the restaurant business often mercilessly carves with its acidic stresses and pointed pressures. It seems there should be at least…
Under new management Alfredo Hinojosa, owner of the Latin night spot Club Babalu on McKinney Avenue, has decided not to move his club to the vacant Arcadia space on Greenville Avenue. Instead, he’ll recast the Arcadia, most recently run by bad-boy club operators Steve and Bruce Kahn, as an upscale…
Those swashbuckling servers briskly pacing Texas de Brazil’s dining room with huge sword-like skewers and vicious knives may as well just pike you with one of their weapons and get it over with. This would, it seems, be preferable to the creeping coronary carnage wrought by 14 cuts of slow…
If this third link in the Nuevo Leon troika is any indication, this “Mex-Mex” restaurant is getting a little tired. Fatigue first strikes with the chips. Sure, they’re warm, which is more than you can say for most Mex or Tex-Mex spots. But they’re thoroughly uninspired. They’re bland. There’s no…
Down but not out Despite the hasty reopening plans proffered by Tim Hager, who was fingered to keep FoodStar Restaurant Group from withering into oblivion, PoPoLos restaurant remains locked up. And it probably won’t reopen anytime soon, at least under the FoodStar moniker. Former PoPoLos owner Maury Jaffer of Jaffer…
There’s a seminal point reached in life’s greatest endeavors — art, sex, drinking Miller High Life — where the experience is so profound, so touching on so many levels, it becomes transcendent. The act and the actor become one, and the interplay dissolves into something greater than the sum of…
Silenced partner You could call it a classic case of biting the hand that feeds you. Or maybe the hand that wants to take over. It seems Chris Svalesen and his undisclosed lone investor in Copper River, his new seafood restaurant slated to go into the former San Simeon space…
Is Italian Café a contemporary hole-in-the-wall with red-and-white checked tablecloths serving superlative Italian grub, or is it a sports bar? It doesn’t take many chews to score this one. Once you’re finished gnawing on the basket of fresh, moist knot bread, it’s evident that the best thing this place serves…
