How's this for eclectic Italian? Daniele Puleo, a refugee from L.A. (a manager of Rex II Ristorante) who hit Dallas to mingle with Alberto Lombardi, is opening Daniele Osteria as chef/owner later this month in the Aims Academy School of Culinary Arts space on Oak Lawn Avenue. Puleo says it will be old-world ("chandeliers instead of track lighting") elegant. No checkered tablecloths. Maurizio Franzoi, formerly of Lombardi's Taverna Pizzeria and Risottoria, will be in the kitchen. Santiago Pena is doing Osteria's construction. You remember Pena. He's the Dallas contractor/metal artisan who opened Taco Loco and Santiago's Cantina Dallas in Deep Ellum. The latter was shuttered suddenly after a May opening. Liquor license delays, he says, though he expects to have it reopened soon. "I couldn't do it," he laments. "I was giving [drinks] away for a long time every day, giving, giving, giving, giving, and hell, that got expensive.".. . Snookie's Bar & Grill owner Gene Street Jr. is a big investor in Little Havana, the restaurant that is going into the space where Mike's Treehouse, launched by Dallas bartender Mike DeMarco, once resided. John Leatherwood, a Snookie's/Black-eyed Pea/Good Eats/El Chico alum, is the creator and managing partner of the Caribbean-themed venue. "Mike's just didn't work, and they wanted out of the restaurant business," Street says. "Someone got into it and thought it'd be fun. It's not." Hell, it got expensive, as Santiago Pena might say...Look for Jesse Moreno-Valle at Gershwin's. He's there now. Moreno-Valle has cooked at Seventeen Seventeen and Popolos Café as well as the French Room and Enigma... Nashwood Winery, "the only licensed winery in Dallas," opened this summer in Preston Forest Village. Here it produces and sells chardonnay, merlot, pinot grigio and zinfandel. Time passes. Dallas gets wetter. People get happier with their cholesterol counts.
