The $15 million project will have a signature steak and seafood house with things like Italian and Mexican restaurants taking over the other spokes. Hartnett hopes it will be a build-it-and-they-will-come sort of wheel. If no one comes, he says he'll develop the concepts himself. "I'd rather get other people in there, so I don't have to work as hard," Hartnett says. Dirt will start moving in about six weeks and the first restaurant should be open by next summer. But why did Hartnett, founder of Fox and Hound English Pub & Grille restaurants and Cool River Café, ditch Consolidated? He says the restaurants were drawing his attention away from his main focus: speculation in the futures markets. So his partners, including Gene Street, bought him out, though he still has a stake in the Austin and Denver Cool River Cafés and is a major shareholder in Fox and Hound. So then what's with the wheel? "I guess I'll keep coming back to the well--as long as it's got water in it," he says.
Cascades, the near $4 million, 400-seat restaurant and rooftop garden lumbering its way into existence in the long-abandoned circa-1960s glass building on Main Street downtown, is no longer. At least not in name. "None of us liked Cascades," says restaurant manager Kyle Kepner. "It didn't have any mystery or sex appeal." Kepner, former III Forks cellar master, says the name's been changed to Luqa Restaurant & Petrus Lounge. Look for an early November opening... Sage Sikiri, former owner of Café Panache in Hurst, is taking over the former Hamburger Mary's/Thirty-Six Degrees space on Lemmon Avenue to open the 200-seat Aqua Italian Bistro & Bar in October...The Four Seasons Resort and Club in Las Colinas hosted a Texas Sommelier Conference that brutalized a host of contestants last weekend in a quest for Texas' best sommelier. Winner: Kim Wallace, Brenner's Steakhouse, Houston; followed by Dave Poss, Vic & Anthony's, Houston; and Rudy Mikula, Nana Grill, Dallas.
