- Baybrook Mall To Add 555K SF of Retail, Restaurant and Entertainment Space, Create Lawn the Length of a Football Field [Houston Chronicle ($)]
- Less Than a Year After Opening in Former Gerland’s, Fiesta To Close Its First Specialty Store in Sugar Land on April 20 [Prime Property]
- Karbach Brewing Starting Construction Today on 19K SF, 2-Story Addition To Its Northwest Houston Facility [Prime Property; previously on Swamplot]
- Black Walnut Café Moving Across the Street in The Woodlands To Double Space, Add More Seating, Parking [Houston Business Journal]
- Austin Restaurant Foreign & Domestic Wants To Be Open in Houston By This Time Next Year [Culturemap]
- Winds Have Helped Contain Spilled Oil to a Few Shoreline Spots Along Galveston Bay [Galveston County Daily News ($)]
Photo of M.D. Anderson Mid Campus 1 Building at Braeswood and Bertner: Russell Hancock via Swamplot Flickr Pool
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It’s interesting that a number of restaurants and bars from Austin have chosen to expand to Houston, but not to Dallas ( or San Antonio). Seems to me Dallas doesn’t have quite the food scene Houston does, and the chains do better there than here. Not Dallas bashing, just making an observation.
Please please please let there be a hockey rink in there!!!
When a new company wants to roll out a new product they always pick Dallas–people in Dallas are sophisticated, trendy, and always crave the newest coolest thing so it’s odd that these Austin restaurants would ignore Dallas, but then again Austin is “weird”–as for San Antonio, they tend to like home grown restaurants and tend to care more about food taste than whether it’s trendy–tofu and black beans are not exactly popular in San Antonio.
Awesome about Baybrook, always liked that mall.
How many locations does it take to be considered a chain?
Uchi (or F&D) opens in Houston and we call it an outpost. Torchy’s, though, is probably considered a chain by now, albeit a regional one.
My musings about other Texas cities that hold a tenuous strand of applicability b/c we’re talking about all the major metro areas of Texas:
The true Austin died in the early 90’s…. about the time the Southwest conference died.
I think Austin restaurants move to Houston b/c certain areas of Houston are more ‘Austin’ than Austin is.
Austin doesn’t want to admit it but they’re just a newer and more liberal (white liberal to be more precise) version of Dallas that is being fueled by relocated California businesses and Northeast transplants.
San Antonio feels at least 10 years behind practically everything (except the Riverwalk… see later), but gets a pass b/c they’re the only city in Texas that respects history. The river walk is cheesy much like their lovely TexMex, and can actually be super fun even if its so touristy. SA gets mad respect b/c they did it WAY b/f new urbanism. The SA hill country kicks butt and is way better than Austin’s hill country. SA is the ‘smallest city’ with over 1MM people in the US.
Dallas is what the rest of the country wants Texas to be, but is actually nothing like what Texas IS. Fort Worth keeps the metroplex honest. All the other cities of the metroplex are actually genetically identical than Dallas. They express genes, however, and therefore seem different… much like E.Coli.
That’s all I could come up with on the fly….
They express *different* genes however, and therefore seem different….
I really like the current original Black Walnut in The Woodlands – – have been going there for over 11 years. Could use more booths, but overall very comfortable with a loyal adult customer base. Would have preferred to see them open another one a few miles away vs. closing this one for larger digs. I hope they can create the same atmosphere (and not duplicate all of their other sterile concepts popping-up in The Woodlands).