LUCKY BURGER REPLACEMENT: DRIVE-THRU BANH MI FROM THE LES GIVRAL’S CREW? 
It looks like a new drive-thru Banh Mi spot from the folks behind the rapidly expanding Les Givral’s restaurant empire is hoping to take over the recently vacated Lucky Burger building at the corner of Richmond and Mandell St. in Montrose. That’s the strongly hinted story, at least, implicit in the new teaser Twitter account for the venture, called Oui BanhMi, affiliated with the Les Givral’s Kahve restaurant on Washington Ave (as well as the recently opened Oui Desserts at 3411 Kirby and the Banh Mieria food truck), which pinpoints itself at Lucky Burger’s old 1601 Richmond Ave address. Any more evidence of the plans? Well, there’s this blurred sheet of “brainstorm” notes posted to the Les Givrals Instagram account last month. [OuiBanhMi on Twitter, via Chic Chick Chic Eats; previously on Swamplot] Photo of Lucky Burger: Swamplot inbox
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Openings and Closings
THERE SHALL BE NO NET LOSS OF SUGAR ON GRAY ST. IN MIDTOWN 
Top Chef: Just Desserts contestant and $53,580 Kickstarter winner Rebecca Masson has finally announced the exact Midtown location of the Fluff Bake Bar storefront she’s been working on since late last year, on account of she just signed a lease last week: It’s set to go in place of the shuttered Sweet Lola Yogurt Bar, (pictured) which ended its reign at 304 Gray St. in Midtown last September. The spot is one of the city’s relatively small number of to-the-sidewalk retail spaces with actual apartments above. Downstairs, customers will be able to dig into Fluff’s Chocolate Stout Syllabub, risotto fritters with gingered blueberries, or chocolate beet cake with cream cheese ice cream — along with beer and wine — but give her another 3 or 4 months to build out the space before you come knocking, please. [Food Chronicles; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Bluebirds and Butterflies
Inspired by the outpourings of support issuing forth from Swamplot’s comments section for the city’s new smallest park ever, the folks behind the parklet on 19th St. have sent in a bunch of photos of the completed project outside a Heights mattress store — including the aerial drone’s-eye view above, which was taken shortly before Thursday’s inauguration ceremony attended by the mayor, a few city councilmembers, and a couple of boy-scout-uniformed salesmen from an adjacent shop who roasted s’mores for the occasion.
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By Popular Demand
NEW ‘CHICKEN RANCH’ OPENING ON NORTH MAIN NEAR SUNSET HEIGHTS WILL SERVE ACTUAL FRIED CHICKEN 
But will it be home to the Best Little Drumsticks in Texas? Josh Martinez, the chef behind the Modular food truck and (until recently) Goro & Gun downtown, and partner Paul Sedillo plan to open an actual fried chicken joint in a not-yet-disclosed location on North Main St., Alison Cook reports. And they’ll be naming it in honor of the establishment of uh, musical repute first brought to widespread public attention back in 1973 by a series of teevee reports by then-new Channel 13 reporter Marvin Zindler, and again later by a Broadway musical and a follow-on movie starring Dolly Parton, Burt Reynolds, and Dom DeLuise. (Not to mention, separately, a haw-along tune by ZZ Top.) But unlike its historical namesake in La Grange (pictured at right in its glory days), the Chicken Ranch “on the fringe” of Sunset Heights won’t be renting out hosted rooms by the hour — it’ll be frying up chickens by the order, though the birds will be available in either regular or “spicy Louisiana-style” versions. Sedillo tells Cook he plans to install a black velvet painting of Zindler in the restaurant when it opens this fall. [Food Chronicles] Photo: Fayette Heritage Museum and Archives via The Signal
What do the Smoothie King at the corner of S. Shepherd and West Alabama, the W Grill at 4825 Washington Ave. (pictured above), and the southern parking lot of the Taco Cabana at the corner of South Main and Old Spanish Trail have in common? They’re all shaped from former locations of Rally’s Hamburgers. After the burger chain’s exit from Houston in the mid-to-late nineties, the distinctive white structures with rounded corners and glass block were repurposed to a range of uses by subsequent tenants. Before its Smoothie King transformation, for example, the spot at 3007 S. Shepherd Dr. did time as a bank. A location of Checkers Drive-in (a rival chain that later merged with Rally’s) at the northwest corner of Antoine and West Tidwell was transformed into a Church’s Chicken — before, that is, being scraped for a drive-up retail box housing a payday lender and a wireless store.
The Drive-Thru Burger Race
No, it’s a bit more than a sidewalk planter. That thing you’re looking at that’s sitting across from the New Living Bedroom store in the Heights is the city of Houston’s first-ever permitted parklet — or at least it will be after Thursday, when an official ceremony with the mayor and a couple of councilmembers in attendance inaugurates it officially as a tiny park. (A parklet was set up on Travis St. Downtown for a weekend last year, but the parking disruption was just a temporary thing.)
The “semi-permanent” green installation in front of 321 W. 19th St. measures a whopping 125 sq. ft., taking up a single street parking spot. Designed and built by some of the workers in the “Made at New Living” program run out of New Living and its Kirby Dr. storefront, the 19th St. installation is meant to be the first piece in a pilot parklet program promoted by the city.
Photo: New Living
Bedroom Community
Where many have failed — say, 4 restaurants in 7 years — the Bombay Indian Grill now dares to tread. The ‘where’ would be the light-rail-side storefront at 706 Main St., where you might have visited Yatra Brasserie, Laidback Manor, Korma Sutra, or the Downtown outlet of the Burger Guys in previous years. Or maybe (more likely, considering the successive histories of those establishments in this location) you never visited any of them at all. Soon another set of light-rail lines will be running down Capitol, the nearest cross street, so maybe you’ll have fewer excuses? A reader sends in this pic showing the new banner for the Indian-food restaurant hung on the Burger Guys’ signage leftovers.
- Previously on Swamplot: Downtown Burger Guys Closes Down
Photo: Swamplot inbox
Replacing the Burger Guys, and Others
A source tells Swamplot that the Samurai Noodle restaurant that’s scheduled to open in the former Sprint spot in the Durham Shopping Center facing the Katy Fwy. feeder road (at center in the photo above) is in fact a first out-of-state venture for the acclaimed 3-location Seattle ramen shop of the same name. The I-10-facing spot in the strip center at 1801 Durham Dr. is wedged between Golden Hunan restaurant and the SNAP Spay-Neuter and Animal Wellness Clinic (not to be confused, we earnestly hope, with SNAP Kitchen). In Seattle, Samurai Noodle offers non-pork broth options for non-traditionalists, and allows customers to specify their preferred level of noodle firmness.
By the Katy Feeder
Humble-area news website HKA Texas has a few exterior pics of the new Amazon.com fulfillment center that opened last week at 8120 Humble-Westfield Dr. between Kenswick Dr. and Lee Rd. in Houston — a good mile west of the Humble city limits, according to the story, but good enough to rate a Humble address. The author of the story was restricted to exterior photos of the 250,000-sq.-ft. facility a couple miles northeast of Bush Intercontinental Airport, which is officially labeled a “sortation center” by Amazon. (The company typically reserves interior access to carefully controlled media visits such as the one described in this month’s profile of a Phoenix center in Wired magazine.)
They’ve Got Your Package Here
The Houston Area League of PC Users will be moving out of its ghost town of a 6,665 sq. ft. headquarters space in the sleepy 2-story office building at 4543 Post Oak Place Dr. a bit later than its originally announced deadline of the end of 2013. But HAL-PC isn’t leaving (as it declared last year) to find some more suitable space with more attractive rents and fewer parking problems, and so the building can work its way to a new identity as an assembly of medical clinics; it’s leaving on account of the organization is shutting down entirely. By a vote of the board of directors earlier this week, HAL-PC has chosen to disband.
User Group Deprecated
The reader who sent Swamplot a steaming hot tip late last summer — Pink’s Pizza is coming to Wash Ave! — brings us up-to-date on construction progress at the sidestreet-facing strip center at 1009 Moy St. (above) a full 10 months later: There’s been none. “Other than the signage on the building and on Washington at the front of the shopping center, there’s been no work done in months,” reads our report. One door over from the Pink’s spot in Suite B (pictured at right), however, a sign is up for Below Parallel, a new retail outlet where customers will be able to equip themselves to work off their pizza before even eating it. The banner promises shoes, supplements, and apparel —- and an opening date next month. “Strange location,” declares our tipster — the shuttered Blue Moose Lodge is around the corner — “but I guess the four Crossfit gyms in a mile radius can shop there.”
- All the Gear You Need, Today [Below Parallel]
- Previously on Swamplot: Pink’s Pizza Moving Into West End Strip Center
Photos: Swamplot inbox
West End Cycles
The Dream’s & Bros. Hand Car Wash at the corner of San Felipe and Bancroft just east of the Target parking lot has shut down, a bunch of readers have reported to Swamplot. The car wash was founded by Afis Olajwon, brother of former Rockets center Hakeem Olajuwon (and himself a former guard for the UTSA Roadrunners), in 1998. On Friday, a large piece of demo equipment was hanging around in the parking lot behind a new chain-link fence surrounding the property at 4303 San Felipe St. Earlier in the week, the basketball-themed signage was removed.
Photo: Ray Hankamer
To That Great Car Wash in the Sky
Street Lights Residential completed its purchase of a strip of land on the east side of the Chelsea Market shopping center (behind the buildings shown at left) on Chelsea Blvd. east of Montrose Blvd. just last month; the 3 small retail buildings there, which used to house the Blue Mambo hair salon, Nolan-Rankin Galleries, the ELS language center, and Just Wax It, were themselves waxed off the site in April. Chelsea Market owner David K. Gibbs sold the property, which extends from Chelsea Blvd. to the edge of the Southwest Fwy., to allow a larger footprint for the development of the 20-story Chelsea Montrose highrise planned next door at 4 Chelsea Blvd. (pictured at top).
The resulting parking shortage at Chelsea Market is to blame for Main Street Theater’s exit from the space in the shopping center it had rented since 1996, according to the theater’s managers and its landlord. The theater group, which was renting 4617 Montrose Blvd. on a month-to-month basis for its Theater for Youth program, had also hoped to use it to stage 3 productions next season during the renovation of its Rice Village location on Times Blvd., which is scheduled to begin in November.
Museum District Parking
Does beer taste better in glass or metal containers? The draught beers of a new craft brewery will soon be bubbling in yet another cleaned-up metal structure in Houston — this one the former Fredrick’s Auto Repair in the southern edge of Oak Forest. 3540 Oak Forest Dr. will soon be home to the brand-new Allen’s Landing Brewing Company, the company announced on its Facebook page.
- Hand Made Craft Beer [Allen’s Landing Brewing Co.]
Photo: Allen’s Landing Brewing Co.
Opens in Front
REFORMED OIL WORKER TYPES GIVING UP PUMP JACK, OPENING NEW BREWERY NEAR THE WILLOWBROOK MALL 
Why are the owners of the microbrewery set to open later this year in this industrial building in the Four Season Business Park at 6820 Bourgeois Rd., a mile southeast-ish of the Willowbrook Mall, calling themselves the 11 Below Brewing Co.? Should their beers be served that cold? “Start with the oilfield, and move to the brewing industry, just like our founders,” the company explains on its Facebook page. “There’s 42 gallons in a barrel of crude oil, but only 31 gallons in a barrel of beer. See what we did there?” You should also see that the original name, Pump Jack Brewing Co., encountered some “trademark drama,” according to the founders, prompting the change. [11 Below Brewing] Photo with superimposed logo: 11 Below
