CONFIRMED: NEW IPAD WILL HIT NEW HOUSTON APPLE STORE ON OPENING DAY 
To guarantee there’ll be Apple addicts camping outside the new Highland Village store on its opening day next Friday, Apple announced today that March 16 will also be the day the new iPad — yes, that’s what it’s being called — goes on sale for the first time. The Highland Village Apple Store, the company’s first not-in-a-mall store in Houston, will also be the first glass-front, glass-back, and glass-roof location to have entrances at both front and rear. Does that mean there’ll be 2 separate lines too? [Mashable; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Vinson
Sign up for the Newsletter
Openings and Closings
WHAT IS PAPPAS GOING TO DO TO MAMA’S? 
Pappas Restaurants is the new owner of Mama’s Cafe at 6019 Westheimer, west of Fountainview. The restaurant shut down over the weekend “after 30 years of serving Huevos Hofbrau and CFS,” reports the b4-u-eat newsletter. A Pappadeaux Seafood Kitchen is next door; a new restaurant in the former Mama’s location is expected to open in about a month, possibly with the same name. [b4-u-eat] Photo: City-Data
HIGHLAND VILLAGE APPLE STORE TO DEBUT WITH THE IPAD 3 The Apple Store still under construction at the corner of Drexel and Westheimer in the Highland Village Shopping Center will open just in time for the debut of the iPad 3. If, that is, workers scramble quickly enough to get the glass-roofed, walk-through structure ready to open by March 16th — which a super-secret source tells Chron tech columnist Dwight Silverman is the official opening date. And, uh, if Apple actually goes ahead and introduces an iPad 3 on March 7th. Oh yeah, and also if the new iPad actually goes on sale on the 16th or later. Please form your line to the left, in front of Sprinkles Cupcakes. [TechBlog; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Vinson
A LONG GOODBYE FOR THE WOODLANDS MALL SEARS 
The Woodlands Mall location is among the 11 anchor stores around the country Sears announced it will sell to mall operator General Growth Properties. All of the stores will remain open until 2013; a closing date will be announced within the next several months. [Retail Traffic] Photo: City-Data
A reader catches workers installing the rising-sun Del Taco logo yesterday on the new fast-food joint going in at 8910 Westheimer, on the northwest corner of Fondren. Houston’s first Del Taco in a long long while is expected to open there “soon,” according to the installation crew.
Photo: Swamplot inbox
WTF IS TAKING THE SHIPPING CONTAINERS SO LONG AT THE MOON TOWER INN 
An only slightly cleaned-up report on the progress of the brewery and shipping-container redo at the Canal St. bar, straight from the Moon Tower Inn Facebook page: “as you all should know, we’re late for everything and some time’s we just plain don’t show up. but DO NOT WORRY, moon tower will be OPEN SOON. using new technology (shipping containers etc) is tricky business and moves a lil slow with our fine city. so, we’re not gonna say exactly when we’ll be back open yet ’cause we’re ass holes like that and we like the suspense. but, our brewery equipment is damn near built and the containers for the kitchen and bar are being fitted at a welding yard and are almost ready to bring on-site! so… everything’s a go! SEE YOU THIS SPRING . . .” [Moon Tower Inn on Facebook, via Eater Houston; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Eddie S.
COMBINED ITALIAN WINERY AND PIPING PRODUCTS PLANT OPENING IN WESTLAND BUSINESS PARK 
What could better symbolize this city’s international sophistication and industriousness than the construction of an Italian winery in a Houston business park off West Rd. and Eldridge? Easy: Putting the winery inside a 60,000 sq.-ft. pipe-machining plant in said business park. Stefano Farina brand Chianti, Barolo, barbaresco, and prosecco will be fermented and bottled in a 5,000-sq.-ft. winery with its own separate cooling and ventilation systems after the dual facilities open, likely in March. Grape juice will be shipped there from the Farina Group’s wineries in Tuscany and Piedmont. Meanwhile, next door, the same company’s ITEX Piping Products plant will produce stainless steel flanges, stud bolts, nipples, swages and various piping products for Houston-area oil and gas businesses — from steel forged in the company’s Western European plants. [Houston Business Journal] Photo: Stefano Farina
A self-proclaimed “loyal reader from the First Ward” ventures into Woodland Heights to snap and send this photo documenting construction taking place at the former gas station at 2631 White Oak — home most recently to Beer Island — and the continuing transformation of White Oak Dr. When construction is complete, the spot on the corner of Studewood will become the 5th Houston location of Little Woodrow’s.
Photo: Swamplot inbox
You’ll have the remainder of this month to say goodbye to another piece of the old Washington Ave: The Guadalajara Bakery at 4003 Washington announces, through a sign posted in a front window, that it’ll be closing down on February 29th, after 45 years in business. The Houston Press‘s Katherine Shilcutt reports that new building owners have plans to turn the breakfast-taco spot on the corner of Leverkuhn into a bar, and gave the bakery 30 days to vacate; the Chavez family has no plans to reopen elsewhere.
- Openings & Closings: January 2012 [Eating Our Words]
Photo: Swamplot inbox
A SECOND RUN AT GROCERIES FOR DOWNTOWN 
Today is opening day for Georgia’s Market Downtown at 420 Main St., the same space where Byrd’s Market shut down last summer. The opening of Phoenicia Specialty Foods at One Park Place across from Discovery Green in the meantime means Georgia’s won’t be Downtown’s only grocery store. Like Phoenicia, Georgia’s is a second location of a more suburban operation (Georgia’s Farm to Market, in the former Kmart on the I-10 feeder just east of Dairy Ashford), and includes a cafe and bar (The Cellar, underground). [Eater Houston; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Eater Houston
The new restaurant opening in the space left behind by the shuttered 11th St. Cafe, also known for a time last year as the Ruggles 11th St. Cafe? Ruggles Green. No, seriously. But apparently it’s not the same Ruggles the restaurant started with.
For about 5 months last summer, the 11th St. Cafe at 748 E. 11th St. took on a new name: Ruggles 11th St. Cafe — after Ruggles Grill owner Bruce Molzan agreed to operate the restaurant. But Molzan later pulled out of the arrangement because “he considered the quality of the food there poor,” he told Chronicle reporter Purva Patel last month. A trademark-infringement lawsuit Molzan then filed against the cafe prompted owner Archie Patterson to remove the Ruggles name from the restaurant in early December; he closed it entirely — after 35 years of operation — at the end of the year, announcing that a new tenant for the space would be named in late January.
GOODBYE TO HEALTH FOUNTAIN 
A reader is looking for some acknowledgment of the demise of the Health Fountain Restaurant, a fixture inside the Post Oak Y at 1331 Augusta (now officially called the Trotter Family YMCA) for more than 30 years. “Nothing horrible happened, I think the gentleman that owned it was just ready to retire. They quietly closed their doors around Christmastime and the restaurant is now Island Smoothie. I will miss the old place, as will many many others! They always had good healthy food and friendly service . . . Island smoothie will be good too, just would be nice to see some publication say so long and that they will be missed!” Update, 1/24: The restaurant’s new name is Island Grill. [Swamplot inbox] Photo: YMCA Houston
HOT ROLLS FOR THE MUSEUM DISTRICT 
A passerby notes there’s construction going on at 5512 La Branch, around the corner from the Children’s Museum. Going in at that address: an establishment named after the proprietors’ late great grandmother, culinary entrepreneur and hot-roll-mix pioneer Lucille Bishop Smith, who on the restaurant’s Facebook page is shown in photos feeding her creations to grocery-store shoppers and boxing champ Joe Louis and greeting Martin Luther King. Lucille’s, scheduled to open this month, promises to feature Southern cooking “with infusions of European gourmet techniques.” [Facebook via Swamplot inbox] Photo: LoopNet
Liquid Gold Hospitality Group partner Stephen Ross tells Swamplot he and his companies have no involvement in Gravitas Restaurant’s lease of the building at 807 Taft St. or with any of the recently closed restaurant’s financing arrangements. “Until recent comments, we were under the impression that we parted on good terms,” Ross says of his relationship with Gravitas owner Scott Tycer. After shutting down Gravitas this past Sunday, Tycer sent a notice to employees and a couple of online publications claiming that the closure had been “driven by the failure of Liquid Gold Hospitality, under the terms of our Operating Agreement with them, to maintain current payments on our bank note.”
Ross’s Coconut Grove was under a management contract with Gravitas that began in May, Ross responds — but the company’s involvement had ended by November: “Liquid Gold Hospitality Group was NEVER involved officially in any of this, however, some principals of Liquid Gold are affiliated with Coconut Grove,” Ross says. “Mr. Tycer has chosen to close the restaurant for his own reasons, none of which involve Coconut Grove, Ltd or Liquid Gold Hospitality Group, LLC.”
- Letter to Gravitas Employees: “Liquid Gold Hospitality Blatantly Violated the Terms of our Agreement” [Eater Houston]
- Previously on Swamplot: Lacking Gravitas
Photo: Eater Houston
The restaurant at 807 Taft St. closed Sunday after 6 years in the former Antone’s space — “for deep cleaning,” according to a sign posted on the door — but messages from Scott Tycer’s Kraftsmen Baking make it clear Gravitas’s problems won’t be fixed by a quick bout of scrubbing. According to Eater Houston, the restaurant had been under the management of the Liquid Gold restaurant group since May — while a sale was being negotiated — but the company decided to sell its stake back to Tycer in November. In a statement sent to Culturemap, Kraftsmen blames the closure on “the failure of Liquid Gold Hospitality, under the terms of our Operating Agreement with them, to maintain current payments on our bank note. . . . We have tried to negotiate with the bank, but they are forcing us to close the doors and they are taking our equipment in lieu of payment.”
- Gravitas Closed After Months of Sale Negotiations [Eater Houston]
- Goodbye Gravitas: Former Scott Tycer hotspot suddenly shutters, restaurant cleared out [Culturemap]
- Previously on Swamplot: Negotiating the First Ward for Lawyers
Photo: XenoHumph
