Restaurants

Openings and Closings
04/28/11 4:36pm

The Buffalo Grille Has Left Buffalo Speedway

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Restaurants, West University
21 Comments

Ding! That’ll be all for the Buffalo Grille — or its 26-year location at Bissonnet and Buffalo Speedway, at least. The restaurant closed at 2 o’clock today, minutes after serving its last meal (an order of chicken enchiladas, if you have to ask). Next assignment for the building: to go away, and leave behind a few more concrete parking spaces for the H-E-B Buffalo Market.

Sometime next week, a slightly larger Buffalo Grille will reopen a mile to the west at 4080 Bissonnet, on the Academy St. end of the Randall’s shopping center, Weslayan Plaza. Inside will be an even-more-enclosed version of the restaurant’s enclosed patio, plus space for an eventual actual outdoor patio next door:

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Downtown
04/20/11 9:57am

Bayou Place Turnover Now Complete

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Openings and Closings, Quicklink, Restaurants, Retail
12 Comments

BAYOU PLACE TURNOVER NOW COMPLETE Curtain! The oldest tenant at Bayou Place downtown — and the only venue left from the original 1997 retail lineup at the revamped former Albert Thomas Convention Center — closed last week. Mingalone Italian Bar & Grill, with its balcony view of the Wortham Center plaza from across Texas Ave., had a 14-year run. Photo: Mingalone

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Buying and Selling
04/14/11 8:40pm

The Finger Offer That Never Came: How the Owners of Otto’s Ended Up Settling for Much Less

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Commercial Real Estate, Fraud, Lawsuits, Mixed Use, New Construction, Restaurants, Retail, Rice Military, Shopping Centers
19 Comments

The longtime owners of the now-shuttered original Otto’s Bar B Que and Hamburgers on Memorial Dr. filed suit on Tuesday against their former broker, Cushman & Wakefield executive director David Cook, claiming that he failed to let them know about several offers to buy their property. As a result, the lawsuit claims, the owners ended up selling their real-estate holdings for — and settling into retirement with — only a third of the money they might have otherwise received. Marcus and June Sofka originally listed their restaurant at 5502 Memorial Dr. and some adjacent property with Cook in August 2007. Two months later, according to the suit, the Ponderosa Land Development Co. submitted a written offer for the land to Cook for $105 a sq. ft. But the Sofkas claim they didn’t hear about that offer until much later. Why wouldn’t Cook have given them such good news?

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Houston Heights
04/01/11 4:18pm

19th St. in the Heights Not Quite Ready for That Sixties Vibe

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Openings and Closings, Quicklink, Restaurants
5 Comments

19TH ST. IN THE HEIGHTS NOT QUITE READY FOR THAT SIXTIES VIBE Contrary to a few emailed and published reports claiming that it opened for business yesterday, the Heights Ashbury Coffee House still needs “a few more weeks” before it’ll be ready, owner Katy Whelan tells Swamplot . . . after an initial “YIKES!” The space at 242 W. 19th St. will be the new home of Staci Davis’s Radical Eats and Deborah Morris’s Juicy in the Sky with Vitamins juice bar. “We promise you we are ALMOST THERE,” writes Whelan. “We will be offering lots of specials for the wait.” [Previously on Swamplot]

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Cinco Ranch
03/25/11 2:16pm

Everything Was Going Fine at the Berryhill in Cinco Ranch — Until This Happened

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Katy, Leasing, Openings and Closings, Quicklink, Restaurants, Retail, Shopping Centers
7 Comments

EVERYTHING WAS GOING FINE AT THE BERRYHILL IN CINCO RANCH — UNTIL THIS HAPPENED The Berryhill Baja Grill in Villagio Town Center — that Tuscan-themed shopping center in Cinco Ranch — has closed. “Not hugely newsworthy,” a Swamplot reader admits — except for one little part of the story. According to a lawsuit filed earlier this month by Villagio Partners, the restaurant hasn’t paid its rent in twenty-seven months. Berryhill moved into the shopping center in August 2007 but the franchise’s operators haven’t paid at all since the beginning of 2009, according to a filing with the Harris County District Court. [Ultimate Katy] Photo: Villagio Town Center

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Interiors
03/18/11 1:09pm

A Bigger and Fancier Mai’s Restaurant Reopens April 16th

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Midtown, Openings and Closings, Renovations, Restaurants
15 Comments

Sporting a new stick-on West Elm look outside but a more modern feel inside, the rebuilt Mai’s Restaurant will open next month, a year and 2 months after a fire gutted the Midtown Vietnamese pioneer. A Swamplot reader who lives nearby and says he’s been “waiting patiently” to eat there again sends in this photo from this morning of the building front at 3403 Milam, along with a few notes and questions. But first, a few sneak peeks at the restaurant’s not-quite-finished interior from earlier this week:

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Memorial Heights
03/18/11 12:06pm

Strip Center Lockout: Terlingua Border Cafe on Studewood Still Closed

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Openings and Closings, Restaurants, Retail, Strip Centers
9 Comments

Counting from the date on the notice taped to the front door, it’s only been a little more than 2 weeks since Terlingua Border Cafe got locked out of its space at the southern end of that super-festive Shops at Memorial Heights strip center at 920 Studewood. But already people have begun to notice the restaurant’s absence. A couple of Swamplot readers sent in these pics of the Border Cafe ghost town. A snapshot of that friendly little letter from the landlord, after the jump:

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Montrose
03/16/11 1:29pm

It’s Showtime at El Real

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Openings and Closings, Restaurants
12 Comments

Never mind the construction work still going on in the parking lot next door: B4-u-eat guesses  El Real Tex Mex No. 7 will open quietly at 1201 Westheimer this Saturday — well, at least for a broadcast of the Southbound Food radio show. Actual opening date for the vintage Tex-Mex venture put together by Bryan Caswell, Robb Walsh, and Bill Floyd in the old Tower Theatre? Uh, “soon.” Chefs were busy pouring on the lard, and waiters were getting some training there earlier this week. If you’re looking for El Reals Nos. 1 through 6, you’ll need to wait a bit longer.

Photo: Candace Garcia

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Buying and Selling
03/11/11 10:53am

Ruggles Grill on Westheimer: Gloria’s Got Your Number

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Land Sales, Lower Westheimer, Montrose, Proposed Developments, Restaurants
10 Comments

Two immigrants from El Salvador who survived what they describe as a “precarious existence” as undocumented workers in Houston for several years plan to buy the 3 Ruggles Grill buildings at 903 Westheimer, tear them down, and build a new 7,500-sq.-ft. restaurant on the site just east of Montrose Blvd. Jose and Gloria Fuentes met each other in Houston after fleeing their war-torn native country in 1978. Their Salvadorian restaurant chain, Gloria’s, now has 12 locations in the Dallas area and one in Austin. The Ruggles purchase hasn’t been completed, the HBJ‘s Allison Wollam reports. But the company also plans to open 3 additional locations nearby: in Sugar Land, The Woodlands, and West U. Ruggles chef and co-owner Bruce Molzan hinted last month that he’d reopen the Ruggles flagship in a new location if the building sold. The 26,812-sq.-ft. property was listed for sale at the end of last year.

Photo: Moody Rambin

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Energy Corridor
03/04/11 12:06pm

If the Buffalo Grille Had Migrated West

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Openings and Closings, Restaurants, Strip Centers
2 Comments

Brock Silverstein tells the HBJ‘s Allison Wollam the strip-center endcap on the northwest corner of Briar Forest and Eldridge Parkway where he and his wife Stacey just opened the Pecan Creek Grille is one of the locations he had investigated a year and a half ago as a possible new home for the then-ready-to-roam Buffalo Grille. Fans of that West U breakfast joint, where the Silversteins worked for 10 years, may find this new lunch spot in the Energy Corridor a little familiar, in a way-out-west kind of way: Pecan Creek has an outdoor patio and serves “diner-style” food, Tex-Mex standards, and breakfast all day.

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New Construction
02/28/11 6:19pm

Starting to Dig on the Carrabba’s Garage

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Proposed Developments, Restaurants, Upper Kirby
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Here’s the big hole being dug at the corner of Branard and Argonne, just off Kirby Dr., where it looks like Carrabba’s Italian Grill is moving forward on its plan to build a 275-car multi-story parking garage. After Mission Constructors completes the garage, the next step in the multi-stage expansion plan — which includes 2 additional restaurants and some office space — will be to build a new Carrabba’s right next to the existing one along Kirby. That Carrabba’s is one of only 2 still owned by the family of restaurant cofounder Johnny Carrabba. The more than 200 locations in the Carrabba’s Italian Grill chain are owned by Outback Steakhouse’s corporate parent, OSI Restaurant Partners.

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Openings and Closings
02/25/11 12:52pm

A Not-So-Moveable Feast: Sorrel Urban Bistro Wants Local Foods Only at Ziggy’s Old West Alabama Pad

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Restaurants, Upper Kirby
3 Comments

The owner of the Pepperoni’s Pizza chain — which has locations in First Colony, New Territory, Pecan Grove, Riverstone, Rosenberg, Greatwood, Woodbridge, Sienna Plantation, and Fulshear — plans to open a bistro focused on local ingredients in the former Ziggy’s Healthy Grill space at the corner of West Alabama and Greenbriar. (Before Ziggy’s, the down-in-front space in the 2-story office building at 2202 West Alabama housed natural-foods store A Moveable Feast.) A sign advertising Sorrel Urban Bistro now hangs out front. Ray Salti tells the HBJ‘s Allison Wollam he expects his new farm-to-table restaurant — which will feature a new menu each week — will open up by early May, and that he’ll count both Mark’s and Haven as his closest competition. Salti also owns Ray’s Grill in Fulshear.

Photos: Aaron Carpenter

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Nightlife
02/25/11 11:56am

Heavy Drinking in the Old Funeral Home: Kirby’s Settegast Kopf Going Multi-Bar

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Renovations, Restaurants, Upper Kirby
15 Comments

The vacant Settegast Kopf funeral home on Kirby and Colquitt, long the butt of jokes from the proprietors of Radio Music Theater across the street, will soon be home to as many as 4 separate bars, according to plans now working their way through the city permit office. Club Rush, a Railhouse Restaurant and Bar, and Twist Bar are the names attached to the permit applications, though a comment from the fire marshal notes that the plans themselves label the establishments Twist, Fountain Bar, Club R Oak, and Hendricks Pub. It looks like the Hendricks Pub would be carved out of the former Chase Bank drive-thru next door at 3312 Kirby; a TABC application for that building is tied to an attorney by that name.

The entire block of Kirby between Colquitt and West Main, including the 2-story retail building on the north end that includes a Cafe Express, is owned by an entity controlled by New York investment firm Thor Equities, though New Regional Planning broker (and planning commission member) Blake Tartt III, who sold it to them 3 years ago, still has a sign out front. Thor’s plan to build a complex called the Kirby Collection on the site apparently stalled not long after it was announced, though the project still has a placeholder page on the company’s website.

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First Colony
02/24/11 4:24pm

Aling’s Hakka Chinese: First Colony Gets Its First Hakka Chindian Restaurant Next Month

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Openings and Closings, Restaurants, Sugar Land
4 Comments

The next landing site for Chindian food in Sugar Land? A 4,000-sq.-ft. space wedged between Busybody Home Fitness and the Stomping Grounds kiddie playland, in the First Colony Commons shopping center at 59 and Williams Trace, just a few doors down from the Home Depot. The new Hakka Chinese joint there should have its soft opening around the end of next week — presuming all goes well with the inspections scheduled for Monday. A grand opening is scheduled for the middle of March. “In India, Hakka cuisine is like Tex-Mex in Texas — kind of. It’s a very popular cuisine,” Irfan Motiwala tells Swamplot. But it’ll be all new for Sugar Land. Fortunately, Motiwala explains, the Hakka people are used to adjusting flavors to meet local tastes. That’s how the whole Chindian food thing came about, after all: in the 1950s, once large numbers of the already nomadic people fleeing Mao’s revolution settled in India, they started incorporating local spices like coriander and tandoori masala into their cooking, giving it a little more zing. Motiwala’s wife, Hsiaolin, and her brother-in-law, Gary Yan, both of whom will be running things in the kitchen, expect a little bit of the same process to take place at the 15425 Southwest Freeway location of Aling’s Hakka Chinese Cuisine. “If I find the people of Sugar Land eat more spicy than normal, i will adjust it,” Yan says.

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