COMMENT OF THE DAY: CONTEMPLATING THE MYSTERIES OF MEYER PARK “[I] drive by meyerpark twice a day going to and from work and i have no idea of exactly what the heck is going on in that massive construction site. In this day and age you would think the developer would have a website, a billboard, a flyer or something that provides the general public with more information about what’s going on. They’[ve] completely demolished several of the buildings but they left the tower in place. That leads me to believe they are going to some how use it as part of the new design. In addition to the Luby’s we need another restaurant like a Cheddar’s with Good food for a low price. I just think this area has so much potential for growth and [its] location is ideal.” [Joe_lsu, commenting on The New Smash Hits at the Meyer Park AMC 16 Theater]
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COMMENT OF THE DAY: THE SHOPS AROUND THE CORNER “Where I live, in the Montrose area, I will soon be within a three minute drive of TWO Whole Foods, a brand new HEB, an updated Kroger, another supernice Kroger on West Gray, a Randall’s, a Fiesta, etc. Three of these will be within a 10 minute walk from my house. I’d wager that there are few (no?) other neighborhoods in America offering this kind of variety and abundance. Meanwhile, my fellow Houstonians who happen to live in the 3rd Ward have no real shopping options nearby. They have to drive 10 or more minutes to perhaps suboptimal grocery stores and fresh produce. But there is a plethora of fried and fast food options in their neighborhood. So, when deciding where to eat quickly, McDonalds or the Navy Fried Seafood store seem to be the first choices. I think what Superhouston is implying is a possibly causal relationship between poverty, [poor] health, and a lack of fresh food. The connection is complicated, multi-dimensional, and definitely worth talking about.” [Matt, commenting on Where the Grocery Stores Aren’t]
The city of Houston and the Cordish Company are “deep into negotiations” with Sundance Cinemas to take over the former Angelika Theater spot at Bayou Place, Steven Thomson reports. Robert Redford’s Sundance Group has operated 2 Sundance Cinemas since 2007 — an 8-screen complex in San Francisco and a 6-screen multiplex in Madison, Wisconsin. If Sundance does end up taking over the vacant Angelika space at 510 Texas St. and maintains all existing screens, it would tie with the Sundance Kabuki Cinema near Pacific Heights as the largest complex in the small chain. The company appears to have scaled back the aggressive expansion plans it announced 4 years ago, which included new theaters in Chicago and Denver. The Angelika Film Center closed suddenly last summer.
That little shopping district on 19th St. in the Heights will get its second vegetarian restaurant as soon as Radical Eats opens its kitchen just down the street from Shade. (They serve meat at Shade; it’s Cricket’s Creamery and Cafe across the street that’s vegetarian.) Staci Davis, who’s been selling tamales, tacos, and other Radical Eats fare at Antidote Coffee, Smart Meals, and various area farmers markets, will be moving her food-preparation operation from a drug and alcohol abuse counseling center in a former Holiday Inn by the Eastex Freeway near Little York to a significantly smaller space inside Katy Whelan’s planned Heights Ashbury Coffeehouse in the space at 242 W. 19th St. Whelan originally had plans to name her space the Love Street Coffee Shop; it’s going where Balinskas Architectural Imports used to be. Also sharing space with Davis and Whelan: Architect Deborah Morris’s new juice bar, Juicy in the Sky with Vitamins.
CHANGING WITH THE TIMES ON NORTH MAIN 
“The Heights could certainly use a great drag revue,” concludes Katharine Shilcutt in her survey of the not-so-new restaurant at 4002 N. Main in Brookesmith, across Walton St. from Shipley’s Donuts: “Linda is the chef here at La Casa de Frida, a family-run place that’s been run by the same folks for 30 years on North Main. It was formerly Rico’s Cantina, then — for a very brief period last year — Rico’s Luchadores. That Mexican wrestling-themed concept didn’t pan out, so the family has now switched gears to a Frida Kahlo-decorated Tex-Mex cantina that offers Italian and Chinese food on the menu in addition to college ‘club’ nights on Fridays and drag shows on Saturdays.” [Eating Our Words] Photo: Swamplot inbox.
The sole Houston location of The Tilted Kilt Pub & Eatery, on Hwy. 6 between Westheimer and Briar Forest Dr., has closed. A reader, who writes that the popular breastaurant “always had a full parking lot whenever I drove by,” wants to know why. Sadly, the folks at the company’s Las Vegas HQ haven’t answered any of our questions directly. Instead, Swamplot readers, here’s your vague but perhaps carefully worded statement, purporting to give the lowdown on just how tough it is to run a little Vegas-style beer, wings, and skimpy costumes show out there in West Oaks:
SUMMARY REPORT FROM THE RECENT URBAN GARDEN SUMMIT “There is a 2 acre plot of land beside the parking lot at the Houston Food Bank’s new headquarters on I-10 east and that organization is looking for someone to build a demonstration garden there. Meanwhile, Covenant Community Capital is assisting a group of chefs including Randy Evans from Haven who are looking for a spot for a cooperative restaurant garden. Last Organic Outpost and the Harris County AgriLife extension office are looking for ways to help both groups. One idea under consideration is to turn the Houston Food Bank lot into a composting facility — at least to get that project started. The search for a restaurant garden is focusing on vacant lots in the Fifth Ward.” [Texas Eats; previously on Swamplot]
CORNERING THE BURGER MARKET Helping to balance out the intersection of Highway 6 and West Rd. in Copperfield, currently home to a Wendy’s, a Whataburger, a Chick-fil-A, a Shell station, and 2 banks: Houston’s very first Carl’s Jr. Or the first one here, at least, in about 30 years. The company building the franchise plans to blanket Houston with 40 Carl’s Jr. locations by the end of the decade. Next up: Hwy 6 and S. University Blvd. in Missouri City, and just west of 288 on FM 518 in Pearland. [Cheap Eats in Houston; previously on Swamplot]
To the reader who wrote in to Swamplot noting that Japanese restaurant Oishii at 3764 Richmond near Greenway Plaza was closed and that a large For Lease sign had been posted in front: Do not worry. Your sushi happy hour is safe. The restaurant is resting temporarily so building surgeons can give a portion of the lowslung structure at the corner of Timmons that raised eyebrow look that’s been all the strip-mall rage since about 1992. The restaurant closed down December 19th, and is scheduled to reopen January 10th.
COMMENT OF THE DAY: HOW TO POUR CROWDS INTO HOUSTON PAVILIONS “. . . What usually gets me downtown is free weekend street parking, beer specials at certain bars, and discounted or free (handed-down) arts and Astros tickets. Oh – and formerly, the Angelika. I like to think most middle-class Houstonians share my tastes, summed up by: cheap Mexican food and free parking. Put that into the mix and the number of visitors would double.” [Superdave, commenting on Comment of the Day: How Tough Would It Be To Turn Houston Pavilions Inside Out?]
The Village News is reporting that the Hanover Company has purchased the 4.5-acre site in the Rice Village once slated for Randall Davis’s Sonoma development, and is ready with plans to build a large — though far less grandiose — retail-and-apartment project on the site. Davis and partner Lamesa Properties made a mess of the site 2 years ago, purchasing a stretch of Bolsover St. from the city and demolishing several buildings’ worth of retail and office space before facing the credit markets and figuring out they wouldn’t be able to get financing for the project.
Hanover’s project, called Plaza View Hanover at Rice Village, is scheduled to include 385 “high-end” apartments, 14,000 sq. ft. of retail or restaurant space, and a multi-level parking garage, all in what its designers label a pedestrian-friendly design. What’s that plaza we’ll be viewing? An almost-17,000-sq.-ft. public space along Morningside, with a “water feature, grass lawn, large trees, and restaurant dining spaces.” According to Hanover executive veep John Garibaldi, 55,000 sq. ft. of retail space, 34,000 sq. ft. of office space, and an 8,000-sq.-ft. grocery store were cut from the earlier Sonoma plans. Much of the towering nouveau pomposity of the Sonoma design has been cut too. Along Kelvin St., Hanover’s buildings will reach 6 stories tall; 5 stories along Morningside and Dunstan.
Here’s a first look at the not-so-distant future of Lower Westheimer, just a block east of Montrose, where sushi chef Tyson Cole and the owners of Austin’s Uchi and Uchiko restaurants plan to open a first Houston venture. The new Houston Uchi won’t be taking over the whole corner. The neighboring spaces will instead be available à la carte: The new owners are picturing as many as 3 separate businesses (one with a second floor and rooftop deck) leasing the 4,700-sq.-ft. building that used to house Caffe Den and Privé at 908 Westheimer. Also available, around the corner on Grant St.: a little 714-sq.-ft. structure with the address of 904B Westheimer. It’ll share restrooms with Uchi, which will be taking over the former Felix Mexican Restaurant space on the corner, at 904A. The left side of the Grant St. rendering above is the only view we’ve seen so far that shows any part of Uchi itself, but it contains a few clues about how Austin architect Michael Hsu (creator of the original Uchi on South Lamar as well as Houston’s Sushi Raku in Midtown) plans to transform a vintage Tex-Mex classic into something sushi-worthy. It looks like at least a few of those arched windows will stay:
AND A CORNER BAKERY ON EVERY CORNER 
A new franchisee of Dallas’s Corner Bakery Cafe chain has bought the company’s 2 Houston restaurants — one in the Reliant Energy Plaza building Downtown and the other downstairs from Dowling Music in that double-decker strip mall facing the 59 feeder near Kirby. Next step for Fairview Capital Management Group: Open 19 new Corner Bakery locations in Houston over the next 8 years. Watch your endcaps: Franchisees in other cities are planning to add an additional 31 corner locations in Texas over the same period. [Business Wire; previously on Swamplot]
THE LUNCHTIME RACKET AT BRADY’S LANDING Visiting the Houston Ship Channel on a promotional “toxic tour” of sites where the air will likely be invigorated once nearby refineries get chugging on the Canadian tar sands headed for Houston through the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, Perry Dorrell stops by the scenic Brady’s Landing Restaurant during lunchtime: “During the evening the restaurant is like many others in the city: bustling with patrons and staff, the parking lot busy with diner traffic. During the day, however, the region’s oppressive noise is invasive and obnoxious; right next door a facility is dry-docking barges and a team of several men operating industrial-grade pressure washers removes barnacles from their hulls. Cranes swing containers to and from foreign freighters, crashing and booming. The warehouses directly across the channel are beehives of activity, with stevedores operating forklifts, shifting and stacking and slamming pallets of material. It was amazing how loud it was, a phenomenon I never noticed in my visits at night to dine. On the other side of the restaurant a steamshovel was loading and unloading a smoking, 200-hundred-foot high brown pile of … something, fertilizer-like in appearance. No accompanying aroma, fortunately. Maybe we were upwind.” [Brains and Eggs; previously on Swamplot]
That phoenix carefully painted only a week and a half ago onto the side of the Agora Cafe at 1712 Westheimer near Dunlavy is now gone, reports the camera of Swamplot photographer Candace Garcia. Agora and the Antique Warehaus that used to be next door donned extremely realistic fire costumes for this past Halloween. In place of the firebird, which onlookers took as a sign the cafe might soon reopen: A new sign for the cafe itself, probably a clearer indication. It looks like more paint has found its way to the front of the Montrose hotspot too:
