Party like it’s 1699 or so in this North Blvd. mansion in Edgemont, where an updated 1925 estate includes a full-blown concert hall, super-formal formal rooms, and a platoon of figures serving a variety of decorative and occasionally structural purposes. The palatial, seemingly performance-ready venue and its collection of antique architectural embellishments sits on the northwest corner of North and Mandell St.
The Menil Collection has picked a landscape architecture firm, and the museum says that the long-awaited master-planned reshaping of its 30-acre Montrose spread will get going this September. The firm belongs to Michael Van Valkenburgh, who’s done some tinkering previously at Harvard Yard and Pennsylvania Avenue. Apparently, the first item of business he’ll tackle here is the parking lot off W. Alabama: “[It] really needs attention,” Menil director Josef Helfenstein tells the Houston Chronicle. “It’s the first thing you see.”
Now that it’s all said and done, and Feast is closing Friday, the restaurant seems to be taking its culinary whole-hog approach to a logical conclusion: It’s throwing a yard sale and silent auction this weekend to get rid of itself. Opening in 2008 at 219 Westheimer — despite John Nova Lomax adding that address to his list of cursed locations — Feast has been dishing up tongues and testicles and everything between ever since. And this Saturday it’ll keep right on going, selling off appliances, silverware, tables and chairs, paintings, and auctioning the real choice bits — like that old-timey black-and-white sign out front. (If you’re squeamish about witnessing this kind of butchering in person, Eater Houston reports that you can bid by email.)
Photo: Keith Plocek
FIRE TAKES OUT WESTHEIMER RESALE SHOP 
Early this morning, a 1-alarm fire at Vintage Oasis in Montrose rendered much of the inventory destroyed and the 2-story cottage at 1512 Westheimer blackened. Culturemap reports that it’s not clear yet what caused the fire, and arson investigators have been called in. Sadly, writes Whitney Radley, the casualties include more than the boxes of used LPs and racks of other people’s trousers: “At least two tenants lived in an upstairs apartment, but no injuries were reported. However, two store cats, Puddin and Wolfie, and three cats belonging to the upstairs tenant reportedly perished in the fire.” [Culturemap] Photo: Flickr user leafy tenement
COMMENT OF THE DAY: NEIGHBORHOOD NAMES STICK “Alief didn’t start getting rebranded as the International District till about 3 years ago; as a matter of fact, no one that lived there knew anyone was calling it something other than Alief. It wasn’t until they put those idiotic balls in the medians that anyone local knew someone was calling it something other than Alief. The Super Neighborhood is still called Alief. Hong Kong City Mall was transformed from a pasture to a Mall over a decade ago, that huge strip center at Wilcrest and Bellaire is almost as old. Maybe in 40 or 50 years people may latch onto the name International District in favor of Alief, but then they’re going to wonder why the Library is still called Alief Regional Library, and the school district is still Alief Independent School District, or why the community center is called Alief Community Center. Or why there’s a animal hospital called Alief Animal Hospital. I have a strong suspicion Alief will always be called Alief, no matter how many weird balls they put in the medians. And I’d also rather just call it Montrose and have people ask me if I’m gay than call it Lower Westheimer and have the 15 minute discussion about where it is, and the end result being that I tell them it’s the new name for Montrose and I’ll still be asked if I’m gay.” [toasty, commenting on Headlines: Eating Steak at CityCentre; Watching SkyHouse Rise]
The next tenant in the former Jeannine’s Bistro space will be Jus’ Mac, the restaurant announced on its Facebook page last week. It would appear that this new location will be open by July. Jeannine’s closed here at 106 Westheimer just west of Midtown at the beginning of May. Jus’ Mac has other locations on Yale St. in the Heights and at First Colony Mall in Sugar Land — and a comment posted beneath the original Facebook announcement indicates that a 4th Jus’ Mac is in the works: “We have inside track,” it says, “on a location in heart of memorial.”
Photo of Jeannine’s: Allyn West
COMMENT OF THE DAY: AN ATMOSPHERE OF MISTRUST “I’m inclined to believe the owner on this one. Who knows better what Sharifi plans to do with the property, than Sharifi himself? It’s not just that he said there were no immediate plans to develop the property – how many times have we heard that one — it’s the good brick award and the quip about townhomes that does it — for me at least. The real story here is the level of mistrust that exists between the public and the building community (developers but also architects, engineers, and contractors). It’s a nationwide phenomenon that’s especially strong here in Houston. There’s a common misconception that our lack of zoning leaves us more vulnerable. We’ve suffered a lot of bad development since the 1960s. It has made us paranoid. And with affordable garden apartments Inside the Loop falling one-by-one to luxury mid rises, it’s understandable that people in complexes like the Gramercy Place Apartments would be especially paranoid.” [ZAW, commenting on The Confusing Continuing Story of the Gramercy Place Apartments]
There sure have been some conflicting reports coming in lately about Gramercy Place. Since the old apartments on the 200 block of Portland St. behind the Museum Tower were sold last month to an LLC controlled by Hungry’s Cafe and Bistro owner Fred Sharifi, we first heard that they’d be torn down and replaced by 2 midrise residential towers. Around that same time, it seems, a real estate agent was sending a letter to Gramercy Place tenants claiming something similar and offering to help everyone find a new place to live.
COMMENT OF THE DAY: THAT SLOW-MO BUILD DOWN THE STREET “Builders started 6442 homes, but how many have been finished? One house on my street broke ground almost exactly a year ago and as of today, it has a foundation, framing, Tyvek wrap, most of a roof, a little plumbing, and a little drywall. The house and its ‘dry’wall have been open to the elements for a few months now, including during the torrential rains of a few weeks ago. There have been only 2 workers working on it at a time, and no one has been working on it at all in the past couple weeks. It’s not like I’m in a slow-moving undesirable area; on the contrary, I’m near the border of 77098 and 77006 where houses are going under contract within a week of landing on the MLS, and asking prices are 1.5x –- 2x what they were 5 years ago. I’ve read that all of the construction employees have defected to work on commercial sites. Maybe that rumor is true.” [GoogleMaster, commenting on Headlines: Houston Tourism Boost; Downtown MegaBus Congestion]
That there’s some pretty bad Feng Shui going down in this commercial for Honda, which was filmed in Vancouver and shown on teevee and the web beginning last October. The man behind the wheel of the CR-V sure is driving some bad chi into the gullet of the far-from-the-prairie home at the end of the T-intersection, to the encouraging narration of Garrison Keillor. But isn’t the house kinda asking for it anyway, what with all that glimmering vortex-popping and all?
And gee, doesn’t the hole stabbing through the house look a heck of a lot like . . . that temporary sculpture that stood on Montrose Blvd. in Houston a few years back? Portal to another dimension? Naah — from here it looks more like a shortcut to Grant St.
UPDATED: JEANNINE’S CLOSING IS ONLY, UMM, PERMANENT, SAYS JEANNINE’S 
Why has the Belgium-by-way-of-Montrose Jeannine’s Bistro stopped serving those moules-frites? Culturemap, it appears, has been following the Westheimer Rd. restaurant’s self-demotion on Facebook: “Earlier posts,” reports Whitney Radley, giving a breathless blow-by-blow, “indicate gradually waning hours — the restaurant temporarily dropped lunch service on April 10 — and chronic staffing issues — it issued a call for ‘good waiters and kitchen helpers’ several days after — before warning . . . that the bistro’s kitchen would temporarily close altogether to ‘make some decisions.'” Update, 12:50 p.m.: Another Facebook post from Jeannine’s says that the restaurant has decided to close for good. [Culturemap] Photo: Allyn West
Last week, this sign showed up in the window at the old Sophia restaurant on W. Main and Mandell, indicating that something or someone called Faustian Bargain intends to serve Montrose some devil juice — er, liquor. Sophia closed here at the end of February, you’ll remember, and Café Artiste mysteriously disappeared several years before that. Some sleuthing by a Swamplot reader — later echoed by Eater Houston and Culturemap — turned up that 2 of the likely new owners of the 2,400-sq.-ft. standalone near the Menil Collection are Omar Afra and Jagatjit Katial of Free Press Houston and Fitzgerald’s fame. Inquiries for more information haven’t been returned.
Photos: Allyn West
