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
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Tag: Restaurants
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
The folks at the Chick-fil-A rising at the corner of Spring and Sawyer in the First Ward (across from the Sawyer Heights Shopping Center) aren’t quite ready to take your order, but judging from this photo it looks like they might be sometime soon. The fast-food drive-thru is going up on the site of the former Riviana Foods warehouse at 2222 Shearn St., which was demo’ed last fall. Now if they’d just add a second Starbucks somewhere near the giant parking lot, comments Twitter photographer knittykat (there’s one inside the Target already), the area would truly fulfill its destiny as stay-at-home mom mecca of the Heights.
- Previously on Swamplot: Daily Demolition Report: Chicken and Rice
Photo: Twitter user knittykat
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
PRINCE’S HEADS FOR NORTH POST OAK 
Reader Marcy Basile notes the former location of the French Press Cafe at 1201 N. Post Oak Rd between I-10 and Hempstead Hwy. is now sporting “coming soon” window signs for Prince’s Diner. Same logo as Prince’s Hamburgers, but these ones have a diner label. [Swamplot inbox] Photo: Marcy Basile
WHERE TO FIND THE PAWS THAT REFRESH 
Not 4 months into the city’s canine-friendly outdoor dining program, there are now a grand total of 12 Houston restaurants that have gained official approval to let customers bring dogs to their patios. More than half of the pooch-friendly establishments are in Montrose or River Oaks; only one is outside the Loop. [Eater Houston; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Paws on Patios
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
THE END OF THE 11TH ST. CAFE 
Next step for the 11th St. Cafe after covering over the “Ruggles” on its sign: shutting itself down entirely. A sign on the door from owner Archie Patterson Jr. noted today by the Heights Life blog indicates the restaurant closed at the end of the year — after 35 years of operation. What’s next for the building at the corner of 11th St. and Studewood? “The new tenant will have a press release in late January,” the notice says. [The Heights Life; previously on Swamplot] Photo: The Heights Life
MOON TOWER INN’S NEW SHIPPING CONTAINER BEER COOLER 
A few details on the brewery redo taking place on the hotdog reinvention grounds of the (currently shuttered) Moon Tower Inn at 3004 Canal St. in the Second Ward, from blogger Leslie Sprague: “One of the two new shipping containers being used to renovate the old space, to expand the kitchen and the tap wall to 42 taps, will be a walk-in cooler for cold storage. The brewhouse will be set-up in part of the office space, behind the old ordering counter. I wasn’t even aware there was an office. They have a 3 1/2 barrel brewhouse on order from Portland Kettleworks and are expecting delivery in mid-February. That’s definitely cutting it close to the planned February reopening.” [Lushtastic] Photo: Marty E.
THE LAWSUIT BEHIND THE PAPER AT THE 11TH ST. CAFE 
Reporter Purva Patel documents the extensive menu of lawsuits embroiling “more unlucky than most” Ruggles Grill owner Bruce Molzan — which provides Swamplot a terrific opportunity to showcase one of the several photos of the papered-over sign at the now-formerly-Ruggles 11th St. Cafe in the Heights sent in by readers earlier this month. Molzan has charged the cafe with trademark infringement, and tells Patel he pulled out of an operating agreement with the 11th St. restaurant “because he considered the quality of the food there poor.” But cafe owner Archie Patterson says Molzan refused to sign a partnership agreement after running the place for 2 months. Patterson says he had the word “Ruggles” on the signs covered — in advance of getting new ones — as soon as he heard about the worker walkout at Ruggles Grill. [Houston Chronicle; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Swamplot inbox
DHARMA CAFE TO RAY’S FRANKS TO LATIN BITES TO OXHEART 
That’s only the recent lineage of the tiny corner space at 1302 Nance St. in the old warehouse district at the northern stretches of Downtown, where former *17 chef Justin Yu, his pastry-baking wife Karen Man, and Central Market wine guy Justin Vann plan to open their new Gulf Coast-flavored restaurant. (Latin Bites will be escaping to the former Rockwood Room location at Chimney Rock and Woodway.) The trio promises not to take up any of the mere 26 seats in the former Erie City Ironworks space themselves. Oxheart — yes, named after the central organ of an ox (as well as a kind of carrot, a type of tomato, and a certain cabbage) — will be open for dinner 5 nights a week, including Mondays, beginning next March. [29-95; more from Eater Houston] Photo: Almost Veggie Houston
COMMENT OF THE DAY: WHY I WON’T MISS THE SANDBOX AT LUPE TORTILLA “It was always a hassle with the kids running around while I was trying to sunbathe.” [Chad, commenting on Lupe Tortilla Axes Kiddie Sandbox]
DRINKING FOR THE GREATER GOOD Among the goals of OKRA, the new business organization founded by a group of mostly Montrose-area restaurant and bar owners (including Anvil’s Bobby Heugel, Chris Shepherd of the upcoming Underbelly, and Greenway coffee couple David Buehrer and Ecky Prabanto): Opening a new, collectively run non-profit neighborhood bar as early this summer — preferably in the refurbished digs of some recently shuttered for-profit drinking establishment. All proceeds would go to a different charity each month, which drinkers would get to vote on. Also coming this spring from the group: “a multi-pig roast unlike Houston has ever seen.” [Facebook; more from 29-95, Culturemap, and Eater Houston]
LUPE TORTILLA AXES KIDDIE SANDBOX 
The removal of the sandbox play area adjacent to the bar at the Lupe Tortilla on the 59 feeder road just east of Kirby has attracted little attention. Well, except for grumbles from disappointed families showing up for dinner with sand buckets and plastic shovels — and the “SAVE the Sandbox at Lupe Tortilla’s on the Southwest Freeway” Facebook page. (So far that protest page has garnered only a single “Like.”) The bleachered sandbox was shut down only a few weeks ago, to accommodate a planned expansion of the restaurant’s deck. Photo: Flickr user amydell
Over the weekend, Lance Fegen and Lee Ellis’s long-awaited Liberty Kitchen & Oyster Bar finally opened in the former Stop-N-Go on the last remaining corner of 11th St. and Studewood without some sort of restaurant on it. The new neighbor to Someburger, Ruggles 11th St. Cafe, and Dacapo’s Pastry Cafe is now open to the public for dinner.
Excepting, of course, Chronicle food critic Alison Cook: A carefully designed custom decal on the restaurant’s door appears to be the restaurant’s attempt to bar Cook from entry, perhaps to prevent her from penning a Liberty Kitchen review anything like her epic slam of Fegen’s BRC Gastropub last year. Sample sentence from that review: “What to say — besides no, thank you — of BRC’s putative pimento cheese dip that’s a runny splodge of lumpy pinkness on a white plate, with its advertised Vermont cheddar utterly defeated by great gouts of mayonnaise?” Cook’s plea that Liberty Kitchen’s sister restaurant serve the gloppy dip in a ramekin instead is apparently the inspiration for the reference to white plates in this witty comeback only 15 months in the making.
But surely the Liberty Kitchen crew will allow Cook a cup of lukewarm tea in that coffeehouse they’re planning to open next door?
