An austere bit of stationery is taped to the door of Bice Ristorante in the Galleria, indicating that mall owner Simon Property Group has changed the locks until Bice comes up with $164,731.37 in rent. The letter is dated from mid-July. And somebody has finally noticed!
“Seriously, how do you fall this far behind on rent?,” asks Tasty Bits author Misha. A few pix below:
Phase 2 of Scott Tycer’s Heights food empire launches tonight, as his new upscale restaurant, Textile, opens — next to his newish bakery in the former mattress factory turned textile mill at 22nd St. and Lawrence:
“The rent is a lot lower here – a third of what I paid at Aries,” he said. “I didn’t take out huge loans to do this restaurant. So really, the only pressure is to be 100 percent as good as we can be.”
Textile is housed in the 114-year-old Oriental Textile Mill, 611 W. 22nd. The restaurant occupies a small corner of the historical structure with a clock tower and smokestack. Most of the 10,000-square-foot space is devoted to Tycer’s Krafts’men, a wholesale bakery that supplies restaurants, including Cafe Annie, Da Marco, Benjy’s and Mark’s. He plans to open a Krafts’men retail outlet in the textile mill, he said.
The Chronicle‘s Dai Huynh also reports a new Kraftsmen retail store — at Kirby and Westheimer.
Just a few blocks south on 19th St., Vietnam Restaurant is expanding into the retail space next door. Bunny Bungalower Annie Sitton reports the new space is scheduled to open in November.
A few of Sitton’s early photos of the Vietnam build-out:
Sandwich franchise Pita Pit has a store tucked inside a Greenway Plaza office building. Two more locations debuted recently: one at Highway 6 and Williams Trace in Sugar Land (opened in May) and another in the tunnel beneath McKinney St. Downtown (opened in July). A new store in a strip center at Westheimer and Fountainview is listed as “coming soon” on the company website.
Now a source reports that a total of 10 Pita Pit franchises are planned for the Houston area — including one in the shopping center at 3939 Montrose Blvd., just north of the Hurricane-Ike-swept Diedrich’s Coffee, near Marble Slab.
Photo of Sugar Land Pita Pit: Pita Pit
This too-cute-for-Disneyland drawing depicts Allegro Builders’ new Wild Wild West-y development at the northwest corner of Studewood and 10th in the Heights. It’s going up just north of Allegro’s headquarters building, which is home also to the Glass Wall restaurant, and is known for its vaguely-historicist facade of valet-parked SUVs.
A few vans may front the new building at 1001 and 1003 Studewood, but it’ll only be in 2 spots of handicapped parking: The main lot is in back. That’ll likely be a relief for local filmmakers, who are no doubt eager to film Universal Studios-authentic spaghetti-western-style gunfights off those front balconies.
All of which makes this new retail-with-office-above confection an ideal location for Robert Gadsby’s new restaurant, Bedford, named after the chef’s birthplace in . . . uh, England.
After the jump: The interior is gonna be . . . modern!
ANVIL STRIKES THE DAIQUIRI FACTORY Beaver’s barkeeps Bobby Heugel and Kevin Floyd will be opening their own place in the former Daiquiri Factory on the Westheimer Curve: “Our new bar, Anvil, located at 1424 Westheimer, will be opening in mid-November. Beneath the decades of former bar structure and traffic, lies a beautiful building with priceless windows, historic brick, and exciting features that are certain to make Anvil a site to see.” [Drink Dogma]
A correspondent sends in this bit of over-the-counter intelligence about Midtown geek-gathering favorite Tropioca:
Tropioca on Milam at Drew is in the process of looking for a new home. They are looking around the midtown area but also at a location near U of H at Cullen and Leeland.
I overheard someone behind the counter saying that their rent has gone up almost 80% and not gradually over a few years, but all at once.
I will be sad to see them go if they leave midtown because they make the BEST frozen cappucino coffee drink inside the loop.
Photo: Yelp user Jill N.
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RmGp3rfOXNc 400 330]
After a summer-long silence, SexyATTACK is back, with this unbridled celebration of . . . uh, retail!
The IKEA on I-10 is a big store. Someone’s got to dance in it.
Sexy does salad bar, after the jump!
A TOUR OF WASHINGTON AVE. EATERIES Wabash Antiques & Feed, the Daily Grind, El Rey Taqueria, that big new Benjy’s, and more: Katharine Shilcutt Gleave’s hungry person’s guide to Washington Ave., illustrated: “. . . the first thing you’ll notice is the abundance of new construction. Not only homes, but restaurants, banks, strip malls — a mad jumble of conflicting styles and materials that assaults the eyes. But if you look past the ubiquitous boxes of townhomes and the spaghetti-like telephone wires that crazily line the street, you’ll catch glimpses of old Houston in the tiny row houses, old brick storefronts and 1930s-era tile street signs along the curbs: Houston in a nutshell.” [Houstonist]
Camera-phone blogger Pankaj offers a survey of some of Houston’s most colorful and fastest-moving restaurants. First up: El Taco del Gordo, cooking down I-10 near Kirkwood, headed East.
No word yet about the diner next door, but the West U. Examiner reports that the Avalon Drug Store on Westheimer just east of Kirby will be calling it quits in 2 weeks:
Pharmacist Bill Morris, who has run the independent pharmacy for 36 years, said “a confluence of events†prompted his recent decision.
Morris is 67 years old — for one thing — and insurance “has made it harder†on independent pharmacy operations, which have low profit margins.
He also pointed to leasing rates that are rising due to the plethora of new construction in the Upper Kirby area.
Update: As owner Coy Ramsey notes in the comments, Avalon Diner is not going anywhere. More from the River Oaks Examiner and Houstonist.
Photo: Flickr user Houstonian [license]
In one fell soup, Bennigan’s has apparently shuttered all of its U.S. locations. And the store is taking its sister restaurant, the ailing Steak & Ale, along with it. The chains’ are filing for Chapter 7 bankruptcy. Both are subsidiaries of Metromedia Restaurant Group, based in Plano.
Over at Houstonist, Katherine Shilcutt Gleave surveys the confusion resulting from the unannounced overnight shutdowns:
Houston is home to at least 20 Bennigan’s restaurants in the city and surrounding metropolitan areas. Calls placed this morning by Houstonist to the locations netted the same result each time: a phone ringing off the hook and no answering service. Only one location answered the phone when we called: the Bennigan’s in Greenspoint off Beltway 8. The befuddled-sounding manager at that location politely told us that they were, in fact, closed. He further confirmed that all other Bennigan’s in Houston were closed as well.
Steak & Ale had 6 Houston-area locations.
Photo: Flickr user alex_user
HIGHLAND VILLAGE SPRINKLES “Sprinkles Cupcakes, The Original Cupcake Bakery, opens in Houston this winter at 4010 Westheimer in Highland Village. Let’s see, we have Sugar Baby’s, Crave and Ooh La La Dessert Boutique (they’re actually in Katy, TX, but it’s a suburb of Houston so we’ll count it) and now Sprinkles, the one who started the cupcake craziness in 2005 in Beverly Hills.” What’s next — Pinkberry? [Cleverley’s Blog]
It appears our report earlier this week was a bit premature (although this one was more accurate). Rosenberg will be losing 2 out of its 3 Starbucks locations. And a total of 8 Starbucks stores will be closing in Houston — plus 1 in the Deerbrook Mall, which is technically in Humble.
Thanks to the pioneering work of a last-name-free coffee drinker going by the name Winter, who has been on a 11-year-long “personal mission” to visit and photograph every single Starbucks in the world, we now have a well-illustrated compilation of the 11 Houstonish Starbucks locations the company has decided to close as part of its 600-store nationwide shutdown extravaganza. Ready for the tour?
3821 S. Shepherd at Farnham. On the “other ” Shepherd Curve, across from Amy’s Ice Cream. It’s been hiding there for a while, but did it ever have customers?
More shuttered Starbucks below. See them all!
It took 2 weeks, but someone at last noticed: Montrose wedding-reception capital Bistro Vino has shut down. Scooping a number of popular restaurant-review websites, the Chronicle‘s Nancy Sarnoff reports that owner Mohammad Bayegan sold the house-turned-restaurant at 819 W. Alabama (at Roseland) and a small apartment building next door to an unnamed residential developer.
[La Colombe d’Or owner Steve] Zimmerman, who lived in a house behind Bistro Vino in the late 1970s and 1980s, said the area had been a quiet residential neighborhood until the 1990s, when small businesses opened offices on West Alabama.
In a note on the Bistro Vino website, Bayegan bids
farewell to all our loyal customers especially to our hundreds of brides that gave us the honor to be part of the start of a very important journey of their lives.
After the jump: one of those brides, starting a journey!
BOB’S CHOPPED, MO COMING Bob’s Steak & Chop House on Post Oak has officially closed, reports Cleverley Stone. Set to open in its place: another steakhouse called Mo’s . . . A Place for Steaks, from Milwaukee and Indianapolis. The Post Oak location is where Tony’s used to be. [Cleverley’s Blog]
