Game Time
Mega-gaming bistro hits Grapevine with axes, pinballs, and escape rooms
A mega-game facility with everything from axe throwing to an "escape room" is open at Grapevine Mills. Called Corky's Gaming Bistro, it's at 3520 Grapevine Mills Blvd N.
The newly built center features 78 classic arcade games, 12 pinball machines, 4 escape rooms, and 10 axe-throwing lanes, plus food and drink.
Corky's has everything: an arcade with games such as Tron, Berserk, Space Invaders, Mortal Kombat, and Donkey Kong, as well as some vintage pinball machines such as Star Wars and Addams Family.
Each escape room has its own theme, including Alcatraz, fashioned after the maximum high-security prison in the San Francisco Bay; Hopeless, where you are kidnapped and trapped inside the home of a nurse named Emily; and Jack the Ripper, where the year is 1888 and you are a detective working for Scotland Yard.
The menu boasts a lumberjack theme in dishes such as the "Paul Bunyan fries," a pound of fries — you read that right, a pound — with melted cheese and bacon. There are burgers, tacos, pizza, sliders, a Chicago-style hot dog, and sandwiches, including an Italian beef sandwich.
Burgers are from Angus beef brisket, "ground locally" at Old Town Market in Lewisville, and come topped with pulled pork, jalapeños, and Canadian bacon. There are fried pickle spears, chips and queso, cheese sticks, fried green beans with wasabi mayo, corn fritters, and quesadillas.
The bar has both beer and wine on tap, along with a selection of cocktails that includes margaritas, a julep, and a Tex-Mex martini with Hatch green chiles.
Corky's comes from Neil Hupfauer, who co-founded Main Event Entertainment, the multi-venue bowling-anchored family entertainment business. Hupfauer has an extensive business background in the bowling, restaurant, and family entertainment industry spanning more than 45 years.
Prior to co-founding Main Event Entertainment, he was managing general partner of Fun Fest, one of the first family entertainment centers in the nation, now known as AMF Fun Fest Lanes. Prior to that, he was general manager and co-owner of Triangle Bowls, a chain of nine bowling centers in Texas.
Lucy Billingsley, owner of Billingsley Company, owns the property on which Corky's resides and is a big fan. "We have already booked a fall company event," she says. "The concept is just fun."
