Things are brewing this week in the Dallas coffee scene with consolidations and departures. The Mansion has a new wine director, and Kitchen LTO opens with a fudge waffle dessert concoction courtesy of Blythe Beck. Read on for more tasty tidbits.
There's consolidation going on at Pearl Cup Coffee, which has merged its two downtown shops into one. According to owner Carlene Saelg, customers at the St. Paul Place location were already going over to the Performing Arts Center location, so they decided to put all their lattes in one basket in the Arts District. The shop in the St. Paul Place lobby was there for five years.
Mini-chain Buzzbrews is opening another branch in what some might find a controversial location: 5815 Live Oak St., at the corner of Skillman. This is the old Tipperary Inn spot in which nothing since has survived. Buzzbrews is unfazed, and renovations are underway.
Austin-based Tex-Mex chain Chuy's will open its eighth location in the Dallas area in Southlake. The restaurant will open at 1221 E. SH 114 in January 2015. "We've received so many requests over the years to open in Southlake, and we've finally found the perfect spot to make that happen," says Travis Hudson, supervisor for the new location.
Chef Teiichi Sakurai's ramen noodle shop Ten, coming to Sylvan Thirty, will now open until January. Its location suffered a fire in March, and reconstruction has taken longer than anticipated.
The Blythe Beck version of Kitchen LTO at Trinity Groves debuts on October 2, starting at dinner. The menu includes deviled eggs, chicken-fried rib-eye, duck pot pie, bacon-cheddar meatloaf, shrimp and grits, and braised chicken thighs. Desserts include pumpkin custard, Maker's Mark banana pudding, and a fudge waffle with peanut butter ice cream and bananas Foster.
Austin's Hopdoddy Burger Bar opened its third Dallas-area location on September 29 at Village on the Parkway in Addison. It's going in at 5100 Belt Line Rd., Ste. 502, in what used to be a restaurant called Ernie's.
The Dee Lincoln's Bubble Bar in Uptown will "transition" from a restaurant/lounge space to a full-time special events venue effective October 15. This is a nice way of saying it is shutting down, although owner Dee Lincoln says in a press release that the demand for private party space has increased exponentially over the past year, so its switch to a special-events venue is totally deliberate and on purpose.
Another day, another Restaurants America failure: Park Tavern in the Shops at Park Lane has closed. According to Eats, its last day was September 12. Park Tavern was owned by Chicago-based Restaurants America, whose previous closures include Boca Chica, Mockingbird Taproom and Townhouse Kitchen + Bar.
Starbucks will pull out its Seattle's Best Coffee drive-through locations around Dallas-Fort Worth. It's closing eight and turning two — in Fort Worth and Rockwall — into Starbucks. The Seattle's Best stores opened in May 2013.
Rosewood Mansion on Turtle Creek has a new wine director: Jennifer Eby, replacing Michael Flynn, who left in July. Eby comes to Dallas from Las Vegas, where she was wine manager at Botero, a fine-dining restaurant at Wynn. Prior to that, she developed the wine program at Wynn's Bartolotta Ristorante di Mare, a restaurant featuring Mediterranean seafood and Italian coastal cuisine by chef Paul Bartolotta.
Chung Jung One introduces Gochujang Korean Chili Sauce to Central Markets in Texas. Gochujang is a fermented red chili paste used in rice dishes such as bibimbap. Louisville chef Edward Lee will showcase the sauce during cooking classes that cost a mere $60. Even better, you get to spend more money and buy bottles of the product when you're done. He'll do a class in Fort Worth on October 7, Dallas on October 8 and Southlake on October 9.
Zodiac potato vodka has launched in Texas with a 40 percent alcohol content and some of the best press release verbiage ever: It's a "farm-to-bottle vodka" (chortle) that's "made in Idaho from regionally grown potatoes and Rocky Mountain water, resulting in a pure, ultra-smooth flavor." It will soon be joined by Zodiac’s wheat-based black cherry flavor.
Rosewood Mansion on Turtle Creek welcomes new wine director Jennifer Eby.
The Denim Danger is one of Lemma's popular specialty drinks.Photo courtesy of Lemma Coffee Co.