Best Bites: Dining out in Dallas-Fort Worth January 4

by Teresa Gubbins

For those who make a sport of watching new restaurants, 2008 already looks to be an action-packed year. Here's some of the bigger ventures that've opened recently or are coming soon:

• Scene opened in early December by the same folks behind Fuse, including chef Blaine Staniford, in the lobby of the Mosaic, another hip place to live downtown. Less clubby and more formal than Fuse, Scene's menu incorporates influences from Spain, Italy, and France.
• Charlie Palmer at the Joule opened December 17 in the Joule, a new boutique hotel in downtown Dallas. Palmer is the famed New York chef and friend-of-Dean-Fearing whose stable of restaurants include Aureole in New York and Las Vegas; Dry Creek Kitchen in Sonoma, Calif.; Kitchen 22 in New York; and Charlie Palmer Steak in Washington, D.C.
• Republic Las Colinas, which opened the first week of December, is a spin-off of the Uptown restaurant-lounge in the space off Route 114 that used to be Tenaya. In addition to the tapas served at the original in Dallas, chefs Jonathan Malkey and Kevin McLaren also do steaks, seafood, and some pretty terrific salads.
• Loft 610, which opened December 20, is an ambitious, downtown kind of place that's sprouted in Granite Park in Plano, with a thick management team and a menu that includes a dish called Asian rain salmon.
• La Cubanita, set to open the week of January 7, is the Cuban entry from restaurateur Alberto Lombardi (Taverna, Toulouse, Sangria, etc.) on McKinney Avenue in the space that used to be Chez Girard.
• Oak Cliff Pizza opens January 11, the first pizzeria in Oak Cliff -- ta-da! OC native Joel Laxson, 34, who was previously in the bar business, was tired of yearning for pizza in his own neighborhood and took matters into his own hands. "It's New York-style pizza, and I know that gets thrown out there a lot, but we're doing pizza with thin crust, and selling it by the slice all day, plus grinders and pasta dishes," he says. He'll be hands-on, working the place himself with his father. They'll do deliveries to the neighborhood and the liquor policy is BYOB.
• The Social House, a "gastropub," debuts in the West Village in mid-January.
• Bolla, opening in mid-January in the newly renovated Stoneleigh Hotel, is the upscale Italian restaurant helmed by chef David Bull, who worked with Stoneleigh manager Jeff Trigger at the Driskill Hotel restaurant in Austin.
• Natsumi is an organic yogurt/gelato shop slated to open at the end of January in the Shops on Henderson, the hipster development that's also home to Capitol Pub and the also-coming-soon artisanal pizzeria Pulcinella.

Catherine Cuellar contributed to this story.

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