Best Bites: Dining out in Dallas-Fort Worth June 20

by Teresa Gubbins

Excuses Cafe -- as in, "no more excuses not to come to Deep Ellum" -- is a new bar-slash-restaurant that's taken root where Club One used to be. It's a family operation: Barbara Martinez co-owns the place with her son Chris and his wife Shelley, who used to manage Club One. In fact, they took over Club One and were running it for a year pretty successfully -- until they applied for a Special Use Permit and got shut down. That's when the family decided to re-cast the place as a restaurant-coffee-bar-community-hang-out. And here they are, toasting bagels and brewing coffee.

"We had all these phenomenal people in Deep Ellum, our customers and friends, who didn’t want to see us leave," Barbara says. "They encouraged us to try something different. We had this great space, an excellent landlord, and people that love us. As the vision came about, all the things we wanted to do here began to take shape and form."

They started with coffee and breakfast items -- scones, bagels, and Belgian waffles Barbara makes with her trusty waffle iron. Chris wanted to do panini. They experimented with soups. Day by day, the menu evolves. Meanwhile, they have a full bar, with happy hour drafts (can you say $2?), Saturday night poker, and open-mike nights coming soon.

Calling Fort Worth winos

Getting a business open in Fort Worth is complicated -- more so when your location is a former gas station that was built in the early 1900s. But Joe Berry and his nephew-partner Tim persevered for over a year of requests and variances: Winslow's Wine Cafe, their cozy, chic wine bar-restaurant on Camp Bowie Boulevard, has finally debuted.

They got Seattle chef Todd Brown, who was moving to Fort Worth with his wife, a native, to consult on the menu. They got Terri Burney of Grand Tastings in Dallas to share tips on wine tastings and pairings. They got a wood-burning oven, the kitchen must-have of 2008, for the pizzas they'll serve.

In addition to the wine bar, there's a retail store where they'll sell about 100 labels.

"We'd like to do five of these around Texas in the next five years," Berry says. "It should go more smoothly than this."

Mansfield gets gourmet

Mansfield gets its own Eatzi's-style establishment in the form of Oliver's Fine Foods, a new gourmet food market from chef Todd Bush and his wife Clarissa. Bush is a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America who's cheffed at Hyatt hotels, private golf clubs, and corporate facilities in Washington, D.C., Florida, and Fort Worth (most recently for Radio Shack). They moved to Mansfield to be close to family. Set to open in mid-July, Oliver's is their first entrepreneurial venture.

"It'll be like Eatzi's, but hopefully not as pricey," Clarissa says. There'll be a big emphasis on the butcher counter, with house-made sausages and hand-cut aged steaks. Also: premium beers, wines, prepared foods, full deli counter, salads, sanwiches, panini, soups, and approximately 30 seats where you can sit down there or take your food to go.

They're in a brand new strip center across from the new Methodist Mansfield Medical Center, where their neighbors will include a Daily Grind coffee shop, cleaners, and donut shop.

Scraps

• There's a new Babe's Chicken opening in la-dee-da Frisco on July 15, making it the seventh branch of this local chicken chain.
• The people at Eats are extremely cheesy, with news of a couple of cheese shops opening soon: Molto Formaggio, with two branches: one at Preston and Royal and another at Highland Park Village; and Scardello Cheese, at Lemmon and Oak Lawn Avenue.

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