Best Bites: Dining out in Dallas-Fort Worth May 2

by Teresa Gubbins

RICHARDSON — Restaurateur Jean-Michel Sakouhi keeps moving west and now he's landed all the way in downtown Fort Worth with The Vault, a swanky new restaurant-bar in the Tower Building, slated to open by the end of May.

Jean-Michel Sakouhi likes wine. You have to like a guy who likes wine.

Sakouhi previously owned Le Paris Bistrot in Dallas, in the space now occupied by Urbano Paninoteca. He started his westward crawl in 2003 when he opened Severine's, named for his wife, in Southlake. It was a charming restaurant-bar but not right for Southlake; Sakouhi closed it at the end of 2006.

"It was very tough, that area of Southlake," he says. "People are very family-oriented. But what I was doing was not aimed towards families. By 8 or 9 p.m., they were all gone. I'm a better fit for downtown Fort Worth."

Chef at The Vault is Gabriel Ochoa, formerly executive chef at Kalamatas in the Renaissance Worthington Hotel, and part of the opening team at Dragonfly in Hotel Zaza. The menu is Mediterranean with lots of seafood: lobster bisque with shelled spring peas, grouper, Arctic char, paella, as well as duck, lamb, filet mignon, and a bone-in short-rib osso bucco.

The space has two floors, with a 4,000-square-foot restaurant on street level and a well-appointed 3,000-square-foot bar beneath it, lined with wine racks, leather sofas, hardwood floors, and a welcoming fireplace. Part of the reason it took Sakouhi nearly two years to get the restaurant off the ground is that he had prostate cancer in February. But he's back on his feet and waiting for the liquor license to come through.

It means "distinguished" or "excellent"

Mumtaz Indian Restaurant and Bar was opened in Richardson on January 16 by Kulwinder Dhaliwal, a longtime local who ran Taj Mahal for 15 years. In December, he sold out his interest to his partner and headed north to what has become a pretty busy center on Campbell, just west of US 75. He needed more space so that he could accommodate graduations, weddings, and other catering events.

"We are Northern Indian, and a lot of places say that they make that food, but there aren't many that are really authentic," he says. "Many are south Indian who try to cook north Indian. I’m from the north. If I tried to make southern Indian food, it would not be that good. It's different if you're originally from there, and you've grown up with it."

Cheese tikka, also called paneer tikka, also called frahd chayze.

Northern Indian dishes include kebabs, curry, and probably the most famous Indian dish, chicken tikka masala.

"What you see in Indian restaurants is mostly from the North," Dhaliwal says. "South Indian is totally different. It's spicier. They use tamarind. We don’t use that much, not in every dish."

One unique dish he does you won't see anywhere else is cheese tikka.

"You can grill cheese," he says. "It's good for vegetarians. Back home, you can get it everywhere."

Frozen yogurt, chapter 25 in an ongoing series

Places serving Pinkberry-style frozen yogurt deserve their own special column. In our last episode, we learned that the Richardson branch of Boba Latte had installed a frozen-yogurt machine and was churning away. Now downtownites can get a lick at Kuai Dumplings, a lunchtime dumpling spot located in Dallas' downtown complex on the concourse beneath the Republic Center on St. Paul Street.

What's really terrific about this option is that, if you eat lunch there, you can get a frozen yogurt for free.

"What we're trying to do is offer a more complete lunch experience," says Kuai spokesman Chris Harris. "It’s serve-your-own and you can help yourself to -- well, we don't call them toppings because some people put them in bottom -- but we have the fruit, granola, Fruity Pebbles."

Even though the yogurt set-up is part of Kuai, they've given it its own separate entity (and Web site, too), called YoCrave. If you don't eat lunch there, you can still come in and buy a yogurt. In fact, Kuai opens at 11 a.m. but since the staff is there prepping for the day, they encourage customers to come in and get one with granola for breakfast. They offer two flavors daily: original "tart" and an alternating flavor such as green tea, banana, raspberry, or strawberry.