Bice Dallas, Italian restaurant at Crescent Court, shuts down

by Teresa Gubbins

DALLAS — Bice Dallas, the Italian restaurant at the Crescent Court complex, shut down on Sunday May 11, manager Morris Marta confirmed.

"We did lunch and then closed," he said. "They decided to close for some reason, the numbers did not meet their expectations. Sometimes a big corporation decides to close or open another restaurant, I don't know the details."

Bice Dallas was part of the Bice Ristorante group, founded in Milan in 1926, with more than 40 branches around the world, including New York, Chicago, Madrid, Istanbul, Mexico City, and Tokyo.

The Dallas branch opened in spring 2006 to positive reviews but faced a number of obstacles, including a weak opening publicity campaign that never really established a following for the restaurant; a jinxed location; and a resistance to high-end Italian food on the part of Dallas diners. Shortly after Bice opened, the even more high-priced Il Mulino closed. Like Il Mulino, Bice offered a more elegant take on Italian food than the overdone pasta heaped with sauce that's more common here.

"I’m only here a few months but what I think about Dallas, Texas is that people really love the steakhouse," Marta said. "And this location, it had at least three restaurants that closed, it's not really a good location."

Previous restaurants that bit the dust in that space include Sam's Cafe, We Oui, and Gumbo's.

The Bice in Houston, located at the Galleria, is doing fairly well, according to a spokesman at that branch; and Bice continues to open new branches in other cities such as San Diego and Dubai.