Friday, September 26, 2008

Best Bites: Dining out in Dallas-Fort Worth September 26

By Teresa Gubbins

Here's to A Toast to Texas in old historical downtown Plano

A Toast to Texas takes an optimistic shot on the prospects of old downtown Plano, but with a unique set of goods that bridges the area's past with its potential future. It's a gift shop (the past) crossed with a beer and wine store ("wine" = "upscale" = cross-your-fingers) that stocks boutique wines and high-end beer along with Texas-themed souvenirs and wine trinkets.

Owners Becky Baack and Toni Rulau are transplants from Minnesota and Wisconsin who became friends after moving here about 15 years ago. They moved into this storefront in March, after it was vacated by arts & crafts store Nature's Finest (which moved into a larger space next door). There is a shrine of sorts to Shiner; wines from Texas and everywhere else; and a distinctively Western theme to the decor which the two women designed themselves.

They host wine tastings with food catered from one of the restaurants nearby, such as Gregory's or the Fillmore Pub, and they also look to the hugely successful Fillmore for direction in terms of beer selection, says Baack.

"With 1,200 square feet, we have limited space, so we see what sells at the Fillmore and try and get it, in case customers have a beer they like there and want to buy a six-pack," she says.

Tea and chocolate

Halo Tea & Chocolate at Lebanon Road in Frisco takes two rising trends -- tea and chocolate -- and pairs them together under one roof. The store is the brainchild of Vincent Le, who came to Dallas from Louisiana because of Hurricane Katrina, and his uncle Thoi Le, with whom he shared a dream to open their own place. (His aunt Kim Phan is also an owner.)

Chocolates from Joseph Schmidt

Thoi oversees the chocolate, which includes Le Chocolatier Manon from Belgium and Joseph Schmidt from San Francisco. Vincent is in charge of the tea. His signature item is "F.I.T.", fruit in tea, with tea and fresh fruit that can be blended together with ice to make a sort of smoothie. Between the flavinoids in chocolate and the anti-oxidants in tea, it feels like they're doing something pretty healthy.

They're still putting finishing touches on the store, and hope to celebrate their grand opening on October 11, assuming all goes according to plan.

"We knew we couldn't do coffee, we couldn't compete against Starbucks," Vincent says. "Not everybody knows about tea but it's starting to get great exposure. Not just old-English style, not bubble tea, there's more to it than that."

More fro-yo

Two new frozen yogurt places in town, both notable in their own ways:

Donna Cooks

Self-serve stations at Yogurtland in Carrollton

• From Joyce comes the news of Yogilicious, opening near Grimaldi'sCampania, across the street from West Village, on Saturday September 27. The Web site shows that this branch is the first, and that more are planned for Plano, Frisco, and Austin. So it's all starting here, even if the phone number for more information comes from Southern California. As is the case with most of the places in this contemporary frozen-yogurt wave, this place has oodles of toppings including cereal, M&Ms, fresh fruit, but what's distinctive here is the wide selection of actual yogurt flavors, 17 in number, all of which end in "tart" -- i.e., peanut butter tart, mango tart, vanilla tart. Tart in this case meaning "not sweet" and not the little pie-like confection. That'd be dumb. To have all your fro-yo flavors taste like little tarts. Why not call it Tart-a-licious, then.
• Content Partner Donna Cooks brings word of the arrival of California chain Yogurtland. Located in the Super H Mart Shopping Center in Carrollton, this is a truly exciting place not merely because it has a lot of flavors -- 15, to be exact -- but because of its unique format which is self-serve. There's a row of spigots and you can help yourself to whatever you want, then pay according to what it weighs. We are talking absolute heaven for control freaks. Which, maybe you know some of those.

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Comments

campania Anonymous

Ahh...yogilicious is located directly next to Campania, not Grimaldis, in West Village. We've been bartering pizza for yogurt as they finish their build out for the past few weeks. Great stuff and we are thrilled to have them as neighbors.

1 year, 1 month ago ( Link to this comment | Suggest removal )

Teresa Gubbins Staff

many thanks - fixed! (HOW could the author POSSIBLY mix up Campania with Grimaldi's! the horror! hee)

1 year, 1 month ago ( Link to this comment | Suggest removal )