Kindal’s Cafe in Dallas having rocky start before it even opens

by Teresa Gubbins

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Opening date pushed back again and David Sanborn show in March will not happen.

DALLAS — Kindal's, the ambitious restaurant-jazz bar scheduled to open in January, February, March, has pushed back its opening date again, this time to April 1.

"We're having a sneak peek affair this Saturday with Chico DeBarge but we're not opening an actual restaurant until April 1," said Kimberly of KB Management, who's helping run the place.

Kimberly was at the restaurant's office on Thursday to answer the phone -- which is better luck than that had by Patrick Rains, a representative for jazz musician David Sanborn.

Sanborn was booked at Kindal's for March 19-20. But Rains was frustrated after repeated efforts to finalize the contract with club management.

"They booked the show back in early November," Rains says. "The way it typically goes is, 'Here’s a contract and a deposit.' [The club] would send a deposit 60 days in advance. No deposit came, and for a couple of weeks it was, 'The bank sent it out wrong,' and then, 'I'm sorry, it's going to be next week.' The last conversation, it was, 'We're a little stressed, we're hosting all these NBA parties, we'll send it on Monday.' Well, NBA Weekend came and went, and so did that Monday. Since then, I haven't been able to get anybody to return a phone call."

A call placed to the restaurant's assistant manager on Wednesday, with voicemail asking for a return call, was never returned.

Kimberly says that the restaurant has just started keeping office hours this week.

"We've just been swamped trying to get it open," she says. "We thought that after the All Star event, things would clear up. We just didn't realize we had so much to do." As for the lack of return calls, she said, "We've been swamped. I know that’s not a good answer."

Rains says he's sympathetic to the obstacles of opening a new place, but the club's lack of communication put him in a bad position.

"Anybody who's ever remodeled a closet or even known someone who's remodeled a closet knows that delays are part of the game," he says. "Delays aren't an issue, as long as people communicate. We were starting to get emails from fans in Dallas wondering what's happening. At this point, we're done. We have to assume it's not happening and figure out how to cut our losses."

Rains says that the national jazz community would love to see a place like Kindal's succeed, where fans can sit and have a bottle of wine and watch a show.

"We were all excited; people in my world that represent the kind of artists they were talking about because Dallas has been without a really great venue for a long time," he says. "It's exciting that there might be a place, but they might have a hard time getting people to believe them."