On Feb. 25, the Louisiana State Licensing Board for Contractors issued a stop-work order for the Checkered Parrot, a two-story bar and restaurant under construction on Prytania Street near Touro Infirmary.

The first Checkered Parrot, now closed, was in the French Quarter. Construction began in the summer 2012 on the second location at 3629 Prytania St.

A spokeswoman for the state licensing board said a stop-work order was issued "because the contractor was acting as a contractor without a license." The issue remains under investigation. A date for a hearing has not yet been set.

According to the state licensing board and various media reports, the Checkered Parrot is owned by Mark Morad.

Last May, Morad was charged with Medicare fraud by a federal grand jury.

Morad also operates the Italian Pie restaurant across the street at 3706 Prytania St.

That Italian Pie location is currently closed for "systems modifications," according to a sign posted outside, and will reopened in "approximately 710 days."

The recorded message on the Prytania Street Italian Pie's phone was less specific, stating "if we answer, you will know we are reopened."

Morad could not be reached for comment. The number listed on the Checkered Parrot website was temporarily disconnected.

The Checkered Parrot is franchised by the same company that operates the Fire of Brazil chain in Atlanta and Latin America. A Fire of Brazil restaurant in the French Quarter closed in 2008.

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At Checkered Parrot bar and restaurant on Prytania Street, state stops construction

Oliver's, a new casual neighborhood restaurant proposed for Old University Avenue, wants to bridge the culinary gap between Lombardino's high-end Italian and burgers at the Blue Moon Bar & Grill.

The food, as described in an application to the Alcohol License Review Committee, would be approachable and familiar salads with roasted beets; pan-roasted brussels sprouts and candied nuts; sandwiches with hand-carved turkey, grassfed beef, braised pork and pan-fried walleye; entrees of mussels, perch fish fry and a half chicken with frites.

"There will be food that will take people back to when they were young, maybe something grandma made for Sunday dinner, said Bob Harriman, who will run the restaurant with Don Michelson. Thats the environment.

The proposed restaurant at 2540 University Ave. would be located on the first floor of the six-story apartment building recently completed by the Mullins Group, 2550 University.(City planners have recently pushed for taller, denser construction in the area.)

At 3,016 square feet, Oliver's would have seating for 93 people inside and 24 more on an outdoor, seasonal patio.

The current proposal is to open quietly for business on Labor Day, serving lunch and dinner from Monday through Friday, with brunch, lunch and dinner (8 a.m. to 10 p.m.) on weekends.

No chef has yet been named, but the application lists Chad Vogel (Maduro) and Craig Madigan (Johnny Delmonico's) as manager/collaborators. Harriman is a co-owner of Sardine and his construction company has had a hand in building many restaurants including Heritage Tavern and Francesca's al Lago.

Harriman, 67, calls himself an "old west side kid." Both he and Michelson, recently of Michelson Associates in Middleton, graduated from Madison West High School.

"Oliver's is the culmination of 35 years of around or in the business," Harriman said. "My grandmother owned a restaurant and bar on Lake Wisconsin I would have been 11 years old when I started bussing tables."

Harriman chose not to be a manager or owner but "simply a designer and builder of restaurants," until now.

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Restaurant veteran brings Oliver's, contemporary comfort food to Old University

There's a lot of construction underway on Duling Street in Fondren.

A new restaurant, Saltine Oysters and Brew, is setting up shop in the old Duling school.

"We really want to celebrate the oyster," said Saltine owner Jesse Houston. "We're going to have varieties from all over the world -- the East Coast, West Coast. Of course, we're going to celebrate our Gulf Coast and all of the seafood and oysters that come out of there. We're going to get oysters from Canada, Japan and Europe."

The restaurant, which is slated to open in August, will also serve special beers from local breweries.

A few feet away, Duling Hall is getting a $50,000 renovation in the hope of bringing in more acts. The improvements include a new stage, kitchen, and repainting. A dressing room has also been added upstairs for performing artists.

"If the music is coming in, you can come in, sit at a high top, get out of the racket. This will be a new bar here just to open up and have better service for our customers," said Arden Barnett of Ardenland Entertainment.

A concert is scheduled for Friday night for the new Duling Hall debut.

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New restaurant opening in Fondren

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Custom Case Made Menu Covers are durable and washable.

By Tim novak Staff Reporter April 28, 2014 7:18PM

Former Mayor Richard M. Daley leaves Northwestern Memorial Hospital in February. | Sun-Times Media File Photo

storyidforme: 65614054 tmspicid: 23462178 fileheaderid: 11460908

Updated: April 29, 2014 1:08AM

Former Mayor Richard M. Daley is expected to be the star witness in Mayor Rahm Emanuels multi-million-dollar food fight with Millennium Parks Park Grill restaurant.

Daley could take the witness stand next week before Cook County Circuit Court Judge Moshe Jacobius, who must decide whether Emanuel can break the so-called sweetheart deal the restaurant got more than a decade ago when Daley was mayor.

Emanuel filed suit in late 2011, seeking to break a 30-year deal that his lawyer called a lop side contract that cheated taxpayers out of $8 million.

The Park Grill has grossed more than $100 million during its first nine years. But it has only paid $2.7 million in rent to the Chicago Park District, which has spent $3 million providing the restaurant with free water, natural gas and garbage collection.

The Emanuel administration argues the Park Grills deal is illegal because the park district let the restaurant open on land-controlled by the city without seeking permission from the City Council.

But the Park Grill run by clout-heavy businessmen James Horan and Matthew OMalley whose investors include many businessmen with political connections to Daley are puzzled by City Halls lawsuit. They point out that Daley and his top staff members knew the park district awarded the concession agreement to OMalley and Horan, who frequently met with Daley during the construction of the restaurant in 2003 and 2004.

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Former Mayor Daley could testify next week in restaurant deal case

"Don't look at the columns," said chef/owner Michael Schlow, on a tour of what will soon become Tico, his Latin-influenced American restaurant on 14th Street NW. Construction is underway, and the columns, which have been painted with an abstraction in warm colors, are not to his liking. "It just doesn't fit ... I want the place to feel like it's been here a long time."

Luckily, his wife, Adrienne Schlow, is a mixed-media artist and, for Schlow, a miracle worker. "She's coming down to fix this," he said, and in a restaurant where Schlow has been involved in the smallest details -- from hand-designing the layout of the kitchen, to selecting the perfect tables, handmade in Arizona -- he plans to cede absolute creative control to his wife.

"She doesn't tell me what to do [in the kitchen], and I don't tell her what to do with the art," Schlow said.

Michael Schlow (Credit: Megan Pappadopoulos)

Tico, expected to open in early June, will be Schlow's grand debut in D.C. The chef, a James Beard Award winner, is well-known in New England, where he has six restaurants in Massachusetts, Connecticut and New Hampshire. Like other notable chefs from elsewhere -- Le Diplomate's Stephen Starr, Osteria Morini's Michael White -- he's come to stake his claim in the District.

Schlow has family in Silver Spring, and visited D.C. frequently as a kid. He also began to develop his professional career here, working for Jean-Louis Palladin at the Watergate: "I always looked up to him," Schlow said. He had been eager to return to D.C. and found space in the Louis complex at 1926 14th St. NW -- right next to the Trader Joe's -- through a frequent patron of his Boston restaurants, who also happened to work for the building's developer, JBG.

"This is not an opportunity for me to drop off a restaurant and go back to Boston," he said. "If this is successful, I will absolutely do more restaurants here."

And on a street where food has become the focus, Schlow's laid-back attitude may be seen as a refreshing change. Tico, a duplicate of his Boston restaurant of the same name, aims to be a neighborhood gathering place for simple American food with a Latin twist: Think fried chicken tacos, or breaded manchego with spicy pomegranate dip in place of mozzarella sticks.

"Nothing is authentic," Schlow said. The menu was inspired by his travels throughout Spain and Latin America, but also through the mother of all invention: necessity, of course.

"A lot of the dishes were bred out of me having nothing in my house to eat," he said. A shredded cabbage salad with a spicy salsa verde that he says is among the most popular dishes on Tico's menu was the result of some experimentation when he was faced with a near-empty fridge.

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Meet Michael Schlow, Ticos top toque

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BALTIMORE (WJZ) Construction is well underway at the new Horseshoe Casino downtown. Now two celebrity chefs announce theyre opening a restaurant thereone with some serious Latin flavor.

Jessica Kartalija has more.

As casinos pop up around the country, celebrity chef-inspired cuisine is along for the ride. The new Horseshoe Casino in Baltimore is no exception.

Celebrity chef Aaron Sanchez from the Food Network show Chopped announced Monday hell open a 222-seat taqueria with Chef John Besh, who owns nine restaurants.

Baltimore is one of those cities really going through a renaissance right now and one of the things that really attracted John and I to this market was the idea of sharing Mexican food with an audience that would appreciate it and needs it desperately over here, he said.

Sanchez says the restaurantJohnny Sanchez, a play on both of their nameswill have live music and serve fresh tacos and tostados, as well as cocktails and stiff margaritas.

We want to have a fun restaurant. We want it to be loud; we want it to be a place that makes a statement, said Sanchez.

They also want to make their mark, as Bobby Flay did at Maryland Live.

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Horseshoe Casino Announces Restaurant With 2 Celeb Chefs

The Chinese Restaurant Awards added star power this year, attracting some of the best chefs in China. Three of five visiting Chinese chefs run Michelin-starred restaurants (Michelin inspectors visit only Hong Kong in China). The superstar chefs joined top-notch local Chinese chefs, cooking a 10-course Gold Medal Dinner after the awards ceremony Wednesday.

"This is the most famous collection of chefs ever assembled outside of China," said CRA founder Craig Stowe in an interview. "They were all intrigued and excited. They know there's a big Chinese population here and that food is important to them. They know the best Chinese food outside of China is in Vancouver." Some would say Vancouver outshines China because of the quality of products.

"We took the chefs to lunch at The Keg restaurant (at 688 Dunsmuir St. in Vancouver) and they were stunned by the quality of beef. They thought it was spectacular. It was Triple A Alberta filet mignon," says Stowe. "They know B.C. Dungeness crab, absolutely, they know Alberta pork, they know geoduck and they know we have spectacular seafood. The next step is to showcase Canadian beef." Some 90 tonnes of seafood is exported to China from Vancouver every week, says Stowe.

Now in its sixth year, the CRA is the go-to guide to Chinese food in Metro Vancouver for locals and tourists alike. Visitors to the website chineserestaurantawards.com are split evenly between locals and tourists.

"Most people have no idea how staggeringly important having good Chinese restaurants is to the B.C. economy," says Stowe.

"The high quality and variety separates Vancouver and Richmond from every city in the Western world. It's our secret weapon in attracting investment, trade and tourism.

"A lot of people in government and tourism don't realize it generates interest in business and visits to the city.

"It's a mecca and it's important for investment and immigration. All business in China is done around a table over lunch or dinner."

This year, the CRA gave awards for 10 signature dishes in nine categories, down from the 24 in previous years. Dynasty Seafood on Vancouver's West Broadway took two awards - one for the geoduck, done two ways and another for the hand-shredded chicken with bamboo.

"Diners discover restaurants and signature dishes they'd never have tried without the direction of the Chinese Restaurant Awards," says Stowe. "Local Chinese diners and chefs say they trust the results. Award-winning restaurants experience a spike in their

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2014 Chinese Restaurant Awards add culinary star power

(PRWEB) April 27, 2014

Venator Contracting Group, LLC is excited to have started construction on the Dickey's Barbecue Pit Restaurant in Brentwood, TN. This will be the third restaurant built for this franchise by Venator Contracting Group with others in North Charelston, SC and Johnson City, TN. David Schatzberg, President of Venator Contracting, states, "We are thrilled that Dickey's Corporate continues to entrust their franchisees with our construction abilities. We look forward to continuing our business partnership and building many more in the near future."

Dickey's Barbecue Pit is one of the fastest-growing franchises in the country.

Every location smokes all of their meats on-site at the restaurant. Dickey's serves up beef brisket, pulled pork, ham, polish sausage, turkey breast, and chicken, with an extensive array of home-style sides from jalapeo beans to macaroni and cheese. Buttery rolls are served with every meal along with the complimentary ice cream and dill pickles.

If you're considering Venator Contracting Group for your next business venture, have confidence in knowing our customers are our highest priority and we base our business on these key factors:

Honesty and Integrity Flexibility Competent Professional Supervision Open Communication Detail Oriented Technologically Advanced Willingness to Work in a Team Environment

To see more past and present projects by Venator Contracting Group, visit us at http://www.venatorcontracting.com/HistoryProjects.php.

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Venator Contracting Group, LLC is Pleased to Announce They Have Started the Construction of a Dickey's Barbecue Pit

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STUART A Palm Beach-based Mexican restaurant hopes to serve its signature margaritas and tacos in the old Rookies building by the end of the year.

Officials with Cabo Flats Cantina & Tequila Bar announced Wednesday the company will open its third location in the historic building near the foot of the Roosevelt Bridge.

Weve had a lot of people from Stuart and the Treasure Coast that have been coming to our Palm Beach Gardens location for four years now, said Adam Robin, Cabo Flats director of operations. It is our pleasure now to open this new Cabo Flats in their backyard and make our famous margaritas and fresh food available to more of the Treasure Coast.

The original Cabo Flats opened in 2009 at Downtown at the Gardens in Palm Beach Gardens and a Delray Beach location opened in 2013.

Robin said the Stuart restaurant could open in November or December in the old Rookies building built in 1926 as the Rob Roy Hotel. He said the company has plans to continue expanding and could have five locations across the state by the end of 2015.

Hog Snappers Shack and Sushi, a popular Tequesta-based restaurant, is under construction next door near at the site of the former Bubbas Fish Camp. Hog Snappers is expected to open in mid-August.

Jeff Hardin, president of Straticon Construction Services, and with his wife, Christine, bought the 1.34-acre site containing the former Rookies and Bubbas in February 2013.

Rookies and Bubbas have been closed and vacant for about 10 years and were considered an eyesore near the south foot of the Roosevelt Bridge.

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Cabo Flats will open its third location in Stuart