The Howard Hughes Corporation (NYSE: HHC) and its wholly owned subsidiary, The Woodlands Development Company, announced that HUSA Management Inc. signed on to open Local Pour at Restaurant Row in Hughes Landing on Lake Woodlands. Construction is set to begin this summer, with opening scheduled for late this year.

Local Pour is the second restaurant to announce plans to locate in Hughes Landing, a 66-acre mixed-use development that will include up to 11 Class A office buildings, shopping, a selection of up to 12 restaurants at Restaurant Row, entertainment, a Whole Foods Market, an upscale hotel, fitness center and up to 800 multifamily residences. Escalantes Fine Tex-Mex & Tequila also has announced plans to begin construction soon at Restaurant Row, with opening set for late this year.

Local Pour features a chef-driven menu of American favorites and a large selection of craft beer on tap. This will be its second location in the Houston area.

Restaurant Row will be a major attraction for the employees, residents and visitors to Hughes Landing on Lake Woodlands, said Paul Layne, executive vice president of Master Planned Communities for The Howard Hughes Corporation. Having a variety of lakeside dining options available within walking distance to office buildings, residences, shopping and entertainment distinguishes Hughes Landing from the competition.

HUSA Management Inc. is pleased to announce the expansion of the Local Pour concept in The Woodlands, said Heather Suggitt, director of Marketing. Based on the success of its first location in River Oaks and the current development in The Woodlands area, we believe that this area will become one of the top growth markets in the Southwest not just for restaurants, but all segments of the economy. Our scratch kitchen and focus on providing the consumer with Texas options for beer, wine and spirits will cater to the current consumer trends in restaurant growth.

HUSA Management Inc. was represented by Debbie Adams, of Edge Realty. Rip Reynolds, director of Leasing, represented The Howard Hughes Corporation.

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Local Pour coming to Hughes Landing

As much as gastronauts cherish their visits to the avant-garde Spanish restaurants Mugaritz, Berasategui and Arzak, many of them will confess that their last trips to San Sebastian may have been less about 14-course meals of high-modern cuisine than cider-fueled wanderings through the old town, where Txakoli flows and the succession of tapas bars is unmatched anywhere in Spain. And while these travelers can tell you in detail about the fuming tide pools of seafood they were served at Azurmendi or the edible river stones at Mugaritz, their fondest memories may be of the kitschy San Sebastian pintxos bar A Fuego Negro, which exists almost as a modernist joke on the excesses of modernism. At A Fuego Negro, you can snack on sous-vide pigeon breast with beet-juice "blood" and edible buckshot, ham coffee with sweetbread cookies, and pickled pig's ears with Oaxacan mole ice cream. Hyper-intellectual cuisine has its place, but parody can be more fun.

So in a Los Angeles restaurant scene dominated at the moment by extreme localism, modernist trickery and the marriage of European and Asian technique, Scratch Bar, a sleek, dim gastropub next to Matsuhisa on La Cienega's restaurant row, is a welcome bit of comic relief, the wiseguy telling jokes in the corner while the popular kids forage miner's lettuce and make buttermilk cheese with a centrifuge.

At Scratch Bar, chef Phillip Frankland Lee and his band roast half-cylinders of sourdough bread, scoop out grooves in the center and fill them with bone marrow trompe l'oeil marrow bones, garnished with ruddy bits of beet-marinated vegetables. They bake whole smelt inside crackers, so that the little fish appear to be emerging from the flat surface like nudes in a Robert Graham sculpture, and set them upright in blood-red smears of beet and beef marrow.

They construct canaps of sweetbreads, tiny flatbread and maple vinegar, call them "Chicken" 'n' Waffle, and dare you to eat them in a single bite. You do, and the sensation is straight out of a Sunday morning at Roscoe's. They inject green olives with pured Kalamatas, dip them in batter, deep-fry them and drizzle them with a little honey. If you have ever wondered what olives might taste like if they were stuffed with other olives instead of pimientos, this is your chance.

When you order Smoking Goat's Milk Cheese, the dry, crumbly fresh cheese comes to the table under a kind of upside-down glass terrine, where it has been resting next to a small pile of smoldering dried timothy grass. ("The same hay the goats eat," confides the waiter.) The top of the glass is smeared with pured olives, which you are encouraged to spread on little rounds of toast. The ruddy pickled vegetables show up again. The waiter replaces the terrine over the sputtering haystack. You watch the vessel slowly fill up again with smoke. The cheese may be dryish, and the smoke makes it smell a bit as if it had been hanging out with the Marlboro Man, but the rugged flavors seem to work.

The signature presentation is probably Squid in a Box the box is fashioned from fried potato, and the construction rests on a tar-black pure of charred eggplant, but it is indeed squid in a box. Vegetarians can have a Box Full of Vegetables instead.

Sometimes the restaurant's effects are elaborate, like the snack of skewered mussels suspended over a shot of sake, which in turn conceals a few grams of sea urchin paved with avocado mousse: Eat, sip, eat. Sometimes, as with the roasted corn rolled in toasted bread crumbs, the point is simple. The squishiness of long-braised pork belly rhymes nicely with the squishiness of a raw Kumamoto oyster. It's a nice bite. But the squishiness of long-braised pork belly does nothing for the briny creaminess of uni in an abstracted version of chirashi sushi. That experiment doesn't work. The corn-infused custard spiked with king crab meat doesn't really work either, at least until sweet corn comes back into its peak season, but you can see the reason behind it.

This is probably the place to point out that, while Scratch Bar is set up like a cocktail bar and, in fact, features cocktails designed by Dave Fernie of Pour Vous, the restaurant has only a wine and beer license, and those fancy drinks are made with sake, sherry or soju instead of booze. In practice, this works out. The Bangkok Dangerous, made with pineapple, two sakes and a dusting of cayenne, would not have been out of place at the Tiki Ti.

I'm not sure Lee is aiming toward a higher end at Scratch Bar, but in a way it doesn't matter. His food tastes pretty good, it is attractively presented and it makes you smile. I suspect the tiny portions and militant whimsy might enrage a certain kind of customer, but for the most part this, and the vanilla ice cream cones with house-made jimmies, may be enough.

Scratch Bar

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Jonathan Gold | L.A. restaurant review: Scratch Bar is comic relief

Filipino restaurant is also a community space in the heart of the city

Owner helps elderly and nonprofits in the area

Mama Tess Diaz-Guzman takes a break at her JT Restaurant. (PHOTO BY PAUL DUNN/CENTRAL CITY EXTRA) Click to see the full Special Report, Old and Poor in Tech City.

SAN FRANCISCO, California Someone who doesnt live or work in the area around 6th and Mission might walk past the Mint Mall and miss the tiny JT Restaurant. But around the neighborhood there are many, from elderly residents to construction workers to Filipino and Latino families, who know the business not only for its home-style chicken and pork adobo, but also for its vital role as a community space.

At the center of it all is the owner and chef, Tess Diaz-Guzman, who is called Mama Tess by those who know her.

Im proud because everybody calls me [that], she says, laughing. I have a lot of nephews and nieces, but [many are] American.

Diaz-Guzman, 55, owns JT Restaurant in the South of Market neighborhood in San Franciscos central city area, with her husband Juan, whom she married in 2010. Formerly a butcher and originally from the province of Laguna in the Philippines, she came to San Francisco 13 years ago, shortly after her first husband passed away.

Her brother already lived in San Francisco and had started the Filipino restaurant in the 1990s. Diaz-Guzman and Juan took charge of it a few years ago, renaming it JT Restaurant (the initials for Juan and Tess).

Business is community hub

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San Franciscos Mama Tess serves elderly a taste of home

Developer Rocco Termini won approval today for a downtown restaurant he plans to fashion out of eight to 10 metal shipping containers.

Dog Style, to be built close to the Catholic Health System headquarters now under construction, got a green light from the Planning Board to proceed. No Planning Board member commented on the eyebrow-raising name of the restaurant, though members were concerned about what color the restaurant would be.

The plan calls for the shipping containers to be stacked on top of each other, covering concrete, to create two floors. They come in three colors: blue, green and red, and one of the colors will be selected for the restaurant, Termini said.

Its something thats being done all over the country, Termini said of using the shipping containers.

Millions of the empty containers can be found in the United States, because it costs more to send them back to China than what they are worth, he said.

The 3,000-square-foot restaurant, planned for a narrow vacant lot at 128 Genesee St., between two buildings, would feature patios on two levels and specialize in hot dogs and beer.

Developer Fred LoFaso, who plans to buy an adjoining property and has it under contract, said he supports the project. But it would block a fire exit in his building, he said.

Termini called the existing fire exit illegal and said it lacks an easement. The board approved the restaurant plan and left it to the citys codes department to work out the fire exit issue.

The board also approved plans for Habibination, a hookah lounge in the former Ambrosia restaurant at 467 Elmwood Ave.

The lounge would not prepare food onsite and not serve alcohol, owner Amir Abbas told the board.

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Planning board approves Terminis restaurant made of shipping containers

Wednesday, March 12, 10:48 AM EDT

From Staff

A shell building was approved for construction at 15128 Max Leggett Parkway. The Angelo Group Inc. is the contractor for the 4,918-square-foot retail building at a project cost of $600,000. Plans show Moes Southwest Grill will take 2,600 square feet of the structure and another retail tenant will take the remaining space.

Pollo Operations Inc. buys Bartram site

Pollo Operations Inc. bought property in the Shoppes at Bartram Park from Compass Bank for $1.2 million. The deed was recorded Monday with the Duval County Clerk of Court.

Pollo Tropical is joining the growth at Bartram Park in Jacksonvilles Southside. The Miami-based chain, with three restaurants in Jacksonville, plans to build its fourth at 13776 Old St. Augustine Road in the Shoppes at Bartram Park.

A concurrency application showed the restaurant site was owned by Compass Bank.

Pollo Tropical Chicken on the Grill is part of Pollo Operations Inc. of Miami.

The city issued a permit for North Coast Construction Co. to build the 3,801-square-foot restaurant and drive-thru at at a project cost of $340,000.

The chain focuses on Caribbean-inspired, citrus-marinated grilled chicken. In addition to its signature grilled chicken, it offers slow-roasted mojo pork, salads, sandwiches and wraps.

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Food notes: Churchs Chicken, Moes Southwest Grill building in North Jacksonville

MT. PLEASANT, S.C. (WCIV) -- A new development in Mount Pleasant isn't even completed and it's already lost one of its tenants.

According to a release from Maverick Southern Kitchens, the restaurant and the new owner of 'The Boulevard' have mutually agreed to end their contract.

The contract was originally made with the Beach Company back in June 2013. The new owner said the opening of the new restaurant would be delayed by 4-5 months.

"Construction of the restaurant was set to begin September 1, 2013 when planners discovered that major building changes were needed to accommodate it." the release explained. "The design, engineering and permitting of the changes were complete in mid-January, just as the property was sold to an institutional investor represented locally by Greystar Real Estate Partners, LLC."

The restaurant would have featured 145 seats in the dining room and full bar, with additional seating outside, and would have served dinner seven nights a week with brunch on Sundays.

"When we learned the process was delayed an additional four to five months, we decided the restaurant could not wait that much longer," said Dick Elliott, founder and President of Maverick Southern Kitchens. "We were excited to be part of the revitalization of Coleman Boulevard, so we're disappointed that won't happen."

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Restaurant pulls out of Boulevard project

March 11, 2014 Chick-fil-A announces future GSW location

Anonymous The Americus Times-Recorder The Times-Recorder Tue Mar 11, 2014, 07:18 PM EDT

AMERICUS Students at Georgia Southwestern State University (GSW) will be able to Eat Mor Chikin when a new Chick-fil-A restaurant opens this summer inside the Canes Den in the Student Success Center.

Construction is expected to begin in May on the new restaurant which will be operated by Aramark, the universitys food service provider.

Were excited to begin construction of this new Chick-fil-A restaurant, which is something our students have been asking for as a dining option, said Shane Collins, Food Service director, GSW. We had this space available and knew Chick-fil-A would be a good fit right in the heart of campus.

In October 2013, students took a GSW Dining Services (Aramark) survey selecting restaurant chain preferences. Chick-fil-A was the overwhelming favorite having received 51 percent of the vote. Boars Head deli was second. The new restaurant will feature a Chick-fil-A/Boars Head combination.

The new Chick-fil-A location will serve the original Chick-fil-A Chicken Sandwich, Chick-fil-A Nuggets, Chick-fil-A Chargrilled Chicken Sandwich, Chick-fil-A Waffle Potato Fries, Chick-fil-A Grilled Market Salad, Chick-fil-A Fruit Cup, freshly squeezed Chick-fil-A Lemonade, ice tea and a variety of soft drinks.

The hours of the new restaurant will be 10:30 a.m.-10 p.m. Monday-Thursday; 11 a.m.-8 p.m. Friday, and 10:30 a.m.-2:30 p.m. Saturday. As with all Chick-fil-A locations, it will be closed on Sunday. The restaurant will be open to students and the public.

Chick-fil-A is the largest quick-service chicken restaurant chain in the United States with 1,797 locations in 39 states and annual sales of more than $5 billion.

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Chick-fil-A announces future GSW location

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BUFFALO, N.Y. (WIVB) Buffalo Developer Rocco Termini wants to open a new trendy hot dog restaurant this summer on Genesee Street made from huge metal shipping containers. News 4 told you Monday the name of the restaurant would create buzz, and Tuesday the name of the restaurant was released, Dog Style.

Termini will submit a formal proposal to the Buffalo Planning Board Tuesday and expects it to be approved.

There are thousands of shipping containers that are not being used because it costs more to ship them back to China than what theyre worth, he explained.

Termini owns the empty lot, which has been vacant for 25 years. The lot is in between the Harbor House for the Homeless and a furniture store.

He says construction should take 90 days, and timing is everything. The new restaurant should be open before Catholic Health opens their new $46 million corporate headquarters, which is about a block away.

Termini wants to attract more 20, 30 and 40-year-olds to downtown Buffalo. He plans on having unique food choices, like a lobster dog with beer and wine.

It will have a garage door that opens to the outside so it will all be exposed int he summertime, Termini said.

Recycling shipping containers for other uses like restaurants, homes and offices is becoming more popular around the country and world. Ron Cope owns Room for Rent in Tonawanda and knows a lot about re-using shipping containers.

He isnt working with Termini, but he is part of the National Portable Storage Association and says more companies and individuals are re-using the long lasting, durable containers. A Starbucks in Chicago is made from shipping containers, and a couple in Brooklyn made them into their home.

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Restaurant to create buzz with name, construction materials

MARTINSBURG - Construction has begun on a new McDonald's restaurant in the parking lot of the Old Courthouse Square shopping center off Edwin Miller Boulevard.

McDonald's USA LLC got permission in May from the Martinsburg Planning Commission to build a 4,350-square-foot restaurant on about an acre in the parking lot of the shopping center across from the Summit Bank branch.

It would have double drive-through windows, seats for 87 and 21 parking spaces.

Journal photo by John McVey Crews were busy Monday working on the site where a new McDonalds restaurant will go in the Old Courthouse Square shopping center off Edwin Miller Boulevard.

The new restaurant is assumed to be a replacement for the existing McDonald's on the north end of Martinsburg, but that has not been confirmed.

Traffic congestion caused by the new restaurant stirred a great deal of discussion by Planning Commission members. The main entrance to the restaurant would be from Edwin Miller Boulevard at Courthouse Drive.

A traffic study found the current road system could handle the additional traffic generated by the new restaurant.

West Virginia Division of Highways officials agreed with the study, stating that no changes, such as a traffic light at the intersection or turn lanes, were warranted.

Also, the plans for the McDonald's met all the city's planning requirements, leaving the Planning Commission members no alternative but to approve the plans.

Construction also has begun on a new 2,480-square-foot Taco Bell restaurant at the former site of the Casa Gonzalez restaurant on the west end of the Old Courthouse Square shopping center. The parking lot and entrance and exits for the old building would remain the same for the new building.

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New McDonald's going up in Old Courthouse Square parking lot

Seattle, WA (PRWEB) March 10, 2014

Roaring Bowl has opened in Seattle! The Gilkey Restaurant Consulting Group (TGRCG) is proud to announce the opening of this exciting, sleek Asian Hot Pot restaurant concept. Located at 516 First Avenue North, Roaring Bowl specializes in Shabu-Shabu cuisine, thinly sliced meats and fresh vegetables cooked tableside in simmering, savory stocks and finished in flavorful dipping sauces. Shabu-Shabu and other hot pot concepts, while a traditional Asian cooking method, is a rapidly growing restaurant trend in the United States.

Roaring Bowls owner was introduced to Shabu cuisine following a trip to Asia and he is now bringing his love of Hot Pot to the Pacific Northwest. The term Shabu-Shabu is derived from the swish-swish sound of the delicately sliced meats and vegetables stirring and cooking in savory pots of stock. The Gilkey Group created the brand, designed the kitchen, developed the menu and recipes, and led all management and staff training as well as the restaurant launch. The Gilkey Consulting Group has extensive experience designing and opening restaurants across the nation. Construction of Roaring Bowl began in September 2013 in this new mixed-use building on lower Queen Anne. The new building on First Avenue North and Republican features 275 condos, a parking garage and street level retail and restaurants.

Japanese Shabu is an interactive and entertaining experience that allows for personalized cooking and adds enjoyment to the dining experience. Roaring Bowls menu features three components: a Robata Grill, the Shabu-Shabu Hot Pots and Gamjatang Bowls.

Robata Grill means fireside cooking and refers to a method of cooking, similar to barbecue, in which skewered foods are slow-grilled over hot charcoal. Roaring Bowl features Robata Grilled Yakitori Chicken, Tograshi-brined Pork Belly, Korean Kalbi Beef Short Ribs, and Ginger and Shiso Skewered Salmon and lemon.

For those new to the Shabu dining experience, Shabu Hot Pots begin with the selection of the steaming broths. The Gilkey Group Chefs created six savory broths: traditional seaweed, spicy miso, extra spicy miso, Wakame, sukiyaki and Szechuan peppercorn. Using your chopsticks proteins are swished into simmering hot broths over the induction burners located at the center of each table. Protein options include Kurobuta pork belly, Painted Hills chuck eye, Andersen lamb top round, Wagyu 28-day dry aged short rib, house-made dumplings, and seafood such as salmon, calamari, clams and shrimp. All meats and seafood are sliced to order to retain freshness and texture and are all raised without antibiotics or hormones. Additionally, most ingredients are sourced from some of the Northwests finest purveyors. Accompanying the proteins is a beautifully arranged vegetable platters which includes fresh Napa cabbage, carrots, enoki and shiitake mushrooms, kabocha squash and other seasonally selected vegetables along with Japanese Udon noodles and white or brown rice. Each diner cooks all items to their liking then ladles the hot broth into their bowl and finishes with a dip in the citrusy Ponzu or Sesame dipping sauces.

The third menu option developed by the Gilkey Group Chefs is Gamjatang, a spicy Korean pork bone soup. The rich, red soup gets its aromatic flavors from simmering pork bones, vegetables and Korean peppers. Gamjatang Bowls also include rice and house-made Kimchee. Bento salads, desserts, beers, assorted sakes and teas round out the menu.

TGRCG developed this contemporary and entertaining hot pot restaurant after much research in Asian hot pot cooking. TGRCGs methodology in creating restaurant concepts is to develop an exciting brand that captures guests attention while crafting design features and operating principles that support that brand image. Managing restaurant development in this manner creates an emotional connection with the guest resulting in brand loyalty and outstanding sales and profits for years to come.

Just steps from the Space Needle, the Gilkey Restaurant Consulting Group developed Roaring Bowl, which is the finest example of a traditional Shabu-Shabu restaurant concept in the nation. Come experience this healthy, interactive experience.

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Roaring Bowl Restaurant Opening in Seattle Announced by The Gilkey Restaurant Consulting Group