Last week I told you about speculation I've been hearing about Central Texas Marketplace. I had a couple of indirect sources suggesting a Twin Peaks and a Chick-fil-A were going in the Cabela's/Don Carlos sector of the massive Waco shopping center.
I have an update as I caught up with local Chick-fil-Ahuman resources director Paul Day at the Richland Mall location. He said nothing has been signed on a new Chick-fil-A location. The fast-food-chicken chain is aggressively seeking a third Waco location, but Day wasn't even sure if the Central Texas Marketplace location was a candidate.
On Tuesday, Dustin Payne introduced us to the TSTC culinary arts program. Today I'm going to formally introduce Dustin, our intern this spring.
That's him with his arm raised and The Coliseum in the background.
Muddle opened Saturday.
I was sitting on the couch watching sports, feeling ambivalent about sitting on the couch watching sports on a Saturday night when I saw a Tweet from one of our WacoFork friends, who said she happened upon Muddle's soft opening. That exacerbated my ambivalence, but I eased my mind by telling myself I would write about the new cocktail bar's opening this week.
Cory has garnered quite a few hits and gotten quite a bit of mileage out of his "20 reasons you know you grew up in Waco in the 80s and 90s" posts and deservedly so. I too enjoyed the walk down memory lane like many of you.
The past is more romantic than the present.
Two more restaurant arrivals recently came to my attention, one through the good old WacoFork wire and the other as a result of trying to get confirmation on the first one.
Last week, I got an email from one of our WacoFork friends telling me a Don Carlos manager had heard Chick-Fil-A was planning to build a second free standing restaurant in town, this one at Central Texas Marketplace near Cabela's and Don Carlos. So I decided to have lunch at Don Carlos to investigate for myself. I received word that Twin Peaks is going in next door to Don Carlos and a Chick-Fil-A on the other side, closer to Logan's Road House.
A couple of years ago, I decided Friday should be Fried-day and I set about writing about our town's best fried food on Friday's.
It was a flawed plan because it's difficult to dine out as much as I do in writing this blog and stay relatively healthy and then throw a weekly meal of decadent fried food on top of it. Still, there's room for a fried-day every now and then.
I'm here to testify that it takes absolutely no credentials to write about restaurants. So there's no shortage of people on the internet who will tell you where they think you should dine when visiting, say, Phoenix.
As it happens, though, I was recently in Phoenix when a couple of sportswriter buddies of mine continued their habit of raving about a particular internet food advisory site called Roadfood.com. I thought it would be a good site to pass along to you, despite the fact that Roadfood.com doesn't include any Waco restaurants on its list.
I received confirmation today that Portofino will be opening a new restaurant on Austin Avenue across from the Hippodrome in the space formerly occupied by The Green Room.
Portofino patriarch Nick Colaku told me he's happy with his current location at Lake Shore Drive and 19th Street, near MCC, but he's been told that his lease will not be renewed as HEB has bought the property and intends to build a new store.
I received a heads up text from Blake Batson at Common Grounds today that made my day of blogging so much more interesting.
During the holiday break, Common Grounds made a couple of upgrades that should make a big impact for Waco's most established coffeehouse. CG added cold brew on tap and replaced its pastry cabinet with a marble countertop, making the entry feel more open.
Happy 2014, WacoFork friends.
It's the first Monday of the new year, which for me means the first WacoFork workday of the new year. For the record, my alter-ego sportswriter persona worked on Jan. 1 and 3, which prevented me from hitting the ground running last week. But even if Mr. Hyde hadn't taken over, there's a chance I would have viewed last Thursday through Sunday as holiday continuation. Kind of like when an NBA player gets fouled while crossing mid-court but somehow the layup still counts.
