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.
There's no argument: Waco became a better place to live in 2013.
The lifestyle factor improved as new restaurants opened and others announced plans to come to town. And did you notice we're building a stadium? So here's our list of the top 13 developments in town during 2013:
It's Sunday morning and I'm alone in the Fiesta Bowl media work room.
The UCF defensive personnel is busy giving quotes to the media in another room here on the beautiful campus of the Camelback Inn in Scottsdale, Arizona. Because I'm here to cover the actual game for my steady wire-service gig and in the meantime write about the scene here in Phoenix, I don't have a ton of interest in listening to the Knights players and coaches pontificate on how they might stop the most prolific offense in the nation (in case any WacoFork readers are unaware, Baylor leads the nation in total offense with more than 50 yards per game more than second-place Oregon).
Here's this year's third installment of Christmas Carol Trivia, also the last one of this year. Congrats to Karl Aho, who was last week's winner.
Today's prize is a $25 gift certificate to Clay Pot. The first one to email the correct answer, which means artist and song, to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. wins.
Sometimes you get lucky. Sometimes you wander into what you think is a new-ish establishment with the intent of writing an article that you think is probably a week or so later than you needed to do it and, instead, it happens to be the first day that establishment is open.
That happened today at Marco's Pizza, which opened on Monday in the Woodway shopping center that also includes Leal's in the space formerly occupied by Gerik's. Not only that, I learned a few things from the knowledgeable and friendly staff.
