Life's a Beach, if you can get a table

I'm usually up on new restaurant openings, but this one slipped through the 5-hole (hockey talk). Thankfully, my apparently-better-informed wife recommended we check out the hottest new restaurant to open in/near Flower Mound since Salerno's opened and it was about the only thing in Town..

Life's a Beach Grill & Sports Bar has opened up on FM407 just west of Morriss, in Highland Village. Lots of fancy TV's and a huge outdoor patio with misters in the summer and a fire pit for winter use.

Sounds great, right! Not so fast. We pulled up Friday night at 8pm (thinking the crowd might have gone down a bit), and found there was a 1-hour wait for indoor seating and a 2.5-hour wait for outdoor seating.

So we punted, and went down to the new Friday's. Beach, no worries, we'll be back.

Cases in point -- more on last week's newspaper discussion

Last week, I gave you a rundown of the current state of Flower Mound newspaperdom. This week, with only one exception, every paper held form, which gives me more examples to make my case.

• The News Connection held true-to-form with single-source stories with their subtly titled "Flower Mound Council Briefs" (front page and here at this link for this week only). In an election season, how could TNC cover a council meeting and print comments from only one candidate - someone who's not even on the council? As a professional journalist myself, I've been in this situation before. I don't subscribe to the notion that every single story I do has to be fair and balanced on its face. But if one story covers only one angle, I better see another story right away that hears from the other side. Let's see what they do this week.
  
• The Messenger this week is chock full of local stories, and several of them exclusives. If you read nothing else in this area, read the Messenger. It's the one place where you'll find a laser-like focus on Flower Mound and its closest neighbors, and you'll find good journalism too.
  
• The Leader went both ways on me this week. Wednesday's paper was an unfocused mesh of stories, one or two of which were from Flower Mound. The rest focused on Lewisville, Carrollton, Plano and The Colony. Most of the Flower Mound entries could have been cribbed from council minutes and from news releases. I really got irked at the front page on Wednesday's paper, which read "Heavy downpour hits hard Tuesday night". Tuesday night (the night of the Arlington tornado), it poured in Plano, Carrollton and Coppell. I don't think anyone in Flower Mound got rain Tuesday night, perhaps a few people near Gerault Park or Lakeside, but probably not even them. But Saturday's Leader was much better, and that's the one exception I noted above. All but one of the stories on Saturday's front page were Flower Mound-focused, the only exception being a story about a boat club on Lewisville Lake. That story has a direct appeal for Flower Mound readers, so it belongs in a Flower Mound paper. The stories aren't as deep as the Messenger's, but at least they're trying to cover more bases in this issue. Also, I give the Leader credit today for writing a pretty good Flower Mound-focused editorial. They take a stand on one of the charter proposals on the May ballot. The editorial is not posted on their website, so you'll have to buy the paper. But this latest entry is a good sign. More please!
  

Have you been to Belk?

I needed some shirts and ties for an upcoming business trip, and perhaps a new suit. So I checked out the new Belk department store, next to the new JCPenney. Belk is new to Texas, so unless you have roots in the Carolinas or the Southeast, you may not be familiar with them. From the grapevine I'd heard Belk was like Kohl's, but with better stuff. Here are my impressions from my first trip to the men's department at Belk:

• Belk indeed is like Kohl's in size, but Belk has much better lighting. The lighting is quite warm and inviting. There's more open space in Belk. I'm not sure if the building is indeed bigger than Kohl's or if there's less merchandise.
  
• The first thing that caught my eye was the brand names they offer: Izod, Colours, Polo, Lucky. Same stuff as Dillards or even Neimans. No problem finding a wide variety of colors, and all the main sizes seemed to be in stock.
  
• I mentioned up top that I was in the market for a new suit. I wasn't sure if I wanted to buy it off the rack at a department store, because I like having an experienced sales person make sure I get a good fit. Just when I was about to settle on shirts and ties, a gentleman walks up to me, introduces himself and asks if he can help. I decided to take him up on his offer and brought him over to the suit area. I told him what I wanted and he took me right there. I tried on a couple of his suggestions, and he was quite helpful with the fit. In the end, I'm happy I asked for help. You'll get more experienced service at a true men's store, but this guy knew enough about what he was talking about to make me feel comfortable in buying a suit.
  
• Belk has a great selection of ties, and they prefer the brands that favor bright colors, which I like. I hate ties that just hang there and blend in.
  
• The employees are still learning their way around the store and its systems. On a cold dreary Saturday afternoon, the store was quite busy. Combine that with an inexperienced and perhaps incomplete staff and you might need to prepare for a short wait to check out. I'm sure this will get better.
  
• The sales clerks want to get to a first-name basis with you. The guy who helped me called me by name at several key turns in the transaction. I heard other clerks make a point of introducing themselves and learning their customers' names. That's something I've never heard in all my visits to Kohl's.
  
• Much of their merchandise is heavily-discounted, like Kohl's, but not all of it is. All the shirts and ties I bought were "buy one, get one free" or 30-40% off. But be careful. Some of their merchandise (the Polo collection, for instance) was full-boat on this visit.
  

I found it pretty easy to drop $500 in my first visit to Belk, thanks in part to a salesman's timely interjection. Nice store - I'll be back.

What's your first impression, and have you been to the newfangled no-mall JCPenney store next door?

More restaurant news

Also coming to The Pines (Morriss at FM3040) is Pollo Salsa, a growing local Mexican chain. They promise a healthier, fresher approach to Mexican food. According to their website, their Flower Mound store will be their fifth, with other locations in Carrollton, Garland, Grand Prairie and Oak Cliff. This looks like their first store that isn't located in space formerly occupied by another type of store (ie Taco Bell, 7-Eleven, etc). The Pines will certainly be real-estate upgrade for Pollo Salsa.

Happy Easter at The Grotto!

Not exactly Easter weather outside today, but at least it wasn't raining (or snowing!). After a morning at Trietsch, the four of us plus my parents visited one of the best restaurants around - period. The Grotto is an institution, and today was not the first Easter lunch we'd spent there.

For big Sundays, Morris Salerno and his staff roll out the big buffet. Today might be been the best I've ever had there. The pecan-crusted chicken was one of my favorites. And it's always great to see Morris Salerno when he pops out of the kitchen to welcome his guests, even those like us whom he doesn't know.

Filing reopens, DeLuca to run again

It's breaking news for April Fools Day!

What's a Prince Bistro?

Good question, perhaps you know the answer. Here's what I know:

The Town's P&Z case log shows an application for a new "Prince Bistro" restaurant that wants to open shop in the Pines of Flower Mound restaurant. I believe they're looking at the very prominent front-corner of that center, right at the SW corner of FM3040 and Morriss. There's a fountain right next to one of the front outbuildings, which sound like a perfect place for an outdoor patio adjacent to an indoor dining area.

I don't think there are any Prince Bistro restaurants in operation. But a quick Google search turned up this Craigslist ad for the company which is looking for restaurant managers for this new "casual American restaurant". Further searching turned up this site for the parent company, Prince and Associates and this page with a reference to their new Prince Bistro project (scroll to the bottom).

I overheard that the broker for the Pines is hoping to have the center full in just a few months. LePeep is still going in to another space there. It's taking a couple months longer than usual, I hear, to get businesses through the permitting stages, due to the rush of applications across Town.

Has anyone been to the sushi restaurant at The Pines? Sushi's not my thing, but perhaps someone else can opine about this new restaurant.

Flower Mound's best local newspaper

Those of you who've lived in Flower Mound as long as me (or longer) have seen lots of colorful journalism tossed in our mailboxes or on our front lawns.

Remember the first days of The Messenger, back in the late 90s and early 00s, created solely to combat the growing-fast Voters United that had swept into power? Or even before that to the old FlowerPlex Pipeline, a one-or-two-woman operation. as I recall, that died shortly before the Messenger came into being? I suppose the inheritor of these legacies would be The News Connection, intensely-local in ownership and in its coverage, with a mixture of homespun writing and more professional fare. It appears to have a very strong advertising base, much more so than its local predecessors mentioned above. TNC covers a wide variety of stories, some of them quite interesting, but they don't always report the most important ones of the week.

The more prominent characteristic of a TNC story is its single-sourcing, and it's this paper's biggest weakness. Too rarely will you find multiple viewpoints in their hard-news stories. TNC relies heavily on "exclusive sit-down" interviews in fact, which are often quite interesting. The problem with these, however, comes when that person's viewpoint isn't challenged. This week's puffpiece with the Town's Economic Development director is a good example. I'm sure Ms. Glasgow is doing a fine job for the Town, but I'm sure there are people would take issue with where the Town stands with regard to economic development, and where we're headed.

It used to be the Leader (first the Lewisville Leader, more recently zoned for a FM edition) was the most comprehensive paper in town. It had the broadest news coverage, with more professional reporters covering more stories. The Leader had all the best Letters to the Editor. It had great ads, including the most prominent weekly local real estate section, a Bible of sorts for the local housing market. In short, the Leader was the de facto New York Times for Flower Mound. But it's no longer the best newspaper in the area. Their coverage is solid but not as robust as it used to be. And it no longer has the lock on the best letters. TNC usually has a better conversation of Townspeople going on its weekly op-ed pages. My biggest complaint with the Leader of today is its lack of true focus on Flower Mound issues. The opinion pages are the biggest example of this. The editorials are exceptionally weak. The columnists are from someplace besides Flower Mound, and they're always writing about generic issues. The Leader is one of a chain of suburban papers (centered around Plano), and I'm sure these columns and editorials are shared through the entire chain. But I don't think they do Flower Mound all that much good.

The best paper in Flower Mound today? It's The Flower Mound Messenger. The Messenger is no longer the paper-built-out-of-spite that it was launched to be almost a decade ago. Like the Leader, it's now part of a chain of smaller suburban papers, this one with corporate ties to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. But the Messenger has more complete news coverage than any of the other local papers. In part it's due to reporter Cecile Satin (a former Leader journalist), who covers a wide range of front-page-worthy current topics and events. With her stories, you're more likely to get multiple points of view, which is the journalist's best means of writing a comprehensive story that more people will find fair.

What do you like to read around here?

==

Southbound 2499 - let's open it up!

TxDOT crews were moving their front-lines farther north on FM2499 this weekend. They were cutting concrete north of Sagebrush, and now FM1171 is in sight. It's progress as promised, and it hasn't been a nightmare as I feared.

I thought by now they would have opened up the new lanes of FM2499 that were first built, between FM3040 and Spinks, but they haven't. Granted, they're not completely done with the medians, but it seems they'd only need a day to fix everything up down there. I understand why they might not want to open the northbound lanes -- it might be more of a pain at the FM3040 to have to funnel 3 open lanes down to 2 (or less) with the ongoing construction just to the north. But there's no reason I can see why they won't open the southbound lanes of FM2499, those that flow south past Spinks where it's already 3 lanes each side.