This sign will soon dot the landscape of the Denton square.
Remember how Denton County Hamburger was never open past 3pm, and no one ever knew why? Turns out the HVAC barely worked - so they just didn’t stay open longer than the AC unit could handle. Crazy huh?
On that same topic, Denton County Hamburger's square location is no more (RIP, sweet, greasy prince), but the big news of the day is that Lone Star Attitude is moving in. The head chef from Fireside Pies and Hibiscus is carefully crafting a burger concept built around a traditional burger that doesn’t include extra love sauce or throwing on a chalupa. They are spending roughly $750,000 on renovations to get it up to code, open, and running. Apparently the seat count will be up to 178 (that's a lot of seats y'all). They'll be able to accommodate all of those brand new fancy-sch'mancy seats because they will also have a rooftop patio. To get there you'll have to hop up some new stairs designed by UNT students that look like piano keys and make music as you go up. We already can’t wait to have a burger and a beer on the rooftop while watching Twilight Tunes and the sun go down... sounds kinda great doesn’t it? We hope the burgers hold up, too.
Vigne, the wine place tucked-away behind Gerhard's, is moving into the old Cellar 22 space to develop a higher-end wine bar concept. We always love a place where we can swirl our cabs and not sound like snobs when we talk about it's legs, terroir and compare the size of our pocket squares and we hope that's what this place will be. So what happens to the old Vigne spot? A BBQ place is moving over in. Hey future BBQ restaurant, can you do us a solid? Texas Monthly recently did a feature on the top 50 BBQ places in Texas. Guess what town wasn't represented on that list. Denton. Some would argue that if From Tha Heart BBQ were still around, it would've made the list, but it's now long gone. Sure, you can drive up to Tioga and give Clark's a try, but it's not really worth it, even with the horse-shoe as corn holders. We need an open-pit, smoke-heavy BBQ place that people will wait in line for. We're not talking Franklin's level here, but something to at least give Pecan Lodge, Lockhart's or even Angelo's in Ft. Worth a run for it's money. I don't know about y'all, but our current Denton brisket selection just ain't cuttin' it for us. Don't let us down as-of-yet-unnamed place. We have high hopes for you.
Along with the pains of a growing city come the perils of parking in a busy and bustling downtown area. We've already mentioned the East Hickory Parking Plan before (you can catch up on it's many features over here on Kevin Roden's blog), but guess what y'all - it's about to get messy before it gets better. Get ready for lots of lane closures, road blockages and people with yellow hats blocking your way. Start following our twitter feed if you aren't already. We’ll be giving out live updates from the city during this painful process of fixing the parking situation. Don't forget to start practicing your back-in angled parking now, so as not to embarrass yourself when it's all done.
Hey - remember that time that past mayoral candidate and alleged troll under Goat Man Bridge, Bob Clifton, tried to take down newly elected Joey Hawkins during the city council elections? Yeah, that happened. Luckily, Joey is a class act, and he turned a nasty and false attempt at a smear campaign into lots of people with free coffee and a hefty donation to Serve Denton. Great job Joey. We liked the way you handled that and we look forward to more of that kind of positive and progressive creativity as you continue to serve our city from your new council seat over District 4.
On the topic of city council, Jim Engelbrecht, Dalton Gregory, Joey Hawkins and Kevin Roden will be serving you as representatives for Districts 1, 2, 3 and 4. Congrats y’all! If you did vote, thanks for your willingness to participate in the democratic process! Two thumbs up to you! Believe it or not, voter turnout was still pretty low this year. Start gearing up for next year, y'all. There are some pretty important seats up for grabs and maybe another party or something.