This is a bolo with chicken. (Explanation below.)

The signature sandwich at Bolo Italian Grill is the bolo: a flatbread wrap that comes with angel hair or gluten-free penne, choice of meat, veggies, cheese and a drizzle of sauce.

Wait: Pasta inside the wrap?

The idea behind Bolo is that it blends burritos and Italian food, a press release says.

This is a bowl of pasta. (No explanation needed.)

Creator Judson Phillips comes from years of owning franchises or partnering with chains such as McDonald’s, Quiznos and Pizza Patron.

Bolo Italian Grill is estimated to open in mid-December in Southlake and is a fast-casual restaurant. Besides bolos, the menu has pasta bowls, salad, and gluten-free and vegetarian options. (See the menu below.) Meals can also be “bambino-sized” into kid-friendly sizes, according to a press release.

260 North Kimball Ave. #264, Southlake. Open seven days a week for lunch and dinner, 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. 817-488-8829. boloitaliangrill.com.

Bolo Italian Grill

(Tom Fox)

Christmas brisket: a new family tradition?

Back in November, Pecan Lodge sold brisket for Turkey Day. Seems like it was successful: They sold 400 of them.

The well-known barbecue joint will again serve take-away meats for the December holidays: smoked brisket ($125) — which will likely be the most popular item — as well as spice-crusted beef tenderloin ($179), racks of ribs ($48), smoked turkey ($109) and smoked ham with apricot-molasses glaze ($89).

Order by noon on Dec. 19. Pick up is 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Christmas Eve.

Now I’m hungry for barbecue. Check out which barbecue joint Dallas Morning News readers picked as their favorite. (Spoiler: It was actually not Pecan Lodge.)

And stay tuned for a list of restaurants in D-FW where you and your family can eat a nice meal away from home on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.

Here's a shot looking across Fresh Market's produce section to the center deli counter, with cheese and ready-made items to go.

You be the judge: Upscale Fresh Market opens today at Arboretum Village (Gaston at Garland roads) just over a mile from the Lakewood Whole Foods Market. Savvy business writer Maria Halkias says it’s smart business.

“That area has been underserved for years,” she writes in an email. “When Whole Foods moved to old Minyard store that was good. Then Trader Joe’s and Wal-Mart Neighborhood Market came in to Lower Greenville. The only other big store there is an Albertson’s at Casa Linda and there’s a Natural Grocer there too. It’s a great demographic Forrest Hills and Lakewood, Old East Dallas….there’s room for them, too.”

Here's the chocolate area in the section devoted to candy.

So what does it mean to shoppers? First, Fresh Market offers an expansive experience: Stocking and shelving are deliberately kept low so you can see across the store, making the space feel larger than 24,000 square feet. Soft lighting. Classical music. The smell of coffee brewing in the morning. Lots of feel-good touches to make shopping pleasant here.

Nearly a third of the store is given over to fresh produce. Quality is first, says PR and community relations manager Drewry Sackett, so you won’t see the kinds of bargains you do at places like Sprouts Farmers Market, where the produce items can be smaller (albeit no less flavorful).

Fresh Market uses a 100-300 system to designate local and regional produce sourcing. 100 means it’s sourced within 100 miles; 300, within 300 miles. That’s a common-sense solution to a problem that has dogged area markets – how to distinguish Parker County peaches from Rio Grande Valley Rio Stars in the pantheon of localness.

With an on-premise bakery, an appealing chocolate display, wine and beer (including some local), lots of chef-case and grab-and-go items, Fresh Market makes shopping for good ingredients pretty painless – even if it doesn’t offer the range of a Central Market or the health-sustainability vetting of a Whole Foods.

Osso buco is one of Fresh Market's specialty frozen foods.

I saw bourbon-praline pecans in the bulk section ($14.99/pound), cool house-brand frozen pastas as well as other items, like the frozen osso bucco, that make it clear this isn’t a “budget” store. But I also noticed bags of Halo brand mandarin oranges for a dollar less than Whole Foods.

In the seafood section, I noticed farmed Atlantic salmon (from Chile), however. Sackett says Fresh Market partners with the New England Aquarium to vet its seafood, but I couldn’t find any blessing for farm-raised Chilean salmon on the aquarium’s website. That particular salmon has often been disdained by what USAToday calls “environmentally motivated consumers,” but pointed out in a 2013 story that one such fish farm had been promoted to “yellow” status from red. Sackett has promised to look into this.

Bottom line, I saw lots to like here as a shopper. I can’t wait to see how things shake out.

Going into a bustling corner of Uptown near the Katy Trail, Sfuzzi is expected to open on Cedar Springs Road soon.

It was a shock to see the sign come down at Vino 100 on Sunday morning. The wine bar in Uptown has closed.

Call it an outlier, though: Uptown Dallas has been a hot area for twentysomethings for years, and it isn’t cooling off anytime soon.

Here are nine openings you can expect in Uptown in the coming weeks and months, plus two more that have already debuted:

Pera Wine Bistro: A Turkish fast-casual restaurant will open on Boll Street where Sharaku Sake Lounge once stood. Pera will sell sandwiches similar to gyros. Owners Sam Sensel and Habip Kargin also operate Pera Turkish Kitchen and Pera Wine and Tapas, both in Far North Dallas.
2633 McKinney Ave., Dallas. Opening this weekend or early next week.

Eureka!: An American restaurant with beers on tap and 40 small batch whiskeys is joining West Village’s new 3700M development on McKinney Avenue just south of Blackburn Street. It’s Texas’ first Eureka!, though California has about a dozen of them.
3700 McKinney Ave., Suite 126, Dallas. Estimated to open Dec. 8.

Truluck's built a brand-new building next to the existing one on McKinney Avenue. It opens early 2015.

S&D Oyster Company: Uptown’s homey seafood restaurant is getting a new addition that will double its square footage. Crews are currently building a new dining room and bar behind the existing S&D Oyster Company on McKinney Avenue. The original building is well over 100 years old, the GM says, and the owner has taken great care to make an addition that jibes with the original. When the addition opens, the menu will not change, though the extra kitchen space will allow the chefs to experiment with adding new items in the future.
2701 McKinney Ave., Dallas. Estimated to open in late December or early January.

Fat Rabbit: Gone is the Sfuzzi at McKinney Avenue and Routh Street — more on that momentarily — and a two-story restaurant and bar called Fat Rabbit is currently under construction. The downstairs area will be a casual restaurant with a menu of sliders, tacos and entrees. Upstairs (and opening 60 days after the downstairs portion) is a VIP lounge and club with bottle service and a menu of global food, says the marketing director. The menu hasn’t been set for the upstairs portion yet. The chef is Kyle Kingrey.
2533 McKinney Ave., Dallas. Estimated to open in January.

Bisous Bisous Patisserie: This macaron business started out selling sweets at White Rock Local Market, and come January, it will open its own storefront. The 1,200 square foot store will also sell tarts, croissants, cakes and coffee.
3700 McKinney Ave., Dallas. Estimated to open in January.

Public School 214 (or PS214 for short): Class is in session year-round at Public School 214, a gastropub modeled after a classroom. Happy hour is called “recess” and curious drinkers can take “beer 101″ classes.
3700 McKinney Ave., Dallas. Estimated to open at the end of January.

Truluck’s: The Truluck’s as you know it on McKinney Avenue will become a parking lot in early 2015. Behind it, on Maple near McKinney avenues, the brand-new Truluck’s building is almost finished. In the new building, the dining room will accommodate 15 percent more diners. That’s not the reason this place was built: It’s the new 90-person bar situated around a grand piano, plus a large private dining room that can be partitioned into three smaller rooms. Truluck’s will close for several weeks in early 2015 while crews demolish the current building and set up the parking lot.
2401 McKinney Ave., Dallas. Estimated opening date is “before Valentine’s Day.”

A bar called Parquet is slated to open where Teddy's Room was. That's about all we know.

Parquet: We don’t have much to report about Parquet, a sports bar (according to Facebook, at least) that’s got signs up where Teddy’s Room was on Cedar Springs Road. We’ve inquired.
2404 Cedar Springs Road, Dallas. No information on opening date.

Sfuzzi: For months, crews have been redoing the inside of 2600 Cedar Springs Road. But what would it become? We’ve known since the building requested a certificate of occupancy in April that on-again, off-again pizza joint “Sfuzzi” was on the permit, though owners were mum. Recently, the bar’s awnings went up, and yes, Sfuzzi is what’ll go into that bustling bar corner near Kung Fu Saloon, 6th Street Uptown and the still-under-construction Routh Street Flats. The redone Sfuzzi space now has a new bar and new booths, and according to SideDish, its executive chef will be Avner Samuel.
2600 Cedar Springs Road, Dallas. No information on opening date.

In addition to the coming-soon places, two notables are already open. They are:

Cliff’s Bar and Grill: Cliff Gonzales, former owner of The Loon (may it rest in peace), has opened his new place, Cliff’s Bar and Grill, on McKinney Avenue. The Loon perfected that weird social mix of college kids and greasy locals, and only time will tell if Cliff’s will be home to the same crowd. But those jonesing for a beer in a can from The Loon: Cliff’s might be the next best thing.

TnT Tacos and Tequila: The Quadrangle is now home to a quickie taco place open late for bar hoppers. (It’s a welcome neighbor for Crushcraft, a restaurant that fills the same late-night needs but serves Thai.) TnT has a second-story patio that’ll surely be a hit in warmer weather.
2800 Routh St., Dallas.

With all these Uptown updates, there’s bound to be more coming and going. What did I miss?

Bisous Bisous Patisserie will feature macarons and more.

(Bisous Bisous)

Artist's rendering of Bisous Bisous storefront.

Bisous Bisous may be the first North Texas macaron baker to go from farmers market to a fixed-location bakery. How cool is that? Andrea Meyer’s artisan macarons have been a fixture at White Rock Local Market since she came on the scene a couple years ago, along with several other macaron bakers when the delicate French meringue-based confections suddenly became hot.

But Bisous Bisous Patisserie, set to open in the West Village’s 3700M in January, will be about much more than macarons. Meyer plans to specialize in French pastries at the combination bakery and coffee bar.

Look for tarts, eclairs and croissants. And while the finishing touches go on the permanent space, you can still order holiday season goodies, such as peppermint, gingerbread and eggnog flavored macarons, Buche de Noel, dark chocolate peppermint tarts and iced shortbread cookies.

Meyer’s a refugee from the corporate world who studied at Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts. According to her press release, she “credits her tenure with the …Thomas Keller Restaurant Group in Yountville, Calif. for honing her pastry skills and instilling a deep respect for her food and her customer in her work.” That’s some great cred.

3700 McKinney Ave., Suite 150. bisous-bisous.com.

Brian Livingston hired original Celebrity Bakery owner Barbara Harris to help bring the company back to what it used to be.

Celebrity Cafe & Bakery CEO Brian Livingston has tossed as many as 4,000 cookies in the garbage in the past few weeks.

The new operator of four Celebrity Bakeries in D-FW says the stores had slumped, occasionally serving stale or burned cookies and a dated menu. The flagship store in Highland Park didn’t seem to match its high-class neighbors: The kitchen was filthy. The five-blade fan above the waiting area had only two blades remaining. The cookies weren’t as good as they used to be.

The tiny Celebrity Bakery in Highland Park got a facelift recently. The three remaining Celebrity Bakeries that CEO Brian Livingston is overseeing will also see some changes.

Livingston and his wife Brittany Livingston are taking over four Celebrity Bakeries and plan to make cosmetic and staffing changes to each location. They started with Highland Park, which closed for a few days while crews re-painted the teeny bakery and scrubbed the kitchen.

When it reopened the week of Thanksgiving, the place was already abuzz. Moms and teens flitted into the shop, ordering holiday pies or buying a famous iced sugar cookie. Some commented on the new chandelier replacing the old fan, and many politely made requests of the new owners: Bring back the sticky buns! We want more flavored iced tea! Will you make me a BLT?

Those regulars likely remember Celebrity Bakery back when it was run by its original owners, Barbara and Bill Harris, from 1989 to 2007. Barbara regularly sat on the patio of the Highland Park bakery — Celebrity’s first shop — greeting customers.

As if years hadn’t passed, Barbara and Bill Harris were back on the Celebrity Bakery patio the week before Thanksgiving, greeting customers like always. They’re not running the business again; Barbara will serve as a restaurant consultant to help bring the bakery back to its “original glory,” as Livingston explains.

“This was my baby,” she said.

Harris made Celebrity into a sophisticated bakery brand — one that made personal cakes for the Perot family and for Dallas Cowboys events. She introduced the store’s most popular items: the iced sugar cookies, cranberry chicken salad and flavored iced tea.

“I could probably run a store based on those three items,” Livingston says.

Livingston wants to revert to the menu Harris created. All four bakeries will eventually see a menu makeover and updates to the interiors of the stores. He wants to add grab ‘n go breakfast and gluten-free cookies, among other items. And he hopes to grow Celebrity Bakery to 10 stores in D-FW.

Meantime, Livingston is on quality control. Which means: He samples a cookie from every batch.

“I’ve probably gained 15 pounds in a few weeks,” he says.

(Robert W. Hart/Special Contributor)

Scotch and Sausage

Big changes at Scotch and Sausage, the Oak Lawn tavern that only opened four months ago, featuring whiskeys and amped-up sausages. Things weren’t working out to owner Dylan Elchami’s satisfaction, according to publicist Lindsey Miller, and chef Trevor Ball left in early September. “It was a mutual parting of the ways,” Miller says. Elchami then brought on Patrick Stark, the former Sundown at Granada chef, as a consulting chef to “fix the kitchen” and revamp the menu.

There are nine new sausages on the 15-sausage menu, including “jackalope” (jack rabbit and antelope with habanero chiles and dried cherries) and smoked elk, to name a couple of the more unusual. They’re now being sourced from small farms in Colorado. New dishes include a chopped salad, chili, bacon-wrapped boudin balls, spatzel mac and cheese and more, and brunch has been added.

The restaurant has changed to full service, with changes made to the dining room. “They opened a second bar at the front patio to help with overflow,” says Miller, as well as reconstructing the rooms (taking down and adding walls, moving the bar). A new bar manager, Jesse Powell, has overhauled the bar program, with a new bar menu on the way.

Bistro 31, Alberto Lombardi’s clubby dining room in Highland Park Village, has seen changes as well. A month ago, we learned that chef Andrew Bell had left Bolsa to take over Bistro 31′s kitchen. That seemed odd on the heels of a September menu re-do by Avner Samuel, whom Lombardi had brought on as a consultant. That relationship has ended, according to publicist Lauren Millet, and now it’s Bell’s turn to have his way with the menu. SideDish first reported Samuel’s departure.

(Ben Torres/Special Contributor)

The dining room at Driftwood

Last year at this time, Jonn Baudoin and Omar Flores — who had previously earned four stars at Driftwood — were just opening Casa Rubia, their modern Spanish place in Trinity Groves. Six weeks later, I found myself wondering in a post whether it was possible for them to run two ambitious chef-driven restaurants at the same time. “From the outside looking in,” I wrote, “it seems to be a difficult balancing act.” In the end, they walked away. That’s when Michael Martensen and Sal Jafar II stepped in to take over.

When the new Driftwood owners opened Proof + Pantry in late August, leaving Kyle McClelland in charge of both kitchens, it felt like déjà vu all over again. I haven’t been back to Driftwood since I reviewed it in early August, but I have been wondering: How do they make this work? How do they run both Driftwood and Proof + Pantry with the same chef?

Now a wrench has been thrown in the works — plumbing problems. That’s what SideDish reported on Thursday, and a spokesman for Martensen and Jafar confirms it, adding “we do not know a re-open date at this time.”  I can’t help but wonder whether it will indeed reopen, and if so, when? Martensen and Jafar’s spokesman promises to keep us posted.

(Ralph Lauer/Star-Telegram)

Hope Lancarte's parents started Joe T. Garcia's restaurant in Fort Worth in 1935. Hope took it over in the 1950s. She's pictured here in 2003.

The grandmother of beloved Fort Worth restaurant Joe T. Garcia’s has died. Esperanza “Hope” Lancarte was 86.

Lancarte’s father started Joe T. Garcia’s in 1935 as a 16-person restaurant. Joe T.’s has grown to accommodate 1,500 seats and even won an America’s Classics regional restaurant award from the James Beard Foundation in 1998.

It was Lancarte who took over the business in the ’50s after her father died suddenly, according to an obituary in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram worth your read. (And believe it or not, the restaurant actually started as a barbecue joint. Now, of course, Joe T.’s sticks to the small but satisfying dinner menu of cheese enchiladas or fajitas.)

Lancarte was the matron of a well-known food family in Fort Worth. She operated two Esperanza’s Mexican Bakeries in addition to Joe. T’s. Her grandson Lanny Lancarte was behind Lanny’s Alta Cocina Mexicana — which has become Righteous Foods, also in Fort Worth.

“No restaurant defines Fort Worth like Joe T.’s and Joe T.’s wouldn’t be Joe T.’s without La Maestra Lancarte,” journalist and Fort Worth native Joe Nick Patoski told the Star-T.