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D Magazine SideDish Yes, Dishers. This post is about a restaurant opening way up north in Allen. But after attending their media preview last week, I can tell you that people in the Plano/Allen/McKinney area are happy to have a new dinner spot. It’s Woodlands Grill at Watters Creek (a cute new mixed-use development just off 75 in Allen), brought to you by the folks at Food, Friends, and Co. (who own the Woodlands Grill on Forest and the Cozymel’s chain). Anyhow, if you find yourself famished after a day of bargain hunting at Allen Premium Outlets and decide to check Woodlands out, I strongly suggest you sample their to-die-for spinach pesto pasta (campanelle pasta, Parmesan, pecans, marinated tomatoes) and get an order of sweet potato fries. Yum.
Retail & Hospitality After a splashy grand opening in Dallas Jan. 17, a second location of Jack Baum’s Woodlands will arrive in Allen this April. The restaurant will have 6,800 square feet in a prominent space inside Watters Creek at Montgomery Farm, near North Central Expressway and Bethany Road. “We present ourselves as an independent restaurant. We never intended to open in the same city,” Baum said. “The Allen location…I felt it was a completely different market.” The 4,500-square-foot Dallas location, at 6073 Forest Lane, is creating 60-70 jobs; the Allen venue will employ 75. Baum calls his latest endeavor an experience somewhere between Houston’s and Jasper’s. He ways he knows “for a fact” that Woodlands will be in other cities, but has no plans to open additional locations in Texas. He declined to specify possible future sites, or the cost of opening each new location. Woodlands has dishes such as tuna tartar, butternut squash soup, mahogany chicken and bison burgers. It’s food that Baum – a Dallas restaurateur of more than 25 years – called “not uncommon.” But it’s “up the fairway of what people want to eat.” The first location of Woodlands opened in November in Chicago. Allen will make its third. Baum is chairman and CEO of Food, Friends and Co. – a Dallas-based restaurant management firm that operates 13 restaurants in eight states. He also started Dallas-based Hampton’s and Newport’s. In 1989, he and a team reinvigorated Sam’s Café, which spawned Canyon Café. Watters Creek is a 1.15 million-square-foot, mixed-use development that will open by late spring. In July, P.F. Chang’s China Bistro became the first of the project’s tenants to open. “I think Woodlands is going to do well (in Allen),” Baum said. “Because of the quality, we weren’t going to be inexpensive. But we want people to feel comfortable with the concept that they can come in once a week and get their favorite item. ldavolio@bizjournals.com
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