PaperCity Magazine

May 2017 Dallas

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S it down to lunch with Front Burner restaurant group's founder and CEO, Randy DeWitt, and president Jack Gibbons, and conversation flip- flops between tales of recent food-inspired travel, the optimal height of a comfortable barstool, and growing fresh greens inside shipping containers. DeWitt and Gibbons, who are best known for Plano restaurants Whiskey Cake Kitchen & Bar and Dallas hot spot Velvet Taco, are far from your pretentious foodies — but they know their stuff. Recent globetrotting has brought them from Napa to France, Russia to Aspen, all in the name of research for their next big concept. And while the Plano- based company currently operates nine concepts, with 15 restaurants in Texas and others in Chicago and Oklahoma, they aren't slowing down. This particular lunch date takes place at Sixty Vines in Plano, perhaps one of DeWitt and Gibbons' most popular eateries, with a second location set to open in the former Palomino location at The Crescent this fall. Today, top of mind to discuss is the debut of Legacy Hall and Haywire, which also open this fall at Legacy West Plano. We sit at a tall-top table, with a perfect view of the open kitchen, massive wood- fire pizza oven, and the star of the show: a bar with 40 varieties of vino on tap. (No other restaurant in the country offers as many.) Glasses of wine are ordered — a pinot noir that DeWitt and Gibbons helped craft with the aid of a winemaker who splits his time between California and South America. Sixty Vines is known for its elevated American fare, and we order up tapioca-dusted crispy zucchini with Peppadew and shishito peppers, red beet and sweet pea-mint hummus, fig and prosciutto pizza, and a divine whey-brined bone-in chop drizzled with sage brown butter. For a moment, I'm no longer in Plano but in a chic, white-walled Wine Country kitchen. DeWitt scrolls through renderings of Legacy Hall on his iPad. The idea of an upscale food hall isn't new — Chicago French Market, Grand Central Market in Los Angeles, and Eataly in New York have been garnering buzz for years. But for Dallas, this is a first. Legacy Hall, which I imagine will feel a bit like a Texas-y Harrod's Food Hall, will boast stalls from top chefs including John Tesar and Gilbert Garza in a 55,000-square-foot space that includes indoor and patio seating, a beer garden, live-music venue, and a craft brewery, dubbed Unlawful Assembly Brewing Co. Also on site are shipping containers utilized as full-service bars and growing sites for fresh produce. No doubt Domination FOOD By CHRISTINA GEYER Front Burner's Randy DeWitt and Jack Gibbons are blazing a cultivated food trail through North Texas. Sixty Vines Jack Gibbons at Whiskey Cake Kitchen & Bar Randy DeWitt at Whiskey Cake Kitchen & Bar 88

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