Armando’s homeowners spice up River Oaks with cozy new Italian cafe

The entrepreneurs of Armando’s are cooking up a little something new for River Oaks. Chef Armando Palacios and his spouse Cinda are bringing their Italian idea Lulu’s to the very same buying heart as their famous Tex-Mex cafe.

The few opened the to start with Lulu’s in Spherical Top in 2018. Named for Armando’s nickname for Cinda, Lulu’s serves vintage Italian such as pizza, pasta, salads, and entrees. The Houston restaurant, which will occupy the Stone Mill Bakers house, is slated to open in summer season 2021.

“I’d been wanting to do an Italian cafe for only 38 years, all right, but then once more who’s counting,” Armando Palacios tells CultureMap. “We experienced the opportunity to take Lulu’s River Oaks place practically three a long time back. We decided not to. We determined to do Spherical Top rated first.”

Lulu’s has produced a robust subsequent in Round Prime. With many Round Major website visitors also being Houstonians, the pair is self-assured that the new endeavor will accomplish equivalent good results.

“When we talked three many years ago, the figures have been ridiculous. We could not take a chance,” Cinda Palacios provides. “That’s yet another rationale we went to Spherical Top — for evidence of strategy. When the pandemic hit, they attained out to us. Clearly, things improved with the figures, and it made it far more beautiful to us.”

With only 2,400 square ft and 75 seats, Lulu’s will be an intimate cafe that serves breakfast, lunch, and supper. The few imagine it as the type of versatile establishment where a person could appear by for coffee and a pastry in the early morning on the restaurant’s terrace then arrive again in the evening for date night. If that meal comes about to be on a Thursday, date night could stop with dancing at Armando’s.

“It’s likely to be distinctive than the bordering Italian dining establishments,” Armando Palacios says. “It’s going to be quite understated. It is going to be the kind of place that brings recollections of the old Armando’s on Shepherd. It’s going to be unbelievable.”
Palacios Murphy Hospitality, the couple’s business, operates a range of ideas in Spherical Top rated such as Mandito’s, a Tex-Mex cafe and Popi Burger. Readers to the region can keep in just one of three visitor houses the few created, and they’ll grow their functions up coming yr with Resort Lulu, a 13-home boutique hotel.

To regulate the progress, the few a short while ago employed Alex Curley to be the company’s chief operating officer. He delivers above 25 a long time expertise in the restaurant business, most not too long ago serving as COO for Atlanta’s Southern Suitable Hospitality group. Curley says he’s utilizing his connections in Washington D.C. and Atlanta to recruit new talent to Houston who have been displaced by the coronavirus pandemic.

“[Talented people] are staying extremely thorough about the place they choose to even further their vocation primarily based on the struggles they experienced with groups that did not fulfill their commitments to them,” Curley states. “This job and Palacios Murphy as a whole is an incubator for a good deal of people who are extremely energized to be a part of it. I really do not assume the timing could be improved.”
