Cafe Annie leaves home to seek glitzier pastures

Nation's Restaurant News, April 3, 1989 by Tracey Taylor Woodard

Cafe Annie leaves home to seek glitzier pastures

HOUSTON -- Cafe Annie, Robert Del Grande's bastion of Southwestern cooking here, is planning a September move into larger, glitzier quarters uptown, escaping from a changing neighborhood.

Lonnie Schiller, managing partner in the restaurant, said the group also plans to move one of its two Cafe Express units to a more prestigious address, less than 100 yards from the new Cafe Annie site.

Cafe Annie, a 1988 Nation's Restaurant News Hall of Fame winner, will move from its location in a strip shopping center on Westheimer Street into a space currently held by Rudi's, an Italian restaurant on Post Oak Boulevard near Houston's upscale Galleria shopping center.

Cafe Annie will take possession of the site in May.

Schiller said the demographics of the old space had changed since Cafe Annie opened there in 1980. The addition of a nine-screen movie theater, a convenience store, and a drive-thru fast-food restaurant across the street brought a strange clash of cultures in the restaurant's parking lot, he said.

"You have people in Bermuda shorts parking their cars next to Cafe Annie customers in cocktail attire," he said.

Another factor in the decision, Schiller said, was the size of the new space. The Rudi's location has 115 seats in the dining room, 20 to 30 seats in the bar, and a private dining room. Cafe Annie currently seats only 88 with an extra 12 in the bar. Rudi's owner, Joe Lucia, hasn't announced his plans, but rumors persist that he may be considering the vacated Cafe Annie location on Westheimer Street.

"Post Oak is the nicest street in the city," Schiller said. "We feel the move to this location is consistent with the culinary reputation that Robert and his staff have developed both in Houston and around the nation."

And the neighbors aren't bad either. Cafe Annie's new location is just up the street from Tony's, another NRN Hall of Famer and Houston's place to see and be seen.

"Cafe Annie will continue in the same tradition but with a few more seats in the main dining room, a significantly larger bar area with a separate bar menu, and the addition of a private dining room," he said.

Although Schiller said Del Grande plans no changes in the menu, he admitted, "He's always tweaking it."

Cafe Annie is scheduled to close its present location on Sept. 30 and reopen on Post Oak two weeks later.

Meanwhile, the Cafe Express move is set for June. Schiller said the Express unit on Post Oak Lane will close June 7 and reopen two weeks later in the prestigious Pavilion shopping center, just south of the new Cafe Annie location.

The other Cafe Express on Kirby Drive will remain unchanged.

The Pavilion, a toney shopping mall featuring Saks Fifth Avenue, Ungaro, Hermes, and numerous other designer boutiques, made Express Foods an offer it couldn't refuse, Schiller said.

"We had plans to do a Cafe Express location in a different market next," Schiller said, "but with the clear turn-around in the economy here, we have decided to concentrate on Houston for the immediate future."

Cafe Express is a "quality and convenience and price value" concept, Schiller said, and was opened five years ago in an office building. Average tickets at the restaurant run about $7.50 on the weekdays and as high as $10 on weekends, he said. The restaurant is serving between 500 and 700 people a day.

"We thought it would be a lunch place," he said. "But we've turned out to have a significant night business, too. It became a destination restaurant."

The move takes Cafe Express out of a strip center and toward "a somewhat softer and more upscale environment," he said.

The Pavilion site has 150 seats with seating outside as well as inside the mall. Other food-service tenants in The Pavilion include Sfuzzi, Houlihan's, and Hunan's.

PHOTO : The present location of Cafe Annie, an upscale Southwestern restaurant in Houston that is moving to a more `prestigious' address. Inset: Robert Del Grande, owner of Cafe Annie.