It always starts to feel like spring in Dallas when the North Texas Irish Festival rolls around. It’s generally the first in a series of fun festivals, but this year is going to be different. With Texas businesses opened up, we could start to see more festivals scheduled in the future, but the beloved Irish festival will happen virtually on March 6.
There’s a loaded schedule of five free livestreams of music and dance plus a paid virtual event streamed from Ireland. All can be found at the festival s website. The North Texas Irish Festival has signaled the start of spring here in Texas for some time,” Sheri Bush, president of the Southwest Celtic Music Association said. “We are pleased to be the warm-up to St. Patrick s Day and to bring musicians to our event before they play in many other places on St. Patrick s Day. This way, everyone gets the chance to hear this incredible music.
Thirsty Lion Gastropub, a division of Concept Entertainment Group, has picked its Chandler location to launch Central Kitchen â an online food hall.
Four new restaurant concepts were developed for Central Kitchen, each featuring unique culinary directions and scratch-made food available for takeout and delivery from the one central website.Â
âThe online food hall launched in Oregon last fall with great success,â said the company, and Arizona is now the fourth state where it has launched.
âWeâve been fostering the idea of a kitchen focused on takeout and delivery for the last year,â said John Plew, president and CEO of Thirsty Lion Gastropub. âThe pandemic put the process into hyper speed, and we saw this as the perfect opportunity to pivot with the climate and launch an idea that aligns with current consumer demands.Â
Smokin Ace just started selling sausages, sandwiches and other eats from its delivery-only kitchen inside the massive new CloudKitchens facility at 810 Vallejo Street. It was one of the first ventures to launch there, but the facility can host some fifty food businesses, so other outfits like Combi Tacos and Meta Asian Kitchen (which has its original location inside Avanti Food & Beverage) are now joining in the fun, with many more to come.
CloudKitchens, founded by former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick, is one of several new ghost-kitchen businesses opening in multiple cities. ChefReady is another, with ten kitchens available at 1468 South Cherokee Street. The model targets relatively inexpensive properties in centrally located areas of cities, allowing third-party delivery companies easy access to heavily populated neighborhoods. So your tacos, noodles, hot dogs and more could all be emanating from the same location.
The Denver Department of Public Health and Environment has gotten tougher lately on local businesses that fail to follow COVID-19 safety protocols. Over the past five weeks, the DDPHE temporarily closed five bars in the city all of which have now been allowed to reopen as part of enforcement efforts as the city worked to qualify for the State of Colorado s 5-Star program, which would allow for an easing of capacity restrictions at restaurants and other businesses.
According to DDPHE data, the department has issued temporary closure orders against 25 businesses or facilities dating back to the pandemic s start, including twelve since October. To date, 23 of the operations have reopened.