Restaurant Soap Operas: Popolos

My inbox is filling with messages from former employees of Popolos, the popular restaurant owned by Steve Hammond that closed on January 30. Of course, they are screaming one side of the story—they got screwed out of a job.

However, there is one common thread to their tales—apparently a long-time customer was in the house on closing night and he/she asked the manager what kind of severance package Hammond was handing out to the employees. From what I can piece together, the customer went nuts when he/she found out there was no severance package in the works. So,  he/she handed the manager his/her credit card (Black American Express) and told her to charge $10,000 on the card and distribute the money to the staff. Several former staffers report that owner Hammond wasn’t too happy about that and a argument broke out in the dining room and the police were called.

Meanwhile, Hammond has opened reworked his Park Cities Prime into Preston’s, a chef driven (Jon Schwarzenberger) restaurant centered around local and organic ingredients with a Texas twist.