Champagne News

Bubble alert: New sparkling wine bar coming to Fort Worth's South Main

Nothing more awesome than a bar dedicated to bubbles.

Photo courtesy of Paramour

Let's raise a toast to Champagne bars, because there's a new one coming to Fort Worth: Called The Coupe, it'll be located at 314 S. Main St., in a vintage building that formerly housed a law/bail bonds office and is now being repurposed for restaurants.

Construction is underway, with an opening slated for the end of 2022.

8-24-2023 UPDATE: The Coupe is now open.

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The Coupe is from husband-and-wife Scott Kimble and Lauren Badgett, who share a passion for all things bubbly. While both are currently employed in the healthcare industry, Scott has extremely relevant food & beverage experience, as a former server at Grand Cru Wine Bar on Magnolia Avenue, which is also where the couple met.

"Lauren and I met when I poured her a glass of sparkling rose, and this dream of opening a sparkling wine lounge grew from there," Scott says. "We saw that there were wine bars and places that serve Champagne, but didn't find anyplace solely focused on sparking wines."

Champagne bars are starting to emerge as a Dallas-Fort Worth trend: March 18 saw the opening of Pinky's Champagne Room & Velvet Jazz Lounge, a bubble-centric new lounge in Fort Worth's Near Southside, and there's another coming online in Dallas in summer 2022, called Coupe Dallas, no relation, but also named for the shallow, almost flat bowl-showed glass designed for Champagne.

At The Coupe in Fort Worth, they'll offer sparkling in bottles, by the glass, and for retail sale.

"Our focus will be smaller production stuff you can't find on the shelves, wines that showcase the generations of families who have put their life’s work into growing the grapes and producing the wine," he says. "One big reason we wanted to do this was the fact that most places who do offer sparkling often have a limited selection filled with well-known brand names. We'd like to spotlight labels that are more affordable and introduce our customers to areas of the world outside Champagne."

The building they're going into was acquired in March 2021 by CHC Development, who office a block away and are repurposing the space for restaurant use. One big asset is that the location will feature a large shared patio.

Scott, who also does graphic design, once worked for a company across the street and knows the area inside out.

"I worked in the neighborhood before it blossomed," he says. "South Main Street wasn't as nice back then, but they've done a lot to extend the Magnolia energy over to South Main."

Their sparkling little endeavor will join buzzy neighbors like The Bearded Lady, Hot Box Biscuit Club, Roots Coffee House, and Tinie's Mexican Rotisserie, all mere doors away.

"Our vision is of a coffeehouse-wine bar mix, with couches and chairs for you to stop in and get comfy. You can come in, have a glass of sparkling wine, even do some work, if your job allows you to drink at work," he says with a smile.

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Chef News

Fort Worth's Will Rogers Memorial Center welcomes bright new chef

FortWorthtx.gov

Will Rogers Memorial Center

There's a new chef in town: Waylon Cornelius, named executive chef of catering and concessions for Craft Culinary Concepts, the food and beverage provider at Will Rogers Memorial Center.

Will Rogers Memorial Center is the 120-acre entertainment complex anchoring Fort Worth’s Cultural District, owned and operated by the City of Fort Worth. Cornelius will oversee menus for trade shows and other events at the center which bring in more than 2 million visitors a year.

Craft Culinary Concepts is headquartered in Glendale, Arizona, and manages food and beverage programs for entertainment, sports and cultural facilities.

Chef Waylon Corneliusfortworthtx.gov

According to a release, Cornelius joined the team this summer and is already shifting the expectations of guests from a typical “BBQ and beans” menu to a bill of fare satisfying every kind of palate.

“We always have fajitas ready to go, but we also make a beautiful Beef Wellington or baked salmon with a pink salt crust,” Cornelius says in a statement.

For consumer trade shows, Craft and its partners Caribou and Taco Heads offer more choices for the thousands of guests who attend events at WRMC annually.

“Some of our equestrian guests are away from home and here for several days, and they need more than popcorn and hot dogs,” Cornelius says. “Our concessions offer biscuits and gravy, burritos made in-house, strawberry salad, fruit and yogurt cups.”

A native of Mansfield, Cornelius grew up helping in a farm-to-table kitchen. He was raised on a farm with his mother, grandmother, and grandfather -- a Vietnam veteran who enjoyed vegetable gardens and raising hogs and chickens. He studied computer science after high school and holds an associate's degree in Cultural Resource Management and Policy Analysis from Tarrant County College.

He's a 2003 graduate of AIMS Academy of Culinary Arts in Dallas where he was mentored by a number of great chefs. While training as assistant executive sous chef at the AAA four-diamond Grand Hyatt DFW, he worked with Executive Chef Sutti Sripolpa, chef Eric Dreyer (who went on to be Oprah Winfrey’s personal chef), and Chef Jean-Claude Plihon, under whom he honed his French cooking skills.

As executive sous chef at the opening of Perry’s Steakhouse and Grille in Southlake, Cornelius gained expertise with volume. While at HG Sply Co., he learned about gluten-free items and other food allergies.

HG Sply is also where he crossed paths with Chef James R. Schell III, Craft’s general manager at WRMC, who recruited Cornelius to the complex.

"James said he needed someone who can hit moving targets, push the culinary team to be more avant-garde and use locally sourced, seasonal ingredients, so here I am," Cornelius says. "Culinary is a small world."

“I want people to say, ‘When we were in Fort Worth, you won’t believe what we got at Will Rogers!’” Schell says. “Even the celebrities who perform [in the auditorium] are surprised. When Chicago played here recently and we served dinner backstage, they said they felt treated like the Rolling Stones.”

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