Sundown at Granada on Greenville. From Facebook.com

Sundown at Granada, 3520 Greenville, recently launched a Texas-themed happy hour featuring beer from Texas breweries Shiner, Lone Star, Deep Ellum, Rahr and Saint Arnolds at $3 each.

Not a beer drinker? The $4 specials include Titos vodka and frozen margaritas, or try $5 wines from McPherson Cellars in Lubbock.

Happy hour runs Sundays – Fridays from 4 p.m. – 7 p.m. and Sundays — Thursday 10 p.m. – 2 a.m.

Don’t forget, Sundown’s not just a beer garden and bar. The place also has a killer menu featuring farm-to-table, local dishes including vegan/vegetarian options.

Rockfish Grill at Mockingbird Station is jumping in to help the victims of the tornado in south Dallas County April 3.

When you eat at Rockfish, ask your server where to drop your receipt next week, April 16-22, and the restaurant will donate 10 percent of the total to the Red Cross.

There recently has been some buzz about the city allowing restaurants and other businesses around White Rock Lake. Advocate readers have already shared some interesting ideas. What do you think? Answer our poll and, if you like, elaborate in the comments section.

During a #winechat discussion last week about local wine, one of the questions I got was how regional wine producers could make it easier for Americans to drink wine that wasn’t called chardonnay, cabernet, and merlot. Many regional wines are made with grapes most consumers aren’t familiar with, like blanc du bois, viognier and tempranillo; hence, they’re reluctant to try them.

My suggestion: Don’t call the wines by their varietal name, which too many wineries feel compelled to do for reasons I’ve never been able to figure out. Call them something fun or interesting or inventive.

Case in point is the El Posadero ($10, purchased, available at Central Market), a tempranillo blend that is more or less the Spanish equivalent of U.S. regional wine. It comes from a less respected region around Madrid, and not the better known tempranillo appellations of Rioja or Ribera del Duero. This means the wine starts out with an image problem, especially for U.S. consumers. Calling it El Posadero goes a long way towards fixing that. Even if you don’t know what El Posadero means (innkeeper, actually, and there’s a picture of an inn on the label), it sounds Spanish and intriguing.

And it’s a pretty nifty wine, too. The El Posadero is blended with syrah, but doesn’t have as much fruit as I thought it would (and is actually a little old-fashioned in spirit). Look for an almost spicy wine with some cherry fruit and lots of acidity — practically sour cherry tart. It needs food, like smoked chicken or beef, but that’s part of the appeal of the wine.

If serving “craft” beers in the style of a European beer hall can make a bowling alley “upscale”, we’re in for a treat when Bowl & Barrel opens a 15-laner this fall at the Shops at Park Lane (behind the new Whole Foods on Greenville).

The DBJ reports SMU alums Josh Sepkowitz and Kyle Noonan are opening the alley, which will include a 3,000-square-foot restaurant and bar.

The Shops at Park Lane, located between Greenville and Central Expressway south of Park Lane, started off slowly as it came online during the beginning of the recession/real estate crunch of a few years ago, but the place is filling up nicely with Dick’s Sporting Goods, Gordon Biersch, Bailey’s Prime, Grimaldi’s, Old Navy and Saks Off 5th. Bloomingdale’s, The Outlet Store opens in the center May 3.

My wife and I stopped by the center a few Friday nights ago, intending to check out the new Grimaldi’s pizza restaurant, since the West Village version often is too packed to get into. I guess plenty of other people had the same idea, because there was a 40-minute wait, so we ambled down to Gordon Biersch instead.

For Dallas, the center is a pretty walkable place; there are some benches outside on the internal street and a couple of patios off of restaurants, so it’s possible to squint and imagine you’re enjoying a real cosmopolitan experience.

As I recall, original plans for the center included a bowling alley in space where the Home Goods store is located; I believe the Bowl & Barrel is taking some of the remaining space intended for the original alley.

Celebrate Easter Sunday by gorging yourself at an all-you-can-eat buffet.

Garden Cafe, 5310 Junius Street, offers an Easter buffet Sunday from 10 a.m.-3 p.m. The spread includes Eggs and sausage, spinach and feta quiche, bacon, sausage, biscuits, gravy, pancakes, rosemary red potatoes, deviled eggs, fruit, muffins, cookies, juices, coffee, tea and more. The buffet is $25 for adults and $10 for kiddos.

The Easter brunch at Kirby’s Woodfire Grill, 3525 Greenville Ave., is 10:30 a.m.-3 p.m. and includes a meat lover’s menu by Executive Chef Daniel Nemec that includes (self served) prime rib, baby back ribs, applewood smoked bacon, salmon, corn beef hash plus mac and cheese, grits, fruits, fresh salads, dilled cucumbers, fried and deviled eggs for $22.95 per person.

Splurge at Central 214′s (Central and Mockingbird) all-you-want Easter brunch buffet — fruit, baby spinach salad with roasted pears, Brazos Valley brie, toasted Texas pecans and spiced mustard vinaigrette or various other dressings, Caesar salad,  Kalamata olives Texas tomatoes, feta and fresh basil, country eggs benedict, caramelized onion biscuit, red waddle ham, eggs, bagels and various breakfast breads, oatmeal, yogurt, pork loin, potatoes, prime roasted cross-rib roast and “dessert land” with cupcakes, banana pudding, brownies, choco mousse (and the list goes on) is all for the taking. $53 for adults and $18 for children. Reservations here.

Know of more Easter dining options? Let us know in the comments section.

The new Italian place, Verona’s, open on Garland Road near Hypnotic Donuts and Barbec’s.

This is the third location for Owner Zeqir Lokaj who has a Verona’s in Plano and Alba.

On the menu: apps include calamari, fried mushrooms, and bruschetta on fresh-baked bread; there is pizza, hot and cold subs, soups, salads and, of course, pasta. The prices look reasonable. If you’ve tried them, let us know what you think.

There are a couple of importers whose wines are so trustworthy that I will buy them regardless of what’s in the bottle. Kermit Lynch, of course, for French wine, and Ole Imports and Patrick Mata for Spanish wine.

Mata’s passion for Spanish wine is famous, and his palate is exceptional. Which is why I trust Ole implicitly. Otherwise, a wine like the Zestos would raise all sorts of red flags. It’s a white wine from a region in Spain best known for red wine, and the red wine doesn’t have all that great a reputation. Its color is different, sort of off-yellow, and it’s made with a grape, the malvar, that is obscure even for those of us who appreciate obscure. Malvar, grown only in that part of Spain, is not even listed in the incredibly comprehensive Winegrape Glossary.

My faith, not surprisingly, was rewarded. The Zestos ($10, purchased, available at Central Market) is unique, though it had some similarity to the Gascon wines I like, including a little white grapiness. It is simple, but definitely Spanish in style — less fruit than the Gascon wines (some lemon, maybe) with a stone fruit pit kind of finish. One tasting note described the finish as bitter almonds, and that works, too.

Drink this chilled on its own or with a any week night dinner that calls for white wine. It’s a candidate for the 2013 $10 Hall of Fame, and is highly recommended. Just don’t expect it to taste like something you’ve tried before.

Sandwich kiosk at Central Park entrance

So there was a lot of discussion here last week about the wisdom of adding commercial development in and around White Rock Lake, and some of the comments had to do with whether restaurants and shops built at the lake could, or should, be reminiscent of development in New York City’s Central Park.

Both are urban parks, both are gathering places for an entire city, and both are largely non-commercial. Still, if you compare Central Park — with its various restaurants and shops, both on the fringe of the park and inside — with the current lack of anything commercial at White Rock Lake, Central Park looks like a veritable NorthPark in comparison.

Maybe this is a good thing, maybe it’s not: Clearly from following the blog discussion, our thoughts are split on the idea. So I thought it would be useful to look at some pictures of Central Park development and try to imagine how these projects might look here at White Rock Lake. I called former DMNer Steve Kenny, my one-time Northwestern University roommate who now works for the New York Times, and asked him to send me some photos with his new iPhone from Central Park.

Today was both an off-day for Kenny and, judging from the photos, a beautiful day in New York, so my inbox was filled with photos.

Take a look at these Central Park shops, then close your eyes and imagine something like them at White Rock Lake. Then open your eyes and start typing your thoughts here.

Dine in or grab a dessert at the Gaston Avenue store.

To-go food too often means greasy low-grade meat inside some sort of bun or shell. And even when the food is OK, you could end up with the type of meal that doesn’t translate well to the Styrofoam box, so that when you get it home, it’s cold and ugly and leaking.

But it so doesn’t have to be that way. Not when you have places like Two Sisters To-Go in the neighborhood. Two Sisters has been around for a long time. I know them for two things: catering parties for hosts with good judgment, and the lemon bars they sold at the Monticello store back in the 90s when I worked a few doors down. Those dang lemon bars were my secret addiction.

I recently rekindled my relationship with the sisters—Connie Chantilis and Rosanne Herskind—as they were promoting their dinner delivery service. They sent over some samples, which I took home to rave reviews from the family.

Take, for example, the classic grilled veggie/chicken enchiladas with Spanish rice and black bean corn salad. Once reheated the enchiladas were melty and tender, stuffed with fresh veggies and shredded chicken, and I don’t know what they put into this rice, but it was tangy and soft and I could not stop eating it. The black bean corn salad, we ate cold. It could work as a dip for sturdy chips or crackers, or you could just eat the whole bowl with a fork. This is but one example of many dinners Two Sisters delivers during the week.

Pear and goat cheese salad

Each delivery day features a chef-created price-fixed menu and a classic family favorite menu (dinner for four is $35.99, dinner for 2 is $24.99) to your home or office between 4 p.m. and 5 p.m. Call our to-go stores to place your order by 3 p.m. the prior day. (Gaston 214.821.4343 Monticello 214.526.1188). Now you can also e-mail dinner delivery with your questions, comments, orders and find out our upcoming menus by emailing delivery@twosisterscatering.com. Sign up here for daily menu notices.

No need for to-go dinner? You can also grab lunch at either store: 2633 Gaston Ave or 3111 – C Monticello. Oh, and (thankfully or cursedly) they still serve those fantastic lemon bars and have since the early days added even more unbelievable desserts.