Michael Shine had a business plan. A veteran of the restaurant industry, owner of Texas Food Group, and former president of The Greater Houston Restaurant Association, Shine has been involved in the restaurant industry for years. But this was going to be the first restaurant he owned outright. He was going name it Mick and Nell's, after his grandparents, and the menu was going to offer classic American food, the type your grandmother would make.
One day he was dining at Frank Crapitto's Frank's Chop House, located on Westheimer near the corner of Weslayan, and he realized that he didn't have to build his restaurant from scratch. He offered to buy the restaurant from Frank, and though it took some time and a lot of convincing, he was finally able to do it.
"We didn't even close," he told me, when I asked him how the transition took place. It ended service one evening as Frank's Chop House, and the next morning it opened as Frank's Americana Revival, the subject of this week's cafe review.
Shine decided to keep Frank's in the name of the restaurant, because that's what the clientele all called it. He added the "Americana Revival," because he didn't want people to think of it as a steak house, but as a place where you could get great classic American food.
