Downtown Ping-Pong Club Embraces Wimbledon With Desserts

— Keeping with its theme, downtown ping-pong club Spin is offering Wimbledon food and drink specials, like cocktails and a berries and cream dessert. It will also host a related-ping-pong tournament on Monday, July 9 and a players night themed to the tennis tournament on Friday, July 13. The venue will be decked out in astro turf too. It’s available from Monday, July 9 through Sunday, July 15.

— The barbecue festival hosted by Texas Monthly will include an already sold-out event at Franklin Barbecue this year. Likewise, the educational smoked meat course with Texas A&M University at Stiles Switch BBQ & Brew is also sold out. Both are taking place on Saturday, November 3. There are still early bird tickets available to the main event, the proper barbecue festival, on Sunday, November 4. While the full lineup isn’t available (expect a lot of places from the magazine’s best barbecue of the state list), it does include first-time fester Guess Family Barbecue’s pitmaster Reid Guess from Waco.

— Juliet Italian Kitchen executive chef Jacob Weaver left the Barton Springs restaurant. He became Hotel Zaza’s corporate director of food and beverage, which means he will be involved in the much-delayed Austin location, which is set to open at West Fourth and Guadalupe streets in 2019. There are two hotels in Houston and one in Dallas. Weaver’s Juliet replacement is new executive chef Jayson Munguia, who had been with now-closed Searsucker.

— Austin Towers revealed that the new office building slated for 300 Colorado will contain an expansion of Del Frisco’s Grille. Parent company Del Frisco’s Restaurant Group’s other restaurant Sullivan’s Steakhouse and counterpart restaurant Sully’s Side Bar were demolished for the new structure.