Pulse

Cooks ’N Boots
Chef Andrew Alexander’s love for Southwestern cooking began at an early age in his grandmother’s kitchen. But it wasn’t until his freshman year in college that he discovered his true calling. Several wild hog cook-offs inspired Alexander to pick up a spatula full-time and to design the barbecue smoker that would change his life.

Fast forward a few years to last summer, when the Culinary Institute of America graduate made his debut on NBC’s Today show by chance. “It was the last week of my externship at the Mansion on Turtle Creek, and Chef Dean Fearing asked if he could borrow my smoker for the live filming of his annual barbecue with celebrity weatherman Al Roker.” Roker plucked Alexander from the crowd. He flashed his “Cowboys Make Better Lovers” t-shirt, and a star was born.

Alexander now runs his own catering company, works as a restaurant consultant around Texas, and makes frequent trips to New York as a celebrity guest chef on NBC’s morning program.

But even with his newfound fame, his heart belongs here, where he can ride horses, hunt, fish, and visit his favorite hometown restaurant, El Fenix. “It’s crazy, but I just love their cheese enchiladas.”
—CHERYL NG COLLETT

Photo: Elizabeth Lavin

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Good Cop, Bad Cop
A fellow officer claims the president of the Dallas Police Association is gaming his time sheet.

There are some things Jay Cooper can’t say. He can’t say, for instance, that a lack of accountability within the Dallas Police Association, the largest union of the Dallas Police Department, has led to the corruption of its president. He’d like to say that. The lawsuit he filed implies it. But sitting in a Starbucks in Plano, he stops himself. “I have to be careful,” he says. There is, after all, the judge’s gag order.

So let’s deal with what we know for certain. Lt. Jay Cooper is a 21-year veteran of the Dallas Police Department and a man known for his vigilance. Three years before DPD’s fake drug scandal, Cooper published an in-house report saying the narcotics division was seriously flawed. And until January, in the Northwest Patrol unit, he supervised Senior Cpl. Glenn White, the president of the Dallas Police Association.

In Cooper’s suit against White, filed in April, he claims the following: White abuses the power he has as DPA president, “virtually ignoring his duties as a police officer.” Cooper never saw him in the office. Instead, White does DPA business on the city’s time, collecting as much as $74,000 a year in ill-gotten money.

It’s hard to say. As the lawsuit states, White is “unchecked in his comings and goings” at DPA, making it difficult to reconcile his time sheets. But an internal memo written on April 26 by Deputy Chief of Police Calvin Cunigan to Assistant Chief Tom Ward makes an interesting claim. Cunigan, head of Internal Affairs, found that three other unions within DPD “have not been afforded the same type of privileges as has been extended to the executive members of the Dallas Police Association.” In other words, the DPA brass is being allowed  to double dip.

White’s lawyer, Mark Ticer, says, “The lawsuit—how can I put this politely?—exceeds being frivolous.” Ticer declined to comment further.

At press time, the case was in discovery. Trial has yet to be set. —PAUL KIX

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REAL ESTATE RUMOR OF THE MONTH
Word on the street is that the Apparel Mart could get a major facelift. Site plans have been drawn up—but no deals have been signed—for a big-box retailer such as Costco or Target to anchor a new development of smaller shops and restaurants. Ross and T.J. Maxx have supposedly shown interest as well. And a new Oak Lawn exit ramp off the Tollway, already in the works, makes the location sweeter. When can future shoppers expect this rumored project to take shape? We hear spring 2007. —A.M.

Illustration: Paul Gilligan

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Sneak Peek!
Home Boy: Super chef Stephan Pyles returns to the Dallas dining scene—and the kitchen—to ward off the invasion of big-name designer imports.

Dallas seems to be the city du jour for imported culinary cloning. New York’s Nobu and Chicago’s Bice take on the Crescent, followed by Kenichi (Aspen), N9NE Steakhouse (Chicago), and Ghost Bar (Las Vegas) in the Victory Park complex. In the midst of all the copycats, Dallas’ own original great chef, Stephan Pyles, is boldly going where few chefs dare to tread these days: the kitchen. His new restaurant, due to open this month in the Southwest Plaza building on Ross Avenue, near the Dallas Museum of Art, will feature something he’s calling “New Millennium Southwestern Cuisine.” He says that translates to totally global food with a strong influence from Spain, combined with the flavors of Mexico, Latin America, Peru, and, yes, Texas. Whatever. What counts is not what he’s calling the food but what he’s calling the restaurant, which for once indicates whose food you’ll be eating. The name of the new joint? Stephan Pyles.
—NANCY NICHOLS

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SNAP JUDGMENT

THUMBS UP: Kudos to WRR 101.1 FM. This month, the station is making the switch to high-definition, giving classical music fans better sound quality and satellite-radio-esque information, like artist and song title. Bonus by going digital: WRR gains access to two additional channels for even more music, including possibly an all-choral station. Greg Davis, general manager of WRR, says you’ll hear the difference from your existing radio, but for the full effect, get an HD receiver—available at your local electronics store.

THUMBS UP: Pizza Hut Park, home to FC Dallas, is the site of the Super Bowl of American soccer. The MLS Cup 2005 will be played November 13 in Frisco, thanks largely to Lamar Hunt and his sports group, who said they’d build the park so long as they got the tournament. Only three months after its opening, they did.

THUMBS DOWN: Any New Urbanist will tell you that setbacks and exposed parking lots belong in the suburbs, and the suburbs are anathema to urban planning. Shafer Property Company, the developer of the strip mall in the shadow of the Crescent and the future Ritz-Carlton—we’re talking prime real estate at Pearl Street and McKinney Avenue—hasn’t learned any lessons from West Village’s success. Put the pedestrians first, not the motorists, and a true sense of place will follow.

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Puppy Love
A local breeder hits it big, thanks to Paris Hilton’s tiny pooch.

On a mid-September afternoon, a woman with short blond hair and an orange shirt rushes into a Garland pet store. Excitedly, she introduces herself to Texas Teacups owner Becky Bice, who deposits a tiny, wriggling Maltepoo (Maltese mixed with poodle) in the woman’s hands. “How big will she get?” the new dog mom asks. Bice guesses 4 to 4.5 pounds. Crestfallen, the woman returns the puppy to the breeder, saying, “Oh. Well, I am looking for a small dog.”

Small dogs are big business for Bice, whose part-time hobby was catapulted into a full-time job when Paris Hilton purchased her Chihuahua, Tinkerbell, from the breeder in 2002. Once Hilton began appearing in public with Tink in tow, requests for the Chihuahuas, which aren’t much larger than a Coke can, began pouring in. “There was a time when we were getting 400 to 600 e-mails a day,” Bice says. “Our phone rang nonstop and I already had a waiting list longer than I could fulfill in a lifetime.” That was when Bice raised the price for a puppy from Tinkerbell’s bloodline from $2,400 to $14,000, which discouraged all but the most serious inquiries.

This summer, the Hilton family adopted a second Chihuahua, Bambi, from Bice. Tinkerbell had reportedly grown too heavy for Paris to tote. —ALLISON HATFIELD

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Mary Mapes is Not a Failing Hooker

Former 60 Minutes producer and Dallas gal Mary Mapes has a new book out this month, Truth and Duty: The Press, The President, and the Privilege of Power. In it, she details her downfall at CBS in the wake of Dan Rather’s Memogate. Here’s a sneak peek excerpt from the book:

“I had been staggering out to catch a cab to work by 9 a.m. and arriving back exhausted about 3 a.m. after the bar had closed and the hotel was buttoning up for the night. By the time I arrived, there was often no one in the lobby except a bellman, me, and perhaps a gaudily dressed female guest or two.

“I often wondered what those women thought I did for a living. Disheveled and limping, straggling along with a heavy briefcase full of files, I entered the hotel lobby each night looking like a failing hooker for that small subset of customers who preferred exhausted, unkempt professional women.”

Photos: Steve Read

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BACKSEAT BREAK-INS
In the span of 73 hours, thieves broke into five SUVs in Highland Park and stole the detachable rear seat from each. Along the way, thieves ignored an iPod, a purse, and, in one case, the car itself, the keys to which were left inside. Why? We wondered. Why? Why? We’re told by law officers that the third-row benches, a $1,200 optional feature at Tahoe and Yukon dealerships, have found a market on eBay. Far be it from us to tell someone how to break the law, but if you’re already stealing, why not really steal? Take the cash and the car. Clearly, these backseat boys are afraid to go all the way.   —JESSICA JONES

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Who is Robert Rowling?
… Besides the richest man in Dallas.

According to the 2005 Forbes 400 list of Richest Americans, Dallas has a new champ. He is Robert Rowling, 52, owner and chairman of TRT Holdings. Forbes puts his net worth at $4.8 billion, which makes him the 42nd-richest American and $600 million wealthier than Ross Perot, the previous Dallas title holder. To Rowling, we can only say: nice.

On his path to riches, Rowling’s skids were greased with his father’s company, Tana Oil & Gas. The two of them made $476 million in cash and preferred stock in 1989 selling oil wells and leases to Texaco. Since then, Rowling has diversified his portfolio through TRT Holdings and its private-equity investment arm, TRT Investment Management. In 2002, TRT invested $25 million in Mexican dollar stores. Rowling’s company paid $500 million for the Omni hotel chain in 1996. He bought Gold’s Gym International in 2004 for an undisclosed amount, and Tana is still pumping for oil.

Rowling moved to Dallas from Corpus Christi in 1997, the same year he first appeared on the Forbes 400 list independent of Daddy. His net worth then was estimated at a paltry $2 billion.

Rowling, married with two children, is a wholesome, reserved businessman. In 1999, he announced that Omni hotels would no longer offer adult movies in the rooms or adult magazines in the gift stores. Last year, Gov. Rick Perry appointed him to the University of Texas System Board of Regents. He lives on Beverly Drive. —ADAM McGILL

SEPARATED AT BIRTH

Dallas Stars announcer Daryl “Razor” Reaugh

Goldie Hawn mantoy Kurt Russell

RANDOM FIGURE
10%
Estimated increase of crane rentals from last year at Irving-based Crocker Crane.
 

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Holy Shakedown!
Meet the bodybuilder who might bring down Pat Robertson’s empire.

Phil Busch is a 41-year-old Addison bodybuilder and author who enjoys Pat Robertson’s 700 Club—or who used to enjoy it. After seeing Robertson talk on his show about his “age-defying” shake back in 2003, Busch gave it a try. In a little more than a year, he lost 198 pounds and took eighth place in a bodybuilding competition. He shared before and after pictures with Robertson and was even a guest on the show.

Then the trouble started. Because Robertson licensed Pat’s Diet Shake for national distribution by GNC. And he was allegedly using another bodybuilder on The 700 Club to promote the shake, although this interloper, who was wearing a GNC t-shirt, never actually referred to the shake by its full name.

It gets complicated. But the upshot is that Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network is a nonprofit organization, while Pat’s Diet Shake is all about profit. Promoting the latter on the former would be illegal (“private inurement,” anyone?). And Busch never granted permission for the use of beefcake photos in a for-profit arena. So he filed a suit against Robertson in September.

“We can’t know yet how bad this might be,” says Jim Davis, Busch’s attorney. “It could lead to some serious trouble for Pat Robertson. It’s not hard to imagine the IRS coming in and saying, ‘Okay, you owe us $50 million.’” —TIM ROGERS