Bob Sambol, of Bob’s Steak and Chop House, Opening His Own Place…Again

An intrepid EscapeHatch fan who knows the smell of cold, hard cash says steakhouse scion Bob Sambol is about to get back into his own place.

Word on the street is that Sambol is actively raising capital to open Roberto’s Italian Ristorante, an Italian concept that he’s been keeping under tight wraps.

“Yes, it’s true,” says Sambol. “I  think Dallas is ready for a masculine kind of Italian restaurant. I don’t want to do another steakhouse, but I think a well-rounded, fast-ball-down-the-middle Italian restaurant would do well.”

Where will it go? Sambol says he’s scouting locations in the Uptown and Oaklawn area–so he can oversee both Roberto’s and Bob’s–and is actively negotiating a lease for the Centrum space at Oaklawn Avenue and Cedar Springs Avenue that originally housed Star Canyon and, later, Silver Fox.

Sambol hopes to have Roberto’s open sometime after the first of the year.

Sambol says at Roberto’s, “I’m going to do everything different from Bob’s. We’ll be open for lunch, open on Sundays, lots of sauces made from scratch” and target a lower check average than at a high-end steakhouse like Bob’s.

He plans to bring back the old Lawry’s carving station for lunch–“sandwiches …turkey, roast beef, ham, cookies, a bowl of fruit…businessmen don’t want a heavy lunch anymore.”

For dinner, it’ll be strictly old school Italian, with a Sambol twist: veal (chop) Parmigiana, big shrimp, seafood linguini (“with great seafood and homemade pasta”), “and a few steaks, because you can’t do a restaurant in Dallas without a steak on the menu. I’m surprised Pizza Hut doesn’t have a steak.”

Sounds a lot like another Tre Amici, right?

“At least I know enough to put a baked potato on the menu,” Sambol is said to have told our source when asked that question.

(Umm, that was Bailey’s Prime Plus, not Tre Amici. No matter: despite his ups and downs, Sambol is still one witty guy.