The Texas Hill Country Wine & Food Festival, which just concluded its 26th annual event, has a new management team and a new name. Starting next year, Food & Wine magazine will take over the THCW&F, and the organizers are rebranding it the Austin Food & Wine Festival. The first edition will take place March 30 through April 1, 2012. Click here to get on the email list … The San Antonio-based Freetail Brewing Co. is coming to downtown Houston next year. You might not have noticed that the city has been without a brewpub since Two Rows closed last October. (Yes, we remember well: A dozen years ago you couldn’t go anywhere in Houston without coming across a brewpub or three.) Freetail’s arrival follows news that Phoenicia Specialty Market is opening downtown this summer, and a Sundance Cinema is going into the defunct Angelika location in the fall. Downtown is coming back to life!

We stopped in yesterday to try Arturo Boada’s new self-named Arturo Boada Cuisine (6510 Del Monte, in the old Bistro Don Camillo location). The place looks and feels great: With rich red and gold sponged on the walls and banquette seating lining the south wall, it’s compact in size, very intimate. There’s even a tiny wine cellar, just right for two or four to dine privately. A wood-fired oven dominates the room. Thin-crust pizzas and house-made rolls are coming out of the oven now, but Boada says he plans to soon begin using it for roasting branzino, lamb, chicken and tenderloin. Our favorite thing at a first taste: a tapas of shrimp, cherry tomatoes and hearts of palm in a rich broth over plantains. Use one of the homemade rolls to sop up every drop of broth. The restaurant serves wine and beer only, no spirits. Well done, Arturo! This is exactly what the neighborhood needed.

We had an email from our old friend Marilyn Reiswerg Descours, one-time Houston pastry chef who owned Pâtisserie Descours on Wirt Road, that she is returning to Houston (from Austin) and looking for opportunities … Molina’s Cantina, Houston’s oldest family-owned and operated Tex-Mex restaurant, announced this week that they will open a third location in Braes Heights Shopping Center at 3801 Bellaire Blvd. at Weslayan. This new location replaces Molina’s former West University eatery at Buffalo Speedway and Bissonnet. The West U location closed in January 2008 when the site was cleared for construction of the Buffalo HEB … Turquoise Grill & Bar, the Mediterranean cafe that has a location in the Upper Kirby area, now has a second location in Sugar Land on Town Square.

The Mission Centers of Houston (MCH) is a non-profit group, and one of their goals is to empower under-privileged Hispanic women by teaching them the job skills necessary to operate a mobile food unit. They will provide low-cost, healthy food options to the community around the Gano Mission at 1815 Gano Street. The group has a 28-foot trailer and now needs $25,000 to equip it and transform it into a mobile taqueria. You can help with a donation. Visit www.missioncenters.org to learn more or send your contribution to MCH, P.O. Box 30417, Houston, TX 77249.