A little west Arlington restaurant has it all: Lunches, salads, cakes and pies
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Arlington has a little restaurant that should be more of a big deal.
Simply Divune Cafe — more on the name in a minute — is an all-around home-cooking haven for breakfasts, lunch sandwiches and fresh salads, and a remarkable selection of 10 pies and cakes.
The new location in the Shoppes at Brownstone Village in west Arlington is clean, well-kept and just cute enough to draw the lunch bistro crowd.
The signature dishes are the chicken-salad croissant sandwich with house-made smoked-Gouda kettle chips and the bread pudding.
But the menu offers 12 sandwiches and five salads, all handmade by chef-owner Adrian Tella.
There’s also a large grab-and-go salad selection, badly needed in west Arlington.
Tella named the restaurant Simply Divune after a line from a play, where a female character said in a patrician accent that a dish was “simply di-voon,” as in divine.
I wish Siri had seen that play.
But if your phone can’t figure how to spell the name, just drive to 2410 W. Abram St.
That’s next door to Beirut Grill and El Gabacho Tex-Mex Grill in a little shopping village just off Bowen Road. It’s only 5 miles east of Loop 820, not far from north Arlington or Fort Worth.
Simply Divune just moved to west Arlington after three years in a well-worn location in suburban Pantego.
Careful: The website isn’t working yet, and the old location is still listed on some search results and social media pages.
The new location looks fresher and seems like a better fit. It has a cozy 12 tables, plus a large patio for weekend mornings or cooler weather.
Tella went to culinary school in Dallas and had been catering before she decided to open the restaurant.
She did not want to stop at serving typical lunch sandwiches and pies.
She serves everything — buttermilk fried chicken-and-waffles breakfasts, a first-rate smoked-Gouda pimiento cheese, wedge salads with a garlic-blue cheese vinaigrette and desserts such as lemon-blueberry cake or blackberry-crumb pie.
“I knew we needed to do more that just a bistro lunch,” Tella said. “We have fresh baked goods. We bake our own croissants. In a couple of weeks we’ll start having peach bread pudding.”
She also plans to start baking her own bread.
Yes, she prepares a lot of food.
But anything that doesn’t sell goes out for $5 in mid-afternoon via a smartphone app, Too Good To Go, a way to buy surplus food in surprise bags from restaurants, supermarkets and doughnut shops.
Simply Divune is open for lunch Monday and for breakfast and lunch Tuesdays through Saturdays. Tella plans to add dinner Thursdays and Fridays; 817-962-7121, instagram.com.
