Renewals: After a long renovation, The Wine Market on Bardstown Road has reopened. Read about its new offerings.

Dining Events: If you’ve been pining for a good, reasonably-priced meal, go and support the Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation by eating a four-course meal at the Prospect Bristol on Thursday, May 28. If you’re up for a short drive, you may want to check out the Wine and Microbrew Festival in Corydon on May 23. This event features wine and microbrew tasting, live music, and an art pavilion.

Try Something New: Asiatique’s Chef Looi has added several new starters, salads, and entrees to the restaurant’s menu for the summer with choices that incorporate quail, tilapia, scallops, and lamp chops. Check out what’s new on the menu at the recently-renovated Highlands Boombozz.

Reviews: Last week we announced that a new restaurant named Captain Pepper Jack’s had opened on Taylorsville Road. This week it got a scathing review.

Coming Soon: There’s good news for Hoosiers that love great pizza: Wick’s Pizza’s fifth store will open in July on State Street in New Albany.

Now Open: The White Oak is the new restaurant that opened last week in the old Artemesia building, 620 E. Market St. Read what new chef Allen Heintzman has to say about the menu here.  It is open from 5:30 – 11 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday.

Shiraz! Word on the blogosphere is that a new Shiraz is currently under construction at the 3500 block of Popular Level Rd., but there is not yet word as to when it will open for business.

Old is New: The new/renovated Highlands Tony Boombozz opened this week, and the new/renovated Browning’s is tentatively set to open mid-May.

Dining Out Deals: The C-J ran an Associated Press piece this weekend that offers several ideas for how to save money when dining out. One of the suggestions is to buy gift certificates from Restaurants.com. I’ve bought two gift certificates from Restaurants.com at different times – one I still have for now-closed Artemesia and the other I used at Kashmir but wasn’t credited for. Still, it might be worth checking into if you’re taking your mom out for Mother’s Day.

If You’ve Always Wanted to Own a Papa John’s: Papa John’s is offering a deal to new franchisees — the $25,000 franchise fee is waived, owners get a $10,000 opening award, and pay no royalties for a year. Interested parties must sign a development agreement before December 27 to qualify for this deal.

Support Local Farmers: The St. Matthews Farmer’s Market will open on May 16. The St. Matthews Farmer’s Market along with the Bardstown Rd. and New Albany Farmer’s Markets will sell Kentucky Bison Company products from the Woodland Farm in Goshen.

One More Derby Mention: Winners of this year’s Run for the Rose include Tony Pack of Martini Italian Bistro in the men’s division, Billie Frith of Wild Eggs in the women’s division, and Joe Huber’s Restaurant in the corporate division.

After closing back in December for remodeling, the Highlands Tony Boombozz location (1448 Bardstown Rd.) reopens today under a new name, Boombozz Pizza & Tap House. The new location features a full bar in addition to the same gourmet pizzas that have made the Tony Boombozz franchise a success.

Owner Tony Palombino wanted the revamped Highlands location feel like a “comfortable, cozy favorite local hang-out.” The venue seats more than 150 people, has a to-go structure that is separate from the dining area, features 21 beers on tap, and boasts Kentucky’s first frosted bar top designed to keep beverages from getting warm before they’re finished.

The best news is the super-sized store will be modeled after the Boombozz Bistro Palombino opened in December on Taylorsville Road, just shy of the Snyder.

“It’ll have the full bar and the larger menu just like the bistro,” Palombino told me—at a tradeshow in Columbus, Ohio, no less, where I bumped into him yesterday. (It’s a small restaurant world, but I wouldn’t want to feed it.)

Palombino had long lusted after the Bardstown Road spot once occupied by Alameda Café and now home to Impellizeri’s Pizza, but he knew he couldn’t put another pizzeria there for fear of encroaching on the current spot just a mile away. Now he’s seeing how things ultimately worked out for the better.

“We’re excited about the change and we’re looking to make a lot of improvements there,” he said. “We’ll be able open up all the windows when the weather is warm, which will fit in with what so many other places in the neighborhood are doing.”

No word on when the new facility will be completed.

What I didn’t expect was red carpet spilling out over the strip-center sidewalk and doormen welcoming guests: an amusing and unusual touch for a pizza-centered concept.

And I didn’t expect the décor and artwork to be so eye-catching (more on that later). If you know anything about the first two Tony Boombozz Pizzerias, you know the stores are properly utilitarian, but not chic. Even the vast step up in style made at unit No. 4 (Hurstbourne Lane at Westport Rd.) doesn’t compare.

Several of store 4’s color and design elements are integrated into BoomBozz Bistro, and they bond the new to the old without confusing one with the other. In the look alone, Palombino has achieved his goal of opening a more serious restaurant.

His award-winning pizzas remain the concept’s mainstay, but to do something unique, the menu had to broaden, he said, beyond that would could be delivered in a hot bag and a flat box. He also wants to dazzle the palates of dine-in customers, a group traditionally more interested in food as entertainment.

We’ll know what’s on the full menu Dec. 6, when the doors to the new 110-seater (12613 Taylorsville Road in Tyler Center, just north of the Gene Snyder Freeway, 261-0222) open to the public. The pre-opening event for friends, family and media provided only tastes of items provided by servers patrolling the dining room. Slices of BoomBozz gourmet and Neapolitan-style pizzas were passed out along with two bruschetta appetizers, an oven-baked dish of penne (with chipotle-tomato sauce, peppers and cheese), and tiramisu and cannoli for dessert. All good stuff, especially the pasta and the tiramisu.

If you’re a customer of the BoomBozz at Hurstbourne Lane, you’ll be delighted by the vastly reduced noise level. Despite the energetic crowd and a nearly full house, I never had to raise my voice to talk to a dining partner. Some smart acoustic engineering has slain the noise monster ever roaring at BoomBozz No. 4.

As mentioned, the artwork—multiple large and brightly colored scenes of what appear to be Italian communities—is on every wall burnt-orange-painted wall and adds a modest air of sophistication. (I’m fond of the oversize black-and-white photos of Tony and Judy Palombino’s children lining one wall inside BoomBozz No. 4, but they don’t fit the color scheme as nicely as the new art, nor are they as easily duplicated—a necessity for future franchising.)

Any dislikes? Just a minor quibble: the use of “bistro” in the name. Maybe I’m hung up on “bistro” in the European sense: a place where you dress casually and dine on rustic and substantial offerings like roasted meats, fine soups and great bread and pastries. BoomBozz Bistro, on the other hand, is distinctly modern and streamlined and lacks such sturdy menu items.

But is that such a sin to use that descriptor for a pizzeria? Nah. In fact, most would call it smart marketing because it’s unique and few care about such technicalities. Palombino’s message in using “Bistro” conveys one simple idea: “This is not a BoomBozz like you’ve ever experienced.”

And he’s right.

The new store is named Boombozz Pizza Bistro and is located at 12613 Taylorsville Road in Tyler Center, just north of the Gene Snyder Freeway. The Bistro expands on Palombino’s fast-casual pizza-centered restaurant, Tony Boombozz Pizza and Vino (2813 N Hurstbourne Pkwy.) by adding pasta, sandwiches and salads, wines by the glass and microbrews. The most notable difference is the Bistro’s customers will get full service.

After opening the Hurstbourne location more than two years ago, Palombino told me he believed he’d hit on the perfect combination of high-quality food and customer self-service. But in talking to his customers there, he was convinced they wanted a little more TLC.

“I really think customers want to be relaxed when they eat out, so I wanted to give them more than what we were giving them in Springhurst,” he told me this past summer. “I think the food there is right, but I knew we could do better with service, so we decided to make the next one full-service.”

The Hurstbourne location’s limited selection of adult beverages was a problem as well, he said, and that drove the decision to tap into the growing microbrew trend. Palombino is betting the adults in mid-to-upper-middle class families building new homes in the Bistro’s neighborhood will appreciate the better-than-Bud variety.

To build buzz for the opening, Palombino is borrowing a page from the Chick-fil-A marketing playbook by giving away free pizza for a year (52 coupons for one free pizza per week) to the first 100 adults through the doors at 8:30 a.m. Dec. 6. Like Chick-fil-A, Palombino is encouraging people to line-up 24 hours in advance for the free grub—and promising to keep them company through the night.

“You see grand openings all the time, but I don’t think people really pay much attention,” Palombino said. “I want to do something different this time that people will remember; I don’t want to do just coupons because that’s not what the Bistro concept is all about.”