NORTHWEST TARRANT CHAMBER OF COMMERCE

   

                    

Dine on Lake Worth - or in Dallas restaurants

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By Bud Kennedy
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Star-Telegram Staff Writer
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A new Louisiana-style restaurant is open on Lake Worth.

I mean floating on Lake Worth.

Guillaumes' Restaurant is the white-tablecloth dining room aboard the remodeled paddle-wheeler tour boat now plying Lake Worth. It serves a sunset jazz dinner cruise, giving Lake Worth a taste of creole cooking.

To go with the new dining room, the boat also has a new name.

It's now the Princess Elizabeth, splashing around the lake from Casino Beach every Friday night while Guillaumes' serves a four-course seafood or chicken dinner.

Chef Saul Williams grew up in Boutte, La., and has cooked in restaurants in New Orleans and Dallas. His first dinner menu for Guillaumes' offers a choice of blackened catfish or chicken with salad, gumbo or bisque, and dessert.

The dining room has been repainted and polished and a dance floor added, with cozy tables and dinnerware to give it a fine-dining ballroom look.

Even in dock, it's a sharp new private-party room for the Lake Worth area.

An Arlington police officer, Princess Wattley, bought the boat in a partnership with her cousin, Cheryl Wattley, a criminal defense attorney. They were shopping for a family lake house and found the paddle-wheeler, which originally cruised on Lake Bob Sandlin in East Texas before it was moved here in 1990 as the Queen Maria.

The Wattleys checked out the tour-boat business and found that they were buying the second-largest paddle-wheeler in Texas. So they decided to promote the Princess Elizabeth as a sunset jazz dinner-cruise boat and bring northwest Tarrant County its first Louisiana-style restaurant.

"When you think of New Orleans, you think of the riverboats," Cheryl Wattley said as the final touches were being added for the maiden cruise last weekend.

"We thought having jazz music and creole food was natural. When you get out on the lake, with the music, it's so relaxing. It feels like a 2 1/2-hour vacation."

Tickets are $50 for the cruise, music and dinner; you book in advance by phone or on the Web at www.pbwship.com. You buy the ticket, then choose your dinner. The menu will change seasonally, Williams said.

The Princess Elizabeth docks at 7401 Watercress Drive, at Casino Beach on the west shore just south of the Texas 199 bridge. Check the Web site or call (817) 822-4027.