New East Dallas Restaurants: Old Kitchens in Casa Linda and Along Garland Road

"Find a used restaurant." Will Salisbury told D Magazine that this was his first piece of advice to anyone hoping to open in Dallas. He says it from a dining room in Casa Linda Plaza, where Salisbury's Pizza moved into the former Be Home Soon space and opened on August 18.

Look at the restaurants that have opened in East Dallas this year, and the ones with permits still in progress. Almost every one of them is moving into a space another restaurant left behind. That tells you where the next openings are likely to come from. It also explains why one well-known building on Garland Road is still empty.

What a used restaurant actually saves

Will and Julie Salisbury both worked at Monarch, Carbone and Bullion, Will as a chef and Julie as a sommelier. Salisbury's is their first restaurant of their own: a casual pizza place built around 18-inch pies. Will says they paid for it themselves. They married at the justice of the peace instead of paying for a wedding, and decided to put the money into the restaurant rather than a house.

In posts on social media, the couple estimates they saved about $250,000 by doing as much of the work as they could themselves. The building they inherited is a big part of that savings. Julie described the choices they skipped. They could have pulled out the drop ceiling and the bar. She said those changes alone would have run about $40,000, and that's before design, drawings and permits. The bathrooms were already finished, so there was no replumbing and no ripping out tile.

The furniture and equipment came secondhand too. The chairs came from an old Italian restaurant in Fort Worth, and Will drove to Oklahoma to pick up half a dozen of them. The oven, the ice cream spinner and the meat slicer all came off Facebook Marketplace. The lease came early as well. Will reached the landlords before the space was ever listed, which he says saved them the cost of marketing it.

The details that matter for a weekday dinner: Salisbury's is at 9540 Garland Road, Suite 407. It serves New York-style pizza for dine-in and runs its own delivery instead of relying on third-party apps.

The same math works for a 50-location chain

You might expect this calculation to matter only to first-time owners. Maman is a New York French bakery and cafe that opened its 50th location, its first in the Dallas area, at The Plaza at Preston Center. Its co-founder explained its move to Lakewood in almost the same terms the Salisburys used.

"Lakewood was a great second-generation opportunity that we came across," co-founder Elisa Marshall told the Dallas Business Journal, as quoted by the Lakewood Advocate. "Due to that reason, we were able to flip it around a little bit quicker." That second-generation space was the former Palmer's Hot Chicken, Catfish and Shrimp at 6465 E. Mockingbird Lane, #316, in Hillside Village. The Advocate reported an April 23 opening.

The pattern keeps going down Mockingbird and over to Gaston:

Olōyō, on the Old East Dallas end of Gaston, shows how far the idea stretches. Chef Olivia López, a James Beard semifinalist, and Jonathan Percival built their following through pop-ups and private tasting dinners as Molino Olōyō, which made Texas Monthly's Top 50 Tacos list. Their menu centers on heirloom masa and seasonal produce from Texas ranches. A neighborhood pizza place, a national burrito chain and a chef's masa project all chose the same kind of space for the same reason.

Three kitchens still waiting on a first night

The next openings follow the same pattern. Each of these is still pending, and none of the reporting through August confirms service has started:

1. Norma's Cafe, 9004 Garland Road. The Oak Cliff diner, which dates to 1956, is going into the former Dickey's in the strip with Bike Mart and Good Records. Dickey's had been at that spot for about 20 years. It closed again in early 2026 after a brief comeback by its original franchisee. The Dallas Observer reported a certificate of occupancy issued July 28. On August 18, the Lakewood Advocate described the certificate as still in inspection. Neither outlet had an opening date.
2. Maman, 1152 N. Buckner Blvd., #124. The second East Dallas Maman is planned for the former Schlotzsky's at Casa Linda. A February report projected a November opening. The March update said it might come later in the summer, and no newer timeline has been published. The Lakewood and Casa Linda cafes are both expected to be larger than the Preston Center location and to double as event spaces.
3. Muchacho, Abrams Road at La Vista Drive. The Tex-Mex restaurant is taking over the former Petra and the Beast space with an enlarged patio. It was slated for late 2026 in a report from November 2025.

All three dates are estimates. All three addresses already have kitchens.

The building that was too much restaurant

The counterexample sits a block from Norma's. The Barbec's building at 8949 Garland Road was built in the 1960s as a Howard Johnson's. Barry and Becky Brown opened Barbec's there in 1978. After they sold it in 1999, it carried on as a neighborhood diner known for its beer biscuits until a 2020 fire destroyed most of the interior. Paperwork for a Popeye's was filed a few years ago, but that plan never went ahead. The Observer reported in June 2026 that the fire damage had been repaired, a new roof and HVAC system had been installed, and the remodeled space was for lease.

The Salisburys considered it. "We could go big and do way more," Will told D Magazine. "But we needed a lot more money to do that." He also looked at a 900-square-foot space before deciding that a mid-sized room kept their overhead manageable, with a smaller staff and less space to heat and cool.

That conversation explains the corridor. The Be Home Soon, Dickey's and Schlotzsky's spaces got tenants. The building with the asymmetrical mid-century roofline has been repaired and was still waiting for a tenant as of the last public report, in June. It needs one with the budget to fill a room that size.

Putting the new stretch to use this fall

Because Salisbury's opened and Norma's is on the way, the Garland Road stretch between the Dallas Arboretum and Casa Linda Plaza now has more places to eat than it did a year ago, and that changes what a fall Saturday on this side of the lake can include.

The White Rock Farmers Market runs Saturdays from 8 a.m. to noon at 1450 Old Gate Lane through December 20. Autumn at the Arboretum continues through November 1, with a Harvest Hues theme and more than 100,000 pumpkins, gourds and squash.

For an evening at the garden, Pumpkins and Pints runs from 6 to 9 p.m. on these dates:

• October 7: BBQ & Beer, rescheduled
• October 9: Texas Trail
• October 16: Pizza and Pours
• October 23: Oktoberfest
• October 30: Chili Cookoff

A morning at the market and the pumpkin displays can end with an 18-inch pie at the end of the same road, in a dining room built mostly from a previous restaurant and Facebook Marketplace finds. If Norma's opens before the season ends, you'll be able to add breakfast at 9004 Garland Road to the same Saturday.

Every one of these restaurants depended on an old kitchen still being in working order, and on a landlord who answered the phone before the space was ever listed. If you own a building on one of these corridors and want to know how a second-generation tenant might affect your property's value, or you'd like early word on spaces before they're listed, Hewitt+Saucedo follows East Dallas closely. Reach out for a free home valuation or off-market access.