For almost thirty years, there was a corner booth at Sevy's Grill on Preston Road where the regulars showed up often enough that the staff stopped asking what they wanted. Deals closed there. So did some marriages, in the sense that first dates eventually became anniversaries celebrated at the same table. On June 27, 2026, the lights went out for good, not because the neighborhood stopped eating out, but because of a landlord dispute that had nothing to do with how many people wanted a seat.
That's the detail that explains what's actually happening around Preston Hollow this year. Ask a longtime resident what's new and they'll mention a restaurant. Ask what's actually driving the turnover and most people guess wrong, because this isn't really a food story. It's a story about who controls the real estate underneath the food, and one specific corner is where it's playing out in real time.
The corner that keeps changing hands
Not far from Sevy's, at the shopping center anchored by Preston Road and Royal Lane, the churn has been fast enough to track like a scoreboard. Anchor Sushi Bar closed its Preston Royal location on May 31, 2026, after three years in a space that spent two decades as Cantina Laredo before a 2019 tornado forced that restaurant out. The same operator, Vandelay Hospitality, still runs an Anchor Sushi Bar on Knox Street that isn't going anywhere. That detail matters more than it looks. When a company closes one location of a concept and keeps another open, it isn't telling you the neighborhood eats less sushi. It's telling you the specific address stopped working for its business model, which is a real estate signal wearing a restaurant's clothes.
Vandelay filled the gap fast. El Molino, the wood-fired fajita concept that built a following at Snider Plaza, opened its second, considerably larger location at that same Preston Royal address on August 10, 2026, roughly ten months after its original debut. The new build-out runs about 6,000 square feet, a scale the 83-seat original at Snider Plaza never attempted. That isn't a company retreating from Preston Hollow. It's a company redeploying inside the same four corners, betting on a bigger format at the exact spot where the smaller sushi concept didn't hold.
The steakhouse that bet big on the same block
If Vandelay's moves look like careful portfolio management, Joseph Palladino's arrival looks like a straightforward wager that this corner is worth a splash. Palladino, the restaurateur behind Nick & Sam's Steakhouse and the Coal Vines pizza chain, opened Palladino's Steak & Seafood on June 16, 2026, in the former Spec's space at 5959 Royal Lane. It's his second location after the original inside New York's Grand Central Terminal, and the Dallas build-out was designed by Rockwell Group, the same firm behind the New York restaurant. Parking has already become the honest complaint among early diners, since the shopping center lot fills fast on an ordinary weeknight. That's a small inconvenience with a useful implication: this corner is pulling more cars than its footprint was built to hold, and that kind of pressure tends to show up later in traffic studies and zoning hearings.
A few blocks south, Craft Restaurant & Beer Market opened its first United States location on April 1, 2026, inside Preston Center at 5974 West Northwest Highway, a building that once served as a COVID-19 hospital before its current life as a 500-seat, two-story restaurant with a rooftop patio and more than 100 beers on tap. It's backed in part by Dallas Stars owner Tom Gaglardi, and it's the Canadian company's first expansion outside its home market. Add Ella, an American bistro that took over the old Chido Taco Lounge space in Preston Hollow Village on June 17, and Cantina La Rosa, a Tex-Mex concept from the Smoky Rose ownership group that moved into the former Fernando's spot, and you get six restaurant stories inside about four months, all within walking distance of each other.
| Restaurant | Address | Change | Date |
|---|---|---|---|
| Anchor Sushi Bar | 6025 Royal Ln. | Closed | May 31, 2026 |
| El Molino (2nd location) | 6025 Royal Ln. | Opened | Aug 10, 2026 |
| Palladino's Steak & Seafood | 5959 Royal Ln. | Opened | Jun 16, 2026 |
| Craft Restaurant & Beer Market | 5974 W. Northwest Hwy. | Opened (1st U.S. location) | Apr 1, 2026 |
| Ella | 7949 Walnut Hill Ln. | Opened | Jun 17, 2026 |
| Cantina La Rosa | Former Fernando's space | Opened | 2026 |
| Sevy's Grill | 8201 Preston Rd. | Closed after nearly 30 years | Jun 27, 2026 |
The fight over what gets built next
The same southwest corner of Preston and Royal that just gained a steakhouse and a Tex-Mex concept is also the site of the most contested zoning case North Dallas has seen in years, and the two stories are closer together than they appear. According to a 2025 report on the initial proposal, developer Leland Burk and Greenway Investment Company began seeking approval for a $650 million mixed-use project on the seven-acre lot in October 2025, calling for a 28-story hotel and condo tower plus a second 24-story residential building on a site currently zoned for a maximum of 54 feet. The plan has shrunk with almost every round of neighborhood feedback since. By June 2026, developers had reduced the hotel-condo tower to 240 feet, or 19 stories, alongside an 18-story apartment building with roughly 175 units.
On August 6, 2026, the Dallas City Plan Commission voted 10 to 4 to recommend approval of that revised plan, now grown to an $800 million project including a 19-story hotel, an 18-story mixed-income apartment tower, a 12-story office building, and what the application calls a restaurant village. Opposition hasn't faded with the height cuts. Preserve Preston Hollow, the nonprofit residents formed specifically to fight this case, says it has collected more than 4,400 signatures against the rezoning. On August 4, that group joined eight other neighborhood organizations, including Bluffview, Wimberley Court, and Melshire Estates, to launch a coalition called D13 Together, which has raised the possibility of a recall effort against the district's council member if the case isn't delayed for further negotiation.
"A 54-foot height limit can suddenly become 240 feet," opponent Chris Cole argued, warning it could reshape how homeowners think about their own investments.
One connection between the two storylines is almost too neat to be a coincidence. Campisi's, the longtime Dallas institution, has confirmed its newest location is slated to land inside this exact disputed development, according to an August 2026 report on the neighborhood's restaurant turnover. The restaurant's opening now depends on the zoning case clearing city council.
Why the height fight might not be the whole story
What barely came up at the podium is that even if the city council rejects this specific rezoning outright, the corner probably isn't done changing. Planning staff told commissioners that under SB 840, a 2025 state law, the site's existing commercial zoning already permits significant multifamily development by right, without a city council vote at all. Staff estimated the property could theoretically hold hundreds of apartment units under that law alone, limited mainly by ordinary constraints like parking and traffic engineering rather than by whatever happens at city hall. The specific towers under debate might get built, get scaled down again, or get replaced by a different developer's plan entirely. What seems less likely is that this corner reverts to what it looked like before the 2019 tornado.
What it actually looks like this fall
For a neighborhood watching all of this from the sidewalk, the practical effects are already visible. Preston Hollow Village, a few minutes north, is riding its own version of the same wave, with St. Michael's Farmers Market running Saturday mornings through September 5 and Blue Sushi Sake Grill drawing a steady crowd for its all-day Sunday happy hour. The Northaven Trail, which runs along the neighborhood's northern edge, hosted its third annual Rhythm & Blooms benefit at Jonathan's this spring, raising money for the trail's wildflower meadows, a reminder that not everything new here involves a liquor license or a zoning docket.
Parking, for now, is the most honest complaint. Diners at Palladino's have already found themselves circling the Preston Royal lot on an ordinary Wednesday night, which says less about the restaurant and more about how much traffic this stretch is absorbing while its longer-term future gets decided one commission vote at a time.
None of this makes the neighborhood unrecognizable. It means the corner of Preston and Royal has become the place where Preston Hollow's two biggest live questions, what to eat and what gets built, are being answered by the same handful of players at the same time. Keep an eye on that corner over the next year. It's telling you more about where the neighborhood is headed than any single restaurant opening ever could.
If you're watching these changes and wondering what they mean for a home in this neighborhood, Hunter Realty Group has been tracking Preston Hollow long enough to read past the headlines. Let's Get a Coffee and talk about it.
