Preston Hollow Restaurant Scene in Fall 2026 Is Shifting
September 3, 2026
September 3, 2026
Sevy's Grill served its last almond-crusted trout on June 27. The restaurant had been on the corner of Preston Road and Sherry Lane since 1997, long enough that eight of its staff members had worked there since opening night and the average kitchen tenure ran past 15 years. Three blocks away, in the same four months, four new restaurants opened their doors. A fifth is set to open before Halloween.
If you live here, you've probably already noticed the churn without connecting the dots. A favorite lunch spot closes. A steakhouse with a New York pedigree takes over a former Spec's. A rooftop bar appears where a hospital used to be. It reads like ordinary restaurant turnover, the kind every neighborhood absorbs every few years. The restaurant scene changed over several months: Sevy's closed while new restaurants opened across the corridor.
Jim Severson, known to regulars simply as Sevy, opened his restaurant in Preston Sherry Plaza the same year Titanic hit theaters. He survived the dot-com crash, the 2008 recession, and a pandemic that closed dining rooms for months. The lease renewal talks with the new landlord ended without an agreement.
Endeavor Real Estate, an Austin-based firm, acquired Preston Sherry Plaza in September 2025. When Sevy's came up for its fourth 10-year lease renewal, the two sides couldn't reach an agreement, according to reporting in the Dallas Morning News. Severson said meeting the new rent would have meant raising menu prices to a point that felt like taxing his own guests. He chose to close instead.
He didn't throw a farewell party. He wrote a final newsletter to his mailing list on June 1, describing what he called an overwhelming sense of gratitude, and spent his last weeks at the plaza saying goodbye at the bar instead. A GoFundMe he started for the restaurant's 50 employees had raised roughly $65,000 toward its $100,000 goal by closing week. Severson has said he's looking for a new location. Nothing has been announced.
While Sevy's wound down, three separate shopping centers within a mile of it were actively recruiting replacements.
Four restaurants opened in the same six-month window, alongside other property activity in the corridor.
Zoom out one block further and another major project comes into view. Preston Center itself, the retail and office hub anchoring this entire corridor, is in the middle of a redevelopment called 8300 Douglas. Ramrock Real Estate, in partnership with Lincoln Property Company and HKS as design architect, broke ground in March 2026 on a project that will eventually include a 12-story, 300,000-square-foot office tower, a 17-story residential tower with 147 luxury units, a 35,000-square-foot rooftop park, and 24,000 square feet of new ground-floor retail and restaurant space, according to D Magazine's coverage of the project. Lincoln's own vice president has said proposals for the new office space already exceed available square footage.
The lease negotiations at Preston Sherry Plaza, the Palladino opening at Preston Royal, and the 8300 Douglas project at Preston Center are distinct parts of the corridor's commercial activity. Sevy's and Endeavor couldn't reach an agreement on a lease renewal after the plaza changed ownership. At Preston Royal, the landlords approached Palladino about opening there. At Preston Center, the 8300 Douglas plan includes office, residential, park, and retail space.
None of this means the neighborhood is becoming less residential or less itself. The new restaurants and property projects are appearing in the same calendar year.
The turnover isn't finished. Fortune House, a Shanghainese dumpling restaurant known for soup dumplings and pan-fried pork buns, is targeting a September 26 opening at Preston Hollow Village, at 7825 Firefall Way near US-75. It'll be the concept's third DFW location, following an original in Irving and a second on Greenville Avenue, and it's moving into a previously empty storefront a few doors from Another Broken Egg Cafe.
JJ's Cafe, a 15-year staple of nearby Lake Highlands, already made its move into Preston Hollow's orbit on July 1, opening its third location inside the Cinco Cocinas Food Nation food hall on Maple Avenue. Owner Jose Ramirez has said the expansion builds on what he started years ago rather than replacing it, which is a more accurate description of most of what's happening here than "replacement" implies. The restaurants coming in aren't erasing what came before. They're opening in spaces across the corridor, alongside other changes to the area.
If you've eaten at Sevy's, you already know what got lost. If you haven't tried the new arrivals yet, the fall lineup gives you a reasonable excuse. Either way, the recent changes offer a glimpse of the restaurant openings and property projects along this corridor.
For more on what's changing across Preston Hollow, browse the neighborhood guide or see how it compares to nearby Park Cities. If you're thinking about buying or selling property in this corridor and want someone who tracks these shifts as they happen, Parthvi Shah is happy to talk through what it means for your specific street. Book an appointment whenever you're ready.
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