Casa Linda Plaza's New Restaurants Are Changing the Plaza

Will Salisbury told D Magazine about opening Salisbury's Pizza inside Casa Linda Plaza with restaurant partner Julie Salisbury.

Salisbury's Pizza is the latest completed restaurant change at Casa Linda Plaza. The table below traces two completed restaurant transitions and one planned opening in this pocket of Northeast Dallas, which local food writers call East Dallas.

Casa Linda Plaza has been the anchor of this stretch of Northeast Dallas since 1945, when it opened as the oldest shopping center in the city. It still wears the Spanish Revival details it was built with, tile roofs and masonry walls, sitting on three of the four corners at Garland Road and North Buckner Boulevard. For decades it has been the walk-to spot for Casa Linda and Casa View, close enough to White Rock Lake that regulars still talk about arriving on foot rather than by car. That's not changing. What's changing is who's cooking.

The Corner That Keeps Changing Hands

Line up the two completed transitions and the planned opening, and the pattern gets hard to miss.

Pei Wei had been a fixture long enough that neighbors were still talking about missing it on local pages. Schlotzsky's closed in 2025, and the space sat empty long enough that Maman's signage went up in February 2026, two full months before renovation crews were even scheduled to start. Be Home Soon was replaced by Salisbury's Pizza before reaching its second anniversary.

The two completed replacements and the planned Maman opening each bring a different concept from the restaurant that left. That's the part worth sitting with.

Different Restaurant Models at Casa Linda Plaza

MiYa Chinese came from David Romano, who had already spent three decades in Dallas hospitality before he took over the old Pei Wei space, including a run as president of Local Favorites, the group behind chains like El Fenix and Snuffers. He'd also built Wok Star Chinese at The Hill in 2021 and Sum Dang Good Chinese at Trinity Groves in 2020 with his uncle Phil Romano. MiYa was the step up from both.

In its report announcing the restaurant, CultureMap Dallas quoted Romano saying, "I could do Italian, I'm Italian, but everybody wants Chinese and if you do it right and treat people well, you get a loyal following." He added, "I always try to do things based on what the community needs."

MiYa added an 800-square-foot patio that the former Pei Wei space had not had.

Salisbury's Pizza tells a similar story from a different angle. Will Salisbury came up as sous chef at Bullion and chef de cuisine at Carbone. Julie was wine director at Monarch and a sommelier at Veritas, Bullion and Carbone. Between them they've worked some of the most demanding kitchens and floors in Dallas, and they opened their first restaurant together on a shoestring by design. They kept the old drop ceiling. They didn't touch the bar. The bathrooms were already plumbed, so they left them alone. By not gutting the space, they estimate they saved around $250,000 on the build-out, money most first-time restaurant owners don't have. The pizza is New York-style, with big 18-inch pies, and their own drivers handle delivery rather than a third-party app.

The planned Maman opening is the outlier in scale. It's a Soho-born cafe chain with more than 50 locations, but it doesn't franchise into just anywhere. Its first Texas location opened at The Plaza at Preston Center in November 2025 and drew lines around the building. The Casa Linda location will be its second Texas address. Renovation on the old Schlotzsky's space started in April 2026, with the opening targeted for November.

The two completed changes and the planned Maman opening bring different concepts and operating models to the plaza.

The Corridor Already Rehearsed This

As The Dallas Morning News reported, Garland Road saw a comparable wave of restaurant openings in 2022. Rodeo Goat moved into the old Highland Park Cafeteria space in Casa Linda. Ellen's opened inside Casa Linda Plaza next to a new Baldo's Ice Cream location. Ascension turned a vacant brick chapel along the corridor into a patio restaurant and wine bar, with its then-CEO, Bill Schaffler, saying the White Rock Lake community was distinctive enough to justify the bet.

The current round continues a pattern of restaurant changes along the corridor. Garland Road has spent most of this decade proving that proximity to White Rock Lake is worth building around, even for operators who could have picked a flashier zip code.

What Actually Changes If You Live Nearby

The changes show up in small, practical ways more than in the headlines. MiYa's patio means there's now outdoor seating on that corner of the plaza where there wasn't any before. Salisbury's delivery service gives customers another way to order from the plaza. If Maman opens as targeted, its daytime hours, focused on coffee, pastries and lunch, would fill a gap the plaza hasn't had since the deli closed, giving people a reason to walk over before work instead of just after it.

None of this requires a special trip across town. That's the point of a plaza people have always reached on foot. The latest changes bring different restaurant concepts and operating models to the plaza.

If you've lived near Casa Linda Plaza for a while, you've already watched storefronts turn over more than once. In this round, some changes involve locally led restaurant concepts, while the planned Maman opening will bring a multi-location café brand.

Northeast Dallas keeps changing shape one lease at a time, and paying attention to who's willing to bet on a specific corner tells you as much about a neighborhood's direction as any single opening does. If you're the kind of person who tracks these shifts because you care about where you live, not because you're shopping for a new address, Donna Hartley has spent years watching how neighborhoods like this one evolve block by block. If a conversation about the broader Northeast Dallas market would be useful down the road, you can always schedule a free consultation when the time is right.