What's Actually Open in Lakewood This Fall, and Why the Biggest Project Still Isn't

Drive down Skillman past Gaston most Sunday mornings and you will pass a boarded storefront that used to be Matt's Rancho Martinez. It closed after nearly 35 years in the neighborhood, and the sign for whatever comes next has said "coming soon" for so long that it stopped registering as news. Meanwhile, three blocks over on Gaston Avenue, a family opened a full restaurant, hired a staff, and started serving lunch combos in the time it took the Skillman project to finish its second round of roof repairs.

That gap is the story of Lakewood's year. Three new places have quietly turned their lights on since spring. One much bigger, much more anticipated project has now missed three separate opening dates going back to 2024. The difference between them has nothing to do with whether Lakewood wants what each one is selling. It has everything to do with what kind of building each one walked into.

What's Already Open

If you have been out of the loop since summer, here is what changed while you weren't looking:

• My Dream Latin Cuisine opened in March at 7260 Gaston Ave., in the space most recently occupied by Las Favela and, for more than a decade before that, Andrea's Italian. The restaurant comes from Salvador Gamón, who has worked Dallas kitchens since 1992 and spent time as server and kitchen manager at Matt's Rancho Martinez, Mattito's, Truluck's, and Hugo's Invitados before opening his own place with his brother Hugo and niece Ivette Ipina.
• Maman, the French-inspired café known for pastries and an espresso program, opened its second Dallas location on April 23 at Hillside Village. It is the brand's first expansion outside Park Cities, and the company has said the choice came down to Lakewood's sense of community rather than any untapped growth angle.
• Total Wine & More opened August 20 at 6330 E. Mockingbird Ln., in the building that sat empty after Joann Fabrics closed in early 2025. At more than 15,000 square feet with thousands of wine, spirit, and beer selections plus an in-store classroom for tastings, it is not a scaled-down neighborhood shop. It is the kind of retail commitment a national chain makes when it is confident about foot traffic on that corner, empty storefront or not.

Notice what all three have in common. Each one moved into a building that was already configured to do roughly what the new tenant does. A restaurant became a restaurant. A fabric store became a big-box retailer with the same open floor plan a fabric store needs. The renovation was cosmetic, not structural.

The One That Keeps Slipping

Serritella is a different kind of project, and its timeline tells you why.

Lakewood Hospitality Group announced the concept in 2024: a 16,000 square foot buildout at 1904 Skillman St., the old Matt's Rancho Martinez site, combining a 250 seat Italian steakhouse, a grab and go market with a cold case of fresh steaks and housemade sausage, and a speakeasy called COSA tucked in back with its own membership program. Co-owner Jason Gorsuch named the project after his grandmother and has talked about it as a tribute to his own East Dallas roots. Executive chef Ryan Ferguson, who spent a decade running the kitchens at Nonna and Fachini, was brought on to lead it.

The original opening date was spring 2025. By last fall, that date had slipped to early 2026, and Gorsuch told the Dallas Morning News the building needed more work than his team had planned for, with recent upgrades touching the roof, the plumbing, and the air conditioning. As of a report this past May, Serritella still had no confirmed opening date. Gorsuch has been consistent that the project is moving forward, just slower than anyone announced it would.

None of this is really about demand. Skillman between Gaston and La Vista already supports Mot Hai Ba, Lakewood Landing, and The Wine Therapist within a few blocks, so the corridor clearly has an audience for a night out. What Serritella ran into was the condition of a building that had been serving Tex-Mex for 35 years and was never built to also house a steakhouse, a retail market, and a members-only lounge under one roof. Lakewood Hospitality Group took on a second property too, the former Chip's Old Fashioned Hamburgers at 6115 La Vista Drive, open for 10 years before it closed. Converting two aging, single-purpose buildings into a three-concept operation was always going to take longer than moving a wine retailer into a rectangular box that used to sell fabric.

What the Buildings Are Actually Telling You

If you have wondered why some Lakewood storefronts turn over in a season while others sit dark for two years, the buildings themselves have the answer. The size of the gap between what a space used to be and what it is becoming predicts the timeline better than any announcement date does. My Dream Latin Cuisine walked into a working restaurant kitchen. Maman took over retail space built for foot traffic. Total Wine inherited an open-plan shell with the bones already in place. Serritella asked a decades-old, single-use building to become something structurally different three times over, and the roof and plumbing pushed back.

This pattern is worth knowing if you have watched a Lakewood storefront sit vacant and assumed the neighborhood had lost interest in whatever was supposed to go there. It usually has not. Alfonso's Italian Restaurant has run out of Casa Linda Plaza since 1982, when Michigan native Peter Colombo opened it at 27, and it has never needed to explain a long vacancy because it never left the building it started in. Lakewood's Whole Foods has anchored its corner since 2009 for the same reason. Ariana Cuisine has served Afghan food to the same regulars for years without a single renovation headline. The businesses that never make the news are usually the ones that never had to ask an old building to become something it wasn't.

What This Means for Your Fall

If you live in Lakewood and have been keeping a mental list of new spots to try, you can cross three off already. My Dream Latin Cuisine is open for lunch combos and brunch on Gaston. Maman is pouring espresso at Hillside Village most mornings. Total Wine's classroom space on Mockingbird is running its first round of tasting events. If you have also been keeping an eye on the old Matt's building on Skillman, the honest answer is that nobody outside Lakewood Hospitality Group has a firm date, and the roof and plumbing work that delayed it once could delay it again. Watching for a lit sign is still the most reliable way to know when it finally happens.

None of this changes what makes Lakewood worth paying attention to as a place to live. A neighborhood where operators wait two years for the right storefront and still choose to wait is a neighborhood with real pull. That patience is itself a signal, whether it shows up in three months or two years.

If you are thinking about what a neighborhood like this means for a home search, or you are weighing what a stretch of Skillman or Gaston with this kind of staying power says about long-term value, Modern Living Group knows this corner of East Dallas block by block. Let's Start a Conversation.