10 May 28 - June 3, 2026 dallasobserver.com DALLAS OBSERVER Classified | MusiC | dish | Culture | unfair Park | Contents took up residence at The Crescent Court. Delilah opened on a cold February night to long lines. Sadelle’s, a trendy New York City spot, stays busy catering to the Highland Park crowd. Little Ruby’s is all the rage in neighborhoods around New York City and occupies a bit of the bottom floor of a glossy new building in Uptown. Most recently, there’s La Lupita from Cabo with its own trademarked tacos Want me to keep going? Yeah, me neither. A Deep Dive Are these imports awful? No, of course not. Honestly, some do it right. Others just don’t. And the reasons are varied and complicated, which pretty much goes for all restaurants or any businesses, for that matter. I visited Komodo once for a dinner on my own, then again on its one-year anniversary for a sparkler-infested anniversary party where I couldn’t get out of there fast enough. On that first visit, I felt like a sucker, paying $16 for bottled water at a table so close to my neighbors that conversation was awkward. In all honesty, however, the dumplings and noo- dles we had on that first visit were very good. We reached out to Komodo’s Mi- ami-based parent company, Groot Hospital- ity, about why they closed just a month before the World Cup, but didn’t hear back. For some insight, I pulled the Mixed Bev- erage Gross Receipts from the Texas Open Data Portal to see what was going on during Komodo’s three-year tenure on the edge of Deep Ellum. Phase 1: The Clubstaurant Hype In April 2023, Komodo rolled into Dallas like a rented Lamborghini Huracan. Green, of course (or verde mantis in car speak). It was a restaurant in front, a club in the back; the mul- let of concepts. You could get a whole Peking Duck and fancy bottle service for your water. There was a private club upstairs (so I was told — I never made it that far) where you had to sort of apply to get in. A real “cool kids” club. Komodo cleared more than half a million in liquor sales each month for the first six months. They dipped below that mark a bit in November 2023, but then jumped back over it in December, and then there was a snag. Phase 2: The First Nose-Dive January 2024 did not go well for Komodo. They went from half a million to just over $100,000 in one month, a stunning drop. Did someone find a fly in their soup? Num- bers stayed low (under $200,000) for three months. But then in April, they threw an an- niversary party (that soiree I attended) cou- pled with a media blitz. They launched brunch, which, this is Dallas, so, yes. Things go better for the rest of 2024, but never con- sistently over the half-million-dollar mark. Phase 3: When I Dip, We Dip The summer of 2025 was rough. The restau- rant was down 11% year over year in June, then down about 20% in July, August and September. Phase 4: Not Even Kendall Jenner Wafting in the doldrums, Komodo called in an ace from the bullpen. In October 2025, Kendall Jenner visited the restaurant to pro- mote her tequila brand. Sales jumped 27% year over year that month. After that? An- other nose-dive: down in November (16%) to a stunning 45% drop year over year in March 2026 ($180,945 in liquor sales). Ouch. And apparently, that was it for the mam- moth 22,500-square-foot space. What Does This Say About Dallas? Of the other velvet-rope imports, none were in the top 25 in alcohol sales in March 2026, except for Delilah, which pulled in $624,965, its first full month of operation. Take note: Komodo pulled in similar num- bers ($675,962) in its first full month, too. Local places like Al Biernat’s, Javier’s, Las Palmas and Katy Trail Ice House have figured it out, consistently pulling in the masses. All three in the top 25 for booze sales in March. Priya Krishna wasn’t wrong — Dallas will continue to draw a party. And renting green Lambos on the weekends. But maybe there’s something to be said for being a part of the city you’re opening a business in. You might get Mark Wahlberg out for opening night (La Neta) or Machine Gun Kelly (Delilah), but after the newness has worn off, are you giv- ing the local set a reason to show up again? ▼ RETAIL THE H-E-B CHECKLIST DOES YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD HAVE WHAT IT TAKES TO LAND THE NEXT STORE? BY JEFF SIEGEL Want to know if your neighborhood quali- fies for Dallas’ next H-E-B, once the super- market chain opens its first-ever city store at Hillcrest and LBJ sometime in the next couple of years? Then answer these three questions: First, does your neighborhood have an empty lot – or one with buildings that can be torn down without too much fuss – that’s about the size of a city block? Second, is that land located at the inter- section of major highways, traveled by tens of thousands of cars a day? And do lots of high-income families live around that land, say, six-figure Plano-style high income? Finally, it can’t be near a Central Market because H-E-B doesn’t want to cannibalize its existing brands. If the answer to each is yes, then Come On Down! your neighborhood has a chance of landing the next H-E-B in Dallas. “The first thing to know is that H-E-B has picked its locations in north Texas in support of a strategy,” says SMU professor Ed Fox, one of the leading retail gurus in the country. “These are big footprint supermarkets that leverage efficiencies for logistics and sourc- ing, and even marketing.” But the Observer, with Fox’s help, has done a fair amount of sleuthing to figure out what H-E-B looks for in store locations, using data from where it has built stores in the Dallas area. Know this is in- formed speculation; H-E-B does not comment on the subject, and almost a dozen Dallas real es- tate brokers and experts – who might work with the grocer -- either declined to be in- terviewed for this story or did not respond to requests for interviews. Nevertheless, there are several certainties: SIZE: This, more than anything, elimi- nates most of Dallas. There just isn’t enough affordable land of the right size with the demographics H-E-B looks for. The Plano and one of the Frisco H-E-Bs are 118,000 square feet; the Park Lane Whole Foods is about half that size. And for those who ask, “What about Oak Cliff?” the Dal- las Central Appraisal District lists an H-E- B-owned property, some 106,000 square feet, at Beckley and Davis, kind of catty cor- ner to Bishop Arts. But, says Fox, that looks more like a site for a Joe V’s than an H-E-B. (Although some would contest it’s perfect for an H-E-B.) LOCATION: Which is not just about high-income neighborhoods. Fox says H-E-B has put its north suburban stores in a more or less straight line, north and south, not unlike a train track with each store as a station. This makes it more cost-effective and more efficient for delivery trucks to stop at each store in procession, instead of driv- ing willy-nilly around the DFW area. TRAFFIC: As in lots and lots of it. Check out this part of the North Central Texas Council of Governments website, where you can plug in an intersection to see how many cars go through it each day. CANNIBALIZATION: There can’t be any H-E-B sister concepts nearby. This rules out some of the wealthiest parts of Dallas, since there are already Central Markets serving the Park Cities, Preston Hollow and Bluffview, and North Dallas. That doesn’t leave much, with the best candidate being the shopping center at the southeast corner of Mockingbird and Abrams, which would attract customers from Lakewood and Lake Highlands. The center, hasn’t had a supermarket since 2016. Yes, it’s sort of close to the Lovers Lane Central Market, and it doesn’t fit the train tracks strategy. But perhaps more import- ant, H-E-B reportedly bought the lease for the supermarket on the site a decade ago, only to close it. So if the chain didn’t want the site then, why would it want it now? DO LOTS OF HIGH-INCOME FAMILIES LIVE AROUND THAT LAND? Lauren Drewes Daniels Komodo: from p9 Money-bag dumpings at Komodo
