If you've lived in Midlothian more than a couple of years, you already know the drill. Somebody announces a restaurant is coming to downtown. City council votes on a facade. A rendering circulates. And then nothing happens for so long that you stop checking.
That's been the story of El Primo's Mexican Grill & Cantina since October 2022, when Midlothian's city council approved plans for the restaurant to take over roughly 13,000 square feet of a 17,000-square-foot warehouse on West Main Street. Nearly four years later, it's still not open. But two restaurants that weren't even on anyone's radar in 2022 have already served their first customers, and one of them beat its own announced timeline by months. That's the part worth understanding if you're trying to figure out where downtown actually stands right now, not where it was promised to be.
The Anchor That Still Hasn't Landed
The plan for El Primo's has always been the biggest swing downtown has taken. Owner Todd Tonore, a Mansfield city council member who also runs The Vault Seafood & Steakhouse and the original El Primo's location in Mansfield, told reporters the Midlothian buildout would cost around $3 million, seat about 600 people, and employ 80 to 100 workers, numbers pulled directly from the Mansfield location that generates an estimated $6 to $7 million in annual sales. Construction was supposed to start between August and September of 2024 and wrap by fall 2025.
By December 2024, that timeline had already slipped. A leasing broker involved in several of the downtown projects told Focus Daily News there was still no official opening date for El Primo's, or for two other long-promised spots, Tequila and Mi Casa, and that his best guess put openings sometime in the first quarter of 2025. That quarter came and went. As of this writing, none of the three have a confirmed opening date.
None of that makes Tonore's math wrong. A restaurant that could pull in Mansfield-level sales would be a real anchor for Main Street. But the gap between the numbers on paper and the doors actually opening is the story of downtown's slowest project, and it's why treating El Primo's as the marker of downtown's revival has stopped making sense.
Two Restaurants That Didn't Wait
While El Primo's sat in permitting and construction limbo, two other businesses just opened.
Bearded Ax Brewery & Gathering Hall had its own delay. Back in December 2024, the same Focus Daily News reporting noted the brewery was pushed back by developer issues and was aiming for a summer 2025 opening. It missed that window too, but not by nearly as much. Bearded Ax is now open at 301 W Main Street, serving as the named anchor tenant of the Lawson Development District, with a full-service kitchen, in-house brewing, and a dog-friendly patio that can host groups of around 50.
Then there's Mo' Bettahs. In late January 2026, the Hawaiian-food chain announced it was coming to Main Street Towne Crossing at 201 Nicolette Creek Road, with a company statement targeting a fall opening. It didn't wait for fall. Mo' Bettahs opened its doors on June 26, 2026, with founders Kimo and Kalani Mack on hand for a Friends and Ohana soft opening the night before, followed by a ribbon cutting and a block-party dinner service. A restaurant chain with no prior roots in Midlothian went from announcement to open sign in five months. A local restaurateur's signature project has been in the pipeline for closer to four years.
Here's where the numbers actually stand, side by side:
| Project | First Announced | Stated Target | Status as of August 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|
| El Primo's Mexican Grill & Cantina | October 2022 | Fall 2025 | No confirmed opening date |
| Tequila (former Campuzano's rebuild) | Sense given December 2024 | Q1 2025 | No confirmed opening date |
| Mi Casa (former Jimmy's) | Sense given December 2024 | Q1 2025 | No confirmed opening date |
| Bearded Ax Brewery & Gathering Hall | Delay noted December 2024 | Summer 2025 | Open, anchor tenant of Lawson Development District |
| Mo' Bettahs | January 2026 | Fall 2026 | Open since June 26, 2026 |
The pattern isn't that downtown Midlothian is behind. It's that the businesses with an outside parent company or a simpler build-out are the ones actually opening, while the ambitious, locally owned, from-scratch projects are the ones still stuck.
Founders Row Never Promised Fast
If you want to see what a slow-but-honest timeline looks like, look a few blocks over at Founders Row. Developer Stephen Hidlebaugh started buying property in Midlothian in 1997 and didn't move the first historic home onto the site until 2016. Today the district holds five tenants: The Porch Pour and Wilson's Seafood as its restaurants, plus Relic + Root, Copper Rose, and House of Aesthetics. Hidlebaugh has said the long-term goal is more than 30 businesses, but nobody involved has ever pretended that's happening on a quick schedule.
That's the contrast that matters. Founders Row was never marketed as an imminent opening. It's a 15-year property assembly that's still filling in a home at a time, and it delivers on that pace consistently. El Primo's was marketed as a fall 2025 opening back when the shovels first hit the warehouse floor, and it's now missed that date by close to a year with no new one announced.
Tonore himself explained his priorities on where to build next.
"I don't want to build in Southlake today before I build one in Midlothian."
That's a statement about loyalty to the local market, not about timelines. It's worth remembering the next time a new sign goes up on that warehouse.
What's Actually Open This Weekend
For anyone deciding where to go this Friday or Saturday, here's what's real right now, not what's coming:
- Union 28, the live music venue at 651 Highlander Avenue, has Dustin de la Garza playing Friday, August 21, and the Reid Freeman Band on Saturday, August 22, both starting at 8 p.m.
- Bearded Ax Brewery is open Tuesday through Sunday on West Main Street, with a patio built for lingering rather than a quick pass-through.
- Mo' Bettahs is serving lunch and dinner Monday through Saturday at Main Street Towne Crossing, closed Sundays.
- Founders Row's Porch Pour and Wilson's Seafood are both running their regular schedules in the historic district on Avenue F.
And if you're wondering whether the bigger civic calendar backs up any of this, MidloFest already happened this year, on April 25, drawing a crowd that the Midlothian Chamber of Commerce itself put at more than 8,000, while other event listings estimated the turnout closer to 10,000 to 12,000. Either number points to the same thing: downtown pulls a real crowd when there's something to show up for. The Chamber's next test will be whether that crowd has more open doors to walk into by the time MidloFest rolls around again.
Reading the Pattern
The lesson here isn't that El Primo's won't eventually open, or that it won't be worth the wait when it does. It's that treating a single marquee project as the proof point for downtown's momentum has been the wrong way to read this market for a while now. The actual openings, the ones you can walk into today, came from a brewery that quietly absorbed its own delay and from a chain restaurant that beat its own timeline by months. The slowest, highest-profile promise is still just a promise.
If you're the kind of person who tracks these things because you live two blocks from the warehouse and you're tired of guessing, that instinct is the right one. Downtown's next chapter is going to keep arriving out of order, and the businesses actually worth paying attention to are the ones that show up before anyone announces a ribbon cutting.
The Angelique Burkett Team pays attention to this kind of thing because it's the same instinct we bring to reading a street, a school zone, or a resale market before we ever talk about a listing. If you're curious what any of this shift downtown means for your own home's value, our free home valuation tool is a quick way to find out.
