Olivia López and Jonathan Percival started Molino Olōyō in August 2021 out of a commercial kitchen in the Design District, delivering heirloom corn tortillas and tamales to people’s doorsteps. No restaurant, no storefront, no fixed address. They built a following the hard way — through pop-ups, private dinners, and collaborations in other people’s kitchens — until the line of people waiting for them became something the city couldn’t ignore.
The James Beard Foundation noticed. Texas Monthly noticed. And the people who had been standing in those lines for four years had been waiting for this moment since the first delivery.
On May 26, Olōyō opened at 4422 Gaston Avenue in Old East Dallas, in the 101-year-old building that housed Cry Wolf. Twenty-three seats. An open kitchen at the center. The name means “cob of the corn” in Nahuatl — the kernel that connects everything to everything else — which is precisely the operating philosophy of the restaurant.
López grew up cooking, worked her way through Craft Dallas, Charlie Palmer’s, CBD Provisions, Mirador, and Americana, and came out of that run with a point of view that doesn’t fit neatly into any single category. The food is Mexican — specifically rooted in heirloom corn, regenerative farming, and the producers in Texas and Mexico who grow the ingredients — but it moves through those traditions with a technique that reflects a serious restaurant career rather than a single culinary lineage. She was a James Beard semifinalist for Best Chef: Texas in 2023. Texas Monthly put Molino Olōyō on its Top 50 Tacos list. None of that happened with a brick-and-mortar behind it.
The menu opens with a raw section — bay scallop aguachile is on the current menu — and moves through a masa section the way a good Italian restaurant moves through pasta. López has said the masa section is the heart of what Olōyō does, and it should be: this is a kitchen that has spent four years developing a relationship with heirloom Mexican corn varieties, learning nixtamalization at a level most restaurants don’t attempt, and building a tortilla program that became the thing people drove across the city for before there was even a restaurant to drive to.
The pescado con moles and cacao nicatole con fresa y bisito colamote appear on the current menu alongside a rotating cast of seasonal preparations. Everything changes with what’s available and what López is working through.
Pastry chef Daiana Guzmán rounds out the kitchen — she comes from The French Room, Meridian, Petra and the Beast, and Homewood, which is a résumé that earns its own attention. Bar director José González was the head bartender at Midnight Rambler and co-founded the Los Tlacuaches pop-up cocktail collective. His drinks are inspired by Mexico’s regions and flavors. The Jefa — tequila, hibiscus, chile de árbol — is on the opening cocktail menu alongside a program built around Mexican spirits and regional ingredients.
The room reflects the same level of attention as the kitchen. The 101-year-old building has handmade tile, custom serving plates from artisans Lozart and Ataula, and Oaxacan glassware by Xaquixe. Nothing in it was chosen casually. This is a restaurant built by people who have been thinking about this room for four years, and it shows in the details.
Olōyō opens with an à la carte menu. A chef’s tasting menu follows later this year. And next door, the casual Molino Olōyō concept — wagyu suadero tacos, camarones zarandeados, churros — is slated to open in the adjacent space before the end of the year, giving the corner of Gaston Avenue two different ways in.
Reservations at Resy. They will not stay open long. Follow @oloyo_dtx on Instagram.
