Henderson Avenue’s long-anticipated overhaul is close enough to done now that its restaurant lineup is starting to feel real. PopUp Bagels opened its second Dallas location on the street this summer. Salt & Straw made its Texas debut nearby. And the anchor tenant everyone’s been waiting on, a Tristan Simon restaurant called Romy, is still on track to open at 2110 N. Henderson Ave. this December, right as the rest of the ten-building Henderson East project wraps construction.
Simon is the developer who built Henderson Avenue’s reputation the first time around, opening The Porch and Victor Tangos there in the early 2010s, both since closed. Romy marks his return to running a restaurant on the street he helped define two decades ago, this time from inside the office-and-retail development he’s spent the past two years building through Ignite-Rebees, his firm with Mark Masinter.
Romy is a bakery-café by day and a modern American restaurant by night, open seven days a week for all three meals. Mornings and afternoons bring coffee, house-made pastries and lighter seasonal dishes. At night the menu shifts to handmade pastas, wood-roasted meats and a wine program built around the kind of unhurried dinner Henderson Avenue hasn’t really had in years. The restaurant seats up to 80 and adds a 1,000-square-foot patio for outdoor dining.
Simon isn’t running the kitchen himself. He’s brought in longtime business partner Taryn Anderson, a managing partner at Ignite-Rebees, and chef Matt Ford, who currently runs the kitchen at Billy Can Can. The restaurant’s name comes from Anderson’s oldest daughter. Romy will also handle food and beverage service for the office tenants in Henderson East, an arrangement Simon has described as treating the building more like a private club than a typical office tower.
Kate Murphy, the designer behind Billy Can Can, is handling the interior, working in oak, marble, brass and plaster. It’s a materials list aimed at feeling more settled than trendy, which tracks with how Simon has talked about the project.
“Henderson Avenue was where I first learned how restaurants could reshape and define a neighborhood,” Simon said when the restaurant was announced. “Romy represents both a return and an evolution, a more mature, soulful expression of dining that reflects how we envision Henderson’s future restaurant culture.”
Anderson has framed the project as picking up a thread that had gone slack on the street in recent years. “When we built restaurants on Henderson, it was a true dining destination driven by talented chefs and real hospitality,” she said. “We’re bringing that spirit back, a return to craft, connection and food with heart.”
Construction crews finished the structural phase on Henderson East earlier this year and have since moved into interior build-out, with the full ten-building project on pace to wrap by the end of 2026. Romy is the first of three restaurants planned for the development, and with the rest of Henderson Avenue’s retail lineup already filling in around it, it’s shaping up to open into a street that’s further along than it’s been in years.
