The Pizzeria Testa building on Greenville Avenue has sat with new owners for over a year now, and what’s coming next is finally close enough to talk about.
Corsaire is the next project from Austin Rodgers and chef Jeff Bekavac, the pair behind Goodwins a few blocks up the street. Rodgers handles the front of house side of their partnership; Bekavac, a Coppell native who trained in San Francisco and New Orleans before working under Nick Badovinus at Neighborhood Services, runs the kitchen. Their first restaurant together turned a stretch of Greenville Avenue that had struggled to hold onto tenants into one of the busier addresses on the street, and Corsaire is their bet that the same instincts translate to a different kind of menu.
Where Goodwins leans American with Mediterranean and Italian touches, Corsaire flips that ratio. Bekavac has described the food as tracking the old spice trade routes — dips and small plates pulling from North Africa, Spain, France, Turkey, and Morocco, the kind of menu built to move around a table rather than sit in front of one person. The room is built for that same instinct: big enough for families and large groups, casual enough for a drop-in round of drinks and bar bites, upscale enough to hold its own on a stretch of Greenville that has gotten more competitive by the month.
The space itself is getting a full rebuild rather than a light refresh. Bekavac has talked about turning the patio into what he calls a real escape from the sidewalk, heavy on greenery, meant to function as an actual reason to sit outside rather than an afterthought tacked onto the dining room. Rodgers built his name doing exactly this kind of neighborhood room once before at Alamo Club, his first solo restaurant a few blocks away on Lower Greenville.
Corsaire was originally aimed at an April or May opening, then slipped into summer. As of early July, the team was describing it as close, with an August target. Nothing has been confirmed as officially open yet, so treat that timeline as the latest word rather than a certainty — Greenville Avenue has seen enough delayed openings this year to make that caution worth stating plainly.
What is certain is the address: 3525 Greenville Ave., the building that spent years as Pizzeria Testa before closing last summer. Given what Rodgers and Bekavac built next door, Lower Greenville has good reason to keep an eye on this one.
