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Food

Will 8 new restaurants at Shops at Willow Bend — part of a $125 million expansion — invigorate Plano mall?

Update on Oct. 22, 2018: This story has been updated now that two of the restaurants are open.

Soon, the shopping part of the Shops at Willow Bend will only be a portion of the Plano mall's story.

The addition of eight new restaurants is turning a corner of Willow Bend into a restaurant park complete with patios overlooking a green courtyard.

Patrons enjoy cocktails and appetizers before sampling food from the brand-new restaurants...
Patrons enjoy cocktails and appetizers before sampling food from the brand-new restaurants at the Shops at Willow Bend on Oct. 4, 2018. Three of the restaurateurs are now open at the Plano mall.(Carly Geraci / Staff Photographer)

It's all part of a larger $125 million remodel, which came after years of struggles as Willow Bend tried to find a strong customer base in the 2000s, as has been reported by Dallas Morning News business reporter Maria Halkias. Willow Bend's new expansion includes the kid-friendly Crayola Experience and the new home to Plano Children's Theatre. Expected to be built at the mall by the end of 2019 are a Cinépolis movie theater; a 200,000 square-foot office building; and an Equinox fitness club.

Shopping malls have really changed in this Amazon-obsessed world, haven't they?

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"We're looking for ways to extend shoppers' stay," says Amy Medford, marketing director for the Shops at Willow Bend. "People are looking for experiences."

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No longer is it enough for a mall to have an Apple store, an H&M and a Macy's, as Willow Bend does. It also has a food court with Chick-fil-A and Sonic. Fine. But with the addition of 60,000 square feet for eight restaurants — built where the Saks Fifth Avenue once stood — Willow Bend has removed a big-box store in favor of using restaurants to draw traffic inside the West Plano mall.

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The restaurants are in an indoor-outdoor section they're calling The District at Willow Bend, located between Neiman Marcus and Dillard's. Four restaurants offered an open-to-the-public, $125 tasting that benefited the Junior League of Collin County on Oct. 4, followed by the Plano Food and Wine Festival on Oct. 6. Two of those restaurants are officially open now.

One of the bigger chef personalities in Dallas, John Tesar, plans to open his second Knife steakhouse at the Plano mall this month. "A lot of the restaurants here [in Plano] are cookie-cutter," he says bluntly. He aims to be different.

Executive chef John Tesar checks on Knife's aged meats at the Shops at Willow Bend in Plano....
Executive chef John Tesar checks on Knife's aged meats at the Shops at Willow Bend in Plano. The restaurant opened in mid October.(Jason Janik / Special Contributor)
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Tesar's restaurant, near the (always busy) Apple store, is a sit-down Knife steakhouse with a walk-up Knife Burger counter nearby. The restaurant also has a small shop where customers can buy cuts of steak and take them home in Yeti coolers — or ship steaks anywhere in the United States.

Because of the office building that will soon be attached to Willow Bend, Tesar believes there will be corporate opportunities to fill his 50-person private dining room and to host businesspeople looking for a steak lunch or dinner. This Knife restaurant in Plano sells Tesar's dry-aged beef, an item popular at the original Dallas steakhouse.

Mexican Bar Co. Cocina chef Patricio Sandoval is from Acapulco, Mexico, but is spending time...
Mexican Bar Co. Cocina chef Patricio Sandoval is from Acapulco, Mexico, but is spending time in Plano while opening a new restaurant at the Shops at Willow Bend.(Jason Janik / Special Contributor)

A meat cooler in a quiet corner of the mall holds $150,000 of this meat, patiently waiting for its day to be sliced and served.

Conversely, Knife Burger sells just four burgers, four shakes and one kind of fries from a counter. Burgers will be priced at a low $5.95, Tesar says.

Next to Knife, and now open, is Mexican Bar Co. Cocina, created by chef Patricio Sandoval, who is from Acapulco. The heart of the menu is 12 tacos served on corn tortillas. His restaurant has some Instagrammable moments in front of artist Erni Vales' cuadrinos — a series of small squares of art that form a larger picture, such as his Dallas skyline drenched in blue. Mexican Bar Co. is open now for dinner; it's expected to open at lunchtime starting Oct. 31.

Outside the mall, flanking the parking garage near Neiman Marcus, are six more restaurant spaces. One is already open, and another is coming soon; several others have not been announced.

Adam Shanaa, left, and his brother Jalal Chanaa are opening Terra Mediterranean at the Shops...
Adam Shanaa, left, and his brother Jalal Chanaa are opening Terra Mediterranean at the Shops at Willow Bend in Plano. Their restaurant menu is designed after their mom's recipes from her home country of Lebanon.(Carly Geraci / Staff Photographer)

The upcoming Terra Mediterranean Grill is a two-story restaurant with a patio that comes from the brothers who launched Lebanese restaurant Ali Baba in 1990. Terra will have a lunch buffet — just like the Terra restaurants in Fort Worth and Irving do — with a more traditional order-from-the-menu setup at dinner.

Scroll right in the photo gallery above to see the rendering of Terra's patio.

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The menu of hummus, saffron chicken, chicken kabobs and the like came from co-owners Adam Shanaa and Jalal Chanaa's mom. "She taught us everything we know," says Shanaa. "Her touch is what made us."

Terra does not have a set opening date yet.

The District's fourth new restaurant is Whistle Britches, a fried chicken joint from Dallas chef Omar Flores that is now open. His Southern-style eatery has bright pops of floral color on the booths and orange light fixtures.

"It's a cool energy to have other restaurants nearby," he says of The District. Though his original Whistle Britches is just 4 miles away, at Preston and Frankford roads, Flores says "it's a whole different clientele" at Willow Bend.

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A small restaurant called Açaí & Alchemy will be yet another addition to The District, though it has not been built yet.

We saved one of the tastier bits of restaurant news at Willow Bend for last: An Ascension coffee shop counter will serve java, beer and wine inside the mall. Ascension is one of Dallas' fastest-growing independent coffee shops — and a significant small business success story. Notably, Willow Bend shoppers aged 21 and up will be able to buy beer or wine at the Ascension counter and drink it while walking through the mall.

One more time: Willow Bend customers will be able to buy alcohol, then shop with drink in hand. They can even take it inside retail stores that allow drinks.

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Marketing director Medford is right: “There’s more to the center than shopping,” she says.

On Oct. 4, 2018, the Shops at Willow Bend's "The District" opened for a sneak peek charity...
On Oct. 4, 2018, the Shops at Willow Bend's "The District" opened for a sneak peek charity event. Three of the restaurants are now open.(Carly Geraci / Staff Photographer)