Why Lubellas Patisserie in East Dallas is a neighborhood success story

Two years ago, Maria Becerra and Ismael Trejo scraped together their savings and left their restaurant jobs to open a bakery in East Dallas. They hoped to build a better life for themselves and their daughters, and so Lubellas Patisserie was born.

Now, on a sunny morning in March 2024, they stand amidst piles of crumbling concrete and snarled rebar in the hollowed-out building next to their bakery, hardly able to believe they made it to this moment. This new space will soon double the size of Lubellas.

A jackhammer drowns out the couple’s excited chatter about the future of the bakery — the sunlight that will flood the dining room, and the kitchen that will be big enough to fit a real bread oven.

”We need this,” Trejo says, pointing to the blueprint for the expanded dining room that lays on the dusty floor. “We don’t have anything else like it in this part of the city.”

Becerra and Trejo, both Dallas restaurant industry veterans, opened Lubellas in their East Dallas neighborhood of Casa View — a pocket of Dallas with few restaurants and even fewer independent ones. They wanted to give their neighborhood a gathering place with the caliber of food they made in the kitchens of some of Dallas’ most well-known restaurants like Bullion, Stephen Pyles and Flora Street Cafe.

Becerra spent her career as a pastry chef in fine dining restaurants, and Trejo worked as a sous chef and server. They knew a bakery would do well in Casa View and they trusted their culinary chops, but they were nervous about pulling it off with limited funds and no budget for marketing.

When Lubellas opened in the Casa View Shopping Center in September 2022, the pastry cases filled with croissants, conchas, cheesecakes, tarts, alfajores and quiches were cleared out in under five hours. The bakery has been busy every day since.

“I think that means we’re doing something right,” Trejo said.

Since opening, Becerra and Trejo have expanded Lubellas’ menu. More than two dozen types of pastries and desserts, all of which Becerra and a few staff members make in small batches while bumping elbows in the tiny kitchen, line the counters on any given day. On weekends, she and Trejo whip up brunch dishes and pastry specials centered around an ingredient Trejo couldn’t resist, like squash blossoms, red pears, ‘nduja, piquillo peppers and pulled pork.

To keep up with the growing number of customers and the frequent requests for catering and private events, Becerra and Trejo jumped at the opportunity to lease the vacant retail space next door.

They closed Lubellas for nearly a week in mid-March for the first phase of construction, and they’ll close again for a week or so in mid-April for the renovations to be completed. When it reopens, Lubellas will be twice the size it is now, with a spacious dining room, coffee counter and a kitchen big enough for all of their ideas.

Once they save up for a bread oven, Becerra will add baguettes and sourdough to the lineup, and Trejo has big plans for the cafe menu that might eventually include dinner service. At some point, maybe they’ll open a second location, they said. It all feels possible to them with the response they’ve received from the community.

Every day they look out from behind the counter at the people walking through the door and see neighbors, out-of-towners who heard about Becerra’s croissants, and local chefs and restaurant industry workers, many of whom live nearby. Their support makes the daily 4 a.m. wake-ups worth it, Becerra said.

“It’s been hard, but customers thank us for being here,” she said. “They feel like we’ve put eyes on Casa View.”

Lubellas is located at 10323 Ferguson Rd., Dallas. It is open Tuesday through Saturday from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. and Sunday from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. lubellaspatisserie.com.