For ten years, Relish Restaurant & Bar meant Westheimer Road. That ends this winter. The original location closes by the end of 2026, and the version of Relish still standing after that will be the one you already drive past on Memorial Drive.
If you live near Town & Country Village, you already know the corner has been busy. What you might not have connected is the direction things are moving. This isn't overflow from River Oaks anymore. It's the other way around.
A River Oaks favorite is packing up, not opening up
Relish opened its first restaurant on Westheimer in 2016, growing out of Addie Teague's grab-and-go shop, Relish Fine Foods. It became the kind of place River Oaks regulars built routines around, known for fried chicken, a lobster roll, and a burger made with in-house ground beef.
In July 2026, the restaurant confirmed it's leaving that address for good. Its own statement kept things simple:
"Relish's River Oaks location will remain open through the end of the year and looks forward to continuing to serve its customers during this time."
Island Grill, a family-owned Mediterranean concept with locations in Rice Village, Tanglewood, Spring, and downtown, is taking over the Westheimer space, with a spring 2027 opening planned. Relish says it will eventually reopen somewhere inside The RO, a 17-acre development still under construction at Buffalo Speedway and West Alabama that isn't expected to open until late 2027.
Do the math and the gap is real. From the day the Westheimer doors close through whenever The RO actually opens, there's exactly one Relish operating in Houston. It's the one at 12850 Memorial Dr., inside Town & Country Village.
That location opened December 2, 2024, and it was built bigger than the original from the start, almost 4,800 square feet with a dedicated bar, a seven-seat oyster bar, and a ten-seat chef's table looking into the kitchen. When Relish first announced the move here, chef and co-owner Dustin Teague talked about the corner directly: "We selected this location for many reasons, including the community vibe it provides, the surrounding businesses, and the people that frequent the area." He called it a spot that could "fill the current void for a neighborhood style restaurant." He wasn't describing a backup plan. He was describing a bet on this specific address, one that's about to become the only place in the city to get that food.
The Henry didn't wait for a Galleria location to open first
Relish isn't the only concept treating this corner as a primary address instead of a secondary one. The Henry, a Fox Restaurant Concepts brand and sister to Flower Child, opened at Town & Country Village on November 12, 2025. It's a full 6,925 square feet with an outdoor patio, a full-service coffee bar, and a private dining room, built for breakfast through dinner plus weekend brunch.
A second Houston location was already planned for the Galleria area on Post Oak Boulevard when The Henry opened here. As of the announcement, that one still had no set opening date. Town & Country got the finished restaurant first.
PopUp Bagels picked Beltway 8 for its Houston debut
The pattern held again in June. PopUp Bagels, the Connecticut-born chain known for its no-toasting, no-slicing, tear-and-dip model, chose Town & Country Village for its first Houston shop, opening June 12, 2026 at 700 Town & Country Blvd. It's the third Texas location after two in Dallas, part of a plan for more than ten shops statewide.
The brand has real pull behind it. It's backed by celebrity investors including JJ Watt, and its Houston opening weekend donated half of proceeds to the JJ Watt Foundation. Houston already has a competitive bagel scene of its own, from the recently closed Golden Bagels and Coffee in the Heights to Brazos Bagel, where demand ran so high the shop had to shut down. PopUp didn't need to test the market somewhere smaller first. It landed at full scale on Memorial Drive.
CultureMap summed up what's been happening here in plain terms, describing Town & Country Village as having become "a bit of a culinary hotspot in the past couple of years." That's not marketing copy. It's a food writer naming three specific reasons: Relish, Ramen Tatsu-ya, and The Henry, all arriving within roughly eighteen months of each other.
The last two years, laid out
| Date | What happened |
|---|---|
| Dec. 2, 2024 | Relish opens its second location at Town & Country Village, built larger than the River Oaks original |
| Nov. 12, 2025 | The Henry opens, ahead of its own planned Galleria location |
| June 12, 2026 | PopUp Bagels opens its first Houston shop here, its third in Texas |
| July 2026 | Relish confirms its original River Oaks location will close by year's end |
| Late 2026 | Relish's Westheimer address closes for good |
| Spring 2027 | Island Grill opens in the former Relish space on Westheimer |
| Late 2027 | The RO, Relish's eventual new River Oaks home, is expected to open |
Read down that list and the story isn't a shopping center adding restaurants. It's a shopping center becoming the place national and local operators choose first, while an address inside the Loop loses a decade-old tenant with no replacement of its own kind for at least a year.
What this actually changes if you live nearby
None of this requires a car trip you weren't already making. Town & Country Village runs its own set of garden-scaped patios and a central plaza park, and with more than ninety retailers on site, most of what you need for a Tuesday errand run or a Friday dinner is already inside the same parking lot.
What changes is smaller and more specific. If you've been splitting your Relish visits between here and Westheimer, that choice disappears by winter. If you've been waiting to try The Henry before deciding whether it's worth a repeat visit, you're not waiting on a second Houston location to prove the concept. It's already proven itself on your corner. And if PopUp Bagels sells out the way it has in other markets, that's a Memorial-area problem now, not a Dallas one.
The corner at Memorial Drive and Beltway 8 spent years being described as convenient, a place to get groceries and prescriptions and a haircut without crossing the Loop. It's still that. It's also become the address where a River Oaks institution is choosing to survive, and where a celebrity-backed bagel chain and a Cheesecake Factory-owned restaurant group both decided Houston's first impression should happen here first.
If you're weighing what a specific block or shopping corridor actually means for daily life in Memorial, that's exactly the kind of on-the-ground read Thomas Eureste works through with clients every day. Contact us if you want a longer conversation about how this neighborhood is actually living right now, not just how it looks on a map.
