If you have driven Park Row or Pioneer Parkway in the last four months, you already know something is different. The Christmas lights are gone from the corner at 2918 W. Pioneer. The Dairy Queen sign is down. A new hand-lettered menu board sits where the drive-thru used to be. And on any given Friday night, the parking lot at the old Campo Verde spot is fuller than it has been in a decade.
Pantego proper is one square mile and roughly 2,463 residents, but the dining corridor that runs through it draws from all of west Arlington, Dalworthington Gardens, and the greater 76013. This summer, that strip crossed a line it had been walking for years: it stopped trading on nostalgia and started trading on chefs. Here is what actually happened, and how to use it.
What changed at 2918 W. Pioneer Parkway
For 40-plus years, that address meant Campo Verde: the year-round Christmas lights, the little train that looped through the dining rooms, the queso, the noise. The 40-plus-year-old restaurant in Dalworthington Gardens changed hands a few times over the past few years. Barbary West Hospitality Group took over Campo Verde in June 2025, and closed the doors a few months later to rework the space into Theodore's.
Theodore's Steak and Seafood opened Friday, April 10, in the building between Fort Worth and Arlington, an ode to the "Bull-Moose" president in the form of crafty cocktails and expensive steaks. The people behind it are the same team locals already know from Cafe Americana on Main Street in Arlington: Chef Mouhssine "Moose" Benhamacht and business partner Liesl Best of Barbary West Hospitality Group, who first opened Cafe Americana, a tapas and seafood restaurant off Main Street in Arlington, back in 2024.
"There's definitely a void in that pocket of Arlington near Dalworthington Gardens and Pantego," Moose says. "We wanted to build something that people visiting Arlington for a game or another event would like. But really, it's for locals, the people who live here."
That line matters, because it explains what you are actually looking at when you walk in. This is not a stadium-district restaurant that happened to land near you. It is a neighborhood restaurant built to survive the eleven months a year when the stadium is quiet. The dining room is painted in cavalry blue with touches of art deco-gold trim, mismatched chandeliers, green leather booths and white tablecloths. Two-pound Tomahawk and two-pound Porterhouse steaks are carved tableside, and the baked alaska dessert will eventually be lit tableside too. The kitchen is running 28-day dry-aged steaks, wagyu cuts, seafood towers, oysters and lobster dishes. Hours run Tuesday through Thursday and Sunday 11 a.m. to 9 p.m., Friday and Saturday 11 a.m. to 10 p.m., with Mondays dark.
The strip, walked east to west
Theodore's is the loudest change, but it is not the only one. The three-quarter-mile stretch from Bowen to Pioneer now reads as a legitimate restaurant row, and each anchor plays a different role. Here is the current lineup as of summer 2026, in the order a resident actually visits them:
Pantego Cafe at 2400 W. Pioneer Parkway is the breakfast default. Open 7:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m., seven days a week, chicken-fried steak and pancakes, coffee that keeps coming. This is where you take your in-laws on the Saturday morning they fly in.
Cajun Corner at 2304 W. Park Row Drive covers the weeknight étouffée craving. Open 11:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. Monday through Thursday, until 10 on Friday and Saturday, noon to 9 on Sunday.
La Guera Pantego at 2427 W. Park Row Drive is the family Mexican room that filled the void when Campo Verde's identity started drifting. It is where the standing Wednesday-night crowd went.
China Bull Express is the newest quick-serve on the strip, in the remodeled former Dairy Queen. A reviewer noted seeing it when they were remodeling it in the old Dairy Queen and figuring "oh great, another Chinese place", which then became the opposite reaction once the food started coming out. Two-item combos, hot line, in and out in fifteen minutes.
The Tipsy Oak is the gastropub. Deep draft list, burger night, the kind of room where you can hear the person across the table.
Theodore's Steak & Seafood at 2918 W. Pioneer Parkway is now the anniversary and closing-dinner room. Same block as Rodeo Hibachi, a genuinely good hibachi spot inside a gas station that most residents still cannot quite believe is that good.
Rodeo Goat, Fattoush Mediterranean Kitchen, Ghost Food Park, John B's, and Sajori Puerto Rican Cuisine round out the ring. That is a legitimate range for a town whose entire population would not fill a single Rangers home game.
Behind Theodore's bar
The cocktail program deserves its own paragraph because it tells you what the team is trying to do with the room. Bar manager Kyle McCaskill built four presidential cocktails inspired by Teddy Roosevelt, each made with hours of prep work from in-house squeezed juices, homemade simple syrups and handcrafted garnishes. The house drink, called To Kill a Bull Moose, is a smoked bourbon version of a negroni, inspired by Roosevelt's saying "It Takes More Than That To Kill A Bull Moose," when his glasses case in his shirt pocket saved a would-be assassin's bullet from hitting his heart.
Read that again. A negroni riff, smoked, named for an assassination attempt, in the building where a train used to loop past your queso. That is the distance the corner traveled in twelve months.
How to actually use the strip this summer
If you live in 76013, you probably already have your rotation. If you have not updated it since March, here is a version that reflects what is on the block right now:
- Weekday breakfast meeting. Pantego Cafe, before 8:30 a.m. Booths clear out, the servers know the regulars, parking is easy.
- Tuesday date night. Theodore's on the early side. Tuesdays run quieter than the Friday and Saturday crush, the kitchen is fully staffed, and you can actually get a two-top without a two-week wait. Ask for the tableside carve if you are ordering a Tomahawk or Porterhouse.
- Kids in tow, Wednesday. La Guera or China Bull Express. Both handle a stroller and a picky eight-year-old without drama.
- Post-yard-work Saturday. The Tipsy Oak patio. Order the burger, keep the shoes you were wearing.
- Out-of-town guests staying near the stadium. Meet them at Theodore's. It is about 10 minutes away from AT&T Stadium. They will assume you drove them across the metroplex for it.
One logistical note that catches new residents: watch the seasonal spraying calendar. The Town of Pantego coordinated with Arlington on targeted ground spraying for West Nile Virus this July, intended to reduce the known virus-infected adult mosquito population as quickly as possible. The strip itself is unaffected, but patio nights on Park Row can be planned around the schedule the town posts.
The number worth holding onto
Pantego has a 2026 population of 2,463. The restaurant density on that one-mile Park Row and Pioneer strip is closer to what you would find in a town of 25,000. That gap is the entire story. The strip does not survive on residents alone. It survives on the greater 76013, on the Dalworthington Gardens crowd, on the west Arlington drive-in, and now on the stadium overflow that Theodore's was designed to catch on the way home.
Which is why the Theodore's opening is not just a restaurant story. It is a signal that the corner is being underwritten by operators who plan to be here for the next decade, not the next season. For a resident weighing whether the block is quietly getting better or quietly getting worse, that question is answered. The block is getting better. The Christmas lights are gone, and something more durable took their place.
If you are thinking through what any of this means for your home's value, or you are curious what the shift in the corridor has done to comparable sales on the streets just north and south of Park Row, the team at Niles Realty Group lives and works this ZIP code every week. Reach out for a straightforward conversation, or request a free home valuation when you are ready to see the numbers.
