If you lived in Wake Forest any time between the late 1990s and October 2023, you probably have a Las Margaritas story. It was the Mexican restaurant tucked below street level on South White Street, reached by a set of stairs that dead-ended into a room most people found by accident the first time and by habit every time after. Regulars knew the staff by name. Then, after 26 years, it closed for a remodel that was supposed to take a matter of months and instead took closer to two years.
It reopened this spring as Las Mas, and it did not come back alone. Within the same stretch of months, Sabatino's Italian Ristorante moved into a shuttered pizza spot a short drive away, and Gym Tacos started building out a location in a former Hardee's on Roosevelt Avenue. Three storefronts that sat empty, in some cases for years, all filled in the same season. That is not a coincidence of timing so much as a signal about what downtown Wake Forest can now support in one walkable loop, especially with the summer event calendar stacking Friday night concerts and a Chamber-run night market onto the same six blocks.
Three Storefronts, One Corridor, Under Six Months
Start with what actually changed. Sabatino's opened February 24 at 131 Crenshaw Cors Drive, taking over the former Patronies Pizza space. Co-owner Phil Seigman told Business Debut the dining room seats about 140 guests, with a covered patio and a full bar built for the kind of full-service Italian dinner that Wake Forest hasn't had much of downtown. The team has talked about adding local bands on weeknights, which would make it the third venue on this list with live music built into the plan rather than bolted on later.
Las Mas landed at 111 South White Street, the same address Las Margaritas occupied for 26 years, but the room itself is unrecognizable. Owner Jose Roman Visoso described the two-year renovation to Business Debut as a full structural overhaul aimed at keeping some of the historic district character while opening up a bar-forward layout with wood finishes throughout. Capacity is 98 guests, up from the cramped basement footprint longtime regulars remember, and the restaurant's own site frames the rename as keeping what worked while making more room for the crowd that built the original.
Gym Tacos is the newest addition and the one still finishing its move. The chain is taking over the freestanding former Hardee's at 216 East Roosevelt Avenue, and as of this spring the ownership group was aiming for an April opening, according to WRAL's restaurant coverage. If it hasn't opened by the time you're reading this, it should be close.
| Restaurant | Address | What It Replaced | What's New |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sabatino's Italian Ristorante | 131 Crenshaw Cors Dr | Patronies Pizza | Full-service Italian, ~140 seats, covered patio, full bar |
| Las Mas Mexican Food & Cantina | 111 S. White St. | Las Margaritas (26 years) | Bar-forward remodel, 98-guest capacity, wood finishes |
| Gym Tacos | 216 E. Roosevelt Ave | Former Hardee's | Another Triangle location for the taco brand, targeting a spring open |
Why the Two-Year Gap Actually Matters
It's easy to read three restaurant openings as routine downtown churn. What makes this stretch different is how long two of these spaces sat empty first. A pizza shop closing and reopening as an Italian restaurant within the same year is a normal turnover. A beloved neighborhood fixture going dark for two full years and coming back is a different kind of event, one that tells you something about how much work went into deciding what downtown Wake Forest needed next rather than just filling a vacancy fast.
The Las Mas team spent that time on a structural remodel, not a paint job. The result is a room built for a bar crowd as much as a dinner crowd, which fits a corridor that increasingly expects people to linger after they eat rather than just pass through. Sabatino's made the same bet with its patio and its openness to live entertainment. Three separate ownership groups landed on a similar answer at roughly the same time, which suggests the corridor itself has changed, not just the restaurants in it.
The Same Six Blocks Are Also Where the Season Peaks
The restaurant openings would be worth knowing about on their own. They matter more because they're arriving during the busiest run of the summer event calendar, all staged on the same stretch of South White Street.
Friday Night on White runs the second Friday of each month through September, a free outdoor concert from 6 to 9 p.m. along South White Street, according to the Town of Wake Forest's events page. The Amazing Lounge Lizards headlined the August 14 date. The next one lands September 11, which gives the corridor one more built-in Friday before the calendar turns to fall.
In between, the Wake Forest Area Chamber of Commerce is bringing back Twilight on White, a Summer Night Market co-hosted with The Cotton Company on August 21 from 6 to 9 p.m. The listing puts more than 40 local vendors on the street and inside the store, plus the kind of browsing crowd that tends to end its evening at whichever restaurant is closest when everyone gets hungry.
Neither event is new to Wake Forest. White Street Brewing Company and Blackbird Brewery have anchored this stretch for years, and the Wake Forest Renaissance Centre keeps a steady schedule of its own downtown. What's different this year is that the dinner options on either end of that walk finally match the foot traffic the events already bring.
Stringing an Evening Together This Month
For anyone deciding how to spend a Friday or the August 21 market night, the geography now works in your favor. A rough version of the evening looks like this:
- Park near Joyner Park or along White Street and start with the night market at The Cotton Company, 306 to 350 South White Street.
- Walk the block to Las Mas for dinner if you want the bar-forward remodel and a menu built around the same kitchen Las Margaritas ran for years.
- Or head toward Roosevelt Avenue for Gym Tacos once it's open, or out to Crenshaw Cors Drive for Sabatino's if you're after a full Italian meal with a patio.
- Loop back for the Friday Night on White stage if it lands on a concert date, or finish at White Street Brewing Company or Blackbird Brewery for a drink before heading home.
None of that requires a car once you've parked once. That's the actual shift here. A year ago, a night like this meant picking one thing and driving somewhere else in the Triangle for the rest.
What This Means If You Already Call Wake Forest Home
None of this is a pitch to move here. If you're already in Wake Forest, the practical takeaway is simpler: the reasons to drive to Raleigh or Cary for a full night out just got thinner. Three storefronts that sat empty are full again, two of them with rooms built for people who plan to stay a while, and the town's own event calendar is stacking its two biggest recurring nights on the same handful of blocks where you'll eat dinner anyway.
If you're the kind of resident who tracks these things because you're also weighing what your house is worth in a corridor that keeps getting more reasons to stick around, that's a conversation worth having when you're ready. Let me be your matchmaker. Schedule a consultation with Triangle Style Living whenever the time is right, and in the meantime, save a Friday for White Street.
