What's Actually New On Mercer Street This Fall, And What Isn't (Yet)

A woman ahead of me in line at the Wednesday farmers market asked the vendor selling goat cheese if Roxie's had opened yet. He didn't know. Neither did the next three people she asked. That's been the running question on Historic Mercer Street for months now: is the Salt Lick family's new Southern comfort restaurant finally serving fried chicken and biscuits out of that old building, or not.

The honest answer is not yet, and the reason why says more about how this street actually works than the restaurant itself ever will.

The restaurant that opened somewhere else first

Roxie's is named for Roxanna Roberts, the grandmother of Salt Lick BBQ owner Scott Roberts, and the concept has been percolating since he started reverse-engineering her chicken fried steak recipe using crumbled biscuits for the breading. The Dripping Springs location was actually secured back in 2020. But the building sits inside the historic district, and historic-zoning review moves at its own pace regardless of how badly a town wants its biscuits.

While Mercer Street waited, Roxie's opened somewhere else. On February 4, 2026, the first Roxie's location welcomed guests in Buda, inside the historic Buda Mill & Grain building, serving family-style platters of fried chicken, chicken-fried steak, and deviled eggs topped with pig candy made from Salt Lick pork. Roberts described the goal in a news release simply as continuing his grandmother's tradition, bringing "that same comfort, care and flavor to every bite."

So the town that inspired the concept's name and character is still watching a different town eat first. If you've been driving past that storefront on Mercer wondering when the lights turn on, the short version is that historic preservation review, not lack of demand, is the holdup. There's no public timeline yet for when the Dripping Springs location clears that process.

What's already working without a grand opening

Here's the part that's easy to miss while everyone stares at one empty storefront: Mercer Street hasn't needed Roxie's to have a rhythm. It already has two things running that most towns spend years trying to manufacture.

The farmers market is the one locals treat as furniture, something so constant it barely registers as an event anymore. It runs at Founders Memorial Park and pulls in the same mix of produce stands, honey vendors, and prepared foods every single week regardless of season. The city's own market page still calls it a signature weekly event, and it's the kind of thing that keeps running whether or not a new restaurant ever opens next door.

The Songwriters Festival is the bigger swing. This October marks its return for a third consecutive year of partnership with the Dripping Springs Art League, which sets up an Art Lounge tent alongside the music stages. The festival puts three or four songwriters in a circle at a time, trading songs and stories in a format that turns downtown Mercer Street into a listening room for a weekend. Past headliner concerts have featured writers behind songs recorded by George Strait, Willie Nelson, and Sheryl Crow. None of that required a single new business to open. It required the same sponsors, the same volunteer stages, and the same weekend in October, year after year.

The street that's already there, block by block

Walk Mercer Street on an ordinary Saturday and the businesses that make it worth the walk aren't waiting on anything. Starrs on Mercer has been running as a modern department store since 2015, carrying apparel and gifts from two local owners. A few doors down, Mercer Street Chic Boutique & Art Gallery mixes women's clothing with local artwork and handmade accessories. Vintage Soul stocks the kind of travel-ready finds that make for a good souvenir. Mazama Coffee roasts on-site, which is the reason it stays filled with people meeting up or working through a laptop over an afternoon.

Live music has its own home base too. Hudson's on Mercer Street runs a 2,800-square-foot music venue with an attached recording studio, and Mercer Street Dance Hall was purpose-built as part of the city's own initiative to bring more foot traffic downtown. Neither needed a restaurant to justify its existence.

Why the gap matters more than the opening will

Here's the thesis worth sitting with: the version of Mercer Street that gets talked about online treats a restaurant opening as the headline, and the weekly market and annual festival as background texture. Locally, it runs the other way. The market and the festival are the parts of the street that show up reliably. The restaurant is the part still working through paperwork.

That's not a knock on Roxie's. It's a reminder that the businesses which last on a historic street tend to be the ones built around a weekly habit or an annual date on the calendar, not a single grand opening. When Roxie's does clear historic-district review, it will be joining a street that already has its own gravity, not creating one from scratch.

For anyone who already calls Dripping Springs home, that's the useful takeaway heading into fall. The farmers market runs every Wednesday no matter what. The Songwriters Festival returns October 16 through 18 with free shows across seven stages downtown. And somewhere in between, a building on Mercer Street is still one historic-zoning approval away from finally answering that question everyone keeps asking.

If you're curious how a street like this fits into the bigger picture of what makes Dripping Springs work as a place to live, the Dripping Springs neighborhood guide breaks down the surrounding communities in more depth.

If you're weighing a move here yourself and want a conversation grounded in this level of detail rather than a generic listing sheet, Sarah McAloon can walk you through what daily life actually looks like block by block. Schedule your personal consultation whenever you're ready to talk specifics.