Lizzeth Martínez and Francisco Estrada, the owners of Naco Mexican, are planning Santonia Cantina in the former Full Goods Diner space at Pearl. The restaurant is expected to seat 140 people, with a late-November opening reported by the San Antonio Business Journal. The San Antonio Current reported that the owners had not announced an opening date when its story was published.
Santonia is planned as a separate concept rather than another Naco location. The owners describe it as a cantina-style restaurant serving lunch, dinner and drinks, with food influenced by Northern Mexico and South Texas. Reported menu items include ribeye tacos, crispy shrimp flautas, pork shanks, botanas and ceviches. A full bar is expected to focus on sotol, mezcal and tequila, according to the Current.
A new setting for the Naco team
The project would give Martínez and Estrada another type of setting for the food and borderlands influences associated with Naco. The couple began Naco as a food truck in 2018 and later expanded into a permanent restaurant, according to San Antonio Magazine. The Current reports that they continue operating the Naco Mexican truck at 2347 Nacogdoches and the restaurant at 310 W. Grayson St. in the Yacht Club.
That history provides useful background but does not establish that Santonia will follow the same operating model or schedule as Naco. The new restaurant remains a planned project, and the two published reports leave the opening timing unresolved beyond the Business Journal’s late-November projection.
Pearl’s restaurant district has expanded beyond its brewery origins
Santonia would enter a district whose identity has broadened substantially since its brewery days. The Pearl Brewery says its historic buildings were restored and repurposed for restaurants, retail spaces, offices and Hotel Emma. It now describes the Pearl District as home to more than 30 restaurants and bars, along with shops, residential lofts, the Culinary Institute of America’s San Antonio campus and public green space.
Pearl News has also reported plans by Oxbow Development Group, a subsidiary of Pearl owner Silver Ventures, to double the destination’s footprint by the end of 2026, adding apartments, a hotel and about 70,000 square feet for restaurants, bars and offices. That planned growth helps explain the commercial setting Santonia is entering, but it does not guarantee the restaurant’s opening or predict its performance.
A local expansion pattern, with limits
Santonia also fits one documented local pattern: food businesses moving from mobile operations into permanent spaces. The San Antonio Report described chef Kris Martinez’s Rocker Dogz, which operated as a gourmet hot dog cart before holding a grand opening for a brick-and-mortar location on South Roosevelt Avenue on Sept. 12. The comparison is limited, however; one example does not show that such expansions are becoming more common or that Santonia will have the same trajectory.
Martínez and Estrada were named 2026 James Beard Award semifinalists for Best Chef: Texas, according to the Current. If the reported schedule holds, Santonia will extend their presence from Naco’s existing operations into one of San Antonio’s most established restaurant districts while remaining a distinct, not yet open, concept.
