When Ben Stephens and his wife relocated to Houston from Dallas three years ago, he thought he would be saying goodbye to one of his favorite hangouts. Truck Yard, a carnival of cheesesteaks, craft beer, live music and back-patio bonhomie complete with a treehouse, was his happy place.

“It feels like you’re drinking in a buddy’s back yard,” the attorney said. “That’s really fun.”

But he no longer has to make the four-hour drive to Dallas to get the Truck Yard experience. The new Houston location, with a Ferris wheel instead of a treehouse, opened in EaDo in May, giving Stephens a reminder of his old home.

And it’s far from the only one. A wave of Metroplex eateries is inundating the Houston market this year, with at least nine North Texas fast-casual concepts launching between spring and the start of 2019 — including Fort Worth-born burger joint Rodeo Goat, and East Hampton Sandwich Company, which landed in Houston last month with two locations, one in Montrose and the other in River Oaks District.

They join a parade of D-FW restaurants that are already entrenched here, including Velvet Taco, Fuzzy’s Taco Shop, Neapolitan pizza spot Cane Rosso, and Brazilian steakhouse Fogo de Chao.

More Information Eating D-FW in H-Town Here are some of the North Texas restaurants that have opened or will open in Houston in 2018 or early 2019: Truck Yard: When this largely outdoor bar landed in Dallas in 2013, it was an immediate hit. Now open in EaDo, it’s drawing similar crowds here. Rodeo Goat and Flying Fish: These are two concepts — gourmet burger joint and Cajun seafood cafe respectively — from Shannon Wynne, the man behind the Flying Saucer chain of pubs. Rodeo Goat is open in EaDo and Flying Fish is set to open in the fall in the Heights. East Hampton Sandwich Company: The East Coast comes to the Gulf Coast with a menu of lobster rolls, chicken parm, and “chowdas.” Open in Montrose and River Oaks District. Shell Shack: This seafood restaurant is set to open on Washington Ave. July 23 with seven to nine more outlets coming over the next four years. Love Shack and Woodshed Smokehouse: Fort Worth celebrity chef Tim Love is best-known as the founder of Lonesome Dove Western Bistro in the Fort Worth Stockyards and a contestant on “Top Chef Masters.” But he’s branched out with these two concepts, one a glorified burger stand and the other a barbecue restaurant, that will land in Upper Kirby. Summer/fall. America Gardens: When this sprawling bar/restaurant opened in Fort Worth, it claimed to have the largest patio in Cowtown. Expect something similarly gargantuan in Houston’s Midtown. Early 2019. Crab Station: Crab, crawfish, shrimp, lobster, mussels and octopus are the specialties at this eatery which has four stores in D-FW but is now branching out across the state with outlets planned for Houston, Odessa and El Paso. TBA. —Cary Darling

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Yet the traffic appears to be mostly one-way, as comparatively few Houston concepts are returning the culinary favor by moving into North Texas this year. It’s an odd inequity of expansion for cities that often measure themselves against each other. Even odder considering Houston has become a darling of the nation’s food scene, with restaurants that people travel to town just to sample.

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But there are reasons for this imbalance of restaurant franchising, from looser city regulations in Houston to DFW being oversaturated with eating spots to chefs in the Bayou City simply being content to serve their fare in their home base.

Plus, people in the food industry agree that Houston, with its robust economy and diverse population, is attractive to restaurateurs outside the market.

“The city, overall, continues to grow dramatically and there is just a tremendous amount of opportunity,” said Jonathan Horowitz, past president of the Houston Restaurant Association and CEO of Legacy Restaurants, the corporate owners of Houston institutions, Ninfa’s and Antone’s. “Then you’ve got to factor in a really fantastically diverse restaurant scene in general with huge support from the public in greater Houston.”

Dallas ‘over-restauranted’?

Yet, it’s not as if Houston restaurants have no presence in D-FW.

Pappas restaurants, Perry’s Steakhouse and Max’s Wine Dive have been there for years, though Max’s Dallas branch closed in 2017, leaving only a location in Fort Worth. More recently, steakhouse B&B Butchers debuted in Fort Worth, its first venture outside Houston.

Others tried and failed. Popular Houston bar chain Little Woodrow’s shuttered its Dallas location last year after six months.

Christina Pappas, marketing director for Pappas Restaurants, says Houstonians really shouldn’t be surprised about the imbalance in terms of so many D-FW restaurants coming here because that’s what they do.

She said both Dallas and Austin traditionally have been ahead of Houston in hatching and marketing new restaurant concepts, and then taking them on the road. “They’ve always had more unique brands and unique restaurant concepts. Houston has lacked that. In the last few years, we’ve sped up, especially in neighborhoods like the Heights and Montrose.”

RELATED: Alison Cook reviews Cane Rosso in The Heights.

Shannon Wynne, the restaurateur behind Rodeo Goat and the seafood-themed Flying Fish franchise that’s soon coming to Houston, thinks another element might be that Dallas simply has too many restaurants, forcing restaurant operators to seek other options. For instance, it’s often claimed that Dallas has more restaurants per capita than even New York City, though that claim is disputed.

“Dallas is terribly over-restauranted,” said Wynne. “With the internet taking away the power of retail outlets, developers are sticking restaurants where retail ought to be and so Dallas is just over-saturated. We’re all looking for new markets to go to. I’m not saying Houston isn’t over-saturated ... (but) Dallas is the main offender.”

Pappas says Dallas is especially jammed with certain types of restaurants. “I think they could be saturated with that cool, trendy concept,” she said. “You go into the suburbs of Dallas — Plano, Addison — and (the restaurants) feel cool. You’ve got nice design, nice graphics and menu items that look cool. I think the outskirts of Houston haven’t seen as much of that, but that’s starting to develop, too.”

Teresa Gubbins, a 25-year veteran of covering the D-FW dining scene for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Dallas Morning News and now as the dining writer/editor for the Dallas edition of CultureMap, agrees. “I don’t know if we have enough diners to keep those (restaurants) afloat,” she said, adding that Houston is the next logical leap. “Houston’s got a great, lively, intelligent dining population — who wouldn’t want to curry favor with that market?”

A prime example of that is Shell Shack, which is debuting its first Houston outpost July 23 on Washington Avenue. Between seven and nine more are planned over the next four years across the metro area.

“Houston was picked before I got on with Shell Shack, but corporate thought it would be a great area to open up their concept,” said Larry Garrett, operating partner for the company’s Houston franchise group. “The growth in Katy, Sugar Land, and League City — those markets are expanding rapidly.”

And, yet, the forecast isn’t entirely favorable.

East Hampton Sandwich Company founder Hunter Pond doesn’t buy the over-saturation theory and thinks the current wave may just be coincidence. “A lot of restaurants see an opportunity to bring their product to Houston and they’ve done similar market studies that we did,” he said, noting that probably not all of the new entrants will survive. “There will be some casualties along the way.”

Keeping it local

As for the lack of pull in the other direction, part of it could be attributed to the after-effects of the oil slump and Hurricane Harvey.

“I don’t know if this is correlation or causation, or just coincidence, but when oil and gas waver and then with the hurricane coming through, everyone had to hit the brakes a little bit,” said Eric Wilkerson, co-owner of Austin’s Tacodeli, which has restaurants in Houston, Dallas and Plano. “I suspect that there might have been some folks whose (expansion) plans might have been interrupted.”

For some, the increased regulatory hurdles of opening a restaurant in D-FW or Austin, compared to Houston, might make them think twice about leaving home. Restaurateur Benjamin Berg, of B&B Butchers, discovered this when opening an outpost in Fort Worth.

“Honestly, from my experience in Fort Worth, Houston’s business climate I would say is better,” Berg said. “It’s a little more business friendly, easier to open and not as many hoops.”

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Wilkerson says that the city of Austin, which he believes has become more business friendly recently, can be especially daunting.

“Everyone has their horror stories … . It’s hard to get permits, it’s hard to navigate the local government … . You have to spend more money … . There’s an international code of plumbing that the whole world agrees upon but Austin, in their infinite wisdom, has added on unique layers on top of that,” he said. “I don’t know if Austin’s lack of business-friendly reputation might contribute, but I have heard anecdotally from other folks that it does give them pause when they’re thinking about where they can build.”

Still others downplay all of the aforementioned reasons and say that Houston is such a great restaurant town that locals feel no need to expand. After all, it’s Houston’s dining scene — not the one up I-45 — that has been regularly celebrated nationally, on both the late Anthony Bourdain’s “Parts Unknown” on CNN and David Chang’s Netflix series, “Ugly Delicious” as well in the pages of the New York Times.

Chef/restaurateur Chris Shepherd, of UB Preserv, One Fifth and the late, lamented Underbelly, says he has absolutely no desire to grow beyond the Bayou City. “I have everything within a half mile, and I live within a half-mile of those things,” he said. “I have a hard enough time going to every single one of the places, having the control I want to have, and having that touch, that feel with the staff and the cooks … I love Houston so much, it’s hard for me to move around.”

Matt Staph, the chef de cuisine at One Fifth who is from Dallas and worked in high-profile North Texas kitchens under star chefs John Tesar and Graham Dodds, agrees. “Houston’s really unique,” he said. “It’s a very diverse city which allows for there to be this broader spectrum for eclectic diners and people that are a little more adventurous than they are in Dallas.”

And there’s Bayou City’s broad footprint.

“There’s not always the need to go when you know you’ve got The Woodlands all the way down to Webster,” Pappas said. “That’s almost a two-hour drive and you’ve got all these places in the middle that you can develop and build locations.”

For instance, a couple of decades ago, Ninfa’s had franchises throughout the state, including Dallas, but Legacy Restaurants’ Jonathan Horowitz says that’s not something the company is interested in these days, even though Ninfa’s is well-known beyond Houston.

“There are people in other parts of the state who are familiar with it, but even if we took something as iconic as the original Ninfa’s and tried to do it in Austin or D-FW, it’s basically like introducing a brand all over again,” he said. “It’s tough to break into that.”

Hungry Dallasites

Still, there are some in D-FW who would like to see more H-Town restaurants give it that “Houston Strong” try in North Texas.

“I wish I lived in Houston for the food,” sighed CultureMap Dallas’ Gubbins. “I would go to (bakery/cafe) Common Bond every (expletive) day of my life … . All my friends know if they go to Houston, bring me back either a loaf of olive bread or a croissant.”

East Hampton’s Hunter Pond is such a fan of El Tiempo Cantina that it’s a mandatory stop whenever he’s in town. “I make a beeline for the filet fajitas with the green sauce … . It just rocks my world,” he said. “Houston utterly dominates Dallas in the Tex-Mex world.”

Pappas says don’t despair, Dallasites, your deliverance may be at hand. She expects more Houston restaurants will export in the near future as the city catches up with North Texas and Austin. “We’ve got so many different types of food and cuisines and we’re such an amazing mix of all that and to share that with the state, if not the United States, would be great,” she said. “We have some amazing brands that could travel.”

Her words would be music to the ears of Truck Yard fan and Dallas transplant Stephens, who wants his friends in the Metroplex to be able to experience the joys of Nancy’s Hustle, Theodore Rex, Rim Tanon and any Houston Tex-Mex.

“Dallas has places like Mi Cocina that are kind of OK, but Dallas does not have El Tiempo, Dallas does not have a Ninfa’s, and Dallas does not have a Lupe Tortilla,” he said, his voice rising emphatically. “Let’s not even talk about something Houston does so well, East Asian food. My God, man!”

cary.darling@chron.com