Carrabba’s Italian Grill plans new Tomball restaurant at Grand at 249

Carrabba’s Italian Grill is making a $2.75 million bet on Tomball, and it is doing it the old-fashioned way: with a ground-up, 5,242-square-foot restaurant at The Grand at 249 Shopping Center, 13215 N. Grand Parkway W.

The project is slated to start construction in June and wrap in March 2027, which puts a possible opening in spring 2027 on the horizon. That timeline makes this less like a quick fill-in and more like a long-range commitment to a fast-growing suburban corridor in northwest Harris County.

The move fits the brand’s Houston story. Carrabba’s says it was founded in Houston in 1986, when Johnny Carrabba and his uncle Damian Mandola opened the first Carrabba’s Italian Grill. The original concept was built around a casual Italian restaurant with a wood-burning pizza oven, big bowls of pasta and an open kitchen, a format that still explains why the chain carries weight in a market that knows its Italian-American comfort food.

Carrabba’s now sits inside a much larger restaurant machine. Bloomin’ Brands says the portfolio includes more than 1,450 restaurants worldwide and about 64,000 team members. Even so, the Tomball plan shows the company is still willing to invest in full-size, sit-down real estate rather than chasing a stripped-down format or a food-hall footprint.

The site choice matters almost as much as the concept. The Grand at 249 is a 65-acre mixed-use development at Highway 249 and Grand Parkway, with about 404,256 square feet of shopping, dining and entertainment space planned at buildout, according to NewQuest. Community Impact reported that leases had already been signed or negotiated for 96.1% of the project in October 2023, a sign that the center has been drawing tenants before Carrabba’s ever entered the picture.

Tomball itself is part of the pitch. The U.S. Census Bureau says the city’s population was 12,341 in the 2020 Census and an estimated 15,152 in 2024, a jump that helps explain why polished chain dining keeps moving farther out along the Grand Parkway corridor.

For Carrabba’s, the Tomball restaurant is not just another address. It is a fresh ground-up build in a growing trade area, at a center built for scale, for families and for the kind of pasta-and-grill dining that made the brand a Houston staple in the first place.