Drive Cedar Creek Parkway on a Friday night now and you will pass four lit-up marquees within a few miles of each other. A steakhouse. A backyard bar with a stage. A honky-tonk with a dance floor. A game room with darts and shuffleboard and a full bar. Different names, different crowds, different reasons to stop.
Same owner behind all four.
That is not a coincidence worth shrugging off. It is the reason a Friday on the west side of the lake looks nothing like it did before last October, and understanding how these four places connect tells you more about where to actually go than any single review ever will.
The Same Name Keeps Showing Up
Greg and Caroline Figueroa did not set out to build an entertainment district. Greg's first venture was Melinda's Hot Sauce, a condiment brand that built enough of a following to fund his next move: Fig's Backyard in Tool, a casual outdoor spot built around barbecue, a full bar, and live music. From there came Fig's Italian Steakhouse, also in Tool, aimed at the date-night and celebration crowd Fig's Backyard was never trying to serve.
Then the Figueroas bought a piece of Cedar Creek Lake history and reopened it as Cedar Creek Plowboys Club. Then, this past July, they added a fourth stop: The Playground Bar & Grill, an interactive game lounge built for leagues, tournaments, and the kind of night where nobody wants to sit still. Each one is a distinct business with its own menu, its own hours, its own reason to exist. All four now operate under what the Figueroas call the Fig Restaurant and Entertainment Group.
Here is the order it actually happened in:
- Fig's Backyard opens in Tool, built around barbecue and live music
- Fig's Italian Steakhouse follows in Tool, aimed at fine dining
- Cedar Creek Plowboys Club reopens in Seven Points on October 24, 2025, with a Louisiana-inspired menu and an indoor dance floor
- Plowboys announces a second phase, a nearly one-acre outdoor concert venue, with an opening originally targeted for March 2026
- The Playground Bar & Grill opens in Tool in July 2026, adding darts, pool, cornhole, and league nights
The Honky-Tonk Hollywood Remembers
Plowboys is the one with a past worth knowing, because it is not a new building dressed up to look historic. In the 1970s and early 1980s, Seven Points was a genuine honky-tonk town, and the original Plowboys Club sat at the center of that scene. Hollywood noticed. The club was filmed as the bar and dance saloon in "Tender Mercies," the 1983 film where Robert Duvall's character, a washed-up country singer, performs after being taken in by a young widow. Duvall won the Oscar for Best Actor. Horton Foote won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. The Texas Governor's Office still lists the location on its official film trail.
After its honky-tonk years, the building sat quiet, then briefly became Cedar Creek Brewery, a craft beer taproom that eventually closed. The Figueroas bought the property on Cedar Creek Parkway in Seven Points and restored it, hiring local contractor Damon Lewis of Lakeside Construction to bring the building back to something close to its original look in a matter of weeks.
"We're honored to bring back a place that means so much to this community," Greg Figueroa said at the time. "Plowboys will once again be a place to share good food, enjoy live music and make lasting memories."
Two Phases, One Plan
Phase One, which opened October 24, 2025, is the part you can walk into right now: a Louisiana-inspired menu reflecting the Figueroas' New Orleans roots, a 22-seat bar, 90 indoor dining seats, 128 patio seats, 16 craft beers on tap, and weekend bar service running until midnight. That is already a bigger footprint than most single restaurants on the lake.
Phase Two, as announced alongside the reopening, calls for a nearly one-acre outdoor venue with capacity for about 1,200 guests, built for headline acts and touring tribute bands, with an opening originally targeted for March 2026. Combined with Phase One's indoor and patio seating, that puts Plowboys' announced capacity above 1,400, a bigger footprint than any other single property on the lake.
That kind of bet makes more sense once you know who Plowboys is built for. Local reporting puts Henderson County's permanent population at around 82,000, with an estimated 45,000 second-home owners and visitors showing up on weekends. That is not a small bump. It is close to a full extra small city arriving every Friday and leaving every Sunday, and it explains why an outdoor venue built for 1,200 is not an overreach. It is sized for the weekend the lake already has, not the weekday one.
Four Doors, Four Different Nights
The reason this works as a circuit rather than four competing bars is that each stop is built for a different mood, not a different crowd.
- Fig's Italian Steakhouse is where you go for a table you booked in advance, a shrimp cocktail, and a night that ends before eleven.
- Fig's Backyard is the casual middle ground, picnic tables, a game room that seats groups of eight, and a menu built around shareable barbecue.
- Cedar Creek Plowboys Club is where the night gets loud, with a live band, a full dance floor, and a bar that stays open until midnight on weekends.
- The Playground Bar & Grill is the one with no music stage at all, built instead around darts, pool, cornhole, poker, mahjong, and league nights for people who came out to compete, not just to eat.
You can move between all four without leaving Tool and Seven Points, which is exactly the point.
Why It's All on the West Side
Here is what makes this worth noticing if you already live near the lake: this kind of one-stop convenience used to be something you only got by buying into a private, gated development. Long Cove, a private gated community on Cedar Creek Lake, built its whole identity around that idea, a resident-only compound spread across 1,200 acres with its own Regatta Grill, four stocked ponds, pickleball courts, and beach volleyball, so members never had to leave the property for a full weekend.
The Figueroas have built something structurally similar, minus the gate. You do not need to own property inside a private community to get dinner, dancing, and a game room within walking distance of each other anymore. You just need to be on the west side of Cedar Creek Lake on a Friday night. Greg Figueroa said it plainly when The Playground opened: "We want people to have more reasons to stay on this side of the lake, bring their friends, enjoy great food, listen to music, play games, and make memories."
That does not mean the rest of the lake went quiet. Independent spots still anchor their own corners, from The Dock and Sharkies Smashburgers to Billito's Italian, and over in Malakoff, Chef Cassy Jones, a familiar face from her State Fair of Texas booth, now serves her fried collard greens to a local following of her own. The lake's dining scene did not consolidate. One side of it just got a lot more organized.
The Guy Whose Name Is on All of It
Greg Figueroa's public life runs alongside his restaurant list. He serves as president of Henderson County United Way, sits on the Henderson County Appraisal District board, has served on the Tool city council, and ran for mayor of Tool. Whatever the outcome of that particular race, the pattern is consistent: the same person deciding where the community gathers for dinner has also spent years sitting on the boards that decide how the community is run.
That overlap is worth knowing if you live here, not because it changes where you eat, but because it explains why these four venues feel less like a chain expanding into your town and more like someone who already had a seat at the table deciding to build the town's living room.
If you are already watching this side of the lake for other reasons, whether that is a future move or just keeping an eye on what a property near this stretch might be worth, I would be glad to talk through what is actually happening in the Cedar Creek market. Let's Connect anytime you are ready.
