The former Arad Evans Inn is being rebuilt into a steakhouse called Dear Dad, and the people behind it are aiming to open in early October.

CNY Signal went looking for the paperwork a steakhouse needs before it can pour a glass of wine. On August 18 it was not there.

### What the records show

New York publishes two relevant datasets. One lists active liquor licenses. The other lists applications that have been received and are pending.

Searching the active list for Fayetteville returns 29 businesses. They range from Wegmans and Target to the Onondaga Golf and Country Club to J P Mulligans on West Genesee Street. None of the 29 is at 7206 E. Genesee St.

A direct address search of that dataset for 7206 E. Genesee returns nothing at all.

The pending file holds 2,939 applications statewide. Thirty nine of them are in Onondaga County, including a wine and spirits store on Fennell Street in Skaneateles and a tavern on Route 11 in LaFayette. None of the 39 is in Fayetteville. A search of the pending file for any address containing 7206 also returns nothing.

There is a useful control in the same data. Mark Bullis and Nathan Fullmer, the partners behind Dear Dad, already run two other licensed places, and both turn up exactly where you would expect. BNB Roadhouse LLC holds a restaurant license at 411 E. Genesee St., which is Bull and Bear Roadhouse. Full Bull LLC holds three licenses at 7900 Green Lakes Road, which is Yards Grille at Green Lakes State Park.

That matters because it rules out the least interesting explanation. These datasets are not missing this operator. They contain his other restaurants, on the same street, in the same village.

New York’s food service permit records tell the same story. There is no entry for Dear Dad at that address.

### What that does and does not mean

This is a snapshot, not a verdict, and it deserves to be read carefully.

Restaurants apply for liquor licenses on their own schedule, and plenty of them file close to opening. The State Liquor Authority’s process runs on the order of months rather than weeks, but an application can be submitted at any point and a temporary retail permit can bridge the gap. Steigs Grillhouse in Manlius opened on exactly that footing in August, operating on a temporary permit issued July 2 while its full restaurant license sat pending, as CNY Signal reported in its review of the Fayetteville to Manlius corridor.

Published datasets also lag. A filing made in the past several days might not appear yet. An application can be recorded under a corporate name and an address format that a text search does not catch, which is why the check above was run against the address in more than one way rather than by business name alone.

None of this is a prediction that Dear Dad will miss October, and nothing here suggests anyone has done anything improper. Opening a restaurant involves a queue of approvals that rarely arrive in a tidy order.

What it does establish is a gap between an announced target and the public record as it stands today. For a restaurant that has been described as carrying one of the region’s strongest wine lists alongside an extensive bourbon selection, the liquor license is not a detail at the edge of the project. It is close to the center of it.

### What has been reported, and by whom

Nearly everything the public knows about Dear Dad comes from a single story.

As syracuse.com first reported on August 18, the former Arad Evans Inn will reopen as Dear Dad, an upscale steak and seafood restaurant from Bullis and Fullmer. That report describes Andrew Giarrusso, previously executive chef at the Sherwood Inn in Skaneateles, running the kitchen, with Samantha Bun, formerly general manager at TS Steakhouse at Turning Stone, as general manager, and Chris DeVita of Salt City Bread as bakery chef. It describes a first floor seating roughly 90 people around an 18 seat bar, a patio with its own outdoor bar, and a second floor deck.

CNY Signal has not independently confirmed the staffing. Those details rest on that reporting and are credited to it. Readers who want the full account should read it there.

No other outlet has reported on the restaurant by name. WSYR covered the project on June 11, before the name was public.

### The date, and why two of them are circulating

Anyone searching for an opening date will find both September and October, and the split is not between outlets. It is inside one story.

The syracuse.com report says early October in its body text and in its summary line. Eight of the 24 captions in its photo gallery say early September.

The captions appear to be stale rather than wrong. WSYR reported on June 11, when the restaurant had not been named publicly, that the goal was to open in early September. The target moved and the captions did not move with it.

Early October is the current figure, and it is the one this story uses.

### A website that should not be cited

There is a site at deardadsteaks.com. Its homepage says “COMING SOON, Fayetteville, NY,” and its hiring link points to job listings for Belly Brands Hospitality Group, which is how CNY Signal independently confirmed the operator behind the project.

Beyond that, it should be treated as unfinished construction rather than information.

Its interior pages are a Squarespace build still carrying template placeholder content. The menu page names an executive chef and a pastry chef who match nobody in any reporting on the restaurant. That same page, on a steakhouse, does not list a single steak. A reservations page still contains the platform’s own instructional boilerplate telling the site owner where to describe their booking policies. Neither page appears in the site’s navigation.

CNY Signal is not treating any of it as fact, and anyone else searching for details should not either.

### The building

The property at 7206 E. Genesee St. carries more history than most restaurant sites in the county.

It operated as the Arad Evans Inn from 1995 until it closed on November 22, 2025, after 30 years under owner Jason Thomas. A kitchen fire in September 2020, which reporting at the time attributed to a roofer’s torch, gutted the kitchen, a private dining room and an office. The restaurant reopened about a year later.

Accounts of the building’s age differ. syracuse.com describes it as nearly 200 years old and the Arad Evans Inn’s own site described an 1840s Federalist style residence. WSYR reported it was built in 1859. This story does not pick one.

### What we could not confirm

CNY Signal has not spoken with Dear Dad, its owners or its operator, and nothing here should be read as their comment. There may be an explanation for the licensing record that is not visible in public data.

We could not determine whether an application has been filed and is not yet published, whether one is planned for a later date, or whether the opening timeline has changed since August 18.

The figures in this story come from New York State datasets checked on August 18, 2026. Licensing status changes, sometimes quickly, and this story will be updated when it does.