Downtown Sarasota's New Restaurants Are Mostly in Old Rooms. Caragiulos Built a New One.
Downtown Sarasota added a run of restaurants this fall, and nearly every one moved into a room another business had just left. The sign over the door changed at 1528 Main, 1532 Main, 1990 Main and 1987 Ringling. The rooms themselves were already restaurants.
Only one dining room downtown is new from the foundation up this season, and it went up because its old one is coming down. Caragiulos Italian American Restaurant opened Tuesday, Oct. 27, at 1833 Ringling Blvd., almost a year after serving its last meal on Palm Avenue. Downtown's dining map follows the addresses. The only way to add a room downtown right now is to build one.
Tony Caragiulo and his sons opened the restaurant at 69 S. Palm Ave. in 1989, inside the Mira Mar. Sarasota Magazine reports that when demolition of the Mira Mar was proposed in 2022, the lease ran through 2040. Dr. Mark Kauffmann sold the property to Seaward Development for $17.3 million in 2023 with that lease still in place. Caragiulos closed on Palm Avenue in October 2025 with about 15 years left on the lease.
Kauffmann also owns the land on Ringling Boulevard where the family built its new home, so one landlord connects the two addresses. Javi Suárez of Suarez Architecture designed the building on what he called "a challenging lot." It has about 4,300 square feet, 150 seats, a full bar and a covered patio, with a tall brick arch at the entrance.
A purpose-built room let the family bring the old one with them. Marble from the Palm Avenue bar was cut into strips and set into the new bar. The original Italian film posters came back, and a shipping container from Italy carried furniture, lighting and art. The Murano glass fixtures were commissioned from Venetian artisans. Anna Caragiulo, the 87-year-old family matriarch, made the 14.5-foot gold curtains. Co-owner Paul Caragiulo told Sarasota Magazine what the curtains do for the room:
"When you put the vinyl on in the space, it's pretty remarkable. And now that my mother finally put the curtains up, it sounds even better."
Luciano Botta of the Milan design firm Compagnia Pacifico, a longtime family friend, planned the space as the next stage of the restaurant rather than a copy of the Palm Avenue room. Many longtime employees are expected back after working at the family's other restaurants during the closure. Paul will sometimes be found playing records from a collection that includes Gianni Morandi and Domenico Modugno.
According to the menu posted before opening, the regulars' dishes kept familiar prices. Pasolini, pasta with Gorgonzola cream and sun-dried tomatoes, is $23. The meatballs are $21, the 37-layer lasagna is $25, and pizzette run $14 to $15.95.
The new dishes set the price ceiling. A 40-ounce bone-in bistecca Fiorentina for the table is $115, a 20-ounce veal chop Milanese is $59, and halibut cacciucco with mussels and prawns is $43. Spaghettini with Cedar Key clams at $26 and My Mother's Pasta, rigatoni with fava bean purée and ricotta salata, at $23 sit closer to the old menu. In practice, the lasagna and meatballs stay in the low-$20s, and the bistecca, served sliced with two sides, lands on the special-occasion end of the menu.
The move also puts Caragiulos on the same stretch of Ringling Boulevard as the season's other new arrival.
The rest of this fall's openings follow a different pattern. Each new restaurant took over a space another tenant had just left:
Two of these turnovers ended long runs. Chef and owner Steve Phelps announced Sept. 15 that Indigenous had closed after 15 years, and Artisan Cheese Company closed after more than 14 years downtown, as the Herald-Tribune's fall roundup reported. In both cases the space is already promised to the next tenant.
The people running these rooms mostly come from elsewhere in Sarasota.
Baldoria comes from Riccardo Margarella and Paola Pignata, the owners of My Mamma Italian Kitchen, as the Herald-Tribune reported in September. The menu draws on Mediterranean cooking with Italian and Spanish twists: tapas, focaccia sandwiches, pastas and pizzas such as the Surf, Turf & Truffle. There is also a 24-tap self-pour wall for beer and wine.
Next door, twin sisters Dana Malcolm and Danielle co-own Sorella, which is Italian for "sister," as the Herald-Tribune reported ahead of its opening. According to the paper's Sept. 24 edition, head chef Giancarlo di Cosmo came from 15 South by Napulé, and pizza chef Simone Di Marco came from Malmosto. The menu features cacio e pepe, carbonara, Neapolitan pizza, osso buco and octopus. Before opening, the owners planned dinner from 4 p.m., later pizza service on Fridays and Saturdays, and eventually lunch and Sunday brunch. The restaurant's own site now says it is open.
Baldoria and Sorella sit side by side, at 1528 and 1532 Main. In one month, that stretch of Main Street added two Italian-leaning dining rooms run by people with local followings.
Farther east, SaraSocial owner Bobby Khush and chef Yamzey Gonzalez went with late-night dining and a lounge setup at 1990 Main. On Ringling, Tastes of the Philippines serves fast-casual, build-your-own-box Filipino food. It held a soft opening Sept. 18–19 and, according to the Herald-Tribune, drew a large opening-weekend crowd.
The Mira Mar block on Palm Avenue is the other side of this story. Your Observer reported in January that every storefront and second-floor office tenant had left, emptying 27,500 square feet. Seaward Development's plan, as described by the Business Observer in April, calls for two 18-story towers with 70 condos behind the restored historic Palm Avenue buildings.
WWSB reported on Aug. 28 that demolition had begun. Seaward principal Patrick DiPinto told the station that "taking a property like this with a 100-year-old historic building and incorporating the historical building into the new 18-story concrete structure is very complex." Completion estimates have moved later. In April the forecast was the end of 2028. By late August, WWSB put it at early 2029.
Until then, the Mira Mar storefronts sit empty, and this fall's openings went to Main and Ringling. One more project shows the same pressure. The Herald-Tribune reported that 1000 North, a restaurant and private club first opened in Palm Beach County by cofounders including Michael Jordan, plans a downtown Sarasota location. A city planning meeting delayed it over resident and parking concerns. New dining space downtown has to get through redevelopment or a planning review first.
Several of the month's first events take place a few blocks from these addresses:
The parade and the art festival both use Main Street and JD Hamel Park, the same street as Baldoria, Sorella and SaraSocial, so those mornings are worth planning around before booking a Main Street table.
At Thompson Group Sarasota, we follow downtown block by block, from the Mira Mar construction to who has signed which lease on Main Street. If you'd like to talk through how these changes affect the buildings and streets you're considering, or the home you already own, we would be glad to schedule a private consultation.
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