Southside Village's Restaurant Row Is Passing the Keys Next Door

"I couldn't justify a $50 prime rib dinner to try and make a little bit of money off that," Tommy Lovell told the Herald-Tribune in late September. His Friday and Saturday prime rib at The 1818 Grill had always run about $37 to $40. Rather than raise the price, he stopped serving it. A few weeks later he closed the restaurant. Its last day was Saturday, Sept. 26.

The address at 1818 S. Osprey Ave. had been a neighborhood tavern since 2002, when it opened as Knick's Tavern & Grill. Lovell took it over in 2024 and later renamed it. He blamed a particularly hard summer off-season and rising prices for gas, produce, cooking oil and beef.

Here is what's new about this September on Osprey Avenue. Nothing on the block went dark, at least not for long. Each space that changed hands went to someone already working on that stretch of Southside Village. Two doors down, the restaurant that kept its prices low came through the same slow summer with people waiting an hour for a table.

Who Holds Which Door Now

The row is short, so the changes are easy to follow. This is where each address stood as of early October 2026.

So the Sicilianos are taking over the space next door, and the 1818 Grill's owner is joining the restaurant two doors up. Lovell will be general manager and sommelier at Alma de España's new downtown location. "I'm going to run his front of the house, and then I'm also going to be his sommelier, and I'm going to pour a great wine for him," Lovell said.

His goodbye was short. "I would just love to thank the neighborhood."

The Spot That Kept Its Prices Down

Lucky 8 sits at 1812 S. Osprey. It shared the same summer, the same rising beef prices and the same thin off-season crowds. It came out of that stretch busier than it went in.

Chef and co-owner Mark Majorie opened the New Orleans-inspired restaurant in late 2024. He first came to Sarasota to help open Veronica Fish and Oyster, after working as chef de cuisine at The Roosevelt New Orleans, among other kitchens. The menu has po'boys, smash burgers and a cochon de lait that draws on New Orleans' Vietnamese community.

The Michelin Guide included Sarasota for the first time this year and named three local restaurants. Lucky 8 was the only one to earn a Bib Gourmand, the guide's award for exceptional food at good value. Tralia and Focaccia Sandwich + Bakery received Selected status. Majorie said the ceremony was on Thursday, May 28, and the crowds arrived that Saturday. "We're talking people waiting outside for an hour just to get a seat," he told the Herald-Tribune in a July interview. The restaurant seats about 50 inside and maybe 20 more outside. The paper reported that the recognition kept drawing crowds through Sarasota's usual slow summer.

Majorie set the pricing on purpose, long before Michelin came calling.

"I really stood on a hill before all of this when we opened this place and said 'Look, I want this to be accessible for everyone,' not someplace that you go to once a year, someplace that you go twice a week. That was important as a business model for me, and it paid off."

Read that next to Lovell's prime rib math and the two owners sound alike. Both refused to pass rising costs on to the people eating dinner. Lovell dropped a dish he loved. Majorie built his whole menu around that limit from the first day. In a summer when food costs kept climbing, the second approach left room on the block for a restaurant people return to every week.

Alma de España Takes the Indigenous Cottage

The other change on the row starts downtown. On Sept. 15, chef and owner Steve Phelps confirmed that Indigenous had closed permanently after 15 years in Towles Court. Indigenous opened in 2011 in a cottage at 239 S. Links Ave. It became known for Gulf seafood, Florida farmers and seasonal cooking, and Sarasota Magazine called it "resolutely personal" in a city of glossier dining rooms. Phelps was twice a James Beard Awards semifinalist for Best Chef: South. The closing post gave no reason beyond "we are ready for a change."

Three days later, Alma de España chef and owner Elier Rodriguez told the Herald-Tribune he was moving his restaurant from 1830 S. Osprey into that cottage. He is buying the property. Rodriguez opened Alma in Southside Village in 2025, in the space that used to be Ka Papa Cuisine. He is a Cuban native who worked in Michelin-starred restaurants in Las Vegas, and he has said his grandmother Cacha's cooking shaped his career. The menu has featured garlic prawns, Spanish-style octopus, paella and Basque-style branzino.

He said the Spanish tapas and grill menu will stay largely the same, with changes added gradually. The new piece is the cottage's outdoor space. "We're going to have a patio, we're going to start having live music, guitar," Rodriguez said. He added that the music could be guitar or piano, kept quiet enough for diners to talk.

The timeline is still a plan. Rodriguez expected to serve his last Southside meal at the end of September and open downtown in early November. As of Oct. 1, the Herald-Tribune was still describing the reopening as expected at the start of November.

The Same Handoff, Told From the Losing Side

A mile north in the Rosemary District, the same kind of handoff played out from the other end. Artisan Cheese Company closed its doors at 550 Central Ave. on Wednesday, Sept. 16, after 14 and a half years.

Owner Louise Converse wrote that sales were down 40% this year, and summer sales were "staggeringly lower" than that. The shop had nearly closed in May 2025. An angel investor stepped in then, and a GoFundMe campaign raised more than $50,000. Rent troubles continued anyway. Converse lined up two people to take over the shop. "But sadly the space will end up going to a restaurant, as the restaurant won the landlord's approval over the cheese shop, as is their prerogative, as I am in rent arrears," she wrote.

The Herald-Tribune's Oct. 1 roundup describes the shop as a 3,000-square-foot space and says another restaurant is expected to move in. As of that report, the restaurant had not been named.

Converse's goodbye was a request. "If you have an independent cheese shop near you, go," she wrote. "Let the cheesemongers tell you the stories of the cheeses in their cases. Fall in love with them, [and] go back."

Her closing explains what happened on Osprey Avenue too. Spaces in these older Sarasota districts are in demand, and they rarely sit empty. Who gets the keys depends on who can pay steady rent through a summer like this one. On Osprey, that turned out to be the operators already there: a pub ready to add a kitchen, and a chef with enough momentum to buy a downtown cottage.

What's Open on the Row in October

For a weeknight dinner in Southside Village this month:

• Lucky 8, 1812 S. Osprey Ave. It's open and still drawing the post-Michelin crowd. With about 70 seats inside and out, plan on a wait at peak hours.
• Legends Sports Pub, 1816 S. Osprey Ave. It's open, though the Herald-Tribune last described it as beer and wine only with no food menu. The Herald-Tribune's Sept. 25 report on the full bar and restaurant expansion into the old 1818 Grill space gave no opening date.
• Alma de España. Look for it in early November at 239 S. Links Ave. in Towles Court, with a patio, quiet live music and Tommy Lovell running the front of the house.

For the wider view of how mainland dining has shifted this fall, see our fall weekend map for Sarasota Mainland residents. For more on the neighborhoods around Osprey Avenue and Towles Court, visit our Sarasota Mainland guide.

Do you own a home within walking distance of Osprey Avenue or Towles Court? A row like this one shapes daily life, and it can shape how a buyer sees your street. Jane Ebury Sinclair keeps track of these changes block by block, and she's glad to talk through what they mean for your home. Schedule a Free Consultation.