What's New Around Naples This August, From Waterside Shops To Fifth Avenue

Drive past the southwest corner of Tamiami Trail North and Seagate Drive this month and the first thing you'll notice is the valet stand where the old Bank of America Private Bank tower used to stand. Darden Restaurants demolished that building down to its steel frame and rebuilt it as Eddie V's Prime Seafood, which opened on June 7 at 765 Seagate Drive. Two months in, the corner has settled into a new rhythm, and it's worth understanding why that particular corner matters more than a single restaurant opening usually would.

Here's the part that gets missed when people talk about Naples restaurants closing and reopening every season like clockwork. What's actually happening at Waterside Shops right now isn't a seasonal reshuffle. Each vacancy this year has been filled by a concept that had never operated anywhere in Southwest Florida before, and in one case, a concept making its very first stop outside its home region entirely. That's a different kind of turnover than the usual chain-for-chain swap, and it changes what "going out" in Naples is starting to mean.

The Corner That Used To Be A Bank

Eddie V's is Darden's sixth Florida location, but its first in Southwest Florida. Diners who wanted that particular mix of live jazz, a wine list of more than 300 bottles recognized by Wine Spectator, and steaks hand-carved by an in-house butcher used to have to drive to one of Darden's other Florida markets to get it. Now it sits inside a 9,896-square-foot building with patio dining and three private event rooms, sharing the Waterside address with the Capital Grille, which has anchored North Naples with a quieter, clubbier chophouse style since 2008. Both restaurants share a parent company and a similar steakhouse pedigree, but Eddie V's runs live music trios in its V Lounge most nights starting around 6 p.m., a detail that tells you which room is built for a longer evening.

Two More Are Still Coming

Eddie V's is only the first of three sit-down restaurants landing at Waterside between this summer and year-end, and the other two are still under construction. Buck & Rider is being built into the space Brio Italian Grille vacated when it permanently closed in April. What makes that one worth watching isn't the seafood-forward menu, it's the fact that this marks the brand's first step outside the Southwest region entirely. Hi Noon Hospitality's founder and CEO, Adam Strecker, said as much when the deal was announced:

"We couldn't be more excited to begin this next chapter in Naples."

RH Restaurant is the slower-moving third piece. Restoration Hardware pulled its construction permit for the former Nordstrom site on Aug. 7, 2025, and the approved plans call for six separate galleries with skylights, connected by landscaped courtyards and glass-roofed walkways, inside a 29,382-square-foot footprint. No firm opening date has been announced, but the target remains late 2026.

Laid out together, the pattern is easy to see:

Nothing in that table is a chain replacing a chain. Each new tenant is a concept Southwest Florida hasn't hosted before, and in Buck & Rider's case, one the brand had never taken outside the Southwest region until Naples asked.

Down On Fifth And Park Street, A Quieter Kind Of New

Waterside gets the headlines because of scale, but the more interesting openings this year have been smaller and closer to downtown. Tiny Kitchen opened in late May or early June at 524 Park Street, a 680-square-foot Argentinian street food spot run by Alejandro Veiga alongside his wife, Samantha Skarl, and his mother, Chef Marta Veiga. A few blocks over, Annie's Bistro settled into the new Olde Naples Hotel on the block where the city itself was founded in 1889, open to non-hotel guests and steps from Third Street South. Ce Soir opened in Bayfront, and All Too Well Gourmet Sandwiches and Barrio Taqueria both joined the Fifth Avenue South lineup this year.

The most anticipated addition on Fifth hasn't opened yet. Restaurateur Stefano Frittella, who already owns Bice, Caffe Milano, La Trattoria, and Vergina on the avenue, has a new three-story building approved at 472 Fifth Ave. S., between Del Mar and Osteria Tulia. The restaurant, Avenue 31, is named for the address of his Monte Carlo restaurant near the Monaco Grand Prix circuit and will replace the longtime home of La Pescheria. Frittella has described his ambitions for the space plainly: "I'm going to open a super high-end restaurant like I have in Monaco."

The Names That Changed Without Moving

Not every change downtown involved a new address. A few familiar doors now lead somewhere different. The same owner who ran Zen Asian BBQ in North Naples transformed it into Papa Joe's Trattoria. Over at Marquesa Plaza, Señor Tequila's became Tequilas Mexican Bar & Grill under new ownership. And Ambrosi & Sons packed up its East Naples location and relocated to the Shoppes at Vanderbilt in North Naples. None of these are simple refreshes with a new sign out front. They're different kitchens and different sourcing behind the same walls, which means a place already in your rotation is worth a second visit before assuming it's still the restaurant you remember.

Where To Actually Use The Off-Season

Naples restaurants that stay open through the summer tend to price for the people who are actually here, and that pricing tends to disappear the week the snowbirds return. Chops City Grill has been running 25% off entrees and steaks through the summer months, a discount steep enough that it functions less like a marketing gesture and more like a straightforward read on what the room can hold in July compared to February. If there's a fine-dining room you've been meaning to try at full price, this is the stretch of the calendar built for it.

What Else Is On The Calendar

Beyond restaurants, a few things are worth a Saturday before the season traffic returns. The Naples Depot Museum has a local-history exhibit tracing the long-running Great Dock Canoe Race tradition, a piece of Naples history that predates most of what's on this list. The Baker Museum's summer photography exhibition, featuring more than 100 Ansel Adams works and archival material, closes in early August, so this is close to the last week to see it. The Naples Players Academy is staging a shorter youth production of Les Misérables in the Kizzie Theater this month, a lighter-footprint follow-up to the main company's summer run of the same show. And Third Street South's Saturday morning farmers market keeps its regular hours through the season, a reliable stop while the rest of the corridor quietly rebuilds itself.

The Read For Anyone Already Living Here

Put it all together and the story isn't that Naples restaurants come and go every year, they do, and always have. It's that this particular round of turnover, from the corner where the bank used to be to the storefronts on Fifth and Park, is assembling a version of the city's dining scene that used to require a drive somewhere else to find. Whether that pattern holds through the RH opening late this year is worth watching, but the corner at Waterside has already answered the first question. The version of Naples that used to send people out of town for a serious night out is quietly becoming a place people drive into instead.

If you're weighing what any of this means for a specific property, a specific neighborhood's rental demand, or the timing of a sale near one of these corridors, that's a longer conversation. Maria Oddy works these markets daily and is always glad to talk through what's changing and what it's worth to you.