For nearly 30 years, 300 John Ringling Blvd. belonged to Tommy Bahama, a restaurant and store a short walk from Lido Beach. Flooding forced it out in late 2024, and Pinchers, a Gulf Coast crab-and-shrimp restaurant group that got its start in Bonita Springs, has signed a long-term lease on the two-story building. Tommy Bahama itself is still on the Circle. It's at 465 John Ringling Blvd., in the space Shore occupied until December 2024.
Longboat Key News called it "a game of musical chairs played almost entirely in shellfish," and that's a good way to read the whole Circle this season. Helene and Milton cleared out a long list of storefronts in 2024. Many of those addresses now have new tenants or are being rebuilt by the businesses that left them, and food fills most of the new seats.
The address map
If you haven't been to the Circle since last season, start here. Each row is a storefront that changed hands after the storms.
| Address | Before the 2024 storms | Now or next |
|---|---|---|
| 300 John Ringling Blvd. | Tommy Bahama restaurant and store | Pinchers, leased, with about 200 seats planned on two floors |
| 465 John Ringling Blvd. | Shore | Tommy Bahama |
| 22 S. Boulevard of the Presidents | Le Colonne, founded 1998 | Nonno Umberto, opened December 2025 |
| 40 S. Boulevard of the Presidents | — | Flambo, grand opening November 2025 |
| 7 N. Boulevard of the Presidents | Jewelry by Cole | St. Armands Jewelers |
| 24 and 28 N. Boulevard of the Presidents | Former bank buildings | Shore's planned three-story return |
| 380B St. Armands Circle | — | Sloan's Ice Cream, planned for early 2027 |
There's a steady point in all this. Your Observer counts more than a dozen restaurants on the Circle, and they range from Columbia, which opened its Cuban-Spanish restaurant there in 1959, to the newest arrivals. Rachel Burns, executive director of the St. Armands Circle Association, told the paper that "there's a lot of opportunity for small restaurant owners to find a niche for something original."
Le Colonne's address stays in the family
The Le Colonne story shows most clearly that the turnover isn't just a change of tenants. Umberto Salustri ran Le Colonne at 22 S. Boulevard of the Presidents for more than 25 years. After the 2024 hurricanes he decided to close it. His son, Simone Salustri, wanted to carry the place on. In September 2025, he and his wife, Amber Mayner, started renovating the space, and they opened it in December 2025 as Nonno Umberto. "Nonno" is Italian for grandfather.
The new version is an Italian seafood and steakhouse with 300 seats and a coastal look. The menu draws on Simone Salustri's roots in a coastal Italian town. Mayner told Your Observer that the most popular dishes are the whole bronzino, deboned by the chef, the dry-aged meat and the shrimp cocktail. The kitchen bakes its own bread and makes its own desserts, and shrimp carpaccio was a recent addition. Her own favorite is the filet mignon with a creamy peppercorn sauce and truffle mashed potatoes.
The bones of the building are familiar to anyone who ate at Le Colonne, and the dining room has been brought up to date. That pairing, a familiar address with a new menu, shows up again and again on the Circle this year.
New owners on South Boulevard of the Presidents
Two doors down on the same street, the Circle added a cuisine Sarasota hasn't had much of. Flambo had a soft opening at 40 S. Boulevard of the Presidents in October 2025 and a grand opening that November, so it's coming up on its first anniversary. The restaurant serves Trinidadian food, which reflects the birthplace of co-owner Anthony Logan. He runs the 175-seat restaurant with his son, Kevin Ramlochan. The first Flambo opened in Philadelphia.
Logan told Your Observer that guests are "treated to the world in one plate." He was referring to Trinidad's Spanish, French, African, British, Chinese and Indian influences. The dishes he named as most ordered:
- Butter chicken in a mildly spiced tomato cream sauce
- Flambo red snapper, a crispy fish served with pickled vegetables
- Trini drunken rice noodles with soy, garlic and sweet pepper
I love the story behind the name. Flambeau is French for a flaming torch, and Logan told the paper the word brings back the homemade lantern his parents made from a rum bottle, a T-shirt and kerosene whenever the power went out in Trinidad.
A few doors away, at 28 S. Boulevard of the Presidents, Chocolate Emporium opened its first Sarasota location this summer, a 1,400-square-foot sweets shop the Herald-Tribune reported as open by June 30. On the retail side, The Sarasota Style held ribbon-cuttings on Jan. 14 and Jan. 16 at 410 St. Armands Circle, according to Your Observer. On the north side of the Circle, Mia Eylon took over the former Jewelry by Cole space at 7 N. Boulevard of the Presidents, and St. Armands Jewelers now lists Monday-through-Saturday hours.
Not every old favorite came back. Speaks Clam Bar closed its location at 29 N. Boulevard of the Presidents after March 15, Your Observer reported. Its Lakewood Ranch restaurant is still open for anyone who misses it.
The bigger bets on John Ringling Boulevard
The two largest moves are at either end of the northeast quadrant, and they have more seats and more square footage than anything else on this list.
At 300 John Ringling Blvd., Pinchers signed a long-term lease for more than 8,000 square feet. It plans to use both floors, with about 200 seats, 75 to 100 staff and a small branded-retail corner. Longboat Key News describes the plan as crab and shrimp in a "flip-flops-welcome atmosphere a short walk from Lido Beach." Pinchers is the flagship of Naples-based Phelan Family Brands, which opened the original Pinchers Crab Shack in Bonita Springs in 1997. Until now, the closest Pinchers to the Circle were in Lakewood Ranch and Venice. For the latest on the St. Armands location, check the Pinchers locations page.
Burns explained the appeal of Florida seafood to Your Observer. "A lot of people want to try Florida seafood," she said. "They want to experience the Florida that they're seeing on TV."
At the other end of the quadrant, the Tommy Bahama Sarasota restaurant takes reservations and online orders at 465 John Ringling Blvd. That's less than a mile east of the building it used for three decades.
Shore's return is an architecture project
The plan that interests me most as an architecture lover belongs to the restaurant that left the Circle. Shore has filed plans to combine the gutted former bank buildings at 24 and 28 N. Boulevard of the Presidents into one three-story, mixed-use building of about 17,000 square feet. According to the filing as Longboat Key News reported it, the building would be stacked like this:
- Ground floor: more than 7,000 square feet of retail plus a café of about 1,820 square feet
- Second floor: a Shore restaurant of about 8,500 square feet
- Third floor: about 4,580 square feet of residential space around a central pool, built for now as a dried-in shell
The paper says the likely order is the retail and café first, then the restaurant soon after. Shore hopes to reopen by early 2028. The same report describes flood-proof glass planned for at least one ground floor on the Circle, which would make a street-level dining room look a bit like an aquarium seen from the inside. Crews have already gutted the buildings and are reinforcing the structure underneath.
The storm turnover also opened a door that had been closed for years. Sloan's Ice Cream, the hot-pink shop founded in West Palm Beach in 1999, secured the 1,450-square-foot storefront at 380B St. Armands Circle and plans to open in early 2027. David Wild, Sloan's director of franchising, told the Herald-Tribune, "We've been looking at trying to find a good site there over the past 10 years." The spot became available after the 2024 hurricane season. It sits at a crosswalk near South Boulevard of the Presidents, a couple of storefronts down from Ben & Jerry's, and the Circle already has Kilwins and Settimi's Gelato.
On the Circle this weekend and into December
You can see a lot of these new storefronts in one afternoon this weekend. The 37th Annual St. Armands Circle Art Festival runs Saturday, Nov. 14, and Sunday, Nov. 15, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Admission is free. ArtFestival.com lists Howard Alan Events as the producer and about 200 artists. According to the St. Armands Circle Association, booths fill St. Armands Circle Park and South Boulevard of the Presidents, which takes you right past Nonno Umberto, Flambo and Chocolate Emporium. The weekend is also the Circle's sidewalk sale.
The rest of the Association's calendar for the year:
- 48th Annual Holiday Night of Lights: Friday, Dec. 4, 5:30 to 8 p.m.
- 22nd Annual Porsches in the Park: Saturday, Dec. 12, 9 a.m. to 2 p.m., in St. Armands Circle Park, sponsored by Suncoast Motorsports
Holiday Night of Lights is nearly half a century old, and this year it lights up a Circle with several new names on it. Some of the addresses are the same ones we've walked past for decades, and now different names are on the doors.
I'm endlessly curious about how buildings change with their tenants, from a bank turned into a flagship restaurant to a family trattoria reborn under the founder's son. If you'd like to talk about the architecture and character of St. Armands and Lido Key, or what it would mean to live within walking distance of the Circle, I'd be glad to hear from you. Work With Catherine at catherine seress.