A neighbor mentioned last week that Rodizio Grill was opening on Fifth Avenue South, and she wasn't wrong to think so. Nearly every roundup of new Naples restaurants this year has grouped it in with the downtown openings, right alongside Barrio Taqueria and Del Mar. But Rodizio Grill's Naples debut is landing at Coastland Center Mall on Ninth Street North, a churrascaria with room for more than 400 guests, built into the old Aurelio's Pizza space and the vacant unit next to it. That's a five minute drive from Third Street South, not a walk.
The confusion is understandable, and it points to something worth untangling if you actually live down here. This fall's "new Naples restaurant" story is really two separate stories that keep getting told as one. There's the wave landing on foot, in small storefronts on Fifth Avenue South and around the corner on Park Street. And there's a second wave, larger in scale and further out, filling in around Coastland Center and Waterside Shops. If you live in Old Naples, only one of those changes what you can walk to on a Tuesday night.
What Actually Opened Within Walking Distance
The additions to Fifth Avenue South itself this year lean toward smaller, owner-run spots slotting into a street that has long been defined by white tablecloth dinners running fifty to sixty dollars a person.
Barrio Taqueria opened in February at 539 Fifth Ave. S., next door to Grace & Shelly's, from owner Sal Muñoz, who spent more than 25 years in hospitality before launching Unidos on Central Avenue. The menu runs birria tacos, three empanada varieties including a spinach, guava, and goat cheese combination, and a Barrio Caesar topped with cotija and charred corn. Muñoz has talked about wanting the food to hold Fifth Avenue's quality standard without the Fifth Avenue price tag, and the counter service format bears that out.
All Too Well Gourmet Sandwiches launched the same month at 795 Fifth Ave. S., on the corner at Eighth Street South, in a retail space that used to house Toad Hall's antique showroom. Chef Mitchell Jamra, whose family has run delis and butcher shops for decades, builds eleven sandwich varieties on schiacciata, a thin Tuscan flatbread, with a Chicago-born concept that started in Lincoln Park in 2022.
A few blocks over on Park Street, Tiny Kitchen Empanadas grew out of a farmers market stand once known as CDL Empanadas into a three-generation family storefront serving empanadas and choripanes just off the avenue.
On the fuller-service end of the same street, Del Mar Naples took over the former Café Lurcat space with a 9,200 square foot, two floor Mediterranean coastal menu from Cameron Mitchell Restaurants, the same group behind Ocean Prime a few doors down. Le Colonial debuted at 457 Fifth Ave. S. in December with French Vietnamese plates from restaurateurs Rick Wahlstedt and Joe King, who have thirty years in the business together, in a space designed by the same firm that did Ocean Prime and Del Mar. And down at the Bayfront, Ce Soir marked the U.S. debut of Canadian hospitality group Aiden Hospitality with a French-inspired, semi-casual waterfront room.
Put those side by side and the pattern is plain. The street didn't get more expensive this year. It got a second, more casual layer stacked underneath the layer that was already there, which means a $12 taco lunch and a $30 dinner are now genuinely available options on the same four blocks.
What's Still Landing, and Where
Several more names are worth tracking, and they land in different places on the map.
Avenue 31 cleared its final approval from the Naples Design Review Board for 472 Fifth Ave. S., a three story building planned between Del Mar and Osteria Tulia. It's owned by Stefano Frittella, who also holds Bice, Caffe Milano, La Trattoria, and Vergina on the same avenue, and it's modeled on his restaurant of the same name in Monte Carlo. It will replace the longtime home of La Pescheria and add condominiums above the dining room, which means this one is a genuine downtown addition once it opens.
Further out, the buildout is happening on a different scale. Rodizio Grill's Coastland Center location, at over 9,100 square feet, is a ground up construction project the mall approved to combine two vacant retail spaces into one dining room with private event rooms, and the company's own site currently lists it as opening sometime in 2026 without a firmer date. Up at Waterside Shops, Eddie V's Prime Seafood was targeting a summer 2026 opening on a redeveloped outparcel, and Restoration Hardware's glass atrium gallery on the old Nordstrom site is expected to bring its own RH Restaurant sometime after that. Those three rooms will draw plenty of attention when they open. None of them are a walk from Third Street South.
Third Street Keeps Its Own Clock
While Fifth Avenue absorbs new tenants, Third Street South hasn't changed its rhythm much at all, and that's arguably its appeal. The Third Street South Farmers Market has run every Saturday from 7:30 to 11:30 in the morning since 1994, drawing close to 60 vendors of produce, seafood, baked goods, and flowers, with a standing rule against national chains. It's the same market it was three decades ago, just with more people who know about it.
The calendar event worth putting on your own fall schedule is Christmas on Third, the 49th annual tree lighting and snowfall, set for Monday, November 23, with a street closure starting at 3 p.m., Santa's arrival around 6:15, and the tree lighting and first snowfall of the season a few minutes after that. Restaurants along the street tend to book up early for that evening, so a reservation made now beats one made in mid-November.
Third Street's other identity is cultural rather than culinary. The Sugden Community Theatre, home to the Naples Players, reopened in 2024 after a $22 million renovation, and Gulfshore Playhouse opened its Baker Theatre and Education Center the same year at Goodlette-Frank Road and First Avenue South. Neither one is competing with Fifth Avenue's restaurant churn, and neither seems to want to.
The Practical Difference This Fall
None of this is really about which street is better. It's about knowing which changes are actually yours to use without getting in the car. If you live in Old Naples, the casual additions on Fifth Avenue South, Barrio, All Too Well, Tiny Kitchen, plus the fuller dinners at Del Mar and Le Colonial, are the ones that change your Tuesday. The Rodizio Grill opening, the Eddie V's countdown, the RH Restaurant anticipation, those are worth knowing about for an occasional destination night, but they're a drive, not a stroll. And Third Street South isn't trying to keep pace with either list. It's holding its Saturday market and getting ready for its 49th tree lighting, which is exactly why people keep coming back to it.
Knowing the difference between what's arriving on your own two streets and what's arriving across town is a small thing, but it's the kind of small thing that makes living here easier. If you're thinking about what a home in this part of Naples actually offers day to day, walking distance to a street like this is worth more than most listing sheets let on.
If you'd like to talk about what's happening in Old Naples beyond the dinner table, from new listings to the neighborhoods around it, Miles Griffin would be glad to help. Let's Connect.
