Chad Munsey wasn't originally set on Hendricks Avenue. Before he settled on a spot for The Huguenot, his planned wine, cheese and charcuterie bar, he and his wife looked at space near The Grotto's former San Marco Square location. What pulled them onto Hendricks instead wasn't a broker's pitch. It was the news that an Italian restaurant was about to open in the same building.
That building is 1039 Hendricks Avenue, the former home of Reddi-Arts, the art supply store that anchored the block for years before it closed. Now it's splitting into two restaurants that never coordinated a launch date but ended up neighbors anyway. Tavola Trattoria, an Italian concept from Table Mesa Restaurant Group out of Bentonville, Arkansas, opened with a soft launch in late July 2026 on one end. The Huguenot is finishing construction on the other, targeting a late-summer opening. Munsey has said the plan came together because of what he saw happening next door, not despite it.
That's the part of San Marco's restaurant news that doesn't usually make the roundup. It's not that several places opened this year. It's that they keep landing on the same two blocks, and the owners are watching each other do it.
One Building, Two Kitchens, No Shared Owner
Tavola Trattoria's menu leans into pizza, stromboli, pasta dishes and Italian staples like zeppole, the kind of food that works for a Tuesday dinner and doesn't require a reservation three weeks out. Table Mesa Restaurant Group runs eight restaurants across Italian, European bistro, American bistro, Latin and bakery concepts, and Jacksonville isn't necessarily a one-off for them. The company has floated the idea of Tavola being the first of several Jacksonville-area locations, with a seafood concept reportedly planned for Bentonville next year.
The Huguenot, by contrast, is being built around wine rather than food. Munsey hasn't published a menu and doesn't plan to release one in detail. What he has done is start hiring, advertising for staff in early August through Instagram, and secure a $75,140 forgivable grant from the Downtown Investment Authority's Core Retail Enhancement Program, approved by a 9-0 board vote in February 2026. The grant program exists specifically to pull retail and restaurant investment into corridors the city wants to see filled in, and Hendricks Avenue in San Marco is one of them.
That's the mechanism underneath the story. This isn't just several restaurateurs happening to like the same street. It's one recently vacated building with good bones and available parking, a city incentive program aimed at exactly this kind of infill, and an owner who picked the site because someone else was already building there.
Two Blocks Over, a Sushi Counter Filled In Fast
Walk a few minutes from Hendricks to Naldo Avenue and you'll find KoBu, a Japanese sushi and omakase restaurant from chef Tuna Lui, who also runs Ginger Bistro in St. Augustine. KoBu targeted an opening window between July 28 and July 31, 2026, and by the third week of August it was running full service, Monday through Saturday from 5 to 10 p.m.
The dining room seats about 36, with another 32 seats on the patio and a reservation-only omakase room built for chef-led tastings priced around $175 per person. It's a different price point and a different pace than Tavola's pizza and stromboli menu a few blocks away, which is worth noting because it means San Marco's new restaurant activity isn't clustering around one kind of dining experience. It's clustering around one small stretch of streets, with wildly different concepts filling in whatever space and price gap is left.
The Burger Truck That Finally Got a Front Door
Not every new opening in San Marco came from an outside restaurant group. Hard Pressed Burgers, known around town for two food trucks and smash burgers pressed thin and cooked crispy, opened its first brick-and-mortar location on Hendricks Avenue earlier this year, taking over the former Good Dough donuts space. Co-owners Edward Evans and Justin Pa'ala had wanted a San Marco location for a while, and the new spot let them keep the trucks running while testing menu additions like buffalo chicken sandwiches and fried fish sandwiches at the storefront.
Hard Pressed has a track record of collaborating with other local operators, including Chancho King, whose owners were recently named finalists for a James Beard award. That kind of cross-pollination between food truck culture and sit-down restaurants is part of what's made this particular stretch of Hendricks feel less like a random collection of openings and more like a scene that knows itself.
The Established Names Are Still Setting the Tone
None of this happened in a vacuum. Rue Saint-Marc, the French-inspired bistro at 2103 San Marco Blvd, was named to the Michelin Guide's 2026 list of Florida Recommended restaurants, a distinction that predates this year's wave of openings but still shapes what people expect when they hear "dinner in San Marco." Town Hall, led by two-time James Beard nominee chef Tom Gray, has been drawing brunch crowds to Historic San Marco for years, and Gray's retro pizza concept Electric Dough took over the old San Marco Theater space with the same instinct for reuse that's now playing out at Reddi-Arts.
Earlier this year, the longtime Bistro Aix space at 1440 San Marco Blvd became Cafe San Marco and Bar San Marco, run by husband and wife David Revuelta and Daimi Morales. Cafe San Marco opened in February 2026 as a grab-and-go breakfast and lunch spot serving pastries, coffee and juices from 6 to 8 a.m., while Bar San Marco takes over the same space in the evenings with a full bar built around a 700-bottle wine list left behind by the previous operators, plus a Spanish-influenced tapas menu.
Here's the short version of what's opened in San Marco over the past several months, and where to find it:
- Tavola Trattoria, 1039 Hendricks Ave, opened late July 2026
- The Huguenot, 1039 Hendricks Ave, targeting a late-summer 2026 opening
- KoBu, 1435 Naldo Ave, opened late July 2026, Monday through Saturday, 5 to 10 p.m.
- Hard Pressed Burgers, Hendricks Ave, opened earlier in 2026 at the former Good Dough site
- Cafe San Marco / Bar San Marco, 1440 San Marco Blvd, opened February 2026
What It Means If You Already Live Here
If you've lived in San Marco for a while, you don't need a map to know that Hendricks Avenue and Naldo Avenue sit within a few minutes' walk of each other, close to San Marco Square and the theater. What's changed is that you can now park once near the square, walk to a sushi omakase counter, an Italian trattoria, a wine bar, and a burger spot, and never move your car. That's not something Jacksonville Beach or Riverside can claim right now with this particular combination of concepts opening in the same six-month window.
It's also a reminder that a neighborhood's food scene doesn't grow evenly. It bunches up wherever the first mover creates a reason for the second one to follow, which is exactly what Munsey described when he explained why he chose Hendricks Avenue over the Square. One restaurant's announcement became another owner's site selection criteria.
San Marco isn't reinventing itself. It's filling in the blocks that were always going to fill in eventually, just faster and closer together than most people expected. If you're the kind of resident who tracks these things because you like knowing what's new before it shows up on a Saturday night wait list, this is the stretch to watch through the rest of the year.
And if watching this kind of neighborhood momentum ever turns into a real estate question, whether you're curious what a home near this stretch of San Marco is worth or thinking about what comes next, Stephen Williams and the Edgewater Home Team are a phone call away. Schedule a consultation whenever the timing is right for you.
