Cassis American Brasserie

It’s time to update my post 2 years ago on Beach Drive restaurants in downtown St Petersburg, Florida. In addition to Parkshore Grill, Moon Under Water, Cassis, Hooker Tea, Marketplace Express, Paciugo Gelato and 400 Beach, all of which offer “sidewalk cafes” as well as inside dining, we now have Tryst and Bella Brava, also offering dining inside or out. What a great selection of places to sit and enjoy something to eat or drink.  Bookmark this post and you’ll have a handy guide to the Beach Drive restaurant sites: get the phone numbers, the hours and menus for you to look over.

Gatsby’s Restaurant is gone: Grayl’s Hotel is being renovated and will reopen as Birchwood Inn with a rooftop lounge on the 4th floor. NOLA at Parkshore Plaza is now AnnaStella Cajun Bistro.

Come enjoy Beach Drive in downtown St Petersburg. Enjoy a stroll along the park and waterfront, enjoy the shops, restaurants and museums. And, yes, dogs are welcome. Downtown St Pete is definitely dog friendly with water bowls along the way – Cassis even has a doggie menu!

And if you have real estate needs, stop in to see The Simms Team at ALVA International, at 238 Beach Drive NE – look for the red awning that says REAL ESTATE.

Galbraith Terminal at Albert Whitted Airport in downtown St Petersburg

The Hangar Restaurant in downtown St Petersburg is ready to open at 8 am on Monday morning, April 12th. It will be open for breakfast, lunch and dinner. The Hangar is located on the second floor of the Galbraith Terminal at Albert Whitted Airport, 540 1st St SE in downtown St Pete.  Their website has been up for a few days and now they have uploaded their menus for breakfast, lunch and dinner.  This is the third downtown St Petersburg restaurant for Steve Westphal – his others are Parkshore Grill and 400 Beach Seafood & Tap House.

Want to get an early taste?  Saturday, April 10 is a reception from 7 – 10 pm, with complimentary hors d’oeuvres and cash bar. Sunday, April 11, from 4 – 7 pm is Family Day with non-alcoholic beverages and complimentary snacks. Free parking for both events. $10 donations are requested for the Albert Whitted Airport Preservation Society.

Beautiful downtown St Petersburg!  How many cities have a general aviation airport within walking distance of many downtown condos?

Parkshore Grill and Beach Drive in downtown St Petersburg

Beach Drive restaurants in downtown St Petersburg Florida have great food, great views, and good variety. Most of the restaurants have outside seating as well as indoor dining, so you can take your pick, depending on your mood and the weather. The west side of Beach Drive NE is a mixture of restaurants, luxury condos, shops, offices and art galleries. On sunny days Beach Drive is a kaleidoscope of awnings, shading the dining tables. Starting south from Fifth Avenue north, there’s

400 Beach Seafood and Tap House  outdoor and inside seating

Gatsby’s Restaurant at Grayl’s Hotel   outdoor and inside seating

Moon Under Water   outdoor and inside seating

NOLA Café  outdoor and inside seating

Hooker Tea   outdoor and inside seating

Paciugo  outdoor and inside seating

Parkshore Grill   outdoor and inside seating

Marketplace Express   outdoor and inside seating

Cassis   outdoor and inside seating

On the east side of Beach Drive NE is part of the string of parks that line the waterfront. So – when you’re dining, you can look across the parks and out at the waterfront. In the parks you’ll find the Museum of Fine Arts and the St Petersburg Yacht Club.  The Museum has the MFA Café with outdoor and indoor seating and of course the yacht club has several indoor and outdoor dining choices for its members.

All of these are within two blocks of The Simms Team real estate office ALVA International, Inc at 238 Beach Drive NE. Downtown St Petersburg Florida is a great walking city. Our office, for example, has a Walkscore of 97 out of 100. It’s wonderful to be able to live in downtown St Petersburg Florida and be able to walk everywhere.

Try out all of these Beach Drive restaurants in downtown St Petersburg – some are open for breakfast, all of them for lunch and many for dinner. All but one have their own website so you can click on them for photos and often menus.  Do come down to Beach Drive!

The workshop at 400 Beach

An early morning glimpse of work beginning in the space at the northeast corner of 400 Beach in downtown St Petersburg.  It’s almost like Santa’s workshop – there are no signs. A drafting table with plans is set up in the unfinished space and pipes are being laid. It must be the beginning of 400 Beach Seafood and Tap House, the new restaurant being developed by Steve Westphal of Parkshore Grill fame.

Scheduled to open on February 15th, 2009, this seafood companion to Parkshore Grill should be an instant success with the same ownership and management, the same sidewalk dining across from the park and Vinoy yacht basin.

Click on the photo and see a little more.

This morning as I was driving to work I saw the long-awaited sign: Hammerhead Grille to open in December (2007). Nearly every day for the last month there have been workers at the old Julian’s Restaurant on 2nd St N in downtown St Petersburg (at 3rd Ave N) but the old Julian’s sign still reigned and there was no announcement or sign for Hammerhead. Now that’s changed – they’re opening this month.

At first the signs said that Rattlefish Grille, the popular waterfront restaurant in Tampa, was coming. When I spoke with the owner a couple of months ago, he said that he was still coming but that all of the ownership group was not in agreement so he’d be opening under another name: Hammerhead Grille.

It will be nice to have it open, just a half block from our office. We’ve always liked the building, but Julian’s just didn’t cut it as a restaurant – neither the food nor the service matched the prices. Their lounge was nice – a quiet place to meet after a closing, with interesting heavy hors d’oeuvres … until they changed that, too. No wonder they went out of business.

We’ve enjoyed Rattlefish in Tampa, and are looking forward to welcoming Hammerhead to St. Pete.

Julian’s Restaurant at 234 Third Ave N. in downtown St Petersburg closed its doors in April. It had a nice lounge – quiet, where you could carry on a conversation and hear each other – but despite being just a few steps from our office, on the same block, we didn’t like going there for dinner. Neither the food nor the service lived up to the prices – in our opinion, and obviously many others felt as we did.

Coming soon is RattleFish Raw Bar & Grill, a Bayside Marina waterfront restaurant at 5210 W Tyson Avenue in Tampa. We’ve enjoyed eating there, occasionally stopping for lunch since it’s between WCI’s Westshore Yacht Club and New Port, both communities just south of Gandy on Tampa Bay.

RattleFish features lots of seafood in a casual atmosphere. Supposedly7, the upstairs will be made into a VIP lounge.

Like so many other restaurants in downtown St Pete, this is within walking distance of Parkshore Plaza, The Florencia, 400 Beach, Bayfront Towers and Vinoy Place, as well as Fareham Square, Huntington Townhomes, The Palms and Town View.