If you live in Naples year-round, you already know the deal in January. Reservations at Third Street South booked three weeks out. Valet lines at Waterside. A twenty-minute wait for a barstool at places that don't take names. Summer inverts all of it, and the summer of 2026 has more moving pieces than usual. A few longtime anchors have closed. A wave of new concepts opened between February and June. Two of the most anticipated restaurants in the region are staging behind construction walls at Waterside Shops. And the operators who stayed open are actively courting locals with pricing you will not see once the snowbirds return.
Here is what the map looks like right now, and where it is about to shift.
What Just Opened on Tamiami Trail North
The freshest arrivals cluster along a stretch of Tamiami Trail N. that has become the most interesting food corridor in the city.
Claypot Turkish Restaurant at 4910 Tamiami Trail N., Unit 310, opened in late May as a fast-casual Turkish concept where everything is made from scratch in actual clay pots using traditional methods. Think Cava or Chipotle, but Turkish, with a Mini Grand Bazaar of imported Turkish goods inside. Hours run Mon–Thu 11 AM–9 PM, Fri–Sat 11 AM–10 PM, and Sun 11 AM–9 PM. The format is unusual for Naples, where fast-casual has historically meant salads and burrito bowls, and it is worth trying before the fall food writers discover it.
A few blocks south, Heyday Cookshop opened at 4691 Tamiami Trail N. in Neapolitan Way from Chef Kayla Pfeiffer, a James Beard Emerging Chef semifinalist and Food Network Chopped Champion. This is her second Naples concept, and the pedigree matters. Heyday is the kind of restaurant that becomes hard to book once season starts, so July and August are the window.
Two more openings worth putting on the list:
- ChaChaCha Fusion, a Cuban restaurant that opened in February at The Strand retail center in North Naples.
- bb.q Chicken, a Korean fried chicken concept taking over the former Napoli on the Bay space in Pebblebrooke Center. Napoli on the Bay has closed, and bb.q Chicken will open in its place, marking the first location in Southwest Florida.
And if you have not been to Ambrosi & Sons in a while, it has moved. Ambrosi & Sons relocated from East Naples to the Shoppes at Vanderbilt in North Naples.
The Waterside Shops Reset
The most consequential story of the year is happening inside one shopping center. Waterside Shops lost three long-tenured tenants this spring:
| Closed at Waterside | Years operating |
|---|---|
| Brio Italian Grille | 20 |
| Häagen-Dazs | 25 |
| Kunjani Craft Coffee & Gallery (Seagate Drive) | 10 |
That is sourced from Waterside Shops, Naples Daily News, Gulf Shore Business, and restaurant direct announcements, and it is a genuine reshuffle. Sixty-plus combined years of tenancy exiting in a single quarter is not routine.
What is replacing them is the interesting part. Buck & Rider is targeting a late 2026 opening at Waterside Shops, with an open kitchen, expansive raw bar, and breezy indoor-outdoor seating, and CEO Adam Strecker has personal ties to Southwest Florida and described Naples as a natural first choice for the brand's first expansion outside Arizona. A Phoenix restaurant group choosing Naples for its first out-of-state location is a data point worth pausing on. Groups that expand cautiously do not pick markets they are unsure about.
Next door, on the former Nordstrom site, RH Restaurant is targeting late 2026 at the center of Restoration Hardware's new glass-atrium gallery, and RH restaurants have become destinations in their own right at other locations, making the Naples version one of the most anticipated openings of the year.
For residents, the practical read is this: the current lull at Waterside is temporary. Once those two open, the reservation dynamics of that entire corner of North Naples will change. If you like walking into places you used to walk into, this summer and fall is your window.
The Summer Math That Actually Matters
Off-season pricing in Naples has always been a locals' secret. This year it is unusually generous. A short list of deals running right now:
- Chops City Grill. 25% off entrees and steaks through summer.
- Ritz-Carlton Dining Passport. One of Southwest Florida's best summer dining deals is back, giving locals a chance to eat at four different upscale restaurants for $45 per person, and the Ritz-Carlton Naples' summer special is available through September.
Set that $45 against a peak-season tasting menu at any of the same four properties in February and the gap is not subtle. This is the kind of pricing that exists because the operators need locals in the room, and it disappears the second occupancy at the resorts climbs back above the summer floor.
Summer is when Naples restaurants reward the people who stayed.
That framing, borrowed from a recent Naples dining dispatch, is the accurate one. The city's best restaurants are not shutting down for August the way New York's do. They are staying open, and they are aware of who is walking through the door.
The Reservation Inversion at Third Street South
The most useful thing to understand about summer dining in Naples is a scheduling quirk that does not exist in most cities.
In January, Third Street South operates on advance-booking logic. Tables at the marquee restaurants are held weeks out, and walk-ins are a coin flip at best. In July, the same rooms operate on walk-in logic. As foot traffic drops from peak season, walk-in availability opens up at restaurants that require weeks of advance booking in January, and summer is the time to try the places that are usually fully committed.
This is not a small thing. It is the difference between planning a Tuesday dinner three weeks out and deciding at 6:15 that you want to be sitting down at 7. If you have a Third Street list you have never worked through, the calendar has cleared for you.
What to Watch on Fifth Avenue and at the Naples Beach Club
Two openings from earlier in the year deserve a second look before season, because both will be near-impossible to walk into by November.
Chef Vincenzo Betulia debuted an haute steakhouse on Fifth Avenue South with an impressive Wagyu program and blue-chip wine list. Betulia's other Naples restaurants have long reservation lists in season, and there is no reason to expect this one to behave differently.
Then there is the Naples Beach Club. The Naples Beach Club, A Four Seasons Resort, opened reservations for its flagship restaurant helmed by two-time James Beard Award winner Gavin Kaysen. A Kaysen-run kitchen inside a Four Seasons flagship on the beach is the kind of restaurant that becomes a national travel story. The soft-open weeks are the version residents get to see.
A Note on the Closings
Not every headline this year has been an opening. The list of longtimers that closed reads like a slice of the last two decades of Naples dining: CAVO Lounge at Mercato after 11 years, Skyline Chili in Naples and Fort Myers after 38 years, Brio Italian Grille at Waterside after 20, Häagen-Dazs at Waterside after 25, and Kunjani Craft Coffee & Gallery on Seagate Drive after 10. Sonic Drive-In in East Naples also closed.
The pattern behind those closures is worth naming. Rents and operating costs are sky high, and the summer months were exceptionally slow. The restaurants that are opening in this environment are the ones with a specific point of view. Fast-casual Turkish in clay pots. A Chopped champion's second concept. A Phoenix group betting on a first out-of-state store. That is a healthier version of a food scene than a copy-paste chain build-out, and it is the version residents are getting to shape by showing up this summer.
The Practical Take
If you live in Naples, the next ten weeks are a short list of things to actually do:
- Get to Heyday Cookshop and Claypot before the fall reviews land.
- Book one Ritz-Carlton Dining Passport night while the passport is still active through September.
- Walk into a Third Street South room you usually cannot get into.
- Visit Waterside Shops now, because the version of it that exists in late 2026 will not be the version you know.
Naples in summer is a different city than Naples in February, and the dining scene is the clearest example of that. The people who stayed get the better version.
If you are thinking about your longer-term plans in this part of Southwest Florida and want a straightforward conversation about the market, Nicole Costa is happy to talk when the time is right. Until then, enjoy the tables that are open.
