Walk South Howard Avenue this month and you will pass two restaurants that did not exist a year ago sitting on addresses that have carried other names for decades. Keep walking two blocks north and a longtime diner that closed earlier this month has already reopened under new signage, same crew, same steak and eggs bowl. None of this reads like the standard restaurant-row turnover story, the one where a landlord raises rent and a new operator with no ties to the block moves in chasing foot traffic. What is actually happening on this stretch of SoHo in 2026 is closer to a family reclaiming its own address, three times over, in the same twelve months.
The corner that burned twice, in a sense
The building at 717 S. Howard Ave sat dark for two years after a January 2024 fire gutted the restaurant then known as 717 South. Owner Michael Stewart chose not to walk away from the site. On March 23, 2026, he reopened it as The Landon, with Hell's Kitchen veteran Chef Robert Hesse running a kitchen built around seafood, steaks, and a bread course that nods back to the old restaurant. The name is not a marketing exercise. Stewart named it for his son. Across the street, his other restaurant, AVA Inspired Italian, carries his daughter's name. Two concepts, two kids, opposite sides of the same block.
That detail matters more than it first appears. A restaurateur with no history on the street picks a name that tests well in focus groups. A restaurateur who has run a business on that corner long enough to lose it to a fire and rebuild picks a name that means something to his own family, then puts a second one directly across the street where he can see it from either doorway.
A block over, a different fire, a different family
The former Ciro's Speakeasy at 2109 Bayshore Blvd tells a similar story with an even longer memory attached. Ciro's had sat vacant since early 2024, its blacklit jellyfish tank and unmarked entrance a fixture of SoHo nightlife for over a decade before that. In its place, Quiote Tequilaria opened in late March as a modern Mexican restaurant and tequila lounge, built around premium mezcal and a fine dining menu for roughly 70 to 80 seats.
The owner, Gene Davis, is not a stranger to the address. His father, retired restaurateur Gordon Davis, opened the original Ceviche in that same spot before Ciro's ever existed there. Gene grew up around Le Bordeaux, Copperfish, Smoke, and Ciro's, all businesses his father built in South Tampa over the years. When he describes the space as gorgeous and the project as exciting, he is talking about a building his family has operated in some form for close to two decades. Executive Chef Felicia Lacalle, a Johnson & Wales graduate who spent a decade between Roy's and Samba Room before running Kuba Cocina, also has history with the Davis family's restaurants. This is not new blood moving into an old shell. It is the same families cycling through the same handful of addresses.
The diner that never left
Three blocks north, the pattern holds again, though with less renovation involved. Daily Eats, the long-beloved diner at 901 S. Howard Ave, made way this month for The Meeting House, which debuted August 20, 2026. The Ciccio Restaurant Group is keeping the same team and many of the same menu items. The steak and eggs bowl regulars have ordered for years is staying on the menu under new branding.
What makes this one worth knowing, if you live nearby, is the building's own history. Before Daily Eats ever moved in, that address was home to The Old Meeting House, a Tampa neighborhood hangout that ran for more than 50 years. The new name is not a rebrand dreamed up in a conference room. It is the building's original identity, returned to it.
Here is a quick reference for what has actually changed on the corridor this year, and what has stayed the same underneath the new signage:
| Address | Before | Now (2026) | The connection |
|---|---|---|---|
| 717 S. Howard Ave | 717 South, closed after a January 2024 fire | The Landon, opened March 23 | Same owner, Michael Stewart, who also runs AVA across the street |
| 2109 Bayshore Blvd | Ciro's Speakeasy, vacant since early 2024 | Quiote Tequilaria, opened in late March | Owner Gene Davis's father built the original Ceviche in the same space |
| 901 S. Howard Ave | Daily Eats | The Meeting House, opened August 20 | Same crew and menu staples, name restores the building's original identity |
Not every reopening is a family story
The corridor is not purely nostalgic. Fresh Kitchen, whose original location burned in a 2024 fire of its own, opened a new flagship in South Tampa on June 9, 2026, under the same brand but without the generational thread running through The Landon or Quiote. On the ground floor of Bayshore Gardens, O-Ku brought modern Japanese cuisine and seafood sourced from Tokyo's Toyosu Market into a spot that has no prior restaurant history to reference. Beach House Coffee opened on Manhattan Avenue as a bakery, cafe, and boutique hybrid, its own new fixture rather than a returning one.
So the corridor is doing two things at once. It is absorbing genuinely new concepts with no ties to the block, and it is watching several of its most recognizable old addresses come back under the same families that built them the first time. Both things are true, and neither cancels the other out. What stands out is how much local food press attention has gone to the reopenings rather than the newcomers, even though the newcomers are the ones bringing something the street did not have before.
What this means if you eat here regularly
If you have lived in South Tampa long enough to remember 717 South before the fire, or to have a soft spot for Ciro's jellyfish tank, or to have a standing order at Daily Eats, the practical takeaway is simple. Both The Landon and Quiote have already drawn dedicated coverage from Tampa Bay Times food critics within months of opening, the kind of attention a reopened landmark tends to generate faster than a brand new storefront with no memory attached to it.
The other takeaway is less about any single dinner and more about what the corridor is signaling. South Howard and the stretch of Bayshore around it are not being remade by outside capital moving in to flip vacant real estate. They are being rebuilt, address by address, by people who already had equity in these buildings in the form of memory, family, or both. That is a different kind of continuity than most restaurant rows get, and it is worth knowing if you are the one walking past these storefronts on a Tuesday trying to decide where to eat.
If you are weighing what a home near this stretch of South Tampa is worth right now, or thinking ahead to a move in or out of the neighborhood, The Davenport Group can walk you through what is actually happening on the ground here, block by block, the same way we have with this corridor's restaurant scene. Reach out when you are ready for a conversation grounded in what is really changing on the street, not just what shows up in a search result.
