Anna Caragiulo is 87, and she sewed the curtains. The gold drapes in the new Caragiulos dining room are 14.5 feet tall. Her son Paul Caragiulo, a co-owner, told Sarasota Magazine that their real job is acoustic. "When you put the vinyl on in the space, it's pretty remarkable," he said. "And now that my mother finally put the curtains up, it sounds even better."
That detail explains the restaurant at 1833 Ringling Blvd., which was scheduled to open to the public on Tuesday, Oct. 27, nearly a year after the last meal on Palm Avenue. For 36 years the old Caragiulos built up its character a little at a time in a 1920s building. The new one was designed to have that character on day one. That choice runs through everything else, from the salvaged marble to the price of the veal chop.
Atmosphere, service, food, in that order
Paul Caragiulo has said plainly how he thinks about the business. Sarasota Magazine reports that he describes the family as being in the venue business and only "incidentally" in the food business, as long as the food is done well. He borrows a line from the British chef Marco Pierre White:
"At the end of the day, atmosphere, service, food—in that order."
That makes the new building easier to read. The restaurant is about 4,300 square feet, with 150 seats, a full bar and a covered patio. From Ringling Boulevard it looks restrained, with a tall brick arch at the entrance. Inside are textured glass globes hung at different heights, vintage Italian film posters and paintings in mismatched frames, wood paneling, lit liquor displays and period table lamps.
"It doesn't look like it was just built," Paul told the magazine. "It's like a Mastroianni movie from 1968."
Two designers worked on that look. Javi Suárez of Suarez Architecture designed the building, and he described the job as reinterpreting Italian American architecture "through a contemporary lens" on "a challenging lot." Luciano Botta, a longtime family friend who founded the Milan interior design firm Compagnia Pacifico, did the interior. He said he tried "to imagine the evolution of Caragiulos, from its beginnings in the 1980s through today."
Why the old room couldn't come along
Caragiulos opened at 69 S. Palm Ave. in 1989. Tony Caragiulo started it with his sons John, Mark, Rob, Anthony and Paul. "We were a meatball hero and Styrofoam cup kind of place when we first started," Paul told Sarasota Magazine in 2025.
The move had been underway for years before the doors closed. Seaward Development bought the Mira Mar in May 2023, and in December 2023 the Observer reported plans for a new Caragiulos at 1833 Ringling Blvd., between Links Drive and Osprey Avenue. The site was a surface parking lot then.
Sarasota Magazine says the restaurant's Palm Avenue lease ran through 2040. Caragiulos left with about 15 years still on it. The landlord stayed the same. Dr. Mark Kauffmann sold the Mira Mar to Seaward for $17.3 million in 2023, and he also owns the Ringling Boulevard land under the new building. Leaving "wasn't easy," Paul told the magazine, even with that continuity.
The schedule also slipped. In fall 2025, Sarasota Magazine reported that the Palm Avenue closing would be pushed back a few weeks past the planned Oct. 26 date because of "unforeseen delays" at the new site. At the time, the Ringling opening was set for January 2026. The public opening was eventually set for Oct. 27, 2026. The family spent most of a year without its flagship. Many longtime employees worked at the family's other restaurants during the gap and are expected to return.
What made the trip across downtown
The old room's atmosphere took decades to build, and the family couldn't wait that long for the new one. So they brought pieces of the old place and shipped in old things from Italy. Sarasota Magazine's preview lists what came over:
- Bar marble from Palm Avenue, cut into strips and set into the new bar
- Artwork and original Italian film posters from the former restaurant
- A shipping container of lighting, furniture, tables and art collected in Italy
- Murano glass fixtures commissioned from Venetian artisans
- Vintage furniture restored and reupholstered in Italy before it was shipped to Sarasota
The shelves that divide the room carry more of the same idea: old-world plate sets, amaretto cookie tins, Italian cookbooks and small ceramic Madonna figurines. A vintage meat slicer sits on display too. Botta said the posters "are authentic prints from their time" and stressed "real, authentic things—not replicas, not imitations."
Paul's records are part of it as well. The sound system was built around his vinyl collection, which includes the Italian singers Gianni Morandi and Domenico Modugno, and he'll sometimes be the one playing them. Family members will rotate through the new location.
The menu follows the room
If the room comes first and the food third, the menu shows what that costs. The favorites are still there, and the top of the menu now goes much higher. Here are some prices from the menu the restaurant posted before opening, as reported by Sarasota Magazine:
| Returning from Palm Avenue | Price | New on Ringling | Price |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pizzette | $14–$15.95 | Spaghettini with Cedar Key clams | $26 |
| Meatballs | $21 | My Mother's Pasta, rigatoni with fava bean purée | $23 |
| Pasolini, pasta with Gorgonzola cream | $23 | Cappellacci with king crab and pecorino butter | $37 |
| 37-layer lasagna | $25 | Halibut cacciucco with mussels and prawns | $43 |
| Chicken parmigiana | $32 | 20-ounce bone-in veal chop Milanese | $59 |
| 40-ounce bistecca Fiorentina with two sides | $115 |
Everything in the left column costs $32 or less. Some new pastas are priced right alongside the old ones, but the right column goes up to $115. A regular can still order the same pasolini and meatballs as always. The bigger new plates are for a different kind of evening, the celebration dinner or the table of six sharing a bistecca, and the room was built to hold that kind of night. Sarasota Magazine linked the higher prices directly to the purpose-built dining room, the commissioned glass, the restored furniture, the full bar and the sound system.
What's rising at 69 S. Palm Ave.
The old corner is changing as well. Seaward's project, Mira Mar Residences, plans 70 condominiums in two 18-story towers behind the historic Palm Avenue structure, with retail and restaurant space at street level.
- May 2023. Seaward buys the Mira Mar for $17.3 million.
- Late 2025. Caragiulos serves its final meals on Palm Avenue.
- May 20, 2026. The project holds its official groundbreaking, Longboat Key News reported, with completion targeted for the end of 2028.
- August 2026. WWSB reported that demolition had begun. Seaward said it would be finished in October, and the station gave early 2029 as the expected completion for the towers.
Seaward told WWSB that the Mira Mar was Sarasota's first hotel and that keeping pieces of that history is a priority. The station reported plans to work historic architectural elements into the new building and to create an on-site history hall with artifacts. "New is simple," Seaward principal Patrick DiPinto told WWSB. "Taking a property like this with a 100-year-old historic building and incorporating the historical building into the new 18-story concrete structure is very complex."
So pieces of the same building are being saved in two places. The towers will keep parts of the Mira Mar's architecture, and its longest-running restaurant took its own pieces with it, down to strips of the old bar top.
Planning a first dinner on Ringling
The address is 1833 Ringling Blvd. As of mid-October, the restaurant's official site still said "opening soon" and pointed people to its social media for updates. It had not posted hours or a reservation link, so check there and on the restaurant's Facebook page before you go.
If Caragiulos is full, the same family runs these restaurants:
- Owen's Fish Camp, 516 Burns Court downtown and 6516 University Parkway
- Burns Mercantile, 530 Burns Lane
- Veronica Fish & Oyster, 1830 S. Osprey Ave.
Farther up Ringling, Tastes of the Philippines at 1987 Ringling Blvd. is another new downtown spot, a fast-casual Filipino restaurant. Its site lists hours of 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Saturday, closed Sunday.
Following downtown changes like the Caragiulos move and the Mira Mar towers is part of Shane Lewis's everyday work with downtown Sarasota owners. If you own a home or condo near Palm Avenue, Ringling Boulevard or Burns Court and want to know where it stands this season, start with Get Your Instant Home Valuation, then let Shane walk you through what the numbers show.
