Riviera 89 opened last week in Suite 305 at 100 Marketside Avenue, sliding pasta imported from Italy and French onion soup onto tables where Catullo's Italian used to serve dinner. Three doors down, in Suite 301 of that same building, a sign for Asado Life has gone up where Dick's Wings closed out its lease. Two storefronts, one street address, both turned over inside the same year.
If you've been reading Town Center as one long strip where restaurants come and go at random, the building at 100 Marketside is worth a second look. It's the clearest evidence yet that this year's changes aren't scattered. They're concentrated, and knowing which is which, open, opening, or just a name on a lease, changes what you actually plan around this fall.
The Same Building, Twice
Catullo's Italian closed in June after three years in Suite 305. By mid-September, Riviera 89 had taken the space, run by French restaurateurs Anthony and Emeric Roy Perruccio, who describe their concept as an Italian kitchen with a French soul. The pasta is imported, the Pinsa Romana is oven-baked, and the menu also runs through French staples like croque monsieur and steak frites.
Suite 301, right next door, tells a different part of the same story. Dick's Wings closed out its space earlier this year, and by August, Nocatee's developer had announced Asado Life as the incoming tenant. A trade report on September 18 confirmed the lease was signed and that Regency Centers now lists Asado Life on the space, a 3,415-square-foot unit near the intersection of Nocatee Parkway and Crosstown Parkway. No opening date has been set.
That's the distinction that matters if you're deciding where to eat this month: one of these two spaces is serving dinner tonight, and the other is still just a name behind glass.
What You Can Actually Walk Into
Riviera 89 is open now, seven days a week, running 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Sunday through Thursday and 11 a.m. to midnight Friday and Saturday, with dinner service starting at 5 p.m. daily. The 80-seat restaurant pulls double duty as a casual lunch stop and a sit-down dinner, with a menu that ranges from spaghetti, penne, rigatoni and gnocchi in-house sauces like pomodoro and carbonara to French-leaning plates like quiche and Alsatian-inspired dishes, a nod to the owners' home region in France.
The Perruccios reportedly scouted several Florida cities before settling on Nocatee, citing the area's atmosphere and sense of community as the deciding factor. For anyone living nearby, that means an Italian and French menu is now on the block where Catullo's used to serve dinner.
What's Only a Sign So Far
Asado Life is a different kind of arrival. This isn't a new restaurant testing an idea. It's an established, live-fire Argentinian concept expanding into its third Northeast Florida location, following an original in St. Augustine and a location that opened this past August in the Jacksonville Shipyards along the Riverwalk. The brand's approach centers on cooking over open flame, with chef's cuts, chorizo, grilled chicken and seafood making up the core of its existing menus elsewhere in the region.
None of that changes the fact that Suite 301 is still dark. As of the most recent reporting in mid-September, no opening date had been announced. For fall dinner plans, Riviera 89 next door is the one serving now, and Asado Life is the one to watch for an opening announcement.
The Other Corner That Already Reset
Marketside Avenue isn't the only address that changed hands this year. A few minutes away on Crosswater Parkway, Salata opened back in April in Suite B, taking over the space that used to be Coastal Wine Market & Tasting Room. It's easy to forget that one already happened. Five months in, Salata has had time to become a normal lunch stop rather than a new opening, which is exactly the point: turnover in Town Center doesn't always announce itself with a grand opening banner. Sometimes it just quietly becomes part of the routine.
The Nocatee location is owned by Jason and Sandy O'Hara, a husband-and-wife team with deep restaurant experience and long-standing ties to Jacksonville, where Jason was stationed with the military more than two decades ago. It's their first Salata, and the brand's return to the Florida market after an absence. On opening day, the restaurant donated 25 percent of proceeds to HUGS St. Johns, a local nonprofit that provides emergency clothing, food and school supplies to families in the county.
Put the three changes side by side and a pattern comes into focus. Within about six months in 2026, three separate storefronts across two addresses in Nocatee Town Center changed hands: a wine bar became a salad counter, a three-year-old Italian restaurant became a French-Italian one, and a wing spot became the future home of a regional steakhouse-style concept still finding its opening date.
What Hasn't Moved
The turnover is real, but it's also narrower than it might feel from the outside. The Town Center's other anchors, Chophouse at Nocatee, First Watch, Jersey Mike's Subs, M Shack, South Kitchen, The Loop and Treylor Park, haven't changed hands this year. Seven names on that list are still exactly where they were twelve months ago. What changed is three specific units, not the character of the whole strip.
That's worth knowing before you draw conclusions about where the neighborhood's dining scene is headed. It isn't a wholesale reset. It's two buildings, three leases and a six-month window where the timing happened to line up. The next time someone tells you Town Center is unrecognizable from a year ago, the more accurate version is that two corners of it are, and one of those corners is still waiting on its tenant to open the doors.
If you're trying to keep track of what's actually open versus what's still just a sign, Laura Worrell keeps a close eye on the businesses moving through Nocatee Town Center and is always glad to compare notes with anyone who lives nearby.
