"We were a meatball hero and Styrofoam cup kind of place when we first started," Paul Caragiulo told Sarasota Magazine in early 2025, describing the restaurant his father, Tony, opened with his sons at 69 S. Palm Ave. in 1989. Over 36 years it became a comfort-food staple with a lunch hour full of regulars, many of them business owners from nearby.
The family set Tuesday, Oct. 27, as the public opening date for the new Caragiulos at 1833 Ringling Blvd., nearly a year after the last meal on Palm Avenue. The meatballs and the 37-layer lasagna are back on the menu, but the new Caragiulos was planned around dinner, with a room, new plates and prices to match.
Fifteen years left on the lease
When demolition of the 1920s building was proposed in 2022, Paul said the restaurant's lease ran through 2040. Dr. Mark Kauffmann, the longtime owner, sold the property to Seaward Development for $17.3 million in 2023 with that lease still in effect. The demolition request was denied because of the building's historic merit, so the project changed shape. It now restores the Mediterranean Revival frontage on Palm Avenue and builds two 18-story condominium towers behind it.
Caragiulos closed on Palm Avenue in October 2025 with about 15 years still left on its original lease. Kauffmann ties the two chapters together: he also owns the Ringling Boulevard property, less than a mile from the old spot, where the family built its new home. Even so, Paul told the magazine that leaving the Mira Mar after all those years "wasn't easy."
As of SRQ Daily's April 13, 2026 report, the City of Sarasota had issued the construction permit for Mira Mar Residences, 70 residences across the two towers, and every tenant had moved out of the century-old building. Work starts with rehabilitating the historic buildings, moves to the towers, and returns at the end to finish the restoration. Anyone walking past the old Caragiulos patio this fall is looking at the first phase of that sequence.
A room built for long evenings
The plan to center dinner was announced early. In the January 2025 Sarasota Magazine piece on the move, the family said the menu would stay largely the same, with roughly 150 seats, a full bar, and dinner as "the primary focus." The finished building shows it.
| Palm Avenue | Ringling Boulevard | |
|---|---|---|
| Address | 69 S. Palm Ave., inside the Mira Mar | 1833 Ringling Blvd. |
| Years | 1989 to October 2025 | Public opening set for Oct. 27, 2026 |
| Building | 1920s Mediterranean Revival plaza | New building by Javi Suárez of Suarez Architecture |
| Size | Storefront in a two-story plaza | About 4,300 square feet, 150 seats, full bar, covered patio |
| Known for | Pizza, pasta, house salad, busy lunch hour | Dinner, with music and atmosphere at the center |
From the street, a tall brick arch at the entrance is the main gesture. Inside, textured glass globes hang at different heights. Vintage Italian film posters, portraits and paintings fill the walls in mismatched frames, alongside wood paneling, lit liquor displays and period table lamps. "It's like a Mastroianni movie from 1968," Paul told Sarasota Magazine.
The design came from Luciano Botta, a longtime family friend and founder of the Milan interior design firm Compagnia Pacifico. He described it as an evolution of the restaurant from its 1980s beginnings, not a copy of the Palm Avenue room. A shipping container brought lighting, furniture, tables and art collected in Italy. Venetian artisans made the Murano glass fixtures, and the vintage furniture was restored and reupholstered in Italy before it shipped.
Paul's vinyl collection sits behind the bar, and the sound system was designed around it. The 14.5-foot gold curtains were made by his mother, Anna, the 87-year-old Caragiulo matriarch. Paul says they improve the room's acoustics. "When you put the vinyl on in the space, it's pretty remarkable," he told the magazine. "And now that my mother finally put the curtains up, it sounds even better."
Paul has also said plainly where the family's priorities sit. 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 quotes the British chef Marco Pierre White's ranking: "atmosphere, service, food," in that order. On some nights he'll be the one playing records, from a collection that includes the Italian singers Gianni Morandi and Domenico Modugno.
What made the trip from 69 S. Palm
These pieces of the Palm Avenue restaurant moved to Ringling Boulevard with the family:
- The bar. Marble from the Palm Avenue bar was cut into strips and set into the new bar.
- The walls. Artwork and the original Italian film posters from the old restaurant are back. Botta told the magazine the posters "are authentic prints from their time."
- The staff. During the closure, many longtime employees worked at the family's other restaurants and are expected to return. Family members will rotate through the new location. Those other restaurants are Veronica Fish & Oyster and Owen's Fish Camp.
- The shelves. Dividers in the dining room hold old-world plate sets, amaretto cookie tins, Italian cookbooks and ceramic figurines, the kind of objects found in many Italian family homes. A vintage meat slicer is on display nearby.
The staff will likely matter most to longtime regulars. Erin McLeod, now president and CEO of Senior Friendship Centers, worked at Caragiulos in the early 1990s. She told Sarasota Magazine she remembers the "dizzying energy of lunch service" and slow afternoons when Rob Caragiulo would photocopy the newspaper crossword so the staff could race to finish it. "I still recognize regulars to this day, decades later," she said.
The menu, old and new
The menu is where the shift shows most. The dishes regulars ordered for years are still there, and the new dishes go higher. Prices below are from the menu posted online before opening, as reported by Sarasota Magazine in October 2026.
| Returning favorites | Price | New to the menu | Price |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pizzette | $14 to $15.95 | My Mother's Pasta: rigatoni, fava bean purée, chicory, English peas, ricotta salata | $23 |
| Meatballs | $21 | Spaghettini with Cedar Key clams | $26 |
| Pasolini: pasta with Gorgonzola cream and sun-dried tomatoes | $23 | Handmade cappellacci with king crab, corn, polenta, 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 bone-in bistecca Fiorentina, sliced, with two sides | $115 |
Most of the returning favorites sit between $14 and $25. At the top of the new list, the 40-ounce bistecca Fiorentina comes sliced with two sides for $115, and the veal chop Milanese is $59. Sarasota Magazine ties the higher prices to the setting: a purpose-built dining room with commissioned glass, restored vintage furniture, a full bar and a sound system designed around the records. The 2025 plans also mentioned family-style dishes and Anna's homemade biscotti.
Planning your first visit
The Ringling Boulevard location had its first real crowd on Wednesday, Oct. 14, at an invitation-only preview, the Sarasota Herald-Tribune reported. Guests had Anna Caragiulo's limoncello along with tastes of the meatballs, mortadella in gnocco and tiramisu.
If your habit was a midday plate of pasolini near Palm Avenue, check the current hours and reservation details on caragiulos.com or the restaurant's Facebook page before you go. The new room was planned around dinner, and the schedule may reflect that. For a first dinner with friends, the room has 150 seats and a covered patio.
Downtown Sarasota addresses are full of stories like this one, and they come up a lot when we help clients choose which blocks they want to be close to. If a favorite table moving across town has you thinking about your own next address, Brenda Wolfe is glad to talk through it. Let's talk about your next move. Schedule a consultation.
