Two New Restaurants Opened in the Village This Summer. The Real News Is Underground.
September 17, 2026
September 17, 2026
Siesta Poke opened on Ocean Boulevard in late August, and word traveled fast enough that Sarasota Magazine named it one of the best new restaurants in the region before Labor Day. A few doors down, chef Jakub Skoczylas and his wife Maja Rakowiecka opened The Duo Doner & Deli, bringing five-day marinated Turkish kebabs to a stretch of the Village that has mostly known tacos and steak. Both spots are already drawing lines.
None of that is the story. The story is happening in a county meeting room, where a seven-member task force spent its first three months learning that the word "beautification" in its own name was misleading. What they are actually working on this fall is stormwater, sewer lift stations, and trolley stops, the unglamorous plumbing that determines whether the Village floods the next time a storm comes through. Residents who only track the restaurant openings are watching the wrong renovation.
Siesta Poke and The Duo Doner & Deli both fill a gap the Village has talked about for years: fast, casual food you can eat standing up between the beach and your car. Siesta Poke is the latest project from Chris Brown and Mike Granthon, the two partners behind Above the Bar Hospitality Group, which already runs Summer House, The Cottage, The Hub Baja Grill, MVP, and the 1947-vintage Beach Club within a few blocks of each other. Brown and Granthon have spent nearly two decades buying up corners of the Ocean Boulevard and Avenida Messina intersection one building at a time, and Siesta Poke slots into that same footprint rather than expanding it. The Duo Doner & Deli is a different kind of bet: an independent husband-and-wife operation, with Skoczylas drawing on stints in Sweden, Croatia, and the U.K. and a run as executive sous chef at Founders Club before he and Rakowiecka opened their own counter.
Both openings read as confidence in foot traffic, not a gamble on a new concept. Quick-service counters are cheaper to open and easier to close than a 155-seat dining room like Summer House. That distinction matters more this year than most, because the Village's business owners have spent 2026 watching a much slower, much less visible project unfold at the county level, one that will decide whether the sidewalks those counters sit on can handle the next big storm.
Two things on Siesta Key have not changed in decades and are not up for a task force vote. The drum circle gathers on Siesta Beach roughly an hour before sunset every Sunday, a tradition that traces back to about 1996 and now draws a Facebook following of nearly 27,000 people who track it. Down the street, the Siesta Key Farmers Market sets up in the Village Plaza parking lot on Sunday mornings, rain or shine, offering produce, prepared food, and crafts alongside live music. These are the fixed points that make the Village feel like a neighborhood rather than a tourist strip, and they are also the reason so many people care what happens to the streets, drains, and trolley stops around them.
That is where the task force comes in.
Sarasota County commissioners created the Siesta Key Beautification Task Force by resolution on May 19, 2026, giving it a 24-month advisory mission and seven seats, one appointed by each commissioner plus two at-large members. On paper, the mandate covers streetscapes, landscaping, signage, and cleanliness. In practice, the group spent its first summer somewhere else entirely.
"It isn't all flowers and roses," Chairman Bob Luckner told the Siesta Key Association in early August, describing what the task force had actually been asked to look at: stormwater and sewer systems, traffic, trolley stops, and other infrastructure across the island. On August 14, Sarasota County Stormwater Director Ben Quartermaine briefed the group directly, a sign that the conversation had moved well past paint and plantings.
Kay Kouvatsos, who has run Village Cafe with her husband for 28 years, explained why residents pushed for this in the first place. "The storm drains that weren't cleaned out cause flooding," she said, describing damage that lingered long after Hurricanes Helene and Milton hit the island in 2024.
The task force has already taken concrete steps. Members voted to ask the county for street sweeping every two weeks in high-traffic areas and twice-weekly trash pickup where short-term rentals cluster, both aimed at the storm-drain blockages Kouvatsos described. They agreed to treat a privately funded engineering study, the RVi/Atwell Siesta Key Vision Study, as a foundation for future recommendations rather than starting from scratch.
Underneath the infrastructure talk is a funding argument that has been building since before the task force existed. Natalie Gutwein, who represents the Siesta Key Village Maintenance Corporation and helped organize the earlier Siesta Key Beautification Alliance, has made the same point to commissioners more than once:
"We bring in one-third of the tourism development dollars, but we're not getting any of it back."
The numbers behind that frustration are specific. Siesta Key Chamber chair Mason Tush told county commissioners in February that the island's post-hurricane tourism slowdown contributed to roughly a 24 percent drop in Siesta-related bed tax revenue during part of fiscal 2025. A member survey by Protect Siesta Key, a group that has often opposed higher-density development on the island, found that 75 percent of respondents prioritized infrastructure spending, with 69 percent naming stormwater systems as the top need.
That combination of falling tourism revenue and a resident base demanding drainage fixes is why the task force voted 6-1 in August to send a letter to the county's Tourist Development Council asking for a different allocation of tourism tax dollars. It is also why the group is treating trolley stops and sewer lift stations, not hanging baskets, as its real agenda this year.
The task force has already scheduled its next steps. A September 25 meeting is set to focus on trolley shelters and pullouts, led by task force member Mason Tush working alongside Jane Grogg, the county's director of transit who oversees the Breeze Transit bus and trolley system, alongside a separate discussion of sanitary sewer issues.
Running in parallel is the county's broader Siesta Key Community Master Plan, a longer-term planning effort that predates the task force. County staff told the group in August that the recommended consulting firm, Kimley-Horn and Associates, had been selected, with a contract expected to go before the County Commission for approval as soon as October or November. Task force members have said they hope the consultant will meet with them directly before the end of the year, possibly in December.
None of this will show up as a ribbon cutting or a new sign on Ocean Boulevard. It will show up, if it works, as drains that clear faster after the next heavy rain and a trolley system that actually gets people out of their cars during peak season. That is a slower kind of progress than a new poke counter, and a lot less photogenic, but it is the piece of Siesta Key's 2026 story that residents will still be living with long after the current restaurant openings have become just another stop on Ocean Boulevard.
The Village's food scene will keep turning over, the way it always has. What decides whether the next hurricane season looks different from the last one is being worked out in county meeting rooms this fall, by residents and task force members most of the island has never heard of. That is worth paying attention to, whether or not you ever set foot in the meeting.
If you are watching how Siesta Key is changing, from the newest counter on Ocean Boulevard to the infrastructure work that will shape the island for the next decade, GiGi Kuster lives this market and can talk you through what it means for property here. Create Your Sarasota Lifestyle.
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