Walk the 5000 block of Ocean Boulevard this month and you will pass two storefronts that did not exist a couple of years ago. One sells build-your-own poke bowls next door to Made in Rome Organic Gelato. The other, tucked into the Siesta Center across from Davidson Plaza, sells Turkish döner wraps double-marinated for five days. Both get called "new" in the same breath on local food round-ups. Only one of them actually is.
The distinction matters if you eat in the Village more than a couple times a month, because it tells you something about how this stretch of Sarasota's Gulf Coast actually works. The intersection of Ocean Boulevard and Avenida Messina, which locals treat as the Village's front porch, has spent nearly two decades consolidating under one ownership group. Understanding who owns what changes how you read every "grand opening" sign that goes up here.
The poke bowl that isn't a new owner
Siesta Poke opened at 5204 Ocean Boulevard, and since opening it has drawn steady praise from customers for its build-your-own bowls, açaí, and boba. Customers choose a protein (ahi tuna, salmon, or grilled chicken), a base, and a sauce made fresh daily. Katie Spelman, who works with the company behind it, called the concept a way for customers to design a bowl "more than 1,000 ways."
Here is the part that gets buried in the coverage: Siesta Poke is, as the Siesta Sand reported, "the latest restaurant creation of Chris Brown and Mike Granthon." The same two names sit behind the Summer House Steak & Seafood, The Hub Baja Grill, and The Cottage, all a few doors down on the same stretch of Ocean Boulevard and Avenida Messina. Brown and Granthon do business as Above the Bar Hospitality Group, and the poke counter is not really a new entrant to the Village. It is an established operator adding a new format to a portfolio it already dominates.
That portfolio goes back further than most residents realize.
How two partners came to own the corner
Brown, a Milwaukee native who moved to Sarasota in 1993, and Granthon, who arrived by way of Peru and Washington, D.C., met in 2005 when Brown bought the Beach Club, a bar that has been operating on Siesta Key since 1947. Granthon was already the general manager. They liked working together enough to formalize the partnership the following year, and from there the list of properties grew steadily rather than all at once.
| Year | Addition |
|---|---|
| 2005-06 | Beach Club (operating since 1947) |
| 2008 | The Hub Baja Grill |
| 2011 | The Cottage |
| 2014 | Eight buildings purchased in the Village, including the old Siesta Market property |
| 2018 | Summer House Steak & Seafood opens March 19 |
| 2022 | MVP (My Village Pub) opens in the former Napoli's space at 5200 Ocean Blvd |
| Most recently | Siesta Poke opens next to Made in Rome Organic Gelato |
By 2023, a Your Observer feature on the group noted that five separate-looking establishments at the Village's main intersection all traced back to the same two partners, "though you wouldn't know it from looking at them." Granthon has described the strategy in plain terms, comparing the cluster of concepts to a cruise ship where guests can visit a different style restaurant each night without leaving the ship. Their reach extends past Siesta Key too. The group also owns Joe's in Downtown Sarasota and holds an investment stake in Mad Moe's Pub and Grill in Osprey, and Brown separately owns the buildings that house Morton's Siesta Market and Another Broken Egg Cafe on Avenida Messina.
None of that makes Siesta Poke a bad addition. The bowls are good and the format fills a real gap for a quick, healthy option near the beach. But if you are trying to read the Village's food scene for signs of where it is actually headed, a sixth or seventh location from the same ownership group is a data point about that group's strategy, not about new energy arriving at the corner.
The döner shop that actually is new
The Duo Döner & Deli, at 5049 Ocean Boulevard inside the Siesta Center, is the real outlier on this block. It belongs to chef Jakub Skoczylas and his wife Maja Rakowiecka, a husband-and-wife team with no connection to Above the Bar. Skoczylas is a native of Poland whose path to Siesta Key ran through Sweden, Croatia, and the United Kingdom. He has said he worked with a Michelin chef in Sweden before an opportunity brought him to Florida, and before opening his own place he served as executive sous chef at Sarasota's exclusive Founders Club.
That resume shows up on the menu. The döner recipe, Skoczylas has explained, marinates for five days and blends techniques he picked up from Turkish friends in the U.K. with seasoning adjustments from every country he has cooked in. The shop also runs a deli counter alongside the wraps, with coffee, breakfast sandwiches, smash burgers, and paninis, aimed squarely at beachgoers who want something fast without a sit-down wait. Sarasota Magazine named it one of the city's best new restaurants, and repeat visitors on Yelp keep calling out Skoczylas by name in their reviews.
The Duo Döner is what a genuinely new small business looks like in the Village right now: independently financed, run by the people who own it, filling a gap none of the existing concepts had touched. It is also proof that new operators can still get a foothold on Ocean Boulevard, even in a corridor where one group controls most of the real estate.
"We like the idea of the multiple locations being different. It's like being on a cruise ship with different style restaurants you can visit in one week. It's perfect for tourists. We offer one-stop shopping within walking distance." — Mike Granthon, co-owner, Above the Bar Hospitality Group
What sits above the ownership lines
None of this matters to the storefronts this October, when the Village runs its own calendar regardless of who signs the lease. The Siesta Key Chamber of Commerce has confirmed two returning fixtures for fall 2026:
- Scarecrow Stroll, October 1-31, 2026. Participating businesses line their storefronts and walkways with handmade scarecrows for residents to stroll past, vote on, and shop around. The tradition only began in 2025, which makes this its second year.
- Safe Treats for Kids, October 31, 2026, 3 to 6 p.m. Sponsored by the Chamber, families trick-or-treat storefront to storefront across the Village, with balloons marking which businesses are participating. The event had to be scrapped in 2024 while the island was still recovering from hurricane damage, and its return in 2025 and continuation this year is as much a sign of the Village's recovery as it is a Halloween tradition.
Both events run on Chamber coordination, not corporate ownership, and both pull in businesses regardless of whether they answer to Above the Bar or to an independent owner like Skoczylas and Rakowiecka. That is the part of the Village that still functions as a shared civic space even as its commercial core consolidates.
Why this is worth knowing if you already live here
If you have lived near the Village for a while, you have probably felt the food scene start to feel a little repetitive even as new signs keep going up. This is why. A large share of what reads as variety on Ocean Boulevard is variety of format, not variety of ownership. Knowing that does not make the Summer House's steaks or Siesta Poke's ahi bowls any less enjoyable. It just means that when you want to see where something genuinely different might show up next, the smaller, independently owned storefronts, like the one Skoczylas and Rakowiecka built from scratch, are the ones worth watching.
Whether you are grabbing a döner wrap before a Scarecrow Stroll evening or deciding which corner booth to hit for dinner, the Village rewards knowing who is actually behind the counter. For anyone thinking further ahead about property near this stretch of the island, that same kind of on-the-ground detail is where Bonnie Schiavone spends most of her time. If you want a closer look at what living near Siesta Key Village is really like, block by block, explore the neighborhood guide or reach out any time. Let's Connect.
