After 15 years on Lakeland’s south side, Cafe Zuppina is moving downtown.
Owners Berna Nar, 61, and her husband Erkan, 65, opened the Eastern European and Mediterranean restaurant at 4417 S. Florida Ave. in 2009. A decade later, they added a market, bakery and coffeehouse.
The couple believes now is the perfect time to make another big leap — into the space formerly occupied by Cafe Roti at 116 S. Tennessee Ave. The location has been vacant since the former Indian restaurant closed in the fall of 2022.
The sidewalk was cordoned off and work was underway at the site Wednesday. Berna Nar said she hopes to open in February.
“The location is a very good opportunity for us … Downtown is becoming the center of restaurants. Every day, a new restaurant is opening. I want to be a part of it,” said Nar, who spent six months looking for a new location.
Nar said she’s excited to offer table service again. Cafe Zuppina shifted to a takeout model when the COVID-19 pandemic hit and continued to operate that way. She said she wants the restaurant — known for its Brussels sprouts, home-cooked meals and vegetable platter — to be open every day and open later in the evenings.
“We plan to be open until 9 on weekdays and until 10 on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays,” Nar said.
With the new space, she’s quadrupling her capacity from 25 people to about 100. And with that, comes a bit of nervousness, too.
“I want a big kitchen to cook better and serve the people in the best way,” she said. “It’s very exciting, but at the same time, kind of scary. We have to restart.”
The chef says she has some “surprises” in store, with new meals being added to the menu. She wants to offer some meals that are made quickly, to please people who work downtown and have limited time to eat lunch. She’s also exploring working with food delivery apps.
“I want to be the healthy food choice for downtown Lakeland and serve hearty warm food. We specialize in gluten-free and dairy-free products. This is not junk food. Our ingredients are the expensive ones,” Nar added, explaining that she cooks with a lot of organic foods.
Cafe Zuppina’s beginnings
The couple is from Turkey. They moved to the United States 22 years ago, while Nar was battling some health issues and seeking treatment here. Her food has Turkish and Romanian influences, as her mother is from Romania.
Nar said they plan to open the restaurant first and then the market later, in the back portion of the new site. She needs to hire about 10 people immediately, including experienced servers and kitchen support staff.
Before the pandemic, Cafe Zuppina had a small restaurant with a maximum capacity of about two dozen people. However, the structure of the building made it difficult for her to serve her customers. She was leasing two buildings and would have to cook the food in one building and bring it over to the other building, where her customers were seated.
“The building is old and not fit (for a) restaurant,” Nar said. “The two buildings were not convenient for moving food from one building to the other.”
She said the limited seating caused issues for her customers.
“The biggest complaint was people hated waiting outside,” Nar said.
She and her husband decided to renovate the second building and turn it into a market and coffee house, serving baked goods and selling Eastern European items.
“We have been there for 15 years. It has been a long time. During this time, we tried to change and made the coffee house. We created a new, nice looking coffee house. We spent so much money changing the inside and fixing it,” Nar said.
Then, the pandemic happened.
“It was a bad time for everyone. I don’t know how we survived. It’s a miracle. I appreciate all of Lakeland for supporting me.”
A vibrant downtown food scene
Julie Townsend, executive director of the Lakeland Downtown Development Authority, said the eatery will be a “great addition” to the downtown food scene.
“Cafe Zuppina is already a successful restaurant; they have proof of concept in their current location,” Townsend said. “It’s exciting to have them move here and be part of our growing restaurant district.”
Several other new spots are also in the works. The owners of Lakeland’s first traditional Japanese ramen shop — Sābu in The Joinery — are planning to open a Japanese-inspired restaurant at 207 E. Main St., between Linksters and Black & Brew. Hakucho will be a Japanese pub with cocktails, small tapas-style plates, yakitori, ramen and udon. It is expected to open in the spring.
“That parcel on Main Street has been vacant for a long, long, long time. Probably 15 years,” Townsend said. “We’re really happy that it’s going to be filled with a restaurant and they’re going to use the sidewalk for a sidewalk cafe.”
Soloman Wassef, owner of the Lakeland Loft cigar and jazz lounge on the second floor of 201 E. Main St., plans to open a casual, tropical-themed bar downstairs in the space formerly occupied by Dart World Gaming Arena. The Island Breeze Tiki Bar will offer Caribbean drinks, recorded island music and covered patio seating.
City commissioners approved a conditional use permit for the beach-themed establishment in April, but little visible progress has been made on the site since then. A poster in the window says “a cool breeze is blowing in, Summer ’23” but lettering over the door still says Dart World Gaming Arena. No opening date has been announced, although Townsend said hopefully it will happen by this coming summer.
Townsend said having a variety of non-chain bars and restaurants makes downtown Lakeland more attractive as a dining destination.
“The whole idea is: Come downtown, and then decide where you’re going to eat,” Townsend said. “Having different types of cuisines and international foods to choose from really makes it a better experience for everybody who comes downtown because they have so many different choices.”
She added that Cafe Zuppina’s market will be a nice complement to the Latin-inspired Bodega Market at 106 N. Tennessee Ave.
“Having that market component gives customers another reason to walk in their doors for things other than just lunch and dinner,” Townsend said.
“We want people to say, ‘We can find things downtown that you can’t find in other places,’ and just be that cool little district where you walk into indie-type markets and find unique things to put on your dinner table — above and beyond the unique meals that you can have at the restaurants themselves.”
Few vacancies remain downtown
At a time when many cities’ downtowns are “dead, dying or on life support,” according to Fortune magazine, Lakeland’s is on an upswing. Townsend said with the new additions, there are very few vacant commercial spaces left downtown — or at least few that are viable.
“There’s the Crispers building. There’s been a lot of interest in that, but the owner is not quite ready to pull any triggers on that location. She’s got some ideas that she wants to get all fleshed out before she makes a decision,” she said.
There is also the recently renovated mixed-use building at 238 N. Massachusetts Ave., now known as the Eli Witt Building. The nearly 100-year-old structure housed the Monarch Market grocery in the 1930s and the Eli Witt Cigar store from 1947 to 1968. It serves as the headquarters for Madden Branded Goods and West Point One LLC, which owns it, but there are at least three spaces available for tenants, including ground-floor retail.
“It has lease options already in the works, so we should see some kind of food establishment popping up in that location soon,” Townsend said.
Unfortunately, there are at least two prime downtown spaces in “serious disrepair” — one on Main Street and one on Kentucky Avenue — that are frustrating further renewal. Townsend said the owners are “unmotivated” to improve or sell the properties and neither the city nor the LDDA has the power to take them through eminent domain.
latest news
Something went wrong. Please refresh the page and/or try again.