For fifteen years, if you wanted a table at The Floridian, you crossed the Bridge of Lions to get it. Genie and Jeff McNally opened the restaurant on Cordova Street in 2010, moved it five years later into a restored 19th-century building on Spanish Street, and kept it there through 2025, building a following for a farm-to-fork menu with a Southern accent. In all that time, the restaurant never had a location on Anastasia Island.
That changed this summer. And in the same stretch of months, one of St. Augustine Beach's own longtime restaurants packed up and moved the other way. If you live on Anastasia Island and eat out more than once a week, you've probably felt this shuffle without being able to name it. Here's what actually happened, and why it landed in 2026 specifically instead of any other year.
The Plaza That Rebuilt Itself First
None of this starts with a restaurant. It starts with a grocery store.
The Publix at 1033 A1A Beach Blvd, the anchor of Anastasia Plaza, was demolished to make way for a much bigger replacement. The old store measured 48,500 square feet. The new one, which reopened on November 13, 2025, came in at 54,964 square feet, a jump of more than 13 percent. To make room for the bigger footprint, the plaza's owners razed several neighboring businesses, including Kato, First Vacation Rentals, and Rainbow Shades & Apparel, and rebuilt around the new store. Parking grew too, from 468 spaces to 481.
That extra square footage and reworked traffic flow mattered beyond the cereal aisle. Anastasia Plaza had spent more than a year as a construction zone. Once the anchor reopened, the plaza had room, and reason, to fill in around it. First Watch took that opening. The national breakfast chain opened its first St. Augustine Beach location in Anastasia Plaza, at 1081 A1A Beach Blvd, with a grand opening on June 8, 2026. The 3,900-square-foot space seats about 150 people, runs a covered patio and interior bar, and employs roughly 30 people on a schedule that ends by early afternoon.
A supersized grocery store and a national breakfast chain are the kind of openings that show up in every neighborhood roundup. They're not the interesting part of this story. The interesting part is what happened to the two homegrown names that had already been on the island for years.
The Beach Loses Purple Olive, Gains Beach Bagels
Purple Olive had been a fixture at 4255 A1A South in St. Augustine Beach for years, run by Peter and Kristen Kenney, who between them have more than two decades in St. Augustine's restaurant scene, including stints at Manatee Café, La Parisienne, and Gypsy Cab Co. In October 2025, Purple Olive relocated off its beachside spot and into the former Gypsy Cab Co. space at 828 Anastasia Boulevard, on the road that leads to the Bridge of Lions.
They didn't walk away from the old address. On March 4, 2026, the Kenneys opened Beach Bagels in that same unit, a breakfast and lunch café built around bagels, sandwiches, salads, and bowls. Kristen previously owned and ran Schmagel's Bagels downtown, so the concept isn't a stretch for her, it's closer to a return.
What that means on the ground: the same operators who built Purple Olive's reputation on Anastasia Island didn't abandon the beach when they moved their flagship inland. They split the difference, taking the fine-dining concept toward downtown and leaving something more casual, and more suited to a quick weekday breakfast, in the old spot.
The Floridian Finally Crosses the Bridge
Meanwhile, the McNallys were making the opposite move. After selling their Spanish Street building in 2025, they built a new 4,000-square-foot space from scratch at 485 Old Beach Road, about a mile south of the St. Augustine Amphitheatre. The new Floridian seats 120 across indoor and outdoor dining, with a private dining room, an outdoor courtyard, a full bar, and a quick-order bar window. Genie McNally continues as executive chef, running the same farm-to-table menu that built the brand downtown.
"This new building is just the next chapter, where we'll continue to focus on what matters."
The move wasn't sudden, and it wasn't the McNallys' only project this year. They also run Jefe's Fish Wagon, a seafood food truck that had been parked at Hornski's Brewing Co. at 100 Anastasia Blvd through Memorial Day weekend before they closed it on May 25, 2026, to concentrate on the new restaurant. And they run Bea's Fine Foods at 9 Anastasia Blvd, which shifted to lunch-only hours starting June 3, 2026, serving 10:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., Wednesday through Sunday. Two changes in the same season, both pointed at freeing up time for the beach opening.
Here's the plain version of what swapped places, side by side:
| Left the beach | Arrived at the beach | |
|---|---|---|
| Restaurant | Purple Olive | The Floridian |
| Years established before the move | Multiple years at 4255 A1A S | 15 years downtown (2010–2025) |
| New address | 828 Anastasia Blvd (former Gypsy Cab Co.) | 485 Old Beach Road |
| What replaced it | Beach Bagels, same owners | N/A, first-ever beach location |
Why This Is the Year It Happened
None of these four moves, the Publix rebuild, First Watch, Beach Bagels, and The Floridian, were coordinated. But they all landed in the same twelve-month window, on the same mile or two of road, for a reason that has less to do with coincidence and more to do with capacity. Anastasia Plaza spent over a year unable to support new tenants while its anchor was under construction. Once that anchor reopened with more square footage and more parking, the corridor had room to absorb a new national brand and give an established downtown name enough confidence in the market to build there for the first time in its history.
Purple Olive's move runs on a different logic entirely, one that's more personal than commercial. Splitting a single flagship into two concepts, one closer to downtown foot traffic and one built for a quick beach breakfast, is a hedge that only makes sense if you already know both sides of the bridge well enough to bet on each of them separately.
What This Actually Changes If You Live Here
If you're someone who already lives on Anastasia Island, here's what shifts in your week rather than in the abstract:
- Breakfast and lunch options along A1A Beach Blvd grew by two full sit-down spots this year, First Watch and Beach Bagels, both within a few minutes of each other near Anastasia Plaza.
- Grocery runs to Publix now happen in a store with more aisle space and 13 additional parking spots, a small but real change if you've fought for a space on a Saturday morning.
- Dinner reservations at The Floridian no longer require crossing the Bridge of Lions. The restaurant is now roughly a mile south of the Amphitheatre, on Old Beach Road.
- If Purple Olive was your go-to for a sit-down dinner at the beach, that specific address is now Beach Bagels, a breakfast and lunch spot. The full Purple Olive menu is still around, just at 828 Anastasia Boulevard instead.
None of this required a new road, a new zoning designation, or a ribbon-cutting from the city. It required one grocery store getting big enough to change what the rest of the plaza could support, and two restaurant families deciding, independently, that this was the year to bet on the other side of the bridge.
If you've lived here long enough to remember when The Floridian was strictly a downtown name, this is worth sitting with for a second. Fifteen years is a long time for a restaurant to decide the beach wasn't its market. Whatever changed their mind changed it this year, not the last ten.
For those of us who track what's happening block by block on Anastasia Island for a living, changes like these are part of what makes this stretch of coastline worth watching closely. If you're curious what a shifting commercial corridor means for property values nearby, or you're weighing your own next move on the island, The Hearn Group can walk you through it, starting with a free home valuation.
