Walk First Street on a Wednesday evening in July and the block feels different than it did last summer. There's a green velvet banquette glowing through the window of a century-old building that used to house something quieter. A hotel crane sits two blocks east. The Luminary's flagship restaurant has a new chef and a new name on the menu. None of this made a splash the way a beach opening does, and yet the district you already live near is turning into a chef-driven food corridor with actual hotel infrastructure behind it.
If you've been telling out-of-town family that "downtown is cute but there's not much new," it's time to update the script.
The First Street food shift
The single most talked-about opening downtown is Oise Ristorante, where James Beard Award semifinalist Brad Kilgore is running an itameshi kitchen.
