What's New in Ithaca This Summer? Restaurants & Events

Walk down North Aurora Street this month and you will find Sedona Mesa Grill serving Navajo tacos and a Chocolate Ancho Brisket Chili out of a building that has worn three names since 2022. Ask a longtime Ithacan what used to be there and you will probably get an answer that is already out of date, because this particular stretch of downtown has been quietly rebuilding itself all year without actually changing hands.

That is the part worth noticing. The story locals tell about downtown Ithaca right now is usually some version of "everything keeps closing." The more accurate story is that a small number of people who already run restaurants here keep opening new ones, in the same buildings, often within months of closing the last one. Understanding who is behind the churn changes how you read it.

One address, three restaurants, two owners

The building at 112 North Aurora Street has held a lot of concepts over the years, moving from Plums to Mahogany Grill to Creola Southern Steakhouse before its latest turn. Mahogany Grill closed on December 24, 2022, with its owners saying at the time they planned to reopen "with a new concept." Creola opened that following spring. Then this July, the same team closed Creola and reopened the space as Sedona Mesa Grill, a Southwestern concept built around Navajo tacos, elote variations, and hand-cut steaks.

The owners are Shayne and Mix Johnson, who also run a second Ithaca address. Their original restaurant, MIX Kitchen & Bar on Elmira Road, closed earlier this year and reopened under Mix Johnson as Modern Ohana, a tropical island fusion concept. So within the same twelve months, one couple closed and relaunched two separate Ithaca restaurants under two new names. Neither closure was a retreat from the market. Both were the same operators redeploying capital they already had, in buildings they already knew how to run.

The pattern isn't unique to one couple

A few blocks away, Atabey Restaurant & Lounge opened May 2, 2026, on the corner of North Aurora and East Seneca, in the space that used to hold Ooy's Cafe & Deli. It is the second restaurant from Janilex Pellot and Kevin Ramos, who opened La Bamba Cuisine in Cortland back in 2023. Pellot has said other Ithaca restaurant owners pushed the pair to open here, describing conversations with people already running places downtown who encouraged them to commit to the harder, more distinctive concept rather than something that already exists in town.

That detail matters more than it sounds. The people telling Pellot and Ramos to go for it were not outside investors or a corporate group scouting Ithaca from afar. They were other operators who already had a stake in the same three or four blocks. Tavern on the Commons, which opened in the old Kilpatrick's Publick House space during Apple Harvest Festival weekend, fits the same shape: local hospitality veterans with decades of combined experience in Ithaca specifically, moving into a space they understood rather than a market they were still learning.

If you live here, this is the useful part. A closed sign in a familiar window does not automatically mean a dying block. More often lately it has meant the same people are about to reopen with a different idea, because they already know the landlord, the permitting timeline, and how foot traffic behaves here in a way a first-time operator from outside would not.

The waterfront got something genuinely new

Downtown's churn is buildings changing names. The waterfront's story this year is different: it is actual new infrastructure. The Ithaca Farmers Market's 2026 outdoor season opened at Steamboat Landing with a completed parking lot and improved walkways, funded by a $3.2 million grant from the New York Department of State. The project had been underway the year before but wasn't finished in time for the 2025 opening. This year it was.

That completed pavilion approach became the setting for Taste of the Finger Lakes on the evening of June 9, a benefit drawing more than 50 restaurants, caterers, wineries, and distillers, with proceeds supporting food equity groups including Foodnet Meals on Wheels and the Trumansburg Food Pantry. The market itself runs Saturdays through the end of October, with Sunday hours starting each May and an East Hill Wednesday market running May through October, all connected by the Cayuga Waterfront Trail that also threads past Stewart Park, the Ithaca Children's Garden, and Cass Park.

Where the food trucks decided to cluster

Not every new opening this year came with a lease. A loose cluster of food trucks has formed at 301 Taughannock Blvd, next to the Jewelbox, and it is worth knowing what is actually parked there if you are hunting for dinner on a weeknight:

• Yxi's Arepas & The Chef Gordito, serving Venezuelan and Mexican food, gluten free
• On the Street Pitas
• DotCU Cuban Food, run by Sergio and Iramis Fernandez, formerly based at Personal Best Brewing
• Gelato da Enzo, an ice cream stop run by the same operator behind Merendino's pizza

Separately, Aakama, a Japanese and Tibetan truck started by Norbu and Phurbu Tsering after they relocated from Queens, has become a regular at the Farmers Market's Steamboat Landing and East Hill Plaza locations on weekends and Wednesdays.

The calendar that already shaped this summer, and what's still coming

GrassRoots wrapped up its 34th year at the Trumansburg fairgrounds July 16 through 19, with Rhiannon Giddens, Taj Mahal, and the Del McCoury Band among more than 80 acts, drawing a crowd that has run around 20,000 people in recent years. If you missed it, the next big date on the shared calendar is Ithaca's own Porchfest, its 18th year, scheduled for Sunday, September 20, from noon to 6pm across the porches and yards of the Fall Creek and Northside neighborhoods. Organizers have a fourth annual Makers Market running alongside it this year, with performer sign-ups closing August 15 and food vendor applications due August 10.

None of this is a coincidence of timing. GrassRoots draws people into the region in July. The Farmers Market and its Wednesday satellite carry the summer. Porchfest closes it out in September before the weather turns. Whoever is deciding where to put a new restaurant or a food truck this year is deciding it against that rhythm, not against a blank calendar.

What this actually tells you about the block

Restaurant openings and closings get treated as noise, the kind of local trivia that fills a newsletter and nothing more. But look closely at who keeps showing up on both sides of those openings and closings and a clearer picture forms. The Johnsons run two Ithaca kitchens and just relaunched both. Pellot and Ramos scaled from Cortland into downtown Ithaca on the encouragement of operators who were already here. The people running the Farmers Market secured a $3.2 million grant and actually finished the project this year, not the last. None of that is instability. It is a small, connected group of people who already understand this specific stretch of the city continuing to bet on it.

If you have lived here a while, you already knew the names changed fast. What might be new is realizing how often the same hands are behind the new sign.

I spend a lot of time paying attention to exactly this kind of pattern, not because it is charming trivia but because it tells you something real about how a neighborhood is actually performing, block by block, season by season. If that's the kind of on-the-ground read you want on Ithaca, whether you're just curious or thinking ahead, Brian DeYoung is a good person to know. Let's Connect.