Forbici Modern Italian is coming to Sundial in downtown St. Pete

Downtown St. Pete has been holding its breath for this one.

After nearly three years of planning and construction, Forbici Modern Italian has finally set an opening date for its highly anticipated St. Pete location — and it's June 24th.

If you've been making the drive to Hyde Park Village just to get your fix of Calabrian chicken wings and 72-hour fermented Roman pizza, you can officially put away your car keys.

What Is Forbici, and Why Should You Care?

The St. Pete restaurant will be the second location for Forbici, which first opened in Tampa's Hyde Park Village in 2019.

Since then it's become one of the most reliably great Italian restaurants on either side of the bay — not a white-tablecloth-and-attitude kind of place, but the kind where you end up staying two hours longer than you planned.

Next Level Brands, the hospitality group behind the restaurant, also operates Boulon Brasserie & Bakery, Union New American, and Predalina. This will be their first St. Pete restaurant, and they join a growing list of Tampa restaurateurs making the jump across the bridge.

That last part is worth noting — Tampa restaurant groups aren't crossing over unless they believe in the market. Forbici clearly does.

The Space: A Big Upgrade for Sundial

Forbici will open in the second-floor space formerly occupied by Sea Salt, which closed at the end of 2024 after nearly 10 years in business.

Sea Salt was a downtown institution, so the shoes to fill here are genuinely large.

The 12,000-square-foot Italian restaurant will officially debut at 183 2nd Avenue North in downtown St. Pete's Sundial retail complex.

After a multi-million-dollar renovation, the restaurant now features an expansive outdoor patio, a private dining room, multiple TV-lined bars, and a sprawling dining space with seating for up to 350 guests.

While the Tampa restaurant features exposed brick walls with family portraits, warm wood tones, and touches of pop art, the St. Pete space will offer a dimly lit ambiance with a color palette of red, green, orange, and gray. In the dining lounge, shelves of fine wines wrap around the walls above expansive glass windows, setting a sophisticated tone that carries into the main dining room.

And the outdoor component is a nice bonus:

Next Level Brands will also run Drift, a new outdoor cocktail bar in the Sundial courtyard, occupying 1,500 square feet with 26 seats and lounge areas for another 50 guests.

A rooftop aperitivo spot and 350-seat Italian restaurant all in one visit? That's a proper night out.

What's on the Menu?

The pizza — considered the star of the menu — is a modern take on a Roman classic, featuring dough that is fermented for 72 hours and baked at high temperatures to achieve a light, airy crust. Guests can choose between square (teglia) and round (tonda) pizzas.

For lunch, Forbici will offer sandwiches, salads, pizzas, and pasta dishes, while dinner features a lineup of antipasti, handmade pastas, seafood, steaks, and traditional Italian entrées.

Popular starters include wagyu beef carpaccio, fried calamari, Calabrian chicken wings, meatballs, and mussels sautéed with white wine, tomatoes, and fennel.

Diners can end their meal with sweet treats like tiramisu, lemon olive oil cake, and gelato.

I drove past Sundial earlier this week and the signage is already up — this thing is happening.

How to Get a Table

Reservations for opening week are now available through OpenTable.

I'd book sooner rather than later. Opening weeks at spots like this fill up fast, and June 24th is less than three weeks away. Plan on the wait being real once word spreads further — a 350-seat room sounds big until everyone in St. Pete wants in at the same time.

Hours will run Monday through Wednesday, 11 a.m. to 10 p.m.; Thursday from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m.; Friday, 11 a.m. to midnight; Saturday, 10 a.m. to midnight; and Sunday, 10 a.m. to 10 p.m.

One real estate note worth mentioning: Sundial's second floor sat dark for over a year after Sea Salt closed. Now it's getting a 350-seat anchor tenant plus a new outdoor bar, with other new tenants like

Incanto Moda Italiana, Prenuvo, and Serotonin Centers

filling out the complex too. That's meaningful momentum for the blocks immediately around it. If you're a buyer weighing downtown St. Pete neighborhoods or curious what the market looks like heading into the second half of 2026, activity like this is exactly the kind of thing that keeps walkable downtown corridors healthy — and keeps buyer demand pointed squarely at this zip code. Worth keeping an eye on.