In Boston Magazine, co-owner Seth Gerber describes La Tavernetta as "a coastal tavern with an Italian kiss." The wharfside restaurant opened at 45 Lewis Street on April 13. Diners have been walking in for spritzes and Calabrian chile wings ever since, watching the sun go down over the harbor while chef Douglass Williams, who also runs Mida just across the water, sends out striped bass ceviche and skewers from the open kitchen.
Two miles away, on Sumner Street, a different kind of anticipation has been building for a lot longer. The sign at 336 Sumner has said some version of "coming soon" since early 2024, when owners Jonathan Harker and Jim Iannuzzi announced that Italian Express Pizzeria, the Guy Fieri favorite that closed during the pandemic, would return as Eastie Bar + Italian Express Kitchen. The reopening was supposed to happen by late 2024. Then it slipped to summer 2025. As of this July, reporting on the project still described it only as targeted for the end of this year.
That gap says something real about how East Boston's food scene works right now. A restaurant with institutional backing, a design team, and a build-out budget can go from empty storefront to full dining room in a matter of months. A neighborhood institution trying to relaunch on its own timeline, with the same beloved menu and the same two owners, is working toward a relaunch nearly three years after its return was first announced.
The Waterfront's New Crowd
La Tavernetta isn't the only new name on the harbor this year. Pomona, a café and wine bar with a Roman deity for a name and a menu that pulls from the Mediterranean, Colombia, and across Latin America, opened in East Boston this past August. It's a sibling concept to a more formal cafe of the same name in Swampscott, run under different ownership, but the Eastie version has its own identity from the first pour.
Then there's the Gallows Group, which used this spring to consolidate three of its concepts under one Eastie roof. In Boston.com's report, the group described its plan as bringing guests "full Blackbird, full Sally's, with a sprinkling of the Gallows," combining Blackbird Doughnuts' pastry case with Sally's specialty program and a taste of the original Gallows menu in a single location. That's three established food brands opening as one storefront, timed and executed the way a restaurant group with existing infrastructure can move.
The timelines here were much shorter. La Tavernetta went from an April 7 preview story to a April 13 opening day. Pomona arrived with barely a ripple of advance press before it was serving customers. The Gallows Group combination came together as a single announcement, not a multi-year saga.
The Restaurant Still Not Open
Set that pace against Eastie Bar + Italian Express Kitchen, and the contrast gets sharper. This isn't a new concept trying to find its footing. It's a restaurant that aired on Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives back in 2012, built a following over a decade of pizza, pasta, and seafood, and closed during the pandemic. Harker and Iannuzzi aren't building a brand from scratch. They're trying to bring back something the neighborhood already loved, with upgrades: a private patio, a new pizza menu, and a full bar under the same roof.
And it still hasn't happened. A July report by WROR quoted Harker as saying he aimed to open "by the end of the year," which would put the total wait at somewhere close to two and a half years from the original announcement. La Tavernetta opened six days after its April 7 preview story, while Eastie Bar + Italian Express Kitchen remained under a year-end reopening target in the July update.
Where Old and New Actually Share a Table
The one place these two speeds meet without friction is Taste of Eastie, which marked its 30th year this past July. The festival is built for exactly this kind of mix: Angela's serving the regional dishes of Puebla, Mexico, alongside Popsicools' frozen treats, Koro Ramen and Sushi, and Mida, all competing for attention in the same afternoon. A festival that's been running for three decades doesn't care whether a restaurant opened last spring or has been a fixture since before some of its attendees were born. It just puts everyone on the same block for one day.
That's useful context, because it means the split between fast-moving newcomers and a slow-moving reopening isn't a story about East Boston losing its character to outside money. The neighborhood's oldest food tradition already treats new and established the same way. The gap is specific to what it takes to relaunch a single independent restaurant versus what it takes for a group with capital and a playbook to open a new one.
The Slower Clock Running Underneath It
There's a second version of this same pattern happening in Maverick Square itself, just without a menu attached. The city's Maverick Square Transportation Action Plan, part of the broader PLAN: East Boston effort adopted in 2025, has been working through its own version of the long haul. Planners conducted a formal Road Safety Audit of the square's streets and intersections, working with MassDOT, the MBTA, Boston Police, and East Boston Main Streets. Back in March 2025, the team sat down with residents in smaller, targeted conversations, with help from the planning group Openbox, to hear how people actually use the square.
Eighteen months later, the plan is still in progress. A fall 2026 open house is scheduled to share proposed small-scale improvements, with the stated goal of wrapping the planning phase by the end of this year. Maverick Square, described on the city's own project page as a key gateway to East Boston, is getting the deliberate version of change, not the fast one.
The One Thing Running on Schedule
If you want a reminder that not everything in East Boston moves at either extreme, it's the farmers market. NeighborHealth has run the East Boston Farmers Market at Central Square Park, 200 Border Street, every year since 2008, and this year's schedule has kept its Wednesday afternoon slot straight through the fall, with dates confirmed into late October. Nothing about it has needed a reopening announcement or a construction timeline. It shows up, sells produce that reflects the neighborhood's roots across the Americas, Europe, Southeast Asia, and Africa, and runs its cooking demonstrations and live music the same way it has for close to two decades.
That steadiness is worth noticing precisely because everything else this year has moved at such different speeds. A restaurant group can open three concepts under one roof in a season. A city planning process takes a year and a half to reach an open house. An independent owner trying to bring back a beloved pizzeria is still waiting, this close to three years in. The farmers market is the one fixture that never had to pick a pace at all.
Walk from Lewis Street to Sumner Street this fall and you'll pass all four timelines at once: the harbor restaurants that opened almost as fast as they were announced, the planning process working through its final public meetings, the market running exactly as it has since 2008, and a storefront that's been promising a comeback since before any of the new places existed. That's not a neighborhood losing its footing. It's one where very different kinds of projects are all just running on the clocks that belong to them.
If the pace of change along this stretch of the harbor, from a restaurant that opened in a week to one that's taken years, has you thinking about what's next for your own place in East Boston, Aura Realty Advisors would be glad to talk it through. Schedule your concierge consultation whenever you're ready.
