New Restaurants Coming to The Village in Grosse Pointe
August 27, 2026
August 27, 2026
For three years, the storefront at 16844 Kercheval sat dark. It used to be City Kitchen. Before that, something else. By this summer it was an empty storefront in an otherwise busy stretch of The Village, the small downtown business district inside the City of Grosse Pointe, tucked between The Hill's white-tablecloth reputation to the north in the Farms and The Park's ongoing redevelopment to the south.
That gap is closing this fall, and the way it's closing tells you more about what's happening on this block than the opening itself does.
Jared Gadbaw runs Oak & Reel, the restaurant he opened on East Grand Boulevard in Detroit in 2020, a spot that built its reputation on the kind of contemporary cooking that gets national attention. Before that, he ran the kitchen at Marea in New York, where the restaurant earned two Michelin stars under his leadership. He is not a chef who needs a second location to prove anything.
His new partner, Cory Barberio, moved to Detroit in 2018 to become the opening chef at San Morello inside the Shinola Hotel, part of chef Andrew Carmellini's hospitality group, where he eventually rose to executive chef and managing partner. He's leaving that post to focus full time on the new project.
The two are opening Angelo's Fine Italian at 16844 Kercheval, targeting a window between late September and early October. The buildout calls for about 100 seats on the main floor, a 15-seat bar, and a private dining room downstairs with another 40 seats, designed by the Royal Oak firm VERSA, the same studio behind Oak & Reel's interiors. The name comes from Barberio's son, and the concept is a deliberate turn away from the envelope-pushing style both chefs are known for, toward Italian American classics finished with what Barberio calls a higher level of craftsmanship, the kind of food that pulls people around a table rather than food that impresses them.
The Detroit News reported on the plan, with Gadbaw saying Grosse Pointe "has a character all its own," and Barberio saying, "We want people to walk in and immediately feel at home."
While Angelo's was still under construction this summer, a different verdict came in a few blocks away. High Pointe Burger Jointe, at 369 Fisher directly across from Grosse Pointe South High School, was named Best New Restaurant in Wayne County by Hour Detroit Magazine's annual contest. Wayne County includes the city of Detroit, which means the win covers restaurants across Detroit too, not just the handful within walking distance of Kercheval.
High Pointe opened in December 2024 in the former Extreme Pizza space. The Grosse Pointe News reported that owner Jennifer Bierkle is a fifth-generation Grosse Pointer whose family has deep roots in the local automotive business and that she built the restaurant with no prior restaurant experience, alongside her husband Jason. The concept started as slider-sized "Smashers" inspired by a favorite burger stand the family visits in Lexington, Michigan, and High Pointe also became a fully gluten-free kitchen in addition to its standard menu, something the surrounding area hadn't had before.
In the Grosse Pointe News, Bierkle described her reaction to the county win: "I was in shock," she said. "I couldn't believe it."
That kind of win doesn't happen because a burger stand near a high school has good foot traffic. It happens because the countywide contest measured it against every other restaurant that opened that year and picked the one across from Grosse Pointe South anyway.
The third data point is the quietest and, in some ways, the most telling. SideStreet Diner, already an established fixture in The Village, was recently featured on America's Best Restaurants. Co-owners Sheila Taylor-Frunek and Meghan Spicer Josefosky say they aren't entirely sure who nominated the diner for the segment. Nobody on staff submitted an application or pitched a producer. A diner built around a straightforward local following got picked up by a national audience without asking for it.
Line these up and the pattern is not about food trends. It's about who is doing the judging. A Detroit chef with two Michelin stars on his résumé chose this storefront over neighborhoods with more built-in buzz. A countywide contest that had to consider every new restaurant in Detroit picked a burger stand across from a high school. A national restaurant feature found a diner that never asked to be found.
The planned restaurant, county award and national feature put several Village dining spots in focus this year.
None of this rearranges the block overnight. But it changes a few concrete things for anyone who already treats Kercheval as their own front yard. Angelo's is likely to be hard to get into for the first several weeks after it opens, given the pedigree behind it and the relatively modest seat count for a destination-level Italian restaurant. High Pointe, now carrying a countywide title, is going to draw visitors from outside the immediate walking radius who previously had no reason to detour to Fisher Road. And SideStreet, having landed a national feature, may see a few more out-of-towners in the booths who found it through a screen instead of a walk down Kercheval.
If you've been meaning to try the diner, or you want a table at Angelo's before the opening rush settles, the next couple of months are the window. This fall, Angelo's is expected to join restaurants in The Village that have already drawn local and national attention.
If you're curious how any of this shows up in what homes on these blocks are actually worth, that's a longer conversation and one Megan Prieur has been having with Grosse Pointe families for years. Closing and Toasting can walk you through it street by street. Get your instant home valuation whenever you're ready to see where your own address fits into the picture.
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