6 new places to check out in Winter Garden

Winter Garden’s downtown district along Plant Street just keeps adding new food and shopping attractions to keep residents and visitors coming back. Besides favorites like Moon Cricket Cafe and Crook Can Brewing, here are a few new additions and some coming soon you may not have seen yet if you haven’t visited in 2018.

While 4 Locos is on the backside of the building, Galvan said he has not had problems with customers finding him.

“With the brewery next door, people have been able to find us — and on nights and weekends it gets very busy.”

4 Locos is just one of three restaurants in the building. Next door is the successor to Matthew’s Steaks & More in Ocoee. One of the district’s few chain restaurants,

also was slated to open in the building Monday, bringing a fast-casual burger menu. and cheese eatery.

It’s been a long journey for Winter Garden resident Bonnie DiCocco to bring her

store to her hometown. She started with a shop at Artegon Marketplace before that tourist district shopping center shut down, then moved to Orlando’s College Park neighborhood. The shop, which opened in May, specializes in home decor, especially trendy holiday decorations.

“Winter Garden has a hometown feel, but still a lot of foot traffic,” DiCocco said. “And it’s growing like crazy.”

The store also has a makers space in the back to teach hopeful entrepreneurs to make the kind of home decor and “shabby chic” furniture they sell in the shop.

“We were trying to get into downtown Winter Garden for years, but there was just never the right space,” she said.

A few doors down and across the street, the Tex-Mex restaurant opened in April, selling burritos, tacos and other Americanized Mexican favorites. But it tries to bring a unique mix of ingredients, too, with items such as mahi-mahi and black tiger shrimp.

Owner and Winter Garden native Drew Cardaci opened three of the restaurants in South Florida, making the restaurant’s Central Florida debut on Plant Street. So far the restaurant has been busy as a fast-casual option for lunch and dinner crowds. It also has a rooftop bar for evening outings. A new breakfast spot called

is under construction at 126 W. Plant St., taking the old space occupied by Italian restaurant Catania. The restaurant’s early menu has organic pancakes, waffles and oatmeal served with fresh fruits and nuts. There are also, as the name would suggest, eggs, fried green tomatoes and other rustic breakfast dishes.

Just off Plant Street, the 26,000-square-foot Tremaine Boyd building is under construction on South Boyd Street, which will have 22 apartments as well as 8,000 square feet for retail and restaurants. The first tenant signed is the cafe now inside the Dr. Phillips YMCA building.

The restaurant specializes in burgers, paninis and other sandwiches. The building is expected to be finished in the summer of 2019.