Medi Brings St. Tropez to Florida’s Gulf Coast

A new Naples restaurant arrives with Mediterranean shared plates and live music.

By Eric Barton
6:25 a.m. ET, Nov. 2, 2026

AUTHOR BIO: Eric Barton is editor of The Adventurist and a freelance journalist who has reviewed restaurants for more than two decades. Email him here.

At Medi, the new restaurant in Naples, Florida, dinner starts with a spread of Mediterranean dips in brass bowls, pita for tearing, and live music drifting in from the bar. Lemon trees climbing the dining room walls are meant to evoke a trattoria near the shores of St. Tropez.

Chef Víctor Villanueva leads the kitchen. Originally from Venezuela, he studied cooking in Peru, and his menu leans on dishes that let the ingredients do the work. Medi debuted October 26 on Fifth Avenue, the chic heart of downtown Naples, in a dining room that opens onto a front patio and a courtyard, with a bar built for cocktails in between. The front patio looks out over the street, and the courtyard carries the Mediterranean theme outside.

That shows up first in the sharing plates: the medi platter, a spread of dips with fresh pita, and labneh paired with tomato chutney, both served in brass bowls that match the dining room's warm, sunlit palette.

From there the menu moves toward the sea. The artichoke branzino and Moroccan salmon with aromatic spices anchor the fish side, while linguini Portofino pairs shrimp with zucchini and sapore di mare gathers seafood into pasta.

The seafood paella is the table's big shared gesture, the sort of dish that arrives and rearranges the conversation around it. Spicy rigatoni topped with burrata and grilled lamb chops give the menu a pasta and a grill anchor alongside the seafood.

The bar keeps pace with the kitchen. The peach rosé spritz and passionfruit martini sit alongside a Sarti spritz margarita and a limoncello sorbet cocktail fizzed with prosecco. As the night goes on, the music shifts toward the bar, and the dining room's early, conversational hum gives way to something livelier.

Medi takes over from Vergina, a Fifth Avenue fixture for 26 years, and keeps the same management and team. The name and the menu are new, and the inspiration is St. Tropez and the Côte d'Azur. The lemon trees set the scene. The shared plates and the music are meant to keep you coming back.