A Saturday in the SoSo Design District: A Local's Route Through the Showrooms and Kitchens South of Southern

Something quietly shifted in your neighborhood last September. The stretch of South Dixie Highway you drive every day picked up a name, a map, and a merchants' association. If you have lived in SoSo for more than a few years, you already sensed the change. Now there is a framework to make sense of it.

The Name Is New. The Character Is Not.

The area south of Southern Boulevard to just past Forest Hill Boulevard along Georgia Avenue and South Dixie Highway has seen such an influx of design-based businesses, retailers, galleries, wellness groups, restaurants, and other attractions in recent years that the owners of Chelsea Lane & Co. and Palm Beach Regency came together to establish a designated neighborhood modeled on the Miami Design District. That merchants' coalition became the SoSo Design District, and the shorthand has stuck.

Here is the part outsiders miss. This is not a food scene that grew a design wing. It is a design corridor that grew a food scene. The area now features nearly 50 locally-owned concepts along the South Dixie Highway and Georgia Avenue corridors, and the anchors were interior designers, wallpaper libraries, and vintage dealers long before the chefs showed up. When you plan a Saturday here, plan it around the showrooms first and the tables second. The logic of the neighborhood rewards you for that order.

The Showroom Spine

The design side of SoSo is denser than most residents realize because these are working trade rooms, not storefronts screaming for attention. A quick lay of the land:

• Chelsea Lane & Co. Founder Chelsea Viau runs what is home to the largest wallpaper and fabric library in Palm Beach County, this wallpaper and textile showroom serves both design professionals and homeowners with full-service interior design, a dedicated trade program, a curated on-site boutique. Homeowners are welcome, not just designers, and that distinction is the reason this shop became one of the two founding voices for the district.
• Palm Beach Regency. Hollywood Regency meets Old Florida at Palm Beach Regency, a paradise for lovers of vintage treasures and tropical decor. Owner Korinne Belock has a 5,000-square-foot warehouse in Lake Park, an online shop, and a SSDD showroom chock-full of furniture, accessories, gifts, and more.
• Caribe Home. Andrew and Fabiola Berman's showroom on the design district map, worth a slow walk-through for the mix.
• Dina C's Fab & Funky Consignment Boutique. Lover of all things fab and funky, Dina Capehart opened her eponymous high-end resale emporium of women's vintage, couture, and contemporary clothing, shoes, and accessories in 2010. Spanning brands from Alaïa to Yves Saint Laurent, Dina C's Fab & Funky Consignment Boutique is filled to the brim with gems.

Give yourself two hours before lunch and you can move through all four without rushing. If you want a map of every district member as it grows, the merchants' association keeps a running directory at the SoSo Design District site.

The Table Along Dixie

Once you factor in the restaurants, the corridor rewards you for staying in the neighborhood instead of driving over the bridge. A working list, arranged roughly north to south so you can slot one into your route:

A few of these deserve a closer look. The SoSo, the restaurant that shares the neighborhood's name, is the fast-fine café from Akadis Hospitality (Kye Akavia, Alex DiSchino and Executive Chef Cesar Brea) dubs the restaurant a "fast-fine café," which will offer modern American cuisine with a sleek aesthetic inspired by the growing neighborhood's vibrant location. It is open lunch and dinner with weekend brunch, at 4802 S. Dixie Highway, West Palm Beach.

Cholo Soy Cocina is Led by Food Network's Cutthroat Kitchen champ Chef Clay Carnes, Cholo Soy Cocina delivers a new kind of Latin street food. Open for lunch and dinner at 3715 S. Dixie Highway. Grato brings Chef Clay Conley, a 5-times James Beard nominee, is serving up homemade pasta, brick-oven pizza and wood-grilled delights. Rhythm Cafe sits inside Fine and funky dining in a 1950's drugstore featuring a "tapa-tizer" menu and homemade desserts. Open for dinner. Reservations recommended, 3800 S. Dixie Highway. The Blue Door describes itself as a coastal bistro inspired by the sun-kissed beach towns of Southern Europe.

A Route That Actually Works

If you have a Saturday and want the district to feel like a neighborhood rather than errands, try this order.

1. 9:30 a.m. Coffee and a proper sit-down breakfast at Aioli at 7434 S. Dixie. It closes Sunday, so Saturday is the day.
2. 11:00 a.m. Drive or ride north to Chelsea Lane & Co. and browse the wallpaper library. Bring a paint chip from the room you keep meaning to redo.
3. 12:30 p.m. Lunch at The SoSo. Small plates, quick pace, easy to slide in without a reservation on most weekends.
4. 2:00 p.m. Palm Beach Regency and Dina C's back to back. Two very different flavors of vintage, ten minutes apart on foot along Dixie.
5. 4:00 p.m. Break for a walk along Flagler Drive on the Intracoastal side of the neighborhood. SoSo offers the best of both worlds with a revamped section of Dixie Highway full of exquisite antique shopping, fine dining, casual eateries, and cocktail bars and the ability for residents to get out and run, walk or bike alongside the water.
6. 7:00 p.m. Dinner at The Blue Door or Rhythm Cafe, depending on whether the mood is patio or interior character.

Skip any stop that does not suit you. The point is that the day now flows east-west and north-south without leaving your zip code.

The district designation did not create a new neighborhood. It gave the neighborhood you already live in a way to be found by everyone else.

Why the Shift Matters if You Already Live Here

The near-term consequence for residents is small and useful. Parking behavior shifts. Shop hours align. The kind of Saturday itinerary above becomes something you can plan on rather than assemble from memory.

The longer view is more interesting. The pattern of a design corridor pulling in restaurants is the same one that reshaped the Miami Design District, and the founders of the SSDD said so directly when they organized. Watch which storefronts turn over next. When a wallpaper library and a vintage dealer are the anchors, the restaurants that follow tend to be operator-driven rather than concept-driven, and the retail that fills in around them leans toward home, garden, and lifestyle rather than fashion. That is a fair prediction to make about which openings and closings you will read about along Dixie over the next couple of years.

For a neighborhood where housing stock ranges from mainly mid-century ranch style homes but also features mediterranean villas and newer built ultra-modern mansions, a design-forward commercial spine is a natural fit. The showrooms match the way people renovate the houses. That alignment is why the district feels less like a marketing exercise and more like an honest description of what SoSo already was.

Your Next Small Errand

Pick one showroom you have driven past for a year without going in. Walk in this weekend. Ask a question you actually have about your own house. The people running the SoSo Design District built it hoping you would.

If your next Saturday errand happens to include a conversation about the house those design ideas are going into, Abbey Adair at A+ Realtor is a block or a phone call away, ready to talk through the neighborhood with the same attention you would give a paint chip. Find Your Dream Home. I'll Get It Sold.