A new bar and restaurant modeled after the French Riviera is set to open on the fifth floor of the Jefferson Bank Building at 1900 Broadway on Friday, bringing raw bar towers, tableside martinis and late-night DJ sets to the corridor near San Antonio's Pearl. The concept, called Seaspice, comes from local hospitality company Gusto Group and had originally been projected to debut in June.
According to CultureMap San Antonio, Seaspice will serve brunch, lunch and dinner, with a menu built around a raw bar featuring oysters and seafood towers, grilled octopus tacos, salmon tartare, lobster rolls and roe served with traditional fixings or as bumps. The restaurant's tableside martinis come dressed with truffles and caviar olives, a detail CultureMap highlighted as part of the presentation-forward approach at the new spot. Renderings show a brasserie-like space filled with marble counters, French wicker bistro chairs and olive trees planted in oversized pots, per the same outlet.
Seaspice's operating hours will run Tuesday through Wednesday from noon to 11 p.m. and stretch later, from noon to 2 a.m., Thursday through Saturday, with Sunday hours set for noon to 9 p.m., the report notes. A weekday happy hour is scheduled for 4 to 7 p.m. Gusto Group has also filed paperwork with the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation as part of the buildout, according to the same account.
A Cocktail Program Built Around Riviera Sunsets
Gusto Group's beverage lineup for Seaspice includes signature cocktails like the Midnight in Mykonos, made with mezcal and Nixta corn liqueur, and the Riviera Royale, which combines coconut tequila, Laurent-Perrier champagne and blood orange, according to Gusto Group. The bar also features a dedicated champagne bar and Mexican carajillos, with weekend live DJ sets running from 10 p.m. until closing.
The concept's origin traces back to a trip Gusto Group COO Thomas Hogan took to the French Riviera with his wife, an experience he set out to replicate through the coastal region's sunset lighting, cold bar dining and the seamless shift into late-night energy, per Voyage San Antonio. Hogan joined Gusto Group as COO after spending eight years operating an exotic car dealership in San Antonio, the outlet notes. Gusto Group CEO Gerardo De Anda, whose entrepreneurial path traces back to a near-fatal goring by a bull named Caramelo in Pamplona, Spain, at age 18, said the company's team pays close attention to cocktail arrival, seafood presentation and room energy across its concepts. “The experience is what it always comes down to,” De Anda said, according to the same interview.
Gusto Group's Growing Local Footprint
Founded in 2020, Gusto Group already operates six distinct dining and bar concepts across eight local locations, including Toro Kitchen + Bar, Cuishe Cocina Mexicana, Stylus Mixology, Books: A Whiskey Society, Cellar Mixology and Boombox Pizza Bar, per Gusto Group. Seaspice will join a growing wave of new and proposed dining and nightlife concepts clustering around the Pearl, CultureMap reports.
The building housing Seaspice is itself a marker of the corridor's transformation. The 13-story Jefferson Bank headquarters at 1900 Broadway spans roughly 232,000 rentable square feet, including more than 18,000 square feet of ground-floor retail, according to JLL Properties. Jefferson Bank occupies four floors of the tower while leasing out the remaining office and retail space, the listing notes.
A $62 Million Tower Reshaping A City Block
Developed by Milam Real Estate Capital for Jefferson Bank at an estimated cost of $62 million, the tower required assembling 12 separate land parcels across a full city block and securing city approval to rezone the site for a 180-foot height limit, according to CoStar News. Construction began in 2020 and wrapped up in early 2023, and the building went on to win the CoStar Impact Award for Commercial Development of the Year in San Antonio in March 2024, with the honor judged by local real estate professionals.
That site assembly required demolishing existing structures on the block, including the original location of cocktail spot Still Golden Social House, which was forced into a hiatus in May 2020, according to the San Antonio Express-News. Several historic shotgun houses were also cleared to make way for the tower, the paper reported at the time.
Part Of A Bigger Broadway Corridor Bet
Seaspice will join other high-profile food and beverage tenants already inside 1900 Broadway, including upscale Japanese restaurant Nineteen Hyaku, which opened on the ground floor with 25-foot ceilings and custom craftsmanship in September 2023, according to Garden & Gun. Sandwich and coffee venue The Newstand followed in May 2024, rounding out the building's dining lineup. Hoodline previously reported on the area's dining momentum when Dallas hand roll bar Nori chose Pearl's West Bank for its first San Antonio shop, part of the same upscale dining ecosystem taking shape around 1900 Broadway.
The building's rise reflects a much larger public and private push along Broadway, where infrastructure improvements linking downtown to Alamo Heights were projected to generate upwards of $1 billion in new economic investment over a 10-year period, according to the San Antonio Express-News. Seaspice's fifth-floor perch, timed to open this Friday, gives that broader corridor bet one more high-end anchor drawing diners north from downtown toward the Pearl.
