Big changes on the local culinary scene

Chef Thomas McDougall Jr., left, and owner and chef Juan Carlos Berrocal, center, with Taverna Berrocal, pose with Kunal Gaekwad, right, at the former location of Sky Fine Dining at the Holiday Inn & Suites on Southwest 38th Avenue in Ocala, Fla. on Friday, April 4, 2025. Taverna Berrocal will be moving into the former Sky restaurant location on the top floor of the hotel and Sky will be moving into the Hilton Garden Inn in downtown Ocala. [Bruce Ackerman/Ocala Gazette] 2025.

If the sky’s the limit, Chef Juan Berrocal has reached it.

This spring, his Euro-Peruvian gem, Taverna Berrocal, will relocate to the top floor of the Holiday Inn & Suites near I-75 in Ocala, swapping its cozy 2515 NE 3rd St. space for a sprawling spot with skyline views.

For Berrocal, this is the opportunity he has been waiting for.

“I am finally going to be able to deliver what I really want to the Ocala people,” Berrocal said. “Everybody knows this spot at the Holiday Inn, all of the locals, it’s special.”

Berrocal says the move to the Holiday Inn will enable him and his culinary crew to make some changes.

“With all my wonderful chefs, we are going to elevate our concept, because here at this smaller location I have been kind of limited because of the size of the restaurant,” he explained.

Taverna Berrocal opened on April 8, 2022, then closed temporarily in March 2023 for a revamp. The restaurant relaunched with a new tapas-focused menu on June 21, 2023, following Berrocal’s travels to refine his offerings. With a focus on tapas-style dining, the cozy eatery’s current interior space for dining is small, but that will soon be upgraded and expanded by the highly anticipated move into the boutique hotel.

“We are going to be inspired with this new location that is so beautiful,” Berrocal said.

While Berrocal is eager to make the move happen this spring in a 30-day time frame, it may take longer.

“It’s a lot of work, our goal is 30 days, but in reality, it may take 60 days,” Berrocal said.

Beyond culinary elevation, he wants more space for his growing restaurant.

“I’m moving over there because my restaurant is getting busier. The Holiday Inn space is like six times bigger than my current place. So, it’s a whole different scenario. It’s a whole different deployment and delegation of work and hiring. With such a large number of seats, we are definitely going to have a different plan about the reservations and walk-ins and about lunch,” he said.

Berrocal says he plans to be open from 3 to 10 p.m. every day and until midnight on weekends because of the hotel bar which he calls “beautiful.”

For his regular customer base, the move has been met with mixed reactions.

“Some of them, they oppose. They say, ‘Oh, no, we like it here, this little restaurant, you know, it’s cozy,’ and they think if I move into a big restaurant, things will change,” he said. “It’s not going to change; all my customers are going to be very comfortable. And so far, the reaction, it’s been overwhelming. They’ve been calling a lot and commenting on Facebook. There’s a lot of expectation.”

Kunal Gaekwad and members of his family own the Holiday Inn and he calls it one of their trophy properties. Gaekwad has known Berrocal for a couple years as a frequent guest at his restaurant. He said they had no intention of leasing the space at the Holiday Inn, but that changed when he found Berrocal.

“We would have left it empty for the next 10 years. But it’s only because we found chef Juan over at Taverna that we thought he could be a good fit. Taverna simply meets our criteria to lease our space. His dishes are extremely unique and he’s a very talented chef, so seeing that, it made sense for me to give him the opportunity to bring his experience and his restaurant over to our hotel, because we didn’t want to give it to someone that was not going to be able to hold our high expectations for one of our trophy properties,” Gaekwad said.

In November 2020, the space atop the multi-story hotel where Berrocal is moving was occupied by Sky Fine Dining, which closed due to the pandemic with plans to reopen in 2021. While Sky did not reopen at that time, it will reopen this fall at the Hilton Garden Inn in downtown Ocala, which also is owned by the Gaekwad family.

“Sky will open in downtown Ocala, we’re shooting for the end of this year, hopefully in the fall. It’s our goal,” Gaekwad said.

Sky Fine Dining offered an eclectic mix of gourmet cuisine with a focus on Asian fusion and steakhouse offerings. Gaekwad praised the former restaurant as a standout in the city’s culinary scene.

“In my view, it was, and still is, the most aesthetically advanced restaurant in Ocala,” he said.

He noted that Sky’s strong reputation led the family to hold off on seeking new tenants after its closure and said they initially considered a reopening to their own high standards. However, after building the Hilton Garden Inn downtown, they shifted focus.

“We realized it made more sense to rebuild the restaurant entirely in a new space. We love the downtown market,” Gaekwad said.

In the past 20 years, Gaekwad said, his family has primarily focused on bringing new things such as high-end car washes, hotels and apartments to Ocala.

“We’ve been pioneering it more so than anyone in the entire city in the last 30 years. Our goal is not to just copy and paste what we see around us, but to take our experience from traveling abroad and around the country and applying it to Ocala, because we know that people in Ocala are ready for the next level,” he said. “A lot of larger companies and especially franchises overlook the Ocala market because they don’t see that the demographic needs high-end offerings. But we felt the exact opposite.”

With Taverna Berrocal and Sky Fine Dining slated to open this year, Gaekwad’s vision is taking shape.

“I think that as of right now, there are no two restaurants in Ocala that have anything similar to what we’re offering in terms of the ambience and the culinary offerings,” he said.

Berrocal said his wildest dream for this new chapter in his restaurant’s culinary history is to bring some acclaim to Ocala.

“That’s why I am bringing all these professional chefs from all over the world to see if we can work very hard to get the first Michelin Star for Ocala,” Berrocal said.

To do so, there will be no shortcuts.

“I don’t believe in shortcuts in my kitchen, and in my new beautiful restaurant, there will be no shortcuts,” Berrocal said.

There will be challenges with this move, according to Berrocal, and he asks for help through prayer.

“Every day we have to pray to God to give us the energy in the challenges that are going to be right in front of us in different aspects. We have to keep going. And for me as a professional chef, this is my goal, my dream. I’ve been waiting for this opportunity to jump like a tiger and make it happen,” he stated.

For Gaekwad, Sky and Taverna Berrocal will be more than fine dining, they will be magnets for Ocala’s booming population.

“We’re one of the fastest growing metro areas in the entire country. With this many new people coming in, it’s very important that we have offerings for them, things to do, because if we don’t, then people are going to start looking outward and going to other cities like Gainesville, Orlando and Tampa. And we want to keep them here. We want to keep them happy,” he offered.

Whether it is Berrocal’s leap toward a Michelin Star or Gaekwad’s stake in Ocala’s rise, together, they are plating up more than meals, they are serving Ocala a taste of what’s possible.

To learn more, go to tavernaberrocal.com and ocaladowntown.hgi.com and find them on social media.