What's New On Avalon's Dune Drive This Summer
July 16, 2026
July 16, 2026
The corner of 27th and Dune has changed tenants again. Where the Black Cactus poured mezcal cocktails for two summers, a new sign now reads Gully's, and inside the same footprint you'll find a second name on the menu, Phil's Famous Pizza, the Sea Isle City style that regulars have been driving south to eat for years. That single address tells you most of what's shifted in Avalon's 2026 dining scene.
Here's the pattern worth naming. Avalon isn't gaining restaurants so much as sorting them. The map is stratifying by occasion, not expanding by count, and the three most-discussed rooms this summer sit at three different price points on purpose.
The Black Cactus opened in 2024 with real momentum. It had picked up the liquor license that once belonged to Jack's Place and Gallagher's Pub, and it took over the site of the old Coldwell Banker building at 27th and Dune. Two summers in, it announced a permanent close in September 2025, with no public explanation.
Gully's stepped into the same address for the 2026 season. The pitch is a deliberate reversal of what came before. Where the Cactus was coastal Mexican with a cocktail-forward bar, Gully's positions itself as neighborhood American with cornhole and giant Jenga in the yard, trivia on Thursdays, and a wing night that pushes discounted drafts in a house mug. The Inquirer's visit in mid-June found a menu that runs from candied bacon over grits to pork belly ramen and mescal mussels, which is more ambitious than the "beach bar" framing suggests.
Two details are worth catching if you live in town. First, the pizza half of the operation is Phil's Famous, a name Sea Isle regulars will recognize, now available without the drive down Landis Avenue. Second, the taps lean local. Check-ins on Untappd through late June show Ludlam Island Brewery pouring a house Pilsner branded to Gully's, alongside Slack Tide's Angry Osprey. If you've been ordering Ludlam Island by the case for the porch, there is now a draft version around the corner.
At the other end of the spectrum, Avalon Prime Steakhouse spent its second full season consolidating. The room opened Memorial Day weekend 2025 in a building most residents can locate without directions, and had its formal ribbon cutting that June with State Senator Michael Testa and former Eagles quarterback Ron Jaworski on hand. What matters for 2026 is what happened after the launch buzz faded.
Prime was recognized in Wine Spectator's 2026 Restaurant Awards, a program that vets wine lists on depth and pairing quality. That is the kind of credential that changes what a room is used for. A steakhouse with a curated cellar becomes the answer to specific questions your guests ask, whether that's an anniversary, a closing dinner, or the night the college kids come home. It is a more formal environment than most Seven Mile Island rooms, and reviews consistently describe it that way.
For a resident, the practical read is this. You no longer need to leave the island for the kind of dinner you used to book in Philadelphia. Whether that is a value you personally want is a separate question, but the option has moved five minutes from your door.
Between the family-and-friends tier and the steakhouse tier, Summer Salt has quietly become the most interesting room on the boardwalk. It began as a pop-up inside an Avalon coffee shop, grew out of the owners' nearby farm, and now runs a prix-fixe tasting menu on the oceanfront through the 2026 season. Cape May County produce, local seafood, BYOB. The scallops are a fixture, and the crab tagliatelle with asparagus has developed its own following.
What makes Summer Salt worth pointing out in a piece about a shifting scene is that it fills a slot Avalon didn't quite have five years ago. It is a real chef-driven kitchen inside a boardwalk building, next to an arcade, with dune views. The tension between the setting and the food is the whole point.
A husband-and-wife team runs a prix-fixe menu on the boardwalk, one door down from skeeball. That is the sentence that explains why the room fills.
The reason the new additions land is that the anchors have stayed put. If you already live here, you know the roster. It is still worth stating what carried through into 2026, because the rest of the map is legible only against these constants.
That list isn't a ranking. It is a baseline. The reason a corner turnover at 27th and Dune registers as news is that the rest of the block has held for a decade or more.
Read the map together and a pattern shows up that the individual openings don't tell you.
Avalon's dining scene in 2026 is separating into occasion tiers rather than piling on more of the same thing. The casual American slot on Dune Drive got a stronger operator with kitchen ambition and a real beer list. The formal end got a room with a nationally recognized wine program. The boardwalk got a chef-driven kitchen you'd otherwise expect to find inland. The middle tier of BYOB Italian, Friday-night seafood, and small fine dining held its ground.
For a homeowner, that stratification changes the small logistics of a summer weekend more than a headline about a new opening would suggest.
That is the version of the 2026 scene a resident cares about. A visitor might read a list. Someone who owns a house here reads a schedule.
If you have been thinking about what your Avalon property is worth in a summer where the dining, the beer taps, and the boardwalk rooms are all sharpening at once, that conversation is one Marialena Recupero is glad to have with you. Let's Connect.
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