Shad Khan’s Iguana Investments is bringing a waterfront dining experience to Downtown as part of the Jacksonville Jaguars owner’s hotel and office project near EverBank Stadium.
Asado Life is planning a 2026 opening at the marina adjacent to the Four Seasons Hotel & Residences and One Shipyards Place, the future Jacksonville Jaguars headquarters building. The complex is under construction on the Northbank of the St. Johns River.
Asado Life offers communal fire grilling, or asado, featuring scratch-made ingredients and what it describes as “traditional Argentinian-inspired cooking methods of chef’s cuts, sausages, fresh catches and grilled vegetables.”
The restaurant’s first location is at 173 Shipyard Way in the St. Augustine Shipyard on the San Sebastian River.
Owner Nick Carrera will operate both the St. Augustine and Downtown locations.
Carrera said he was planning to open a second location when he was contacted by Iguana through Colliers, which is recruiting retail and restaurants for the Four Seasons property. Iguana is Khan’s real estate development company.
Carrera said being located at another marina was a happy coincidence.
“It worked out very well. It is like a satellite of our brand. It’s almost like at a resort,” Carrera said.
“We refer to it as a local escape where you can get away for a couple of hours. We obviously have access to the boating community, and that lends itself to the feel we are going for.”
The waterfront atmosphere suits his restaurant’s theme. In St. Augustine, Asado Life provides outside dining along the San Sebastian River. There is also indoor dining with a bar.
Like the St. Augustine location, the new one will have its own parking. Carrera anticipates that the customer base will include guests from the Four Seasons and members of the area’s boating community. It is open to the public.
The $20 million Jacksonville Shipyards Marina will be at 1406 E. Bay St. The marina will have 78 slips. Inner-basin slips can accommodate vessels of 30 to 55 feet. The pier at one dock can support vessels up to 400 feet. There will be two water taxi slips.
The city is paying for redevelopment of the public marina; a marina support building; an event lawn; and the Riverwalk to support the hotel and residences.
The restaurant is an offshoot of Carrera’s first business, Urban Asado, which built and sold Argentine-style asado grills. The grill’s temperature is controlled through a pulley system that raises and lowers the cooking surface over the heat.
Before founding the restaurant, Carrera and his team would stage pop-up events where they would cook for charity events. Besides fostering goodwill, the events provided a chance to show the capabilities of the asado grilling system.
Carrera said he wants to re-create the pop-ups once the Downtown location opens. There is space at the new location for events before Jaguars games, concerts, Jumbo Shrimp games and other events in Downtown’s Sports and Entertainment District.
“We have some details to work out, but we are thinking of doing pop-ups on the lawn between the restaurant and Jaguars’ new offices for tailgating,” he said.
Carrera has experience opening a restaurant in a construction area. After opening Asado Life in St. Augustine, construction of apartments on an adjacent property presented logistical problems getting customers past the building project and into the restaurant.
“About two or three weeks after we signed the lease is when they started construction on the apartment building next door. So there were road closures, and there was a big mess going on for a while.”
The plan is for the Downtown Asado Life to serve lunch and dinner.
Lunch includes entrees like fish and chips, grilled steak, burgers, sandwiches and an asado bowl of black beans, rice, tomato, tortillas and cilantro that can be topped with chicken, steak, shrimp, pork or grilled zucchini.
While the asado grill is the central attraction, the restaurant has a full kitchen. The dinner menu has charcuterie starters and small plates of smoked salmon, foie gras and sesame ginger beef tips.
There are a variety of cuts of grilled beef as well as prepared entrees including lobster gnocchi, braised short ribs, salmon and a vegetable plate.