Habersham and 37th Became a Food Corner by Giving Three Traveling Kitchens a Building

The old filling station at East 37th and Habersham has been a lot of things. It was a gas station. Then it was restored, and more recently it was Baby's, a tiny neighborhood snack shop that, in Eat It & Like It's words, had "a very short run." Now a converted school bus parks beside it. Across Habersham is a red-sauce Italian restaurant that opened in September. Next door, the end unit of a new three-story complex has a courtyard facing the sidewalk, and at 11 a.m. today, Thursday, Nov. 5, a ribbon gets cut there.

Anyone who has lived in Thomas Square for a few years remembers this corner as a place you drove through. In 2026 it filled up fast. None of the three businesses that filled it started here. A barbecue bus, a ghost-kitchen pop-up and a restaurant brand with two suburban locations had each built a following elsewhere. What the corner gave them was the thing Midtown rarely has on offer: small, ready buildings, all coming open in the same season.

Three addresses, three routes in

Each of the three already had customers before it had a lease on this corner.

The bus that finally stopped moving

For about three years before this spring, Slow Fire BBQ ran out of a converted school bus. Eat It & Like It described it as "one of the worst-kept secrets in town—if you knew, you knew." In April 2024, Connect Savannah reported the truck at 1904 Waters Avenue, where the team hoped to settle. That spot didn't become permanent. The old gas station on 37th did.

The April announcement laid out a kitchen and pit room behind the station, with the build-out estimated at five to six months, and said the bus would park at the corner Thursday through Saturday in the meantime. The city's approvals came next. On June 23, the Metropolitan Planning Commission approved a special use permit for Slow Fire to take over the property as a small restaurant and general store. According to Savannah Agenda's summary, the permit kept the site's existing beer and wine approval and attached conditions that limit hours and make the approval nontransferable. MPC staff had opposed expanding alcohol sales to liquor because the lot sits so close to homes. Commissioners took that restriction out and said the city's licensing process could handle the question.

In late September, Savannah Agenda was still describing the on-site kitchen as something Slow Fire would "eventually add." Slow Fire's online ordering page still lists the 37th Street operation as the food truck, with service opening Thursday at 11 a.m. Boxcar Creamery and General Store shares the 410 E. 37th St. address. So for now, the barbecue at this corner still comes off the bus. What changed is that the bus has an address, and you no longer have to chase it around on social media.

A 2023 pop-up gets a courtyard

One week after Slow Fire's news, Maizal announced it would open next door. It went into The 912, the new three-building, three-story mixed-use complex at Habersham and East 37th, which Eat It & Like It reports was designed and built by E.H. Fortitude with Ward Architecture + Preservation. Maizal has the end unit, and its courtyard faces the street.

The concept belongs to Marisol Borrego, a Bogotá native and chef on the Big Bon Bodega team. She first ran it as a ghost-kitchen pop-up in 2023. Big Bon Bodega partners Kay Heritage and Shahin Afsharian own and operate the café. The Savannah Chamber's event listing calls Maizal Savannah's first and only gluten-free café. The menu: arepas, Colombian-inspired bowls, handmade pastries, locally roasted Colombian coffee and smoothies.

Maizal is also an event space, and that part has its own rules. The MPC approved a small private event venue in the complex on Aug. 25. As Savannah Agenda reported, events are catered and booked by reservation, generally 3 to 9 p.m. on select evenings, with gatherings kept under about 40 people. A separate permit allows alcohol sales only during those catered events. In practice, this corner gets a daytime café with arepas and coffee, plus occasional small private evenings booked through the venue.

Across Habersham, a suburban name comes into town

Narobia's Grits and Gravy closed at 2019 Habersham in March 2026. When Maizal's plans were announced that April, Eat It & Like It noted the café would sit directly across the street from the empty space. It didn't stay empty long. Romano Italian Grill opened there, and the Savannah Morning News openings-and-closings gallery recorded it in the former Narobia's location.

The Greater Savannah Black Chamber of Commerce reported a grand opening on Tuesday, Sept. 22, 2026. It describes Romano as a locally owned brand that already had locations in Rincon and Port Wentworth. This location goes by Romano Italian Grill Downtown, and Romano's site carries ordering and hours.

Of the three routes, this one is the most familiar: a brand proven in Effingham County and the western suburbs, looking for a city address, took a vacant restaurant space that came with a kitchen. Romano fills the evening sit-down slot on a corner where the other two are a bus and a café.

The same thing is happening a few blocks west

The pattern goes beyond one intersection. Across Starland, recent openings have landed in existing spaces on side streets and lanes, not in new storefronts along Bull.

• The Larrikin Coffee Bar and Cafe took over the former Garden Square space, which had opened in November 2025 and closed in mid-2026. Its address is 2400 Bull St. Suite 6, but you walk in from 40th Street. The Larrikin's site bills it as an all-day café for breakfast, lunch, cocktails and casual dinner, and lists Monday through Saturday hours of 7 a.m. to 9 p.m., with Sunday brunch from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m.
• Specials Pizza is a pizzeria and bar at 2520 De Soto Ave. Eat It & Like It reported on Oct. 20 that it had newly opened in the lane off Bull and 41st, from the team behind Late Air.
• 10 E. 41st St. is set to become a South American-inspired restaurant from owner Dana Collins. Savannah Agenda reported that it builds on her earlier Cuban food concept and plans about 30 seats plus outdoor seating. The MPC approved its alcohol permit in June, and in mid-August City Council voted 7–2 to approve accessory alcohol sales. No name or opening date has been announced.

Walk from Specials' lane to the gas station on 37th and you pass every one of these. None of them is a ground-up commercial building on Bull Street.

The city is formalizing what the blocks already do

In late August, the zoning started catching up. On Aug. 27, Savannah City Council rezoned seven properties clustered around East 40th and Drayton, one block east of Bull, from Traditional Neighborhood to Traditional Commercial. Savannah Agenda reported that supporters said the block already works more like a commercial corridor and that the change lets owners adaptively reuse the existing buildings.

The Thomas Square Neighborhood Association backed the change and asked for one condition: no non-owner-occupied short-term vacation rentals, citing concerns about "micro hotels" and party-house uses. The applicants agreed, and council added the restriction. The block can host more businesses, and the neighborhood association made sure that doesn't turn its houses into small hotels.

That's also where the name question lives. Officially this is Thomas Square, and as Eat It & Like It put it, "the purists will make sure you know that." The Starland label keeps spreading to anything nearby anyway. The Chamber's Maizal listing places the café in the Starland District. Whichever name you use, the blocks between Bull and Habersham now hold a barbecue bus with a permanent address, a gluten-free Colombian café opening its doors today, and an Italian grill already serving across the street.

If you've watched this corner change from your own porch and wonder what it means for the home you live in, The Trisha Cook Team is glad to walk you through what's happening on your block, from new restaurants to rezonings. Schedule Your VIP Consultation.