The New Downtown Rocky Mount Runs Thursday Through Sunday

Marilyn Bryant Tucker didn't plan on renaming her restaurant after a figure of speech. She told the Rocky Mount Telegram that customers kept repeating something back to her. "When people hear me talk, I would hear them repeat, 'sho' nuff,'" she said. When she asked whether she really said it that much, they told her, "Yeah, you sure do."

So the Maryland-style seafood place at 135 SE Main Street, open since late March 2025 as Bustin' A Gut, soft-opened again as Sho' Nuff Seafood with Soul. It now serves Southern-fried seafood and homemade soul food. Two doors away, a family from Aurora province in the Philippines runs Rocky Mount's first Filipino restaurant. Around the corner on Tarboro Street there's a lounge that works by reservation. A block over on South Pearl, a rooftop cocktail bar opened in August.

Each of these places opened, or changed course, to serve something downtown didn't already have, so none of them competes much with the others. From Thursday through Sunday their hours line up into a single evening. On Monday, one of them is open.

Two Storefronts, East of the Tracks

The block is the 100 block of Southeast Main Street, on the east side of the CSX rail line between Hill and Tarboro streets. These two storefronts have seen more changes since 2022 than most of downtown.

At 139 SE Main, Kabayan Bites had a soft opening in late May, and a Rocky Mount Area Chamber of Commerce gathering later marked the official opening. The space has held several restaurants. The Telegram's account lists Main Street Gastropub, which opened in November 2022, came back in early 2024 under a former Rocky Mount Event Center chef, and later closed. Saigon on Main, a Vietnamese restaurant, followed in early December 2025 and closed in February.

Jm Yravin Gaspar runs Kabayan Bites with her mother, Marynol Gaspar, and her brother, Jyvie. She told the Telegram she believes she can bring stability to the location, and that the restaurant's advantage is simple: "there's nothing else like it around." The name works on two levels. Kabayan means a fellow Filipino, and "Bites" tells passersby it's a fun place to grab something to eat. A large menu on the back wall covers beef, chicken and pork dishes. One example is tocilog, which is garlic rice, sweet pork and a fried egg. There's also a small grocery section, where Filipinos in the Twin Counties can buy Filipino-centric food.

Mayor Sandy Roberson has gotten food there both as takeout and dine-in. "I give it a two-thumbs up," he told the Telegram.

The Kyser Drugstore Building Gets Its Second Menu

Sho' Nuff's building is older than anything else on this list. The Main Street Rocky Mount blog dates 135 SE Main to about 1912, when it was the Kyser Drugstore. It still has its arched second-story windows, granite keystones and a corbelled brick cornice, plus remnants of what was probably a Mesker metal storefront.

The menu change came from the customers. Tucker told the Telegram she started out serving nothing but seafood, then saw that people also wanted soul food. Her kitchen has decades of experience in it. Her mother, Lossie Dupree, is 76 and has been cooking soul food for more than 50 years. The other cook, Juanita Norville, is 73. Both have roots in the Whitakers area, and both worked for years at Gardner's Barbecue in Rocky Mount, where Tucker also worked for a time.

"I want people to come here and enjoy a good home-cooked meal." Marilyn Bryant Tucker, to the Rocky Mount Telegram

Tucker grew up in Rocky Mount. She told the paper she remembers "how downtown was so beautiful" and is glad to be part of the effort to revitalize it. If you look the place up online, the hours that matter are the ones the Telegram printed with the renaming, because older listings still carry the Bustin' A Gut name.

After Dinner, Two Different Rooms

So far this is a block where you eat. The evening continues on Tarboro and Pearl streets, at two bars that each picked a lane.

L'Levation Bar and Lounge, 109 Tarboro Street. Owner Lyrexx Lewis runs it as an upscale lounge. Guests need a reservation, must be 25 or older, and have to meet a strict dress code. It occupies a two-story commercial building that the Main Street Rocky Mount profile dates to around 1920, possibly earlier at its core. The profile was written after a downtown tour with Downtown Development Manager Tanika Bryant. L'Levation opens later than anything else nearby, so it works as the last stop of the evening.

The Renaissance, 118 S. Pearl Street. The Telegram's preview places it between Sunset and Western avenues. The Chamber cut the ribbon on Aug. 4. The plan was cocktails at the first-floor bar and live music and entertainment on the roof. The owners describe the look as "the energy of 1920s Harlem, the craft of today's cocktail renaissance and the warmth of North Carolina hospitality." Aliyah Dukes, design director of Raleigh-based Dukes Properties & Construction, designed the interior as a speakeasy that still feels easy to walk into after work.

Partner and acting manager Daniel Bellamy is from Tarboro. He told the Telegram the plan was to bring in food truck vendors, local chefs and caterers until The Renaissance opened its own restaurant menu. For now, its website shows a bar menu of craft cocktails, wine and beer and promotes small plates. If you want a full dinner before the rooftop, Southeast Main is a three-block walk away. Chamber President and CEO David Farris told the Telegram he expected The Renaissance to "help downtown."

Where the Hours Overlap

Put the four schedules side by side and you can see how the new downtown runs. These are the most recent hours each business or the Telegram has published. Small restaurants adjust their hours often, so call ahead.

All four are open Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Sho' Nuff's four-day week sets the window. On a Thursday, you can sit down at Sho' Nuff by 6, walk to Pearl Street for a 7:30 cocktail, and still have three hours before the rooftop closes. On Monday, the only one of the four open is Kabayan Bites.

Sunday runs on an earlier clock. Both restaurants close by 6 p.m., The Renaissance opens at 2, and L'Levation opens at 5. A late lunch on Southeast Main followed by an afternoon drink on the roof fits that schedule better than a late dinner does.

The Dates That Fill the Calendar Next

Between now and early December, the calendar carries three confirmed reasons to be downtown, each a short drive or walk from these blocks:

• CIAA Volleyball Championship, Nov. 9–11. The 47th championship comes to the Rocky Mount Event Center, with listings starting at 8 a.m. Visiting teams and families will be downtown on a Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, the days when the fewest of these places are open.
• Jingle Mingle, Saturday, Nov. 14, 10 a.m.–4 p.m. It's a holiday artisan show at the Imperial Centre for the Arts and Sciences, 270 Gay Street, put on by the City of Rocky Mount's Parks and Recreation department. It ends at 4, which gives you plenty of time to get to Southeast Main before the Saturday kitchens close at 9.
• Rocky Mount Christmas Parade, Sunday, Dec. 6, 3 p.m. The 2026 parade page links to the route map. Parks and Recreation is the contact. A 3 p.m. Sunday parade falls inside both restaurants' Sunday hours and right after The Renaissance opens.

For more about the Mills side of town, our Wednesday evening at Rocky Mount Mills covers the brewery incubator and the Battle Park loop. Wednesday is also the night Southeast Main is quietest. More on the city's neighborhoods is in our Rocky Mount guide.

A 1912 drugstore with a new soul food menu and a 1920s building turned into a reservation lounge both show what happens when old buildings get the right new use. That's the kind of work we do every day at Foote Real Estate Group, from pricing homes to planning renovations and new builds across Rocky Mount. If you're curious what your own place is worth as downtown fills back in, start with a free home valuation.