When Walt Manney explains why he opened an Italian restaurant on Center Street, he doesn't lead with market research. He leads with his own commute. "I have to travel an hour to get Italian food," he told the Rutland Herald when Nonna's Italian Ristorante soft-opened at 22 Center St. on November 8, 2024. That's a small complaint, but it turned into the only sit-down Italian restaurant currently operating in downtown Rutland.
Zoom out from that one opening, though, and something more useful shows up. Two new restaurants took root on Center Street within weeks of each other in late 2024. Almost two years later, only one is still open. The survivor and the casualty split on one trait that has nothing to do with cuisine, price point, or décor.
Two openings, one closing, and the pattern in between
Nonna's exists because another restaurant didn't. Taso's on Center announced it was closing at the end of October 2024, and the Manneys secured the lease and opened Nonna's less than two weeks later. It's Walt and Lynn Manney's third food-service business on the same few downtown blocks, alongside Sugar and Spice in Mendon and Jones' Donuts in Rutland, which meant they already had a customer list, a landlord relationship, and a staff bench before a single table was set. Manney has pointed to former Rutland institutions like The Palms and Sal's as the kind of sit-down Italian dining the city used to have and lost.
Compare that to Pao Pao, which opened in December 2024 as a brick-and-mortar version of the arepas Felix Franco had sold at the Vermont State Fair the previous summer. Franco and his wife Paola Nuñez built a genuinely ambitious menu, blending Venezuelan and Peruvian cooking into one of downtown's more distinctive dining rooms. It closed permanently on April 12, 2026, according to Seven Days, after about sixteen months in business. Unlike the Manneys, Franco and Nuñez didn't have a second Rutland business to lean on while the first one found its footing.
That's not a knock on the food. It's a reminder of what actually determines whether a new concept survives its first two winters downtown: whether the owner already has a name in town before the sign goes up.
The bar that didn't need to be new
The same rule shows up at The Mad Rose, the cocktail lounge at 42 Center St. that's become downtown's newer late-night anchor. Its owner, Brooke Lipman, is a Rutland native who left for the West Coast and came back in 2011 to buy Center Street Alley, a dive bar she still owns. More than a decade later, she opened something with a different feel next door, telling Seven Days she wanted "somewhere you can go and have dinner and an interesting cocktail, a whole experience."
The Mad Rose didn't have to build a reputation from scratch. It borrowed one, from a bar Lipman had already been running for over ten years. The menu leans on small plates and a rotating cocktail list, and the bar pours Pine Hill IPA from Rutland Beerworks, one of several signs that the newer downtown spots are building on relationships with other local businesses rather than importing outside supply chains.
What continuity actually buys a new restaurant
Put those three stories next to each other and the pattern gets hard to miss. The businesses that made it past their first year downtown this cycle, Nonna's and The Mad Rose, both belong to owners who had already spent years running something else on the same streets. The one that didn't, Pao Pao, was a first business for both owners, however talented the cooking.
That doesn't mean every new concept without local roots is doomed, and it doesn't mean every longtime owner automatically succeeds. What it does mean, if you eat downtown regularly, is that the restaurants worth betting your Friday night on right now tend to be extensions of businesses you already trust, not just untested new names on a sign.
Fair Week changes downtown's rhythm too
None of this happens in a vacuum. The Vermont State Fair runs August 18 through 22 this year at the Rutland County Agricultural Society fairgrounds on South Main Street, according to the fair's own site. It's one of the oldest state fairs in the country, tracing back to 1846 when it started as a one day event called the Rutland State Fair before taking its current name in 1972.
Fair hours run late into the evening most days, from 5 to 11 p.m. on opening Tuesday and 8 a.m. to 11 p.m. Wednesday through Friday, with Saturday stretching from 8 a.m. to 11 p.m. If you're planning a downtown dinner that week, expect fairgoer traffic on South Main and budget extra time getting across town.
The same week brings a run of shows at the Paramount Theatre on Center Street. Carly Pearce plays August 15, and The Wallflowers follow later in the week, according to the Rutland Herald's events listings. Aaron Lewis, the Vermont-born former Staind frontman, closes out fair week with a set at the fairgrounds on August 22.
Here's the week at a glance if you're mapping out plans:
- August 15: Carly Pearce, Paramount Theatre
- August 18 to 22: Vermont State Fair, Rutland County Agricultural Society fairgrounds
- Mid-fair week: The Wallflowers, Paramount Theatre
- August 22: Aaron Lewis and the Stateliners, Vermont State Fairgrounds
The parts of the week that don't change
Fair week is loud, but the weekly staples underneath it keep running on schedule. The Vermont Farmers Market still sets up at Depot Park every Saturday, the same outdoor market that's supplied downtown's kitchens all season. Friday nights downtown have belonged to the Friday Night Live series this summer, drawing people onto Center Street after work.
One thing did wrap up before August arrived. The free Seven to Sunset concert series at Main Street Park, which brought acts like Rick Redington and Tuff Love to downtown every Wednesday evening, ran its last date on July 29. If Wednesday nights at the park had become part of your week, plan on something else downtown for the rest of the summer.
Same block, new owners
Before November 2024, Center Street had Taso's where Nonna's now stands and no cocktail lounge at 42. The block that exists this August has an Italian dinner spot busy enough to fill on show nights at the Paramount next door, a late-night cocktail bar built on a decade of goodwill from its owner's other business, and one empty storefront where a promising new concept ran out of runway before it built the kind of local relationships that carried its neighbors through.
That's not a story about restaurants closing. It's a story about which kind of new business downtown actually keeps its lights on, and it's a useful thing to know the next time a new sign goes up on a block you've walked past for years.
If you're already calling Rutland home and you find yourself thinking about what any of this, or anything else about the neighborhood, might mean for your own address, Crow Real Estate Group is easy to reach for an unhurried conversation. Getting a read on your home's current value takes less than a minute if you're curious where things stand.
