Here’s a post from Instagram earlier today:

I didn’t see this post in time to swing by, but I’ll try to check out the space tomorrow.

If you’re curious what Acheson is all about, check out this revealing interview in Atlanta Magazine. That interview includes his answer to “why Savannah?”:

Everyone always asks when Iâ€ll open in Vegas or New York. Those are great cities, but they have great dining options already. Here, we can look in our own backyard. Savannah is an amazingly beautiful city. It can use a couple more restaurants that are serving great food. Thereâ€s not much down there that does what I do. Weâ€re in a historical neighborhood. Back in the Day Bakery is two blocks away. Thereâ€s a lot of local genius happening in this area. Weâ€re about a half-hour walk from the park. The tourist crowd will have to come to us. Weâ€ve always been somewhat of a destination dining. I think people will be happily inconvenienced by the destination.

I like that: “happily inconvenienced.”

Hugh Acheson’s Savannah restaurant will be called the Florence, officially. He’d tentatively called it Vittoria at first, then settled on the double entendre that the Florence provides: It’s not only the name of a city in Italy but also the name of Savannah’s famous waving girl statue.

Yes, Florence Martus. I wonder if she ever ate the Italian-ish cuisine that Acheson has planned. Click here for more on Acheson, who will also be featured at the Savannah Food & Wine Festival in November.

Now, let’s be clear that March 2014 looks like a really ambitious goal. There’s active construction on One West Victory, where Florence will be, but we haven’t really seen anything come out of the ground yet.

In other news, the Whole Foods Market in Savannah is now on Twitter at @wfmsavannah. I’m taking a preview tour of the store tomorrow (Saturday), which I will likely write about for next Tuesday’s City Talk — Tuesday is opening day.

Also of note: the Facebook page for the Whole Foods in Charleston (actually in Mount Pleasant) has 3140 likes, while the yet-to-open Savannah store has 8514.

In other foodie news, my City Talk column on Sunday is about my first trip to The Bier Haus, which got its beer and wine license just a week ago.

Spudnik will be opening soon on West Broughton.

Chipotle and Zoës Kitchen will both be opening in the next month or so next to Whole Foods.

The weeklong event will fill a traditionally slow week in the city’s cultural calendar. The festival has already attracted a good bit of local and regional press, and there are some fairly big names in the food and wine world who will be headed our way, including Rob Mondavi Jr., and visiting chefs Steven Satterfield, Hugh Acheson, and Chris Hastings.

As noted in a May piece in the Savannah Morning News, the event is an expansion of the Tourism Leadership Council’s annual Taste of Savannah. A big expansion.

I’m excited about the festival, but I honestly don’t know if I’ll end up going to any of it. As regular readers should know, even if they don’t believe it, I pretty much always pay my own way to events and restaurants that I end up writing about. I get press tickets for a few Savannah Music Festival shows each year, but I spend hundreds of dollars on tickets for myself and friends. I don’t like to be on “the list” at clubs, and it makes me nervous when restaurateurs and chefs recognize me and try to send free stuff over. I do get a press pass for the Savannah Film Festival, which I cover extensively, although that process has a couple of years proved quite frustrating.

So I’ve looked several times now at the schedule and prices of the impressive events lined up for the Food & Wine Festival. They look really good and — let’s be honest — quite pricy.

I might yet decide to splurge for a $195 seat at the Celebrity Chef Tour, a “collaboration dinner, featuring several award-winning James Beard Foundation Chefs” at 700 Drayton at the Mansion on Forsyth Park on Wednesday, November 13. But I’m not likely to spend that much for two tickets so I can take along a friend or a date, and it’s probably not the type of event one would enjoy alone, although I do enjoy dining alone pretty often.

The $39 tickets for Taste of Savannah in Ellis Square will probably sell really well, but I’m not sure who will turn out for some of the rest of the events. Maybe there will be a large demand for the Michael Mondavi Family Dinner at 8 p.m. on that Saturday, but the $225 cost seems prohibitive to me. Ditto for the $55 jazz brunch at the Westin on the festival’s final Sunday — one can typically enjoy a jazz brunch at the Aqua Star for somewhat less money.

Perhaps in future years, the Savannah Food & Wine Festival will find a way to incorporate more of the work of local chefs and restaurants. Maybe there will be more populist events that include traditional Lowcountry foods like boils, BBQ, and soul food. Maybe there’s a way to emphasize locally sourced ingredients as the inaugural Revival Fest hopes to do.

Perhaps there will be more events like the recent “Smack down” between Roberto Leoci and Jesse Blanco described with great energy at Eat It and Like It.

Of course, it’s possible that the first Savannah Food & Wine Festival will be so popular that it won’t need to do any of these things I’m imagining.

Maybe wealthy retirees and the business community will step up to the plate in a big way, as they have for so many cultural events in Savannah, and be joined by a variety of younger professionals and well-to-do tourists. I guess we’ll see.

Let me finish by saying how much I love the festival’s official poster, designed by a SCAD student I count among my broad network of downtown friends, Nuntanut Sathityatiwat, aka Nat.

Just take a look at Nat’s poster, with the buggy and the pedicab, the live oak and Spanish moss, the corkscrew, the strawberry dipped in chocolate — and all presented so elegantly and simply. I’d say it’s one of the best festival posters we’ve seen around here in recent years. Click on through to get to the festival’s Facebook page:

WHAT: Groundbreaking Ceremony for One West Victory, an exciting new eco-friendly student focused community developed by Jamestown, whose portfolio includes Chelsea Market and One Times Square in New York, White Provision and 999 Peachtree in Atlanta, and Pacific Place in San Francisco, among many others. Special guest Dr. Estella Shabazz, a member of Savannahâ€s City Council, will serve as a featured speaker for this historic occasion, addressing the positive impact this revitalization project will have on one of Savannahâ€s oldest neighborhoods.

One West Victory will feature 114 chic, fully-furnished one, two and four bedroom residences, as well as 5,500 square feet of amenities including a fitness center, art studio, media center, study areas, outdoor patio and courtyard space. This multi-use development, located on the site of the old Savannah Ice Factory, is bike and bus accessible. One West Victory will also be home to a 7,000 square foot chef-driven restaurant and café that will serve the Savannah community. One West Victory is scheduled for completion in Summer 2014.

WHEN: Thursday, May 23, 2013
11-11:45 a.m.

WHERE: One West Victory
1 W. Victory Drive
Savannah, Georgia
(located at the intersection of Victory Drive and Bull Street)

This is certainly good news. One West Victory was approved last fall, but the site has seen little visible activity since then — prompting concern about the project’s future. But major developments like this can’t begin work until all the designs, contracts, and such are in place.

For those who know Savannah at all well, you’ll notice in the image below that the showcased building is the old brick one that you see as you come to the point where Whitaker dead-ends at Victory.

I’ll confess to preferring an earlier version of the site plan that put more energy on the corner of Bull and Victory and to still being a bit concerned about the design of the parking garage as seen from Bull Street — both north and south of Victory.

Here’s the site plan from my post last fall:

In other recent news, Chef and restaurateur Hugh Acheson announced that he was opening an Italian restaurant as part of One West Victory.