Ask someone in Weston or Coral Springs what Davie does in July and you'll get a shrug. Ask someone who lives off Griffin Road and you'll get a calendar. Summer here is not the empty stretch between the Orange Blossom Festival and the November circuit finals. It is the season the Town, the arena, and the restaurants quietly program for the people who stay.
The rhythm has three anchors: a rodeo Saturday in June and another in September, a Town-run prix-fixe dining window in August and September, and a set of morning-and-evening park routines that make the heat a feature instead of a problem. New businesses are slotting into that rhythm this year. If you know the dates, the summer is denser than most residents give it credit for.
The Rodeo is a Summer Calendar, Not a Winter Event
The Weekley Brothers Davie Pro Rodeo is easy to think of as a cold-weather draw, because the Orange Blossom Festival and the RAM Southeastern Circuit Finals bookend the fall and spring. That reading misses two of the year's best nights. The 2026 schedule at the Bergeron Rodeo Grounds includes a Saturday, June 20 performance at 7:30 p.m. and a Saturday, September 12 performance at 7:30 p.m., both at 4201 SW 65th Way.
Those two dates matter because they land in the months when the rest of Broward's outdoor programming has thinned out. A summer Saturday at the arena is a different animal than the winter finals crowd. The stands read local. The Weekley Brothers organization was named the Best Rodeo in North America in the USA Today 2020 Readers Choice Awards, and the November event, the largest championship rodeo east of the Mississippi River with contestants competing for over $250,000 in money and prizes, gets the coverage. The June and September nights are the ones your neighbors are actually at.
A useful way to think about the summer: two rodeo Saturdays, two months of prix-fixe menus, and roughly twelve weekends of park-at-dawn weather. Everything else fits between those.
Savor Davie: The Two Months When Local Restaurants Set a Fixed Price
The Town launched something this year that residents should mark on the fridge. From August 1 to September 30, 2026, participating restaurants will feature a multi-course meal offered at a fixed price as part of Savor Davie. The format is straightforward: a three-course prix-fixe consisting of a first course, a second course entrée, and a third course dessert or an approved substitute such as a specialty non-alcoholic beverage, side, or chef-selected small plate, with a minimum of two entrée selections required for participation.
The rules are worth reading closely, because they change what "prix-fixe" usually means in South Florida. The multi-course meal shall constitute the total price charged to customers, with no additional fees, surcharges, or upcharges; taxes, gratuity, and beverages may be charged separately. That is a stricter no-surprise rule than most restaurant weeks operate under.
Savor Davie is not a citywide promotion built to lure Miami-Dade traffic west. The goal is to spotlight small business owners, family-owned enterprises, and branded eateries that make up the community. Which means the participating list will lean toward the places locals already know: the sushi rooms and Italian counters on South University Drive, the Latin kitchens near Nova Southeastern, the steakhouses off Griffin. If you have been meaning to try the neighbor's favorite spot and never quite pulled the trigger, August is the month the math finally works.
The New Indoor Room for a 3 p.m. Storm
Davie summer has a predictable arc: cool at 7 a.m., unbearable by 2 p.m., dramatic thunderstorm around 4 p.m., beautiful again at 7 p.m. The gap in the middle is what a new business is aiming at.
Golf Vault, a new golf simulator lounge from Chris Flores and Gil Martin, is targeting an end of June or July 1 opening at 4900 S. University Drive, Suite 205. The locally owned concept will combine golf simulators, lounge seating, food and drinks, and event space in a roughly 4,000-square-foot second-floor location above Pinza 104. The address puts it in the University Drive corridor most Davie residents already drive twice a week, which is the entire point. It is a walk-in-when-the-sky-opens kind of place, not a destination trip.
Two other openings within a short drive round out the summer's "new places" list:
- The Restaurant Store at 2750 Bridge Way, Suite 120, sits just off I-595 and the Florida Turnpike and is now open to the public. The Davie opening marks The Restaurant Store's 14th location nationwide and third in Florida, following Jacksonville and Orlando. This is a wholesale foodservice supplier that welcomes retail shoppers, and while membership unlocks deeper savings, all shoppers are welcome, both in-store and online, with more than 510,000 items available. For anyone who cooks seriously or hosts, browsing 47,000 square feet of restaurant-grade sheet pans and knives on a rainy Saturday is a real afternoon.
- Poke I Love You is opening a second location just over the line. The new shop will be located in Plantation at 10055 Cleary Boulevard, with an expected opening date of late spring/early summer 2026. The restaurant specializes in build-your-own poke bowls with options starting with sushi rice, ramen, spring mix, or Thai rice, plus proteins including salmon, ahi tuna, tofu, chicken, marinated octopus, beef, crab, or shrimp. It is a four-minute drive from most of central Davie.
Morning and Late Afternoon at the Parks
The parks work in summer. You have to accept that they work between 7 and 9 a.m. and again from 6 p.m. onward.
Tree Tops Park is the one to know. The boardwalk runs through 23 acres of restored freshwater marsh and nature trails; there is a viewing tower, and paddleboats and canoes are available to rent. A canoe on a still July morning is a different Broward County than the one on I-95. Equestrian trails run through the park, which is a reminder that Davie remains one of the last places in the tri-county area where you might share a bridle path with someone on horseback on the way to breakfast.
Flamingo Gardens programs directly for summer. The 60-acre botanical garden is running Pollinatorpalooza, featuring David Rogers' Big Bugs: The Pollinators, a set of sculptures of insects and pollinators created from natural and reclaimed forest materials installed throughout the Gardens. There is also a nighttime wildlife experience centered around animals that awaken after dark, with interactive stations focused on owls, scorpions, snakes, alligators and more. Night at a botanical garden with the temperature down twenty degrees is a summer trick most residents never think to use. The grounds hold 3,000 rare and exotic plants along with Florida native wildlife including alligators, bears, bobcats, eagles, otters, panthers, peacocks, and flamingos, sanctuary animals that are permanent residents rather than seasonal attractions.
For 2026, Flamingo Gardens is also included in the South Florida Adventure Pass, which returns for 2026 with the price the same as last year and Zoo Miami now included in the pass at no additional cost. If you have out-of-town family visiting in August, the pass math is worth running.
A Summer That Reads Like Davie
The thesis is a simple one. Davie's summer is not a lull. It is a locally programmed calendar that assumes you already live here. Two rodeo Saturdays at the Bergeron Grounds. Sixty-one days of prix-fixe menus at neighborhood restaurants. A new simulator lounge tucked above Pinza 104 for the 3 p.m. rain. A wholesale kitchen store off I-595 for the cooks. A nighttime garden and a paddled marsh for the mornings and evenings the heat allows.
The people who live here already know most of these places exist. What summer 2026 offers is a set of dated reasons to actually use them, and a couple of new rooms to fold into the rotation. That is worth more than most tourist-facing "Best of Broward" lists will admit.
If you have been thinking about your next move within Davie, or wondering what a home in the equestrian pockets versus the University Drive corridor really trades on this year, the team at Julian Calderin with The Bespoke Group knows the streets these calendars are built around. Get Your Home Valuation to see where your property fits in the current market.