A sweet couple soon will have a couple of sweet local restaurants.
This spring, Chef Sergiy Horyslavskyy and his wife, Galyna Horyslavska, plan to launch Sweet Couple, a boutique bakery, cafe and coffee shop in North Naples. Their new business will open in March or April in the same inline commercial strip where they have operated Tartine and Tartelette French restaurant for nearly three years.
The couple signed a lease Jan. 20 for the 1,438-square-foot space that most recently was Bobby Yanks Burgers and Locale Eatery in the green-trimmed retail strip on Health Park Boulevard next to the NCH North Naples hospital campus at the intersection of Goodlette-Frank and Immokalee roads. Until December 2018, it was home to Sweet Caroline’s, a local cafe and bakery that was a popular breakfast and lunch venue for more than two decades.
Returning a similar concept to Sweet Caroline’s longtime space is one of the reasons the Horyslavskyys are naming their new business Sweet Couple. “A lot of people remember the place and say it was such a nice place,” Horyslavska said. “And, customers call us a sweet couple.”
Sweet Couple will feature sandwiches, quiches, salads, soups and coffee drinks as well as fresh breads, croissants, pastries and desserts made by Chef Horyslavskyy, who works alone in the kitchen, making food from scratch.
“He loves to bake desserts, breads, everything. Everything we have in the store will be homemade,” Horyslavska said. “Every day we will have a special. Every day there will be something special. We have a lot of ideas for that place.”
Although the small cafe will have about 16 seats divided between inside and outside, the couple is expecting mostly takeout orders from a regular customer base drawing from the nearby hospital, Arthrex headquarters and the new Fifth Third Bank recently built on that corner.
“People will see the difference,” said Horyslavska, noting that she and her husband bought all new equipment, including bakery cases, tables and chairs, and a convection oven and range for the cafe. “It’s small. Perfect for us.” 
The surnames of the married couple are each slightly different because of their genders, a common practice in some cultures, including their native Ukraine. The chef went to culinary school in Strasbourg, France, 17 years ago and returned to Ukraine to open an American-style restaurant and nightclub. Seeking a better life in America, the couple moved to the United States with their first daughter in 2016. They worked in various restaurants in Orlando and Naples before buying Tartine & Tartelette, an existing turnkey restaurant, in early 2020 just as the pandemic made it nearly impossible to do business.
“The first year of our restaurant was so bad,” she said. “But now it’s good and we are so happy. Now we are opening one more place and now we know what customers love.”
Tartine & Tartelette, a dinner-only, fine-dining restaurant, operates by reservations only on the northern end of the business strip. A few doors down, Sweet Couple, 11121 Health Park Blvd., Suite 300, will be open 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. every day but Sunday. Both of the couple’s restaurants are closed Sundays to give the family time to share with their three children, two of whom were born in the United States.
