Over 50 Tampa

Downtown · $$ · italian

Ash is the modern Italian room chef Ferrell Alvarez and Chon Nguyen's Proper House Group opened in Water Street Tampa. Alvarez sums up the room as fancy, but approachable fancy: pasta made in house, ingredients sourced close, happy hour from 5 to 7 every night and walk-ins always welcome. The signature plate is the lumache alla vodka with guanciale and parmesan, which the kitchen says is the most requested dish on the menu. Private dining runs from a chef's table for four up to a full buyout, and the site points out it is a short walk from the arena and a reasonable option before a show at the Straz Center.

Ybor City

A cider and mead house in Ybor City, open since late 2014, and one of very few rooms in Tampa built around either drink. Most of what it pours is exclusive to the tasting room, and the company says its ciders and meads are made with Florida grown ingredients and are always 100 percent natural. It is unrelated to Cigar City Brewing despite the shared nickname for the district.

farm to table, sandwiches, bakery

Fat Beet Farm is a working farm on West Hillsborough Avenue with a kitchen and bakery on the property, founded by Jen and Tim Curci in 2013 on what they describe as a ragged piece of coastal Florida land. Vegetables are grown in greenhouses on site, cooked in the kitchen and returned to the soil: scraps go through composting and a bio-digester built with the University of South Florida that turns food waste into fertiliser slurry, with rainwater harvesting and an on-site solar grid behind the rest. The counter serves sandwiches, biscuits, fried chicken and baked goods, and the farm runs tours, workshops, markets and volunteer days. It is the only venue in the Tampa Bay area holding a MICHELIN Green Star, awarded in the 2026 statewide Florida selection.

Ybor City

Gasparilla started distilling in Ybor City in 2018 and calls itself the oldest rum distillery in Tampa, working from Florida sugarcane molasses and leaning all the way into the Jose Gaspar pirate story the city celebrates every January. The cocktail bar pours its own rum, vodka and gin, and the distillery runs tastings and tours of the production floor alongside private events. It calls its spirits farm to bar top.

Tampa Heights · sushi

Kosen is a twelve-seat omakase counter on West Palm Avenue in Tampa Heights, running a menu of more than twenty courses. The kitchen keeps an in-house fermentation program and buys from local regenerative farms, and a Japanese-inspired cocktail lounge called Tanto sits alongside the counter under a director of beverage and sustainability. It has held one MICHELIN star in every Florida selection since 2024 and displays the 2026 star on its own site. Rocca, another one star room, is a few doors along the same block.

Ballast Point & Interbay · $$ · seafood, lobster rolls, ice cream

Leon's is a small seafood counter on Interbay Boulevard beside Ballast Point Pier and Park, looking out over Hillsborough Bay. It opened in 2024 and is built around lobster rolls served hot with butter or cold with mayonnaise, alongside locally sourced ice cream and Ybor City coffee. It closes at 8 PM and is shut on Mondays, so it is a lunch and early-dinner room rather than an evening one.

Midtown Tampa · new american, french, italian

Ponte Modern American sits on Gramercy Lane in the Midtown Tampa development off Westshore, from James Beard-nominated chef Chris Ponte. The kitchen melds his Parisian training with American cooking and builds the menu on locally sourced ingredients. It has been a MICHELIN Recommended restaurant in both the 2025 and 2026 Florida selections.

vegan, prepared foods, breakfast

Pure Kitchen is a 100 percent vegan grab-and-go kitchen on West Kennedy Boulevard. The menu changes every morning and the food is made in small batches from fresh ingredients, so this is the practical stop when you want a prepared meal without ordering from a fixed restaurant menu. The kitchen posts the day's choices on Facebook and Instagram, and its September 26, 2026 Instagram post confirmed that the shop was open that day.

Tampa Heights · southern, steak

Steelbach is the chophouse inside Armature Works, the 73,000 square foot streetcar warehouse on the Heights waterfront that was restored and reopened as a food and event building. The kitchen calls itself Southern inspired and buys grass-fed beef from Florida producers, aging it four to seven weeks, trimming and cutting to order, then cooking it over a Florida oak fire at about 1,000 degrees. Wine is the other half of the room, with UnWined Wednesdays and multi-course wine dinners led by Master Sommeliers.

West Tampa · bbq

The Brisket Shoppe is a Texas-style barbecue counter on North Armenia Avenue in West Tampa run by pitmaster Danny Hernandez, who smokes hand-selected Akaushi wagyu brisket daily over locally sourced oak. The board also carries heritage turkey breast, Cheshire pork ribs and house sausages, with local craft beer and wine alongside. The kitchen states its rules flatly: 'No Freezers. No Microwave. Chef Driven.' It serves Wednesday through Saturday from 11am until the meat runs out, and entered the MICHELIN Guide for the first time in the 2026 Florida selection.

Tampa Heights · florida, seafood, new american, southern

Richard Gonzmart of the Columbia Restaurant Group opened Ulele in August 2014 in the old Tampa Water Works building on the Hillsborough River, next to the natural spring the restaurant is named for. He calls it his legacy and points out that it sits four blocks from where his family lived and about 300 yards from where he was born at St. Joseph's Hospital. The kitchen works off a ten foot barbacoa grill and builds the menu from Florida produce, seafood and other proteins, with native-inspired dishes behind the name of the Tocobaga princess Ulele. Ulele Spring Brewery operates inside the building and was the first on-site brewery in Tampa Heights, pouring Rusty Red, Water Works Pale and Hydration Station Lager.