Over 50 Tampa

Davis Islands · new american, seafood, pizza

220 East sits on Davis Boulevard in the small village strip at the top of Davis Islands, and its own site calls it a locally owned American kitchen 24 years strong. The menu runs wider than most neighbourhood rooms: shrimp and grits, a hand-cut New York strip, pizzas including a dill-pickle one the site tells you to trust it on, and a weekend brunch with chicken and waffles. Its Cuban sandwich is built on Cuban bread from La Segunda, which it names on the menu. Several dishes are marked GF on the menu itself.

Ybor City · italian, seafood

Bernini has been on the corner of Seventh Avenue and 17th Street in Ybor City for more than thirty years, cooking Italian food with a Gulf accent ... pistachio crusted grouper, eggplant in house made pomodoro, crispy duck with a chianti demi-glace. Owner Jason Fernandez is a fourth generation Tampa native who runs the Historic Hospitality group in Ybor City and got his first restaurant lessons from his neighbour Adela Gonzmart of the Columbia. His great-grandfather Jesus Fernandez tended bar in Tampa in the early 1900s. Fernandez went away to work with Ella Brennan at Commander's Palace in New Orleans and later with Wolfgang Puck before coming home to Ybor.

Ballast Point & Interbay · seafood

Big Ray's Fish Camp is a small seafood counter on Interbay Boulevard in South Tampa. Chef Raymond 'Nick' Cruz traces it back to Ballast Point Pier, a few minutes away: his own site says 'spending countless summer days fishing, cleaning, and cooking said fish on the line, would eventually turn into a personal passion to serve the best and freshest seafood in South Tampa.' It has been a MICHELIN Recommended restaurant since the 2025 Florida selection and kept that place in 2026.

Seminole Heights · american, seafood, pizza

Front Porch Grille has been on North Florida Avenue since 2002, which makes it one of the longest-running independent restaurants in Seminole Heights. It works out of a converted two-storey bungalow, the kind of house the neighbourhood is built from, with Bart's Tavern as the bar side of the same operation. Weekend service starts at 8am, so it is a breakfast room as well as a dinner one, and the kitchen keeps its own daily specials and happy hour separate from the main menu.

$ · bbq, southern, seafood

Hank's is a barbecue and fried catfish counter on North Dale Mabry Highway in the Egypt Lake-Leto area of north Tampa, one of the few places in the city that treats the fish fryer and the smoker as equal partners. Creative Loafing's barbecue guide singles out the crispness of the fish. It runs a catering side alongside the counter.

Ballast Point & Interbay · seafood, american

Hula Bay sits on the water at the end of Tyson Avenue in the Westshore Marina District, and its own site bills it as Tampa's premier waterfront restaurant with Hawaiian leanings. The complex runs a waterfront bar alongside the dining room and a second bar, Duke's Retired Surfers Bar, which shares its reservation system. It posts live music and a brunch service.

Live music some nights. Go before the band starts if you want to talk.

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.

Downtown · steak, seafood

Malio Iavarone opened Malio's in 1969, and his own site traces the kitchen back further than that, to the restaurant his immigrant parents ran from 1945. More than fifty years on it is still the room Tampa books for the night that matters, now downtown in Rivergate Tower on Ashley Drive with the river out the window. Prime steaks, seafood and cocktails, with private event space and catering on the same floor.

Carrollwood · new american, italian, seafood

Michael's Grill has been on N Dale Mabry since 2000 and calls itself a neighborhood hidden Carrollwood gem, which is close to how Creative Loafing described it when it reviewed the place: a tiny restaurant tucked into a strip plaza off Dale Mabry that took the reviewer three turnarounds to find. Michael and Andrea Reilly opened it after years in the business, he as a chef in Miami restaurants for 14 years and she as a baker and pastry chef, and the review recorded the chef coming out of the kitchen in his whites to talk to tables while the dining room filled up. The menu is fresh New American standards with French and Italian classics behind it, run across lunch, dinner and a weekend brunch. The room has terra cotta floors and a bar that looks into a cramped kitchen.

North Hyde Park · seafood, american

Ricks on the River is a bar and grille sitting directly on the Hillsborough River off North Willow Avenue, with a marina and wet slips so guests can arrive by boat. Its own site describes live music daily, fresh oysters at its own oyster bar and cold drinks on the water. It stays open to 1am every day and to 3am on Friday and Saturday, which is genuinely late by Tampa standards. Creative Loafing put it on its kid-friendly list because children watch for dolphins from the riverside deck.

Open late. Go earlier if you want a calmer room.

Ballast Point & Interbay · seafood, caribbean, american

Salt Shack sits on Old Tampa Bay at the end of West Tyson Avenue, a few hundred feet from Hula Bay, and it is built around the view. Its own writing leans hard on sunsets, calling itself a first stop for waterfront sunset dining in Tampa. The cooking is coastal seafood with Caribbean leanings and tropical drinks. Between this and Hula Bay, Tyson Avenue is the closest thing South Tampa has to a waterfront restaurant row.

University Area · seafood, floribbean, smoked fish, oysters

Skipper's has been on Skipper Road north of the University area since 1980, a tin-roofed compound of weathered wood that calls itself a world class music venue and cooks Floribbean seafood to go with it. The kitchen's best known plate is the blackened grouper Reuben, which the site notes was featured on the Travel Channel's Best Sandwich in America, and there is an oyster bar alongside it. Music runs in the yard behind the restaurant, with free live music on Sunday afternoons in addition to the ticketed calendar. In January 2026 the venue announced a partnership with the Straz Center for the Performing Arts, which is an unusual pairing for a smokehouse under live oaks.

This is a music venue. It is loud when a show is on.

Tampa Heights · $$ · seafood

Stones Throw is the open riverfront pavilion at the Armature Works end of the Heights waterfront, a short walk along the Riverwalk from downtown. It runs on oysters, seafood and craft cocktails, with sunset happy hours, weekend lunch, Taco Tuesdays and live music on the water. The pavilion sits on the Hillsborough River with the boardwalk and the boat slips right there.

Live music some nights. Go before the band starts if you want to talk.

Downtown · seafood, new american

The Pearl is a restaurant, tavern and oyster bar in the Water Street district, serving made-from-scratch entrees, shareable plates and seasonal oysters with a long cocktail and beer list. It runs lunch on weekdays, brunch at weekends and dinner seven days, with a weekday happy hour from 2pm to 5pm. Its own site records inclusion in the 2024 through 2026 MICHELIN Guide.

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.