1983
South MacDill restaurant, bar and arcade from a Tampa hospitality group. Publishes Bucs and Gators schedules, NFL and college football all season, and Premier League on weekends. Says it has 80 TVs.
220 East
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.
7th + Grove
7th + Grove sits on East Seventh Avenue in Ybor City and describes itself as the flagship of the 7th + Grove Hospitality group. The cooking is Southern comfort food crossed with Guyanese flavours, served with what the site calls creatively crafted cocktails, and the room runs late on Thursday, Friday and Saturday. It is one of the Ybor rooms Creative Loafing Tampa Bay lists among Tampa Bay's restaurants, and it leans into events... a Saturday day party with hookahs and small bites, NFL Sundays, private parties and catering.
Go early. It turns into a late-night spot later in the evening.
Al's Finger Licking Good Bar-B-Que & Soul Food
Al's cooks Tennessee-style barbecue in Ybor City, dry-rubbed ribs smoked over wood with a tomato-based sauce, and it has won best barbecue in Tampa more times than anyone bothers to count. The food is family food in the literal sense, with dishes on the menu named for the people they came from ... Uncle John's smoked sausage, Aunt Nita's black eyed peas, Sparky's pulled pork, Mazie's serve-it-up yellow rice and chicken. The business started as a concession stand in 2003 and became a sit-down restaurant in 2009, and it now runs barbecue and soul food out of one address on East Seventh Avenue after folding the two shops together.
BellyUp! Tampa / Over 50
Over 50 Tampa
Nobody publishes the noise level, and it is the thing that decides the night.
Good places to eat and drink in Tampa, minus the nightclubs. When a spot gets loud later or draws a lot of kids, the card tells you.
4 spots
Bern's Steak House
Bern's Steak House has been on South Howard Avenue since 1956, built out by Bern and Gert with their own craftspeople from what the restaurant's own history calls 'an ordinary business block on Howard Avenue, containing a grocery, barber shop and dime store'. The wine list runs to more than half a million bottles across 6,500 labels, kept in a 50-degree working cellar on site and a temperature-controlled warehouse, and the programme won the 2016 James Beard Award for Outstanding Wine Program. Dessert moves upstairs to the Harry Waugh Dessert Room, which keeps its own wine list. It is a MICHELIN Recommended restaurant in the 2026 Florida selection.
Malio's Prime Steakhouse
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.
Renzo's SoHo
Renzo's moved its original Tampa steakhouse into a new South Howard room with an Argentine wine and spirits program built for this location. Choose it for Malbec, dinner, and a slower start to the night. It closes at 9pm Monday through Thursday, 10pm Friday and Saturday, and 8pm Sunday.
Steelbach
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.
What these spots are known for
The same over 50 spots, sorted by the reasons people actually pick them.
Origin Stories
Who built this and why?
Neighborhood Institutions
What has been here forever?
Rooftops and Patios
Can we sit outside?
Big Groups
Will they seat twelve of us?
Private Dining and Buyouts
Can we take a room?
In the MICHELIN Guide
Who has the inspectors paying attention?
Historic Rooms
What was this building before?
Vegan and Plant-Based
Where can I eat with no asterisks?
Community Quotes
Recommendations from real Tampanians, always attributed to whoever wrote them.
Nobody’s shared a over 50 recommendation yet. Be the first.
Run one of these rooms?
Every Tampa spot here already has a free profile going, put together from what you publish publicly. If we have you filed wrong, or we are missing what you most want to be known for, tell us.