Over 50 Tampa

Midtown Tampa · italian, cuban, bakery, sandwiches

Alessi has been baking in Tampa since 1912, working from 'family recipes passed down through four generations'. It is a Sicilian bakery that grew up alongside the Cuban and Spanish bakeries of West Tampa and Ybor, and it sells both traditions ... Italian pastries and cannoli on one side, fresh Cuban bread and scachatta on the other, plus a deli counter, custom cake studio and rotisserie chicken. The business has moved into a single new building on West Cypress Street that puts the bakery, cake studio, deli and cafe 'under one roof'.

SoHo · $$$ · italian

Bella's opened on South Howard in 1986, when Bill Shumate and Joanie Corneil set out to give Tampa authentic Italian cooking, and its own site now counts 40 years of service. Shumate had run restaurants around the country since 1964 and served as president of the Florida Restaurant Association and chairman of its Hillsborough County chapter. Corneil came to the partnership having run two of her own places in Oklahoma. The restaurant sells its own cookbook, which is the sort of thing only a kitchen with a long back catalogue bothers to do.

SoHo · steak, new american

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.

East Tampa · $ · bbq, southern

Big John's Alabama BBQ has been on 40th Street North in East Tampa since 1968, when the late Rev. John A. Stephens, known as Big John, opened it after moving to Tampa from Eufaula, Alabama with his family. Its own biography page says he came to the area with goals of being an entrepreneur but most importantly a man of God, and that the Tampa Tribune and other outlets recognised his contributions to the community. The restaurant still cooks on an open pit, a technique it says it has kept for over 40 years, and it took Steve Harvey's Hoodie Award for Best Barbeque Restaurant in 2007. His son Fred Stephens keeps the business going, and his widow Sallie Stephens and their children marked a grand re-opening.

East Tampa · cuban, italian, sandwiches

Brocato's opened in 1948 and has worked its way through three businesses in the same family: grocery store, then meat market, then sandwich shop. Its own site puts the arithmetic plainly, that nearly eighty years later 'countless restaurants, diners and sandwich shops have come and gone' and Brocato's has not. The counter is known for the Tampa trinity of Cuban sandwiches, deviled crabs and stuffed potatoes. It sits on East Columbus Drive in East Tampa, closes at 5:30 in the afternoon and is shut on Sundays, which tells you it is a working lunch counter rather than a destination restaurant.

Tampa Heights · $ · sandwiches, coffee, breakfast

Cafe Hey is the small coffee and sandwich room on North Franklin Street that Tampa Heights has used for years, and Creative Loafing calls it a Tampa Heights staple. It runs a vegan brunch every Sunday until it sells out, which sits oddly and happily next to a menu of meaty sandwiches. Thursday night is open mic, and the bill is musicians, comedians, poets and whoever else signs up.

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

Ybor City · cuban, italian, spanish, sandwiches

Carmine's has been on the corner of Seventh Avenue in Ybor City since 1948, and its own site describes it as 'a cornerstone of Ybor City for over seven decades'. The menu is the Ybor mix rather than one country's cooking ... Cuban, Italian and Spanish dishes side by side, with the Cuban sandwich and the deviled crab croquettes as the two orders it is known for. Owner Carmine Iavarone runs the room, and the site credits him with 'deep roots in the community' and decades of keeping the recipes going.

Ybor City · spanish, cuban

Casimiro Hernandez, Sr. opened the Columbia Saloon on December 17, 1903, and it became the Columbia Restaurant in 1905. It is still run by his descendants, now into the fourth and fifth generations ... Richard Gonzmart, Casey Gonzmart Sr., Andrea Gonzmart Williams and Casey Gonzmart Jr. The Ybor City original has grown from a corner saloon into 15 dining rooms across an entire city block, 52,000 square feet with seating for up to 1,700, and the company calls it the largest Spanish restaurant in the world. Flamenco is performed during dinner, with seatings at 5:30, 6 or 6:30pm for the 7pm show Monday through Saturday and 8:30 or 9pm seatings for a second 9:30pm show on Friday and Saturday.

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

Downtown · $ · pizza, italian

Eddie & Sam's has been selling foldable New York slices on the corner of Twiggs in downtown Tampa since 1998. The kitchen's whole argument is the water: it imports New York water for the dough, on the theory that the minerals in it are what give a New York crust its texture. The slices are wide and thin crusted, sold by the slice or the pie, and the room is the downtown lunch counter for courthouse and office workers.

University Area · jamaican, caribbean

The Fowler Avenue room with the bright teal roof is the flagship of four Jerk Hut locations, all of them in Tampa, and it is the only one that is a full restaurant rather than a carryout window. It runs a Jamaican lunch buffet Monday through Friday and a Sunday brunch buffet with live reggae, alongside a full liquor bar and a separate carryout counter. On Friday nights the patio turns into a market of Tampa Bay vendors with live cooking stations that runs to midnight, and the ladies' night behind it goes to 3am. The Tampa Bay Times included Jerk Hut in its list of Tampa Bay's 25 most iconic restaurants, a list that required at least a decade in business to qualify.

Go early. It turns into a late-night spot later in the evening.

Palma Ceia · $ · bbq, southern

Jimbo's has been smoking pork and ribs on West Kennedy Boulevard since 1970, and its own site claims the title without hedging: the best barbecue in southern Florida since 1970. It is a family-owned and operated business and describes itself as decades of delectable barbecue rather than anything more fashionable. That's So Tampa has written about it as a pit that has been going for over fifty years.

V.M. Ybor · cuban, bakery

La Segunda was founded in 1915 and still bakes on North 15th Street in V.M. Ybor, just north of the Ybor City historic district. Its own site counts '110+ Years of Family Tradition' and says the business 'started in a small Ybor City bakery'. The bakery says it turns out '18,000+ Loaves Baked Daily', which is why so much of Tampa's Cuban bread, and most of the city's Cuban sandwiches, trace back to this one address. There are now several counters around Tampa Bay, but 2512 N 15th St is the original bake house.

University Area · $ · hot dogs, american

Mel's opened on July 3rd, 1973 at the corner of 42nd Street and Busch Boulevard, and it is still there. Mel was a Chicago musician who came to Florida with his rock band in the early 1970s, and the site tells the origin plainly: after a late night he found himself in Tampa 'craving the comfort food of his hometown: the Chicago-style hot dog,' noticed nobody in the city was selling one, and opened a stand. The Szabo family, described on the site as longtime customers spanning four generations, bought the business on September 6, 2023 and kept the recipe and the room the way they found them. Half a century in, the yellow building on Busch is the kind of place people bring their own kids back to.

University Area · german, swabian, deli, brewpub

Dunderbak's has been serving Tampa since 1974 and sits in the Oak Ramble Shopping Center on Bruce B Downs, which is a plain strip plaza and exactly the point: this is a German beer hall, brewery, deli and European market behind a strip-mall storefront. It started as one of about 30 franchise locations nationally, and co-owners James and Christina Ellis bought this one in the 1990s; the franchise folded and they turned it into a brewery with a dozen or so house beers on tap, told to That's So Tampa. The kitchen cooks from family recipes, with the potato pancakes made fresh every morning from James's Oma's recipe and the coleslaw from his mother's. Live polka plays on weekends, the beer hall room on the left seats 32 for private bookings, and the site's own parking advice is to arrive by 6pm on a Friday if you want a space.

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

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.

Seminole Heights · american, diner, greek, breakfast

Three Coins is open twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, on North Nebraska Avenue at the top of Seminole Heights, and it has been doing that long enough to be the default answer to where to eat at three in the morning in Tampa. The breakfast menu runs around the clock, so late-night French toast is a normal order. Beyond breakfast the counter does a Reuben, a gyro on pita, a BLT and a fried chicken plate, at diner speed and diner prices.

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

Palma Ceia · sandwiches, deli, bakery

Wright's opened on 20 April 1963, started by Marjorie and Pete Wright, who thought Tampa needed a gourmet shop. It has stayed on South Dale Mabry ever since as a counter-service deli, bakery and caterer, and it is the sandwich most long-time Tampa residents name first. Breads run to pumpernickel, rye, whole wheat, buttercrust white, onion rolls, wraps and Cuban. It closes on Sundays and shuts at 5:30 on weekdays, which tells you it is a lunch house, not a dinner one.