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 · $ · bbq, southern, 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.

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'.

Channel District · vietnamese, southeast asian

Bamboozle is the Vietnamese counter downtown office workers have used for lunch for years, now in the Channel District on 12th Street. The kitchen works banh mi, rice bowls and noodle plates and describes its own line of work as bamboozling customers into healthier living for over fourteen years. A second location, Bamboozle Heights, sits up N Florida Avenue in Seminole Heights.

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.

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.

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.

Seminole Heights · $ · pizza, italian american, italian

Cappy's calls itself 'Tampa's favorite pizza joint since 1995' and works out of a small room on North Florida Avenue packed with vintage signs and junk-shop decor. It is one of the few places in town making Chicago deep dish alongside New York thin crust, and the menu carries vegan options as well. It opens for dinner only, from 4pm at weekends and 5pm on weekdays.

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.

Downtown · cuban, spanish

The Hernandez and Gonzmart family put a Columbia on the ground floor of the Tampa Bay History Center, so the Riverwalk has a table serving the recipes the Ybor City original has run since 1905. The patio is canopy covered and sits on the water in the Water Street neighborhood, beside the downtown arena. The menu is the family's Spanish and Cuban standards, the 1905 Salad, Cuban sandwiches, paella, ropa vieja and croquetas, with flan, churros and guava cheesecake after. Dishes are credited to founder Casimiro Hernandez Sr. and to great-grandmother Carmen Hernandez.

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.

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.

Downtown · american, pub food

Hattricks is the hockey bar of downtown Tampa, an Irish pub and sports room on South Franklin Street that has been there for years and fills before and after everything at the arena. Its own description is the number one spot for Lightning pregame parties, postgame celebrations, and any concert or event at the arena or the convention center. The posted closing time is honest about how that works: eleven in the morning until as late as three, according to volume.

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

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.

Ybor City · cuban, sandwiches, coffee

King Corona has been on Seventh Avenue since 1998, which by Ybor City standards makes it a newcomer and by everyone else's standards makes it a fixture. The Ybor room pairs a full bar and a walk-in humidor with Cuban coffee and sandwiches, and the sidewalk tables are one of the standard places to sit and watch Seventh Avenue. The house also rolls its own small-batch cigars under the Dulzura Farms name. A second Ybor site, King Corona 1902, is announced for November 2026: twelve thousand square feet on Seventh Avenue with a members-only floor and a balcony over the district.

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.

West Tampa · cuban, spanish

La Teresita has been cooking Cuban food on West Columbus Drive in West Tampa for more than fifty years, run by the Capdevila family, who give their name to a page of the site and to the Capdevila Group. The kitchen opens at six in the morning, which is a West Tampa habit rather than a restaurant trend, and the site describes 'delicious homemade Cuban and Spanish dishes'. Alongside the restaurant the family runs a ballroom and a catering operation used for quinces, weddings and parties.

A South Tampa sports tavern since 1995, open 11 AM to 3 AM every day. Its site calls it the best place to watch the Rays, Bucs and Lightning.

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

Ballast Point & Interbay · pub food, british

Mad Dogs & Englishmen is a British-style pub that has been part of Tampa's dining scene for more than thirty years and now occupies a purpose-built home on South MacDill Avenue, having moved from its long-time address. It runs a full week of service from late morning, with weekend opening at 10am. It joined the MICHELIN Guide in the 2025 Florida selection and is Recommended again in 2026.

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.

East Tampa · southern, soul food

Mama's has been cooking soul food in East Tampa for more than fifteen years, run by Chef Reaves and Katrina. Creative Loafing Tampa Bay lists it among Tampa Bay's restaurants for its Southern classics, naming the pork chop sandwiches, chicken liver and beef tips. Tampa Magazine files it under mac and cheese, which is the other thing people drive there for. The restaurant has moved once already, to the Dr Martin Luther King Jr Boulevard address it uses now.

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.

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.

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.

Palma Ceia · new american, bakery, sandwiches

Pane Rustica is a bakery and restaurant on South MacDill that its own site describes as 'serving South Tampa for 26 years'. It runs as a single room where the bakery counter and the dining room share the same space, and it does its own wholesale baking alongside the restaurant. The kitchen also handles catering and private events out of the same address.

Palma Ceia

Also called Walter's Press Box Sports Emporium. A South Tampa sports bar since 1978 with 42 screens, a patio with screens, and hours of 11 AM to 3 AM every day.

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

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.

Westchase · brewpub, american, pub food

The Doble family founded Tampa Bay Brewing Company in 1995 and opened its first brewpub in a two-story brick building on 15th Street in Ybor City in February 1997, in a room that used to house horses. The Westchase site came in 2015 as a production brewery with a restaurant attached, tucked into a business park off Linebaugh, and it is where most of the beer is now made. The own site says it is 'still a family run company with David Doble as the leader for all operations.' Both taprooms run 24 rotating taps, a full service kitchen, and what the brewery calls large outdoor patio spaces, with a food menu built to use its own beer rather than sit next to it.

Seminole Heights · european, sandwiches, gastropub, american, bar food

The Independent has been the beer bar of Seminole Heights for about fifteen years, a European-inspired pub on North Florida Avenue with a cafe attached that serves the same kitchen menu plus coffee and baked goods. The draft list is built from imported and American craft beer, and the kitchen runs from Bavarian brat platters to tempeh reubens. Visit Tampa Bay records 50 seats indoors and a total capacity of 150 with the outdoor space, and lists live music, gallery openings and beer and wine events as the regular calendar. The bar stays open to 1am at weekends, which in this stretch of Seminole Heights is unusual.

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

University Area

The Orpheum spent most of two decades as an Ybor City rock club and has moved north: it now runs out of 14802 North Nebraska Avenue, minutes from the University of South Florida. The booking has not softened, running to punk, metal and hardcore several nights a week, and the venue also books a second room it calls Oscura.

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.

Temple Terrace

A Temple Terrace bar and grill that says it has served the area for over 35 years. Its own site promotes Sunday NFL viewing parties, with trivia Monday, bingo Tuesday and karaoke Wednesday to Saturday.

West Tampa · cuban, sandwiches

The West Tampa Sandwich Shop calls itself the "Home of the original honey cuban sandwich", and the honey is the local argument: a Cuban sandwich of ham, roast pork, pickles and mustard with honey added, pressed on fresh Cuban bread. It opens at six in the morning and closes at three in the afternoon, six days a week, which is a working West Tampa schedule rather than a restaurant one. It sits on North Armenia Avenue in the middle of West Tampa, the other cigar-era neighbourhood, and it is one of the shops That\u0027s So Tampa puts on its list of the top Cuban sandwiches in the city.

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.