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.
15 spots
Bernini of Ybor
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.
Carmine's Restaurant & Bar
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.
Casa Santo Stefano
Casa Santo Stefano is Richard Gonzmart's Sicilian restaurant, set in a former 1925 Ybor City macaroni factory a few blocks from the Columbia. Gonzmart says on the site that it 'pays fond tribute to the Sicilian food I ate every Sunday with my best friend Vincent Palori', and the kitchen calls what it cooks not just Sicilian but Tampa Sicilian. The wine, cheese, olive oil and salt are imported from family businesses in Sicily, the hand-painted backsplashes and tabletops were ordered in person from a family in Caltagirone, and the vintage photographs on the walls were lent by descendants of Tampa's founding Sicilian families. The bar side, Santo's Drinkeria, serves Sicilian street food, cocktails and wine on its own schedule.
Common Dialect Beerworks
Common Dialect was started by husband and wife Mike and Kendra Conze on the Seminole Heights stretch of Florida Avenue. The brewery says it set out to make a colourful, welcoming room rather than another minimalist industrial one, which is how most of Tampa Bay's taprooms look. There is no kitchen; rotating food trucks park there through the week.
Hidden Springs Ale Works
Hidden Springs opened to the public on 18 September 2015, but the first beer was made in the garage of Josh and Jacqui Garman after Josh's mother Marsha gave them a Mr. Beer kit one Christmas. She died soon after, and the brewery still tells that story. It is family owned and run, on Franklin Street in Tampa Heights, and the tasting room is bookable. Its manifesto is printed on the site: 'Hidden Springs is a place where we abide no hatred and exist to create community, great tastes, and connections.'
Mama's Southern Soul Food Restaurant
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.
Mr. Dunderbak's
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.
Rooster & the Till
Rooster & the Till opened on North Florida Avenue in Seminole Heights in 2013, co-founded by chef Ferrell Alvarez and Chon Nguyen. Its own site tells the growth story plainly: it started as 'a 37-seat restaurant with a few induction burners' and is now 'a 72 seat, award-winning establishment.' Alvarez was a 2017 James Beard Foundation semi-finalist for Best Chef South. The restaurant has taken a MICHELIN Bib Gourmand four times, including 2026, and the menu and wine list change constantly.
Sky Puppy Brewing
Sky Puppy is a small brewery in Casa Bomberos, Ybor City's original fire house, run by Matthew McKinnon, who brews, and Danielle Vergnaud-McKinnon, who manages. 'Sky puppy' is a nickname for a bat, and the bat is the brand: the owners chose it as a symbol of transition and new beginnings, and the tasting room is hung with bat and burro work by the artist Copper Tritscheller. The two had lived in Ybor for more than a decade before opening the brewery there.
Southern Luv BBQ
Southern Luv BBQ smokes over pecan wood on Citrus Park Drive in northwest Tampa, run by founder and pitmaster Chef Essi Tadrus. His own story on the site starts with a plate of ribs at a gas station in Fort Hood, Texas at age five, where his father was stationed; he opened his first restaurant at nineteen and later brought it home to Tampa. The kitchen took second place for World's Best Cuban Sandwich at the International Cuban Sandwich Festival in Tampa, and it bottles its own Carolina gold and sweet heat sauces and bags its own kettle-cooked chips in small batches. When Hurricane Milton knocked out power, the restaurant fired the pit back up and handed out free pulled pork and mac and cheese to neighbours.
Station House BBQ
Preorder BBQ and Cubans for Friday or Saturday pickup at 5214 N Nebraska Ave in Seminole Heights, 11:30am to 3pm. Station House BBQ is firefighter-owned and also offers walk-in platters and catering for parties, weddings and corporate events.
The Brother Trattoria
The Brother is named after a person. Its own site explains that the Brother, or Sylas as the family calls him, is the youngest of three children belonging to owners Ashton and Joel Sanchez, and that he is the reason the restaurant exists. It is a small Italian room on South MacDill in Palma Ceia describing its cooking as Italian cuisine with a creative flair.
The Independent Bar & Cafe
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.
WeVegan Cafe
WeVegan Cafe sits on South Manhattan Avenue in Interbay, and its owners Sandra Carson and Effren Denson are Tampa natives who grew up in that neighbourhood. The business started because they went plant based and could not find a vegan cookie they actually enjoyed, so they worked on their own recipe until they had one they loved. They sold the first batch at a farmer's market in November 2017, which grew into a wholesale business supplying vegan cookies and breads to coffee shops and delis around the bay, then an online retail operation when Covid hit the restaurant industry, and finally this cafe. It serves craft coffee, homemade baked goods and hot and grab-and-go breakfast and lunch seven days a week.
Wulfaven Brewing Company
Joseph Lazzara and his father Santo had the idea for Wulfaven in 2017 after a combined thirty-odd years in the drinks business, secured a site in 2019, then watched Covid stall it for two years before breaking ground on Perez Drive at the end of 2021. The name is Wolf plus Haven: the wolf for knowledge and the pack, the haven for a third place to unwind. The taps run to crisp and clean styles alongside IPAs and pale ales.
What these spots are known for
The same over 50 spots, sorted by the reasons people actually pick them.
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In the MICHELIN Guide
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