Over 50 Tampa

Tampa Heights · food hall

Armature Works is a 1910 streetcar barn on the Hillsborough River in Tampa Heights, rebuilt into the Heights Public Market with close to twenty independent food counters under one roof. Above the market are private event rooms and Rooftop 220, which looks back at the downtown skyline. The lawn outside it runs down to the Riverwalk, and Creative Loafing lists it as a kid stop for the giant chess boards and the family events it runs through the week. Chill Bros keeps an ice cream counter inside.

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.

Tampa Heights · cuban, empanadas

Empamamas is the empanada counter in the Heights Public Market at Armature Works, listing itself as a Cuban kitchen. The signature is the Tampa Girl, the shop's turn on a classic Cuban sandwich, alongside tacos and street eats. The same team runs Muchachas, the Mexican stall a few doors down in the same market.

Tampa Heights · american, breakfast

Graze 1910 is the all-day breakfast counter in the Heights Public Market at Armature Works, and its name carries the building's street number. The plates are waffles, egg dishes, gourmet toasts and burgers, which the building describes as refined American comfort food, and the seats look out over the river and the downtown skyline.

Tampa Heights

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.'

Tampa Heights · sushi

Kosen is a twelve-seat omakase counter on West Palm Avenue in Tampa Heights, running a menu of more than twenty courses. The kitchen keeps an in-house fermentation program and buys from local regenerative farms, and a Japanese-inspired cocktail lounge called Tanto sits alongside the counter under a director of beverage and sustainability. It has held one MICHELIN star in every Florida selection since 2024 and displays the 2026 star on its own site. Rocca, another one star room, is a few doors along the same block.

Tampa Heights · $$ · caribbean, new american, tapas

M.Bird is the rooftop lounge over Armature Works, four floors up from the food hall, with the Hillsborough River on one side and the downtown skyline on the other. The room is done in an art deco key and the kitchen sends out shareable plates, listed on its own site as Caribbean, American and small plates, alongside tropical cocktails. DJs work the deck and the space takes groups and private events.

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

Tampa Heights

This is the original Magnanimous taproom, on Florida Avenue a short walk from Armature Works, and the brewery is known around Tampa Bay for hazy IPAs, especially its Juice Lord. Twenty taps rotate, there is a package cooler for cans and bottles to go, and there is a free shuffleboard table and several TVs. The brewery has no kitchen: you bring your own food or order delivery.

Tampa Heights · $$ · mexican, tacos

Muchachas is the Mexican stall in the Heights Public Market at Armature Works, opened by the team behind Empamamas next door. It is known for birria quesatacos, street tacos and burritos, and it is one of the market counters that draws a line on a weekend afternoon.

Tampa Heights · new american

Oak & Ola is the sit-down dining room inside Armature Works, the restored streetcar warehouse on the Heights waterfront, and it takes its name from the two streets that meet outside. Executive chef Margaret LaVetty came up through China Grill in New York, Campanile in Los Angeles and Nemo in Miami Beach, started cooking in professional kitchens at 14 and finished at the California Culinary Academy at 19; around Tampa she picked up the nickname Captain of Crunch for her granola. Chef de cuisine Jaime Nava has worked the kitchen for close to a decade and writes the weekly dinner features. The menu is sourced and rewritten by season, and the room keeps a memorial to chef TJ Hoferichter, who died in 2024.

Tampa Heights · italian

Rocca is an Italian restaurant on West Palm Avenue in Tampa Heights, describing its cooking as 'Italian cuisine inspired by the old and the new'. It has held one MICHELIN star in every Florida selection from 2023 through 2026, making it one of the two longest-running starred rooms in the city alongside Koya. It sits on the same short stretch of Palm Avenue as Kosen, so one block of Tampa Heights holds two of the city's four stars.

Tampa Heights · $ · american, bar food

Shuffle is a bar on North Tampa Street in Tampa Heights built around shuffleboard courts, with a full kitchen, six rotating taps and an outdoor stage that carries live music at least weekly. Brunch is a fixture, and the menu is straightforward bar food rather than anything precious. Creative Loafing lists it as a place families can actually use, because the backyard gives children somewhere to be while the adults eat.

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

Tampa Heights · southern, steak

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.

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.

Tampa Heights · $ · pizza

The Fold sells hand-tossed pizza by the slice or by the pie from the Heights Public Market at Armature Works, made with never-frozen ingredients and built for a quick stop rather than a sit-down. A second counter operates on Harbour Island at 601 S Harbour Island Blvd.

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.