Over 50 Tampa: Ybor City

Ybor City · southern, caribbean, guyanese

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.

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.

Ybor City

Military-themed bar on 7th Ave in Ybor. Its home page calls it the Sports HQ and posts weekend slates for FSU, college football and the Bucs, plus Rays playoff games. Happy hour runs Monday to Friday, 3 to 6 pm.

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

Ybor City

BarrieHaus is a lager house in Ybor City built on a family brewing line the owners trace back 150 years, and it pours many of its beers through Czech side pull faucets imported from the Czech Republic. The 5,000 square foot space holds a wrap around copper bartop, an indoor taproom, a small room they call the Den and an outdoor Biergarten. Its Vienna lager Family Tradition took a 2022 World Beer Cup gold and the Czech-style pilsner Bublina took another in 2024. Well behaved leashed dogs are welcome outside.

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.

Ybor City · $ · coffee, sandwiches, bakery

Blind Tiger is a Tampa coffee roaster with cafes around the city, roasting since 2014. The Ybor City room on East 7th Avenue is the one most visitors meet, and there are others in Seminole Heights on North Florida Avenue and in Westchase on Montague Street. Visit Tampa Bay lists it on its plant-based guide for the vegetarian sandwiches and vegan desserts that sit alongside the coffee, which makes it one of the few Tampa places open from half past seven in the morning with something for a vegan to eat.

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 · sicilian, italian

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.

Ybor City

A cider and mead house in Ybor City, open since late 2014, and one of very few rooms in Tampa built around either drink. Most of what it pours is exclusive to the tasting room, and the company says its ciders and meads are made with Florida grown ingredients and are always 100 percent natural. It is unrelated to Cigar City Brewing despite the shared nickname for the district.

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.

Ybor City · new american, bbq

Coppertail brews inside a historic industrial building on East Second Avenue in Ybor City, a 34,000 square foot production brewery with a five vessel brewhouse and more than 1,000 barrels of fermentation capacity. The two-story Tap Room and Kitchen sits in front of it, with exposed brick and steel, a second-storey loft that looks toward downtown, and a patio. The kitchen smokes its own meats and makes its own sausages, and the taps carry Coppertail beer alongside Fallen Fruit Hard Cider and High Dive THC Seltzer. The brewery also runs tours and keeps a live music and events calendar.

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

Ybor City · american, cuban, sandwiches

Gaspar's Grotto sits on Seventh Avenue in the middle of Ybor City and builds its whole identity on Jose Gaspar, the legendary Gulf pirate Tampa throws Gasparilla for every January. Its own site says the bar pays homage to the legendary local pirate Jose Gaspar and celebrates Tampa's immigrant past. There is an indoor bar and dining room plus two outdoor patios with live entertainment weekly, and Sunday brunch has become the thing it is known for. The bar also runs a pig roast, a VIP bottle lounge, weddings and its own Ybor Gift Company merchandise shop.

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

Ybor City

Gasparilla started distilling in Ybor City in 2018 and calls itself the oldest rum distillery in Tampa, working from Florida sugarcane molasses and leaning all the way into the Jose Gaspar pirate story the city celebrates every January. The cocktail bar pours its own rum, vodka and gin, and the distillery runs tastings and tours of the production floor alongside private events. It calls its spirits farm to bar top.

Ybor City · $ · kava, coffee, tea

Grassroots is a kava house on East 6th Avenue in Ybor City serving Vanuatu kava, locally roasted coffee, kratom, herbal teas, kombucha and hand-crafted natural sodas. It is built for sitting still: free wifi for remote work, a shelf of board games, and a room that runs from morning coffee through to a late hangout. Its own words for the place are that every visit feels like home, and that it is more than a cafe. The kitchen side is small, and the food that is there is deliberately vegan and gluten free friendly.

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.

Ybor City · new american, french

Mise en Place is one of Tampa's long-standing fine dining rooms and now sits on East 8th Avenue in Ybor City after moving there, a relocation covered by the Tampa Bay Times, 83 Degrees and Creative Loafing. The kitchen cooks modern, French-influenced food, and the bar keeps a cocktail hour from 4pm to 6pm Tuesday through Saturday ahead of dinner service. It has been a MICHELIN Recommended restaurant in both the 2025 and 2026 Florida selections.

Ybor City

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.

Ybor City · new american

The Bricks opened in 2010 at the corner of East Seventh Avenue and North 14th Street, which Ybor City also calls Avenida Republica de Cuba. It was started by a local team in partnership with the Skate Park of Tampa, and the idea was a hangout for skaters, artists and musicians rather than a bar chasing the Seventh Avenue club crowd. There are two performance spaces ... an open-air courtyard and a small Cafe Stage that overlooks the bar and the front windows ... and most shows are listed with no cover.

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

Ybor City

The RITZ is the big room on Seventh Avenue, a 1917 theatre that has been a cinema, a church and a nightclub and now runs as Ybor City's main concert hall under Sunset Events. It takes VIP table reservations and runs a guest list, and the same company puts on Sunset on the River and Holiday Riverfest. With Crowbar closed since August 2026, it is the largest live music room left in the district.

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

Ybor City

A wine bar on the Seventh Avenue strip that sells itself as a neighbourhood room rather than a nightlife stop, with small plates alongside the list and staff who are expected to talk you through it. It runs a weekly Wine Society gathering at 7pm on Wednesdays and four tiers of wine club membership. The site also advertises franchise opportunities.