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.
Armature Works
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.
Babushka's Temple Terrace
Babushka's started in 2018 because a Russian international student at USF noticed that Eastern European food was missing from a city that had almost every other cuisine, and talked his family into opening a restaurant. The name is the Russian word for grandmother, chosen because, as the restaurant puts it, 'in most families back in Eastern Europe, Babushka is usually a person who cooks the best food.' The kitchen runs borscht, pierogi, piroshki, sweet and savoury blinchiki and a homemade honey cake, and there is a kids' menu and a bar menu alongside the main one. The Temple Terrace room on N 56th Street is a short drive from the USF campus where the idea started.
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4 spots
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.
Rick's on the River
Ricks on the River is a bar and grille sitting directly on the Hillsborough River off North Willow Avenue, with a marina and wet slips so guests can arrive by boat. Its own site describes live music daily, fresh oysters at its own oyster bar and cold drinks on the water. It stays open to 1am every day and to 3am on Friday and Saturday, which is genuinely late by Tampa standards. Creative Loafing put it on its kid-friendly list because children watch for dolphins from the riverside deck.
Salt Shack on the Bay
Salt Shack sits on Old Tampa Bay at the end of West Tyson Avenue, a few hundred feet from Hula Bay, and it is built around the view. Its own writing leans hard on sunsets, calling itself a first stop for waterfront sunset dining in Tampa. The cooking is coastal seafood with Caribbean leanings and tropical drinks. Between this and Hula Bay, Tyson Avenue is the closest thing South Tampa has to a waterfront restaurant row.
Ulele
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.
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