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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9 spots
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.
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.
BarrieHaus Beer Co.
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.
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.
Jerk Hut Island Grille & Beach Club
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.
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.
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.
Shuffle
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.
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