Family Friendly Tampa: University Area

University Area · jamaican, caribbean

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.

University Area · $ · hot dogs, american

Mel's opened on July 3rd, 1973 at the corner of 42nd Street and Busch Boulevard, and it is still there. Mel was a Chicago musician who came to Florida with his rock band in the early 1970s, and the site tells the origin plainly: after a late night he found himself in Tampa 'craving the comfort food of his hometown: the Chicago-style hot dog,' noticed nobody in the city was selling one, and opened a stand. The Szabo family, described on the site as longtime customers spanning four generations, bought the business on September 6, 2023 and kept the recipe and the room the way they found them. Half a century in, the yellow building on Busch is the kind of place people bring their own kids back to.

University Area · german, swabian, deli, brewpub

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.