BellyUp! to Tampa’s Best Bars

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.

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.

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.

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

The Castle opened on Guavaween in 1992 as a small saloon and grew into the goth and alternative dance club Tampa sends people to, spread across five named spaces: the Saloon, the Main Hall, the Tower, the Courtyard and the Dungeon. A jukebox supplied the music for the first few years before DJs took over. The bar keeps a deep list of single malt scotches, small batch bourbons, aged tequilas and imported beer. The entrance is on 16th Street between 9th Avenue and Palm Avenue.

Town 'n' Country

A tavern on Memorial Highway known for its cheesesteak. Its own site says it has more than 20 TVs and a patio, and it runs a football Sunday wings and pitcher deal.

Ybor City

Club Prana runs five floors on Seventh Avenue, each with its own room and name: the Lounge, the Mezzanine, the Sanctuary, the Night Club and, on top, the rooftop Sky Bar with private cabanas. The first two floors open on Thursdays with open format music; Fridays and Saturdays all five run, with Top 40, hip hop, Caribbean reggae, Latin, Afrobeats and dance. There are more than 30 VIP tables across the building, and floors can be rented individually. Smoking is allowed only on the fifth floor.

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.

SoHo · bar food

Corner Bar is the casual stop across from the louder dance rooms. The official site posts a midnight close from Monday through Thursday, 3am on Friday and Saturday, and midnight on Sunday. Weekly trivia gives the room a reason to visit before the weekend crowd arrives.

Virginia Park · $$ · new american, cocktails

District South sits on South Dale Mabry and tells its own origin plainly: a group of friends could not find a place in South Tampa that put quality cooking, handcrafted cocktails and a warm room together, so they built one. The room splits between cosy dining space and an outdoor patio, with a bar that the restaurant describes as the lively end of it. It publishes separate lunch, dinner, brunch, happy hour, dessert and late night menus, which is a lot of service windows for a neighbourhood restaurant.

SoHo · small plates

EDGE is the calmer rooftop choice above the Epicurean Hotel. Go for cocktails, small plates, and an open-air view rather than a dance floor. It is open Tuesday through Saturday, with a 1am close on Friday and Saturday. Hotel valet is free before 7pm and costs 10 dollars after.

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.

SoHo · new american, cocktails

Howard & Platt is the polished early-evening choice at Howard and Platt. The full bar, covered patio, dinner menu, and weekend brunch make it better for a seated first round than a 3am finish. Happy hour runs Tuesday through Friday from 4 to 6pm in the bar 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.

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.

SoHo · american, french, mediterranean

LALA gives SoHo a built-in activity instead of another stand-and-talk bar. Book one of eight themed private karaoke rooms or use the open mic in the main room. Tampa hours reach 3am Thursday through Saturday, and the late-night menu runs until 2am Friday and Saturday.

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.

SoHo · irish, bar food

MacDinton's is the long-running Irish pub at the center of the South Howard crowd. It is the easy pick for soccer, football, karaoke, and a packed late finish. Current public posts show nightly specials and activity through 3am, while the official site confirms the SoHo address and phone.

Seminole Heights

The newer and larger of Magnanimous's two Tampa taprooms, on the corner of Sligh and Nebraska, with 24 rotating taps and a room built for sticking around: classic arcade games and pinball, cornhole, board games, a projector with sound for games, a covered outdoor patio and a free parking lot. Sliceadelic Wizard Pizza parks there Tuesday through Sunday. The brewery says this is where most of its events and live music happen.

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.

Channel District

Pour House sits in the Grand Central at Kennedy building in the Channel District and works as both a small brewery and a beer and wine bar, with about forty taps running and a shared outdoor seating area with the other businesses in the complex. It has a pool table and a popcorn machine, no kitchen of its own, and food trucks the third Thursday of every month. Guests are welcome to bring food in from neighbouring restaurants.

Palma Ceia

Also called Walter's Press Box Sports Emporium. A South Tampa sports bar since 1978 with 42 screens, a patio with screens, and hours of 11 AM to 3 AM every day.

North Hyde Park · seafood, american

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.

Ballast Point & Interbay · seafood, caribbean, american

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.

Ybor City

Showbar is a dueling piano bar on Seventh Avenue that runs an all-request show every Friday and Saturday, with singalongs, comedy and crowd battles. The rest of the week it turns into a DJ room: open format inside and Latin on the outdoor patio on Tuesdays, a $500 beer pong tournament on House Party Wednesdays, and early 2000s throwbacks on Retro Rewind Sundays. There is a late-night food menu of tacos and wings. It closes at 2:45am every night it opens.

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.

Seminole Heights · cuban

Soul de Cuba opened on North Florida Avenue in Seminole Heights and cooks from what it calls authentic family recipes, built around the Cuban sandwich, slow-roasted lechon and Sunday brunch. The kitchen puts on themed evenings rather than just service, including a Taste of Havana plate of ropa vieja, lechon asado, arroz moro, beef empanada and platanos maduros, and an Evening in Havana night of Cuban food, music and stories. There is a bar, a patio and catering for celebrations and corporate events.

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.

SoHo · american, bar food

Sunset Rodeo is the country night on South Howard. The room has live bands, line dancing, late DJs, a patio, and a mechanical bull. It is 23 and over except for its 21 and over Thursday program. The current event calendar carries live music through October 2026, and posted hours run to 3am from Tuesday through Sunday.

Westchase · brewpub, american, pub food

The Doble family founded Tampa Bay Brewing Company in 1995 and opened its first brewpub in a two-story brick building on 15th Street in Ybor City in February 1997, in a room that used to house horses. The Westchase site came in 2015 as a production brewery with a restaurant attached, tucked into a business park off Linebaugh, and it is where most of the beer is now made. The own site says it is 'still a family run company with David Doble as the leader for all operations.' Both taprooms run 24 rotating taps, a full service kitchen, and what the brewery calls large outdoor patio spaces, with a food menu built to use its own beer rather than sit next to it.

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.

Seminole Heights · european, sandwiches, gastropub, american, bar food

The Independent has been the beer bar of Seminole Heights for about fifteen years, a European-inspired pub on North Florida Avenue with a cafe attached that serves the same kitchen menu plus coffee and baked goods. The draft list is built from imported and American craft beer, and the kitchen runs from Bavarian brat platters to tempeh reubens. Visit Tampa Bay records 50 seats indoors and a total capacity of 150 with the outdoor space, and lists live music, gallery openings and beer and wine events as the regular calendar. The bar stays open to 1am at weekends, which in this stretch of Seminole Heights is unusual.

A sports bar whose Instagram bio says 42 TVs, a pet friendly outdoor patio and live music Monday, Thursday and Friday. The Tampa Ravens Flock lists it as an official 2026 watch bar.

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.