BellyUp! to Tampa’s Best Bars

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.

SoHo · $$$ · italian

Bella's opened on South Howard in 1986, when Bill Shumate and Joanie Corneil set out to give Tampa authentic Italian cooking, and its own site now counts 40 years of service. Shumate had run restaurants around the country since 1964 and served as president of the Florida Restaurant Association and chairman of its Hillsborough County chapter. Corneil came to the partnership having run two of her own places in Oklahoma. The restaurant sells its own cookbook, which is the sort of thing only a kitchen with a long back catalogue bothers to do.

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.

Channel District · american, pub food

District Tavern is the neighborhood bar of the Channel District, a block off Channelside Drive, and it is the room downtown workers and residents use when they want a kitchen open late rather than a show. Its posted hours run from late morning to three in the morning Tuesday through Saturday, which is later than almost anything else in the district.

SoHo · new american

Elevage is the restaurant inside the Epicurean Hotel on South Howard, directly across the street from Bern's Steak House, whose group helped create the hotel with Mainsail Lodging. It serves from 7 in the morning, running brunch into mid-afternoon, then a lite bites window, then dinner to 10. Valet is free before 7 PM and 10 dollars after. It was in the 2025 Florida MICHELIN Guide as Recommended and is not in the 2026 selection, so it carries no Michelin designation now.

Seminole Heights · american, seafood, pizza

Front Porch Grille has been on North Florida Avenue since 2002, which makes it one of the longest-running independent restaurants in Seminole Heights. It works out of a converted two-storey bungalow, the kind of house the neighbourhood is built from, with Bart's Tavern as the bar side of the same operation. Weekend service starts at 8am, so it is a breakfast room as well as a dinner one, and the kitchen keeps its own daily specials and happy hour separate from the main menu.

SoHo · mexican, tacos

Green Lemon is the margarita-and-tacos stop in the middle of South Howard. It works best when food matters as much as the first round. The official site posts an 11pm close on Tuesday, Friday, and Saturday, with a 10pm close on the other nights.

Downtown · american, pub food

Hattricks is the hockey bar of downtown Tampa, an Irish pub and sports room on South Franklin Street that has been there for years and fills before and after everything at the arena. Its own description is the number one spot for Lightning pregame parties, postgame celebrations, and any concert or event at the arena or the convention center. The posted closing time is honest about how that works: eleven in the morning until as late as three, according to volume.

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.

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.

Ballast Point & Interbay · pub food, british

Mad Dogs & Englishmen is a British-style pub that has been part of Tampa's dining scene for more than thirty years and now occupies a purpose-built home on South MacDill Avenue, having moved from its long-time address. It runs a full week of service from late morning, with weekend opening at 10am. It joined the MICHELIN Guide in the 2025 Florida selection and is Recommended again in 2026.

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.

Downtown · mediterranean

Predalina is a waterfront Mediterranean restaurant and lounge on East Cumberland Avenue in the Water Street district, a concept by Oxford Commons. It runs dinner, dessert, weekend brunch and a full cocktail and spirit-free drinks list, and it is one of the few MICHELIN-listed rooms in Tampa that stays open past midnight, to 1am on Friday and Saturday. It has been MICHELIN Recommended in both the 2025 and 2026 Florida selections.

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.

University Area · seafood, floribbean, smoked fish, oysters

Skipper's has been on Skipper Road north of the University area since 1980, a tin-roofed compound of weathered wood that calls itself a world class music venue and cooks Floribbean seafood to go with it. The kitchen's best known plate is the blackened grouper Reuben, which the site notes was featured on the Travel Channel's Best Sandwich in America, and there is an oyster bar alongside it. Music runs in the yard behind the restaurant, with free live music on Sunday afternoons in addition to the ticketed calendar. In January 2026 the venue announced a partnership with the Straz Center for the Performing Arts, which is an unusual pairing for a smokehouse under live oaks.

Palma Ceia · $$ · pizza, small plates, cocktails

The Blind Goat is a Prohibition-styled bar and eatery on Henderson Boulevard that describes itself as modern industrial and built for the social, working adult. It runs local craft beer, feature cocktails, pizza and small plates. It is the latest-closing room found in this sector: 3 AM on Friday and Saturday, against a midnight close the rest of the week.

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.