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.
7th + Grove
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.
Angry Chair Brewing
Angry Chair is a Seminole Heights brewery known well beyond Tampa for big pastry stouts, but its own line about itself is about the name: everybody has an angry chair, work or traffic or whatever, and the beer is the getting away from it. The brewery says it does not always brew to style and calls its beers forward thinking, then notes drily that it won a gold medal for its pilsner, so it can follow the rules if it wants to. The taproom is on North Florida Avenue, has its own food menu and takes private event bookings.
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.
BellyUp! to Tampa’s Best Bars
Bar specials & what’s not on the bar menu
8 spots
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.
Carmine's Restaurant & Bar
Carmine's has been on the corner of Seventh Avenue in Ybor City since 1948, and its own site describes it as 'a cornerstone of Ybor City for over seven decades'. The menu is the Ybor mix rather than one country's cooking ... Cuban, Italian and Spanish dishes side by side, with the Cuban sandwich and the deviled crab croquettes as the two orders it is known for. Owner Carmine Iavarone runs the room, and the site credits him with 'deep roots in the community' and decades of keeping the recipes going.
Cigar City Cider & Mead
A cider and mead house in Ybor City, open since late 2014, and one of very few rooms in Tampa built around either drink. Most of what it pours is exclusive to the tasting room, and the company says its ciders and meads are made with Florida grown ingredients and are always 100 percent natural. It is unrelated to Cigar City Brewing despite the shared nickname for the district.
Gaspar's Grotto
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.
Hidden Springs Ale Works
Hidden Springs opened to the public on 18 September 2015, but the first beer was made in the garage of Josh and Jacqui Garman after Josh's mother Marsha gave them a Mr. Beer kit one Christmas. She died soon after, and the brewery still tells that story. It is family owned and run, on Franklin Street in Tampa Heights, and the tasting room is bookable. Its manifesto is printed on the site: 'Hidden Springs is a place where we abide no hatred and exist to create community, great tastes, and connections.'
King Corona Cigars Cafe & Bar
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.
Oxford Exchange
The building went up in 1891 across the street from Henry B. Plant's Tampa Bay Hotel, held an arcade of local shops from the 1920s, then sat empty for decades until the century-old brickwork was restored. Brother and sister Blake Casper and Allison Adams reopened it as Oxford Exchange on September 24, 2012, and Casper's line for how it started is that it started with a bookstore and an office. Under one roof now are the restaurant, the bookstore and shop, a coffee bar, the TeBella Tea Bar, a champagne bar, the Commerce Club membership workspace, and the OE Studio and podcast room. The design takes its cue from the old London clubs and shops, and the stated intent was a place to belong.
The Bricks Ybor
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.
Start with the deal
Choose the day and time first, then see which current happy hours and weekly specials fit.
What these spots are known for
The same bars spots, sorted by the reasons people actually pick them.
Rooftops and Patios
Can we sit outside?
Big Groups
Will they seat twelve of us?
Private Dining and Buyouts
Can we take a room?
Sports on TV
Where can I watch the game with food and drinks?
Late-Night Food
What is still open?
Live Music
Where can I eat and hear a real band?
Origin Stories
Who built this and why?
Vegan and Plant-Based
Where can I eat with no asterisks?
Community Quotes
Recommendations from real Tampanians, always attributed to whoever wrote them.
Nobody’s shared a bars recommendation yet. Be the first.
Run one of these rooms?
Every Tampa spot here already has a free profile going, put together from what you publish publicly. If we have you filed wrong, or we are missing what you most want to be known for, tell us.