BellyUp! to Tampa’s Best Bars

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.

Ybor City · cuban, italian, spanish, sandwiches

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.

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 · 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.

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.