BellyUp! to Tampa’s Best Bars

Ybor City · italian, seafood

Bernini has been on the corner of Seventh Avenue and 17th Street in Ybor City for more than thirty years, cooking Italian food with a Gulf accent ... pistachio crusted grouper, eggplant in house made pomodoro, crispy duck with a chianti demi-glace. Owner Jason Fernandez is a fourth generation Tampa native who runs the Historic Hospitality group in Ybor City and got his first restaurant lessons from his neighbour Adela Gonzmart of the Columbia. His great-grandfather Jesus Fernandez tended bar in Tampa in the early 1900s. Fernandez went away to work with Ella Brennan at Commander's Palace in New Orleans and later with Wolfgang Puck before coming home to Ybor.

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.

Ybor City · sicilian, italian

Casa Santo Stefano is Richard Gonzmart's Sicilian restaurant, set in a former 1925 Ybor City macaroni factory a few blocks from the Columbia. Gonzmart says on the site that it 'pays fond tribute to the Sicilian food I ate every Sunday with my best friend Vincent Palori', and the kitchen calls what it cooks not just Sicilian but Tampa Sicilian. The wine, cheese, olive oil and salt are imported from family businesses in Sicily, the hand-painted backsplashes and tabletops were ordered in person from a family in Caltagirone, and the vintage photographs on the walls were lent by descendants of Tampa's founding Sicilian families. The bar side, Santo's Drinkeria, serves Sicilian street food, cocktails and wine on its own schedule.

Seminole Heights

Common Dialect was started by husband and wife Mike and Kendra Conze on the Seminole Heights stretch of Florida Avenue. The brewery says it set out to make a colourful, welcoming room rather than another minimalist industrial one, which is how most of Tampa Bay's taprooms look. There is no kitchen; rotating food trucks park there through the week.

Tampa Heights

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.'

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.

Ybor City

Sky Puppy is a small brewery in Casa Bomberos, Ybor City's original fire house, run by Matthew McKinnon, who brews, and Danielle Vergnaud-McKinnon, who manages. 'Sky puppy' is a nickname for a bat, and the bat is the brand: the owners chose it as a symbol of transition and new beginnings, and the tasting room is hung with bat and burro work by the artist Copper Tritscheller. The two had lived in Ybor for more than a decade before opening the brewery there.

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.

Carrollwood

Joseph Lazzara and his father Santo had the idea for Wulfaven in 2017 after a combined thirty-odd years in the drinks business, secured a site in 2019, then watched Covid stall it for two years before breaking ground on Perez Drive at the end of 2021. The name is Wolf plus Haven: the wolf for knowledge and the pack, the haven for a third place to unwind. The taps run to crisp and clean styles alongside IPAs and pale ales.