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
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Forbici Modern Italian
Forbici sits on Snow Avenue in Hyde Park Village and takes its name from the Italian word for scissors. Its own story is about a family table rather than a chef: sharing meals was our family's language of love, and the restaurant is meant to put guests at that table. Practically, it runs Italian food and pizza with handcrafted cocktails and live entertainment through the week, opening at 10 for weekend service. There is a second Forbici at 183 2nd Ave N in St. Petersburg, which is Pinellas and out of scope for this property.
Irish 31 Pub House & Eatery, Hyde Park
The original Irish 31 pub in Hyde Park. Its own page says any game on goes up on the flatscreens and LED walls, and it shows UFC Fight Night live on the big screen. Happy hour runs 3 to 7 pm Monday to Friday.
Jekyll
Jekyll is a hidden cocktail room in Hyde Park built on the split-personality conceit, with plush velvet seating, dim light and drinks that are as much performance as pour. The house signature, 'Lost in Translation', is brewed and smoked at the table. The soundtrack runs to nostalgic hip hop and rap rather than lounge jazz. It also runs themed high tea seatings with a full afternoon service made by its own pastry kitchen, which sell out fast. Jekyll is the sister bar to Ciro's Speakeasy, which closed in 2026.
On Swann
On Swann opened on 29 May 2016 in Hyde Park Village and serves contemporary American food from a seasonal menu. Its own site says the room was built so guests can watch the cooking happen in an open kitchen, and that the interior is meant to nod to Tampa's past while matching the neighbourhood around it. The partners listed are John Cooper, Trudy Cooper, Chris Arreola, and Chris Ponte with Michelle Ponte. Ponte is the executive chef and partner: he started at Clearwater's Pepper Mill in 1991 after Johnson and Wales, then studied at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris on the kindness of a Pepper Mill regular and apprenticed at Taillevent.
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.
Quiote Tequilaria
Quiote is an agave-focused bar and dining room at 2109 Bayshore Boulevard, open evenings only from Wednesday through Sunday. The address matters: it is the room that was Ciro's Speakeasy and Supper Club, whose own site now carries only a farewell note. A quiote is the flowering stalk an agave sends up once in its life, which is a fair name for a tequila house.
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