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
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LALA Tampa
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.
Showbar Ybor
Showbar is a dueling piano bar on Seventh Avenue that runs an all-request show every Friday and Saturday, with singalongs, comedy and crowd battles. The rest of the week it turns into a DJ room: open format inside and Latin on the outdoor patio on Tuesdays, a $500 beer pong tournament on House Party Wednesdays, and early 2000s throwbacks on Retro Rewind Sundays. There is a late-night food menu of tacos and wings. It closes at 2:45am every night it opens.
Skipper's Smokehouse
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.
Sunset Rodeo
Sunset Rodeo is the country night on South Howard. The room has live bands, line dancing, late DJs, a patio, and a mechanical bull. It is 23 and over except for its 21 and over Thursday program. The current event calendar carries live music through October 2026, and posted hours run to 3am from Tuesday through Sunday.
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.
The Orpheum
The Orpheum spent most of two decades as an Ybor City rock club and has moved north: it now runs out of 14802 North Nebraska Avenue, minutes from the University of South Florida. The booking has not softened, running to punk, metal and hardcore several nights a week, and the venue also books a second room it calls Oscura.
The RITZ Ybor
The RITZ is the big room on Seventh Avenue, a 1917 theatre that has been a cinema, a church and a nightclub and now runs as Ybor City's main concert hall under Sunset Events. It takes VIP table reservations and runs a guest list, and the same company puts on Sunset on the River and Holiday Riverfest. With Crowbar closed since August 2026, it is the largest live music room left in the district.
The Sapphire Supper Club & Lounge
The Sapphire opened in May 2026 near the stadium as a supper club built on the 1950s idea of one: dinner, a band and a late night in the same room. Its own writing promises live bands, DJs and tableside flair alongside the cooking, with private dining suites bookable from 11 in the morning even though the main room does not open until 6 in the evening. On Friday and Saturday it runs to 3 AM, which makes it one of the few rooms in this part of the city with genuinely late posted hours.
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