How waves of immigration have created culinary magic in Tampa

As I wander past the New Orleans-style iron verandahs, cigar shops and organic ice cream parlours on Tampa’s palm-tree-lined 7th Avenue, I realise I’m being followed by a rooster. Like me, he seems to be heading to The Columbia — Florida’s oldest Spanish restaurant.

It’s a balmy November afternoon, and elderly gents and young people are shooting the breeze while smoking cigars in armchairs on the pavement, but nobody seems phased by my feathered friend. Here in Tampa’s Ybor City neighbourhood, the rooster is king.

An official edict states the chickens must be allowed to roam free in honour of the area’s original Cuban immigrants, who raised the birds. Along with settlers from Spain, Italy, Germany, Switzerland and elsewhere, these Cubans flocked here in the 1880s and ’90s, when this part of Florida’s western coast was the cigar-making capital of the world, less than 350 miles from Havana.

More than a hundred years later, Ybor’s red-brick cigar factories have been reincarnated as shops and restaurants, but the legacy of Tampa’s immigrant communities is alive and well, not least in its food scene. Although less well known than its Floridian east-coast neighbour Miami, Tampa has, over the past few years, developed a reputation as one of America’s hottest food cities. It now has five Michelin-starred restaurants, as well as 30 others with either Bib Gourmand or Michelin Recommends ratings.

As with so many of America’s great cities, the story of Tampa’s food tells the story of the city — not least at the huge, 1,500-seater Columbia. Taking up an entire block, it first opened in 1905 to feed the thousands of workers at Ybor’s cigar factories, serving Spanish classics as well as Cuban specialities. In one of its many, high-ceilinged dining rooms — decorated with the florid, blue and yellow Spanish tiles common across Spain since the 16th century — I tuck into the restaurant’s famous, crammed-to-the-gills Cuban sandwich. This culinary cross-breed features Spanish ham, Italian salami and spicy, Cuban-style roast pork, as well as swiss cheese, pickle and mustard introduced by the German and Jewish communities. It’s all piled up inside a Cuban-style baguette from one of Tampa’s oldest Cuban bakeries — a local institution called La Segunda.

To find out more, the next day I head to La Segunda’s nearby take-out branch — a simple, whitewashed building that’s just a five-minute drive from The Columbia. The original shop was opened in 1915 by Spanish immigrant Juan Moré, who’d learned to bake bread while in Cuba. Today, the bakery supplies not just The Columbia but other restaurants across the US South. Inside, the walls are lined with black-and-white photos showing the original owners and bakers, and large glass counters are filled with tantalising-looking pastries and cakes. I join locals queuing for the long Cuban bread sticks before meeting the bakery’s fourth-generation owner, Copeland Moré — the great-grandson of founder Juan.

“Cuban culture is very important to Tampa,” Copeland tells me, pristine in a white La Segunda-branded polo shirt. “A lot of the food we make represents the cultures of the people who settled here,” he continues, with a laid-back Southern accent. “The Cuban sandwich is a classic example of one of the main four cultures who settled here in Ybor — Cubans, Italians, Spanish and Germans — and made it what it is today.” And it’s not just the Cuban bread that flies out the door; Copeland points out his popular German chocolate cake, Italian cannolis — piped with creamy, sweet ricotta — and Cuban-style pastries, including guava turnovers (chunky triangles of puff pastry filled with sweet guava paste).

A 10-minute drive from Ybor, the city’s immigrant history continues to unfold amid Downtown’s steel-and-glass high-rises. Just yards from the Tampa Bay History Center — a museum where 14,000 years of Tampa ancestry is documented — there’s an outdoor food court on the waterfront called Sparkman Wharf that perfectly sums up the city’s mix of cultures. Its repurposed shipping containers house restaurants that showcase the food of some of the city’s most innovative chefs; for example, creative tacos at Gallito Taqueria and Korean-style pork buns at Dang Dude — both the co-creations of Ferrell Alvarez, one of Tampa’s long-standing star chefs.

To the sounds of 1960s soul, I park myself in smart outdoor seating overlooking the water to feast on local fried shrimps at Edison’s Swigamajig, helmed by five-time James Beard Award semifinalist, chef Jeannie Pierola. It’s one of many local businesses taking advantage of the wide range of seafood available, thanks to the city’s location on the Gulf of Mexico. Crisp on the outside, tender on the inside, the shrimps are plump and sweet, served with hand-cut fries and a zingy, tamarind tartare sauce.

It’s the taste of Italy, meanwhile, that awaits me for dinner at Michelin-starred Rocca, a quarter of an hour’s drive north of Downtown in the multicultural, recently gentrified Tampa Heights neighbourhood. When Rocca received its Michelin star in May 2023, it was one of the first in Tampa to do so. With industrial-style pillars, high tables and Beyoncé tunes on the PA, it’s surprisingly informal. Dispensing with starched linens and gushing waiters, Rocca feels more like Saturday night in a neighbourhood bar.

The food, however, is a different story. I’m soon tucking into tortello all’uovo, a hand-made, ravioli-like pasta filled with a decadently rich mix of spinach and ricotta, while woody maitake mushrooms add just the right level of bite. The emphasis here is on high quality but essentially unfussy food.“I worked in some very avant-garde modernist restaurants in New York,” says Rocca’s chef-owner Bryce Bonsack, who comes over to chat at my table, dressed in his chef whites.

Having grown up in Tampa, Bryce spent time at New York’s Michelin-starred Blanca, where, he tells me, “It was all gels and sous vide and hundreds of different foams. It was exciting to learn, especially as a young chef, but it almost made you want to revert to cooking over a fire or something very simple with three ingredients.” That sent him on a journey to Italy, in search of its rustic, ingredient-led cuisine.

Rocca’s best-known dish is its ‘mozzarella cart’. A waiter positions a trolley alongside my table as if he’s about to flambé crêpes suzette, and there’s a sense of theatre as he stretches pliable mozzarella high above the table like an elastic yo-yo before arranging the warmed cheese on a plate. He then adds dark brown Kumato tomatoes, fresh basil and 10-year-aged balsamic vinegar. The combination of warm, almost meltingly soft mozzarella with the punchy tomatoes and elegantly tangy vinegar makes for unquestionably the best tomato and mozzarella salad I’ve ever had.

Rocca belongs to the new generation of restaurants reflecting the city’s diverse, multicultural mix. At breakfast the next day I find myself tucking into the Med Morning Yogurt Bowl at Psomi, a hip, white-washed Greek restaurant amid smart, clapperboard bungalows and neatly tended lawns in the leafy Hyde Park area. It’s run by self-taught chef and owner Christina Theofilos, a Greek-American born and raised in Tampa. “What’s special for me about Tampa is how many cultures are here, and you see it through the food,” she tells me. “We’re seeing more speciality restaurants opening up and chef-driven concepts where the person cooking the food is passionate about it and is trying to share a story with you.”

Back in Ybor that evening, I’m off in search of Tampa’s blossoming cocktail scene, which I’ve heard is as good as its food. On 7th Avenue, at Hotel Haya’s glamorous Flor Fina bar, young, heavily tattooed lead bartender Natalie Walker mixes me one of her bestsellers — the dos agaves — as I settle into an elegant leather bar stool under a gold-leaf ceiling. Dangerously drinkable, sweet yet subtly sour, it’s a mix of reposado tequila and mezcal, lemon juice, pear and hibiscus liqueurs with house-infused rosemary honey, Natalie tells me.

“The cocktail scene all over the city is huge,” says Tampa-raised Natalie. “Our entire menu is made by our own bartenders, who know the area and create cocktails with a sense of where we are.” It’s little surprise, then, that this best-selling cocktail has a Spanish name and Hispanic ingredients. As I savour my last sips, I look out at the street to watch a group of women dressed for a night out. They’re heading to another bar, but they’re not alone. Hot on their heels, a cockerel is pecking the pavement behind them.

Where to eat in Tampa:

Élevage Soho Kitchen & Bar
The cuisine at Élevage — set within the food-focused Epicurean Hotel — is best described as refined home-cooking. Creatively mixing Cuban, Spanish, Asian and Middle Eastern flavours with traditional Southern classics, the results include grits with smoked gouda, as well as its bestselling, supremely treacly smoked chicken wings — brined for 24 hours before being smoked, fried and tossed in a dry rub. Mains around $36 (£29).

Oxford Exchange
As in many US cities, brunch is big in Tampa, not least at this light and airy cafe, set within a stylish mini-mall originally built as the stables for the late-19th-century Tampa Bay Hotel. Look out for refined, organic versions of brunch classics like buttermilk pancakes with maple syrup or avocado toast with soft, whipped goat’s cheese and spicy pepita crunch. Lunch includes fish tacos, speciality teas and cocktails. Dishes from around $20 (£16).

Edison’s Swigamajig, Sparkman Wharf
This upscale reinvention of a classic Florida seafood shack is an offshoot of two other restaurants from star local chef and Tampa native Jeannie Pierola. It’s part cocktail bar, part seafood restaurant — the ‘swig’ in its name a reference to the cocktails; the ‘jig’ a nod to the weighted ‘jig’ baits used in fishing. There’s a wide range of locally sourced seafood, including jumbo shrimp and chips with tamarind tartare sauce, and conch fritters served with orange blossom honey and mustard. Dishes around $19 (£15).

Timpano
Located in the Hyde Park Village shopping area — Tampa’s answer to Beverly Hills — this restaurant is another smart address for brunch, with a foliage-filled interior shaded by wicker lamps. Expect US staples like steak and eggs and brunch burgers, as well as more inventive creations such as avocado crostini and French toast made with brioche, served with coffee cannoli cream and cocoa nibs. The menu also features Italian-influenced concoctions such as the slightly odd-sounding but locally popular carbonara benedict, which is more or less as its name suggests — a mound of spaghetti carbonara wedged between the benedict’s traditional poached egg and muffin. Brunch dishes around $22 (£17).