The Top 39 Restaurants Near Swordfish Grill & Tiki Bar
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- World Culinary Awards 2025 · Nominee · World's Best New Hotel Restaurant
- World Culinary Awards 2025 · Winner · North America's Best New Hotel Restaurant
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Rank 7. Il Ritorno
Italian
Chef David Benstock crafts inventive Italian pastas—duck tortellini with foie gras, radishes arranged as miniature gardens—in a soaring brick dining room downtown. Luxury touches like caviar doughnuts and wagyu anchor a menu that prioritizes bold flavor over restraint.
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Rank 8. Fortu
Asian
Fortu's sleek dining room in downtown St Petersburg—all wood, mirrors, and sharp angles beneath the Ponce de Leon Hotel—channels style with a Pan-Asian kitchen that delivers. Spicy pork wontons gilded in crispy garlic, kimchi-butter carrots, and seared Japanese wagyu suggest a place unafraid to blend precision with appetite.
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Rank 9. Sushi Sho Rexley
Omakase Sushi
Chef Rexley Kwok's sushi counter sits a block from downtown's noise, offering omakase that balances technical precision with genuine warmth. Nigiri anchors each meal—koji-cured salmon brushed with whiskey-barrel soy, uni kissed with yuzu, spot prawn served raw and fried—each bite a small argument for restraint over spectacle.
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Rank 10. Big Ray's Fish Camp
Seafood
On a desolate stretch of Interbay Boulevard, a weathered seafood shack run by owner Nick Cruz dispenses blackened shrimp, fried grouper sandwiches, and a lobster tail corn dog with the casual efficiency of a bait shop. The room is spare—wooden tables, metal chairs, a tent-covered patio—but the key lime pie, with its graham cracker crust, suggests someone here knows what matters.
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Rank 11. Mad Dogs & Englishmen
Gastropub
A warren of small rooms and a glassed conservatory lined with British memorabilia frames the kitchen's competent take on pub classics: sausages in puff pastry with curry-Dijon mayo, shepherd's pie built from tender lamb and topped with crisp breadcrumbs. The formula is familiar, executed without pretense or innovation, which is precisely the point.
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Rank 13. Bistro BT
Vietnamese French
BT Nguyen's casual spot on Henderson Boulevard pulls off a likable fusion of French and Vietnamese cooking with real finesse. The spring rolls arrive crispy and densely packed with pork and glass noodles; the pho builds its aromatics around tender beef and springy strands. Warm service and a modest wine list round out an inviting neighborhood bistro that doesn't overreach.
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Rank 14. Bern's Steak House
Steakhouse
A stately steakhouse where prime dry-aged beef meets garish vintage glamour and ceremonious service. The meal crescendos upstairs in a posh dessert room with bananas Foster and live piano.
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Rank 15. Streetlight Taco
Mexican
A South Tampa taqueria with black ductwork and comic-book tables channels contemporary style while nixtamalizing heirloom corn daily for tacos and tostadas. The sweet potato taco with goat cheese, pomegranate, and sesame macha glaze, or the crab tostada with mango and cream cheese, proves the food matches the room's ambition.
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Rank 16. Lilac
Contemporary Mediterranean
In a corner of the Tampa EDITION, John Fraser's Lilac commands its own sleek space, where an open kitchen clad in emerald tile looks onto a compact dining room. The contemporary prix-fixe menu draws from Mediterranean sources—French onion bread, grilled octopus with pork belly and succotash, baba au rhum—built on a plant-forward foundation that feels more disciplined than restrictive.
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Rank 17. Restaurant BT
Vietnamese
Chef BT Nguyen's intimate flagship draws on Vietnamese heritage and classical French training, combining bright aromatics with refined technique. Fussy plating aside, the cooking is assiduously seasoned and bursting with flavor, grounded in local ingredients.
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Rank 18. Élevage
International
Élevage trades pretension for approachable cooking that borrows freely across cuisines—smoked chicken wings beside wild mushroom chawanmushi, bison with za'atar and curry. The kitchen balances boldness with restraint, as in schnitzel paired with spaetzle and a bright mustard jus.
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Rank 19. Olivia
Italian
Chef Chris Ponte names this Italian spot after his daughter and proves the gesture sincere through meticulous housemade pasta and ragù that respects tradition while gently subverting it. Truffle-honey pizza and herb-ricotta-crowned rigatoni suggest a kitchen that sweats small details without pretension.
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Rank 20. Haven
Contemporary
Haven treats charcuterie and offal with equal reverence, turning rabbit kidneys and sweetbreads into small-plate revelations in a convivial setting. Whimsical desserts and ample vegetarian options balance the meat-forward menu's playful ambition.
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Rank 22. Timpano
American Italian
A verdant room with a clubby soundtrack sets the stage for cooking that respects Italian-American tradition without apology. The bar mixes enticing drinks, while tableside pasta preparations and a silken spinach raviolo with runny yolk prove the kitchen knows its craft.
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Rank 23. Rocca
Italian
Chef Bryce Bonsack brings New York rigor and Italian training to handmade pasta—spaghetti al limone crowned with blue crab and zucchini achieves that rare balance of restraint and richness. The mozzarella cart performs, but the chocolate custard with espresso cream and pizzelle suggests a kitchen unafraid of its own ambition.
- Michelin Guide 1 Star
- James Beard Awards 2026 · Nominee · Best Chef: South · Bryce Bonsack
- Wine Enthusiast 2024 · Forward 50 Restaurants
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Rank 26. Psomi
Greek
Chef Christina Theofilos runs this Greek bakery and daytime spot where strangers swap tables over octopus ceviche and house-made dolmades with the ease of old friends. A French dip built on feta-brined roasted chicken and skordalia aioli arrives on crusty bread, followed by bougatsa or baklava coffee cake—desserts that justify the pilgrimage.
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Rank 27. Ponte
Contemporary New American
Christopher Ponte's midtown dining room unfolds in cream and white linens, where oysters arrive under pink peppercorn foam and steaks command an entire menu section with their own butters and sauces. The ambition is genuine enough to justify the price, and the cocktail list splits evenly between classicism and invention.
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A narrow sandwich counter in Tampa's NoHo perpetually draws lines for house-made schiacciata and Italian subs that taste like they wandered in from a New York corner. The tomato and mozzarella on crispy, thin bread, the chicken cutlet with vodka sauce—these are small things executed with the confidence of people who know exactly what they're doing.
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Rank 29. The Pearl
Seafood
The Pearl occupies a contemporary Channelside space where maritime touches and outdoor seating frame a sprawling American menu pitched toward seafood and conviviality. The in-house pastry program—a pie-only operation—produces a brown sugar number with oatmeal crust that justifies the trip alone.
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Rank 30. Noble Rice
Sushi
Among the restaurants clustering Channelside, Noble Rice stands apart with a lively energy uncommon to minimalist Japanese spaces. The à la carte sushi menu anchors the room—king salmon nigiri, a negi toro roll layered with spicy fatty tuna and black garlic soy—but karaage, ramen, and skewered items suggest something less reverent than pure omakase tradition.
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Rank 31. Predalina
Mediterranean
In downtown Tampa's Channelside, siblings Blake and Allison Casper Adams honor their family's arc from Brazil through Portugal to Rhode Island with a sprawling Mediterranean menu anchored by mezzes and pastas. The tomato calamarata—tubes of pasta shaped like squid, dressed in herb-bright sauce and kefalograviera—announces a kitchen thinking in tangible pleasures rather than concepts.
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Rank 32. SuperNatural Food & Wine
American
A bright sandwich shop in downtown Tampa's tight quarters serves olive and feta on toasted focaccia alongside cinnamon sugar sour doughnuts that vanish by mid-morning. Turkey and cheddar melts arrive with sweet bacon jam, each construction revealing a thoughtful hand at work in a space barely big enough for its counter and a handful of seats outside.
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Jon and Mary Kate Walker's market-restaurant north of St. Pete stocks and cooks Gulf seafood with methodical care, Southern inflections threading through fried green tomatoes and pimento cheese. Oysters Bienville arrives broiled under butter and breadcrumbs; the grouper Po'boy justifies its own orbit on the menu.
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Rank 35. Steelbach
Southern Steakhouse
A steakhouse in a former electrical plant where mesquite-fired meats are the point, sourced from a partnership with a local rancher for grass-fed beef. The industrial setting and composed sides matter less than the exceptional quality of the grilled beef itself.
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Rank 36. Mise en Place
International
A converted catering space with polished service and a cocktail program of classical restraint, Mise en Place draws equally from business dinners and dates. The menu swings freely across continents—ricotta-filled squash blossoms, mole-crusted scallops—but the real argument for a return visit lives in desserts like warm pistachio polenta cake with olive oil gelato and blackberry jam.
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Rank 37. Rooster and the Till
International
A casual room with an open kitchen counter pulls from Southeast Asian, Latin American, and Levantine traditions in a menu that pivots weekly—think green garbanzo croquette with Goan curry and sikil p'ak, or fried cobia collar with nuoc cham. The textures are seductive, the flavors arrive without apology, and the staff moves with infectious energy through a space that refuses pretense.
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Rank 38. Yummy House
Chinese
The dining room fills quickly at this spacious Chinese restaurant where a sprawling menu accommodates every appetite, from orange chicken to clay pot-braised fish with its own earthy depth. Dim sum service at lunch offers the expected dumplings and turnip cakes alongside less common pleasures—pineapple buns, Hong Kong egg tarts—that reveal the kitchen's range beyond the comfortable familiar.
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Rank 39. Flaming Mountain
Sichuan Chinese
Strip mall Sichuan spot where husband-and-wife owners from northeast China channel regional pride into bold, ingredient-driven cooking—dry-fried chicken studded with chilies, cumin lamb, cooling cucumber salad—that arrives in portions built for serious appetites. The heat and restraint here feel equally confident, which is rarer than it should be.