The Columbia Restaurant in Tampa’s Ybor City is the premier Spanish/Cuban fine dining restaurant. It’s over 115 years old and still remains as one of Tampa’s most popular restaurants. Owned and operated by 5 generations of the same family, it boasts several dining rooms from casual to elegant. You can enjoy great entertainment of flamenco dancers in one of their dining rooms to make a night that would rival an evening in Spain.
As a teenager I worked at a hardware store right across the street from the restaurant. My mother’s middle sister, and one of my cooking mentors, Aunt Margaret, married a Tampa Sicilian-American. Her husband’s older brothers owned a hardware store across the street from the Columbia Restaurant. He was Uncle Phillip to all the young men in the extended family. And even though we were not blood relatives, he was always Uncle Philip to me. And as he did for many of the young boys in our extended family he gave me a job at the hardware store to earn my spending money.
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He always had lunch at a reserved table at the back of the Cafe section of the Columbia restaurant. The round table was always filled with some of our more colorful businessmen and politicians. On any given day, you could spot the mayor of Tampa kibitzing with other prominent Italian, Spanish and Cuban lawyers, businessmen and judges. Looking back it reminded me of scenes from The Godfather. Working for Uncle Philip gave us the great privilege of being welcomed to this exclusive table and learned the ways of being a Latino man in this mixed community of Caribbean and European Latinos.Â
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The cafe had a long bar, a bakery, ceiling fans and cane back chairs. It oozed Spanish culture. As a young man in 1932, Uncle Phillip, along with his father and younger brother, Joseph, built the most beautiful of the restaurant’s 5 main dining rooms known as El Patio. Still, the most sought after dining reservation at the Columbia.Â
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They had great Cuban coffee and cuban sandwiches. I loved their arroz con pollo (saffron rice and chicken) and their Spanish bean soup. One of their most popular menu items is their 1905 Salad. You will find Tampanians serving this salad in hundreds of homes. I have added this to my recipe page. You can also find this recipe in the cookbook, The Columbia Restaurant Spanish Cookbook by Adela Hernandez Gonzmart and Ferdie Pacheco.
If you’re ever in Tampa, don’t miss enjoying this historic restaurant. Once you have experienced it, make sure you try the many mom & pop Spanish/Cuban restaurants the city has to offer. I will feature some of those in a later post.
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