Downtown waterfront
Tarpon Kitchen
Oak grill. Gulf fish. Dry heat.
Reserve a table or call +1 727 821 4400
Opened 2021
Oak grill
“The grouper was the fish I keep trying to cook at home and failing. Sour orange, not lemon. The porch at 5:30 on a Wednesday is the correct use of a Tampa Bay evening.”
Sixty-four seats on 1st Avenue Northeast, a short walk from the Vinoy lawn. Nia Bennett cooks grouper, pink shrimp, and stone crab when the season says so. Not a lobster roll, and not a steak frites plate pretending it belongs here.
Dinner Wednesday through Saturday from 5:00 pm. Sunday 11:00 am to 8:00 pm. Closed Monday and Tuesday. The other notes are on the about page.
$38
Wood-grilled grouper
Sour orange, charred scallion, pan juices. Hogfish when the boats run out, and we say so.
$32
Pink shrimp, chile
Garlic, dried chile, lime. The shrimp stay in Pinellas.
$12
Key lime tart
Luis Ortega’s pastry. Toasted meringue. Sunday lunch sells it out before 3:00 pm.
or call the floor +1 727 821 4400
Nia Bennett
The grill
Nia Bennett left the Vinoy in 2021 and took the grill with her. Four years on the hotel line, cooking snapper that had to look like a banquet. Tarpon Kitchen is the short list: oak fire, citrus from groves east of town, pastry by Luis Ortega.
Nia Bennett
Sixty-four seats
The rooms
Thirty-six seats in the Gulf Room, twenty on the screened porch, eight at the counter. We do not combine them into a banquet. Happy hour is the porch, Wednesday through Friday, 5:00 to 6:00, then the list goes away.
Walk-in
The counter
Eight seats facing the oak. No reservations. You eat what Nia is firing, and solo diners get first look. The counter closes when the last Gulf Room ticket is in the window.
200 1st Ave NE, waterfront side of the avenue. Meters on 1st until 9:00 pm. Garage on 2nd Ave N, four minutes on foot. We do not valet.
