Opened 2021
After the Vinoy kitchen, a room of our own.
Nia Bennett spent four years cooking hotel food. Tarpon Kitchen is the short list she kept writing on the back of banquet tickets.
The building
A real corner of downtown
200 1st Ave NE is a late-1920s walk-up a short way from the Museum of Fine Arts. We took the ground floor in January 2021, poured sand-colored plaster, screened the porch and lit an oak fire.
Sixty-four seats is what the floor holds without turning into a banquet hall. We close Monday and Tuesday because the same four people cannot cook seven nights and still buy fish at the dock.
The menu is Pinellas: grouper, pink shrimp, stone crab in season, and citrus that grew nearby.
Dates
How it got here
2017 to 2020
The Vinoy line
Nia cooks banquet and à la carte at the Renaissance Vinoy and learns to fire 120 identical plates of snapper. Marcus Hale joins her station in 2019.
January 2021
Lease on 1st Avenue
A lunch counter closes, and Nia signs for the ground floor the week after she leaves the hotel. Plaster, a screen, a hood, a grill. No investor deck.
September 2021
First service
Forty-two seats and no porch. Grouper, shrimp, and a key lime tart.
2022
The porch and the pastry
Luis Ortega joins from a Tampa hotel and takes the dessert list. The screened porch adds twenty seats and the 5:00 to 6:00 hour.
2024 to 2026
Sixty-four, and the 7:00 rule
The counter stools go in and Camila Ruiz takes the floor. After too many Friday nights of children at 8:15, we stop seating anyone under 12 after 7:00.
The people
Who is on the line
Nia Bennett
Chef. Opened Tarpon Kitchen in 2021 after four years at the Vinoy. She writes the board every afternoon.
Luis Ortega
Pastry. Joined in 2022. The key lime tart is his, and he will tell you when Sunday lunch took the last one.
- Camila RuizGeneral manager. The floor, buyouts and the phone.
- Marcus HaleGrill. Lights the oak at 2:30 pm.
- Jonah PeckFloor lead. Keeps the counter list.
- Dee PatelWine and beer, mostly from down the street.
Guest notes
What people wrote
“The grouper was the fish I keep trying to cook at home. Sour orange, not lemon. The porch at 5:30 on a Wednesday is the right use of a Tampa Bay evening.”
“At the counter, Nia told me the grouper had run out before I ordered and sent snapper instead. That is the whole restaurant in one gesture.”
“Luis toasts the meringue on the key lime tart. We split it and still ordered the grapefruit sorbet.”
“We came at 7:20 with a nine-year-old and were turned away. The rule is on the site and we did not read it. The host offered 5:00 the next night.”
“Stone crab in April with mustard sauce. The price was on the board, as promised.”
“We drove from Orlando on a Monday and found a dark door. It says closed on the site. The shrimp on Wednesday were worth the second trip.”
“Sunday at 11:30 on the porch, cornbread and a cold beer. The trolley rattled past twice. Fine by me.”
“I wanted frites and got collards and grilled onion with the hanger steak. The chimichurri is the point.”