2 Best Restaurants in The Tampa Bay Area, Florida

For more than a century, this family-owned Ybor City bakery has been a go-to stop for authentic Cuban bread—crispy on the outside, and soft and chewy on the inside. It's also the largest producer of Cuban bread in the world, each day baking 18,000 loaves for restaurants in Tampa and beyond. In addition to bread, the eatery also offers a number of other baked goods, including guava turnovers, flan, and cannolis, as well as a full café menu with breakfast items, sandwiches (on house-made bread, of course), and salads. La Segunda also has locations in South Tampa and St. Petersburg.

A short trip west of Ellie Schiller Homosassa Springs State Wildlife Refuge, this tiny eatery is housed in a local museum and open only for lunch, but it's well worth making room in your itinerary for a visit here. The restaurant is known for its Cuban sandwiches and occasional blues shows. You can sit at a table within the museum itself or one of the tables in the very casual main dining room. Another option is to get your lunch to go and picnic at nearby Yulee Sugar Mill Ruins State Park.