Columbia Cafe at the Tampa Bay History Center — Restaurant in Tampa

03/13/25, This was my second time dinning in this outstanding cafe. I've also dined in the Columbia restaurants located in St. Augustine and Ybor. The Flaminco dancers in Ybor are a must see!

Unfortunately, my experience on the aforementioned date, didn't come close to equalling my previous trip in this cafe, which occurred in 2019.

On this occasion I brought my mother and father 94 years old and 86 years old respectively.

Our waitress and meal were excellent. Our dining experience didn't take a nose dive until a gentleman dressed in a white dress shirt interrupted our conversation.

Note, he did introduce himself. He simply went from asking how our meals were to discussing mostly himself. My mother stated that the gentleman was a braggart who specialized in one up manship.

For example when she interrupted his long tangent about himself she proudly asked if I looked 62. He smugly grinned and said yes.

When I in turn mentioned that my youthful and beautiful mother was 95 and still driving, he snorted he'd had a customer dine in the restaurant who was 101 years old and could still walk, mind you my mother both walks and drives.

He then bored us with telling us how much weight he'd lost 140 lbs. He went as far as to show us his license picture. We congratulated him but noted the absence of reciprocity on his part failing to acknowledge my mother awesome health and vitality.

On the way out I asked the hostess for the managers name. He must have heard I asked for his name because as we were leaving the historical exhibit I bumped into him. He gave a recap of our earlier encounter absent an apology. We will still dine here, but will try our best to avoid that manager .

We dined at this fine dinning establishment on 11/13/19. We had earlier listened to a lecture in Teco Hall. We decided to treat ourselves to some dessert and Cuban Coffee.

Upon entering the restaurant we were greeted by the hardest working and nicest waiter we have encountered since moving to Florida in 2018, James. James seemed to be everywhere at once and always with a smile.

My wife ordered Flan and I ordered the Churros along with our Coffee. Not only were the desserts delicious, but they also were pretty to look at. My Churros came with three types of sauces to dip them in Guava, Chocolate, and Caramel.

We definitely will be back. Thanks again James for making our dessert meal...

We picked this restaurant based off of wonderful reviews but unfortunately we had a terrible experience. There was 4 of us , we were eta promptly but our server took about 20 minutes to finally come by and place our drink order , at that point we were ready to order appetizers and our entrees but she left so abruptly we did not have a chance she returned about 7 minutes later with our drinks and took appetizers only , again leaving before we could get a word in about our dinners . We weren’t in a rush but again had been waiting a long time . We did not like the 3 appetizers we ordered and only ate about half out of starvation. Our dinners we’re unfortunately the same 2 people ate it all I didn’t touch my salad there was so much dressing on it just completely saturated to the point of unedible . The other salad the chicken was “ funny “ and the server did take the one salad off the bill . The bill was around 140 dollars and none of us liked any of it . We got attitude when we asked for our drinks to be refilled multiple times but again we were using it to wash down food we didn’t care for and for the face of being there a few hours obviously we were thirsty. A manager came by the table and apparently asked if we were doing okay . No one could hear anything he was saying due to the music being very loud and the one person that could here him was shy and didn’t complain for the entire table unfortunately. We just had a really bad experience with a rude sever and had such high hopes of loving this place . I understand places get busy but the door and service was so poor . I work very hard for my money and to see basically 140 dollars thrown in the toilet was disappointing this was over a week ago and I’m still bothered by it so I finally am...

TL; DR - 3 stars from a vegetarian perspective. Otherwise, 4+ for meat eaters.

So, let's start with the food. I'm a vegetarian Chad, and they had some veggie stuff, but only 1 veggie entree from what I saw besides salad. Eggplant.

The thing is, it wasn't bad eggplant, right? It really wasn't. But, they give you a ton of what I would say is just alright eggplant. Again, not bad, but with the view and atmosphere it felt like it should have been high-tier eggplant. Class A eggplant. What I had I would consider Class C eggplant.

My one gf had Yellow Rice with Chicken and she said it wasn't bad. She mentioned the chicken was kinda dry and the rice overly mushey, but I had some of her rice and it was very good.

We also had an appetizer, I think they were bean cakes. They came out late though (same time as our entrees) so we didn't really get a chance to enjoy them as much. Those were somewhat lukewarm, meaning they weren't hot but weren't also cold.

I will say though they did give us each a nice and warm bread. That was very good and now since I think about it that alone can count as an appetizer. It was delicious!

Finally, my one gf had 2 drinks, a Sangria and a wine. She said the sangria was watered down while she did enjoy the wine.

So, tbh everything wasn't bad. The vibes were great (we sat outside; pretty view), good music, staff were friendly, right? Just the lack of vegetarian options for an entree and the appetizer coming out basically the same time as our din din is why I decided to go with 3 stars. If I was a meat eater, I'm sure I would have given at least 4 stars. Looked like they had lots of...