Restaurant is the oldest continuously operated restaurant in Florida, the oldest Spanish restaurant in the United States and one of the largest Spanish restaurants in the world
General Information
Open 6am to 9pm daily
How to Get There
Overview
The original Columbia Restaurant, located in the historic Ybor City neighborhood in Tampa, Florida, is the oldest continuously operated restaurant in Florida, the oldest Spanish restaurant in the United States and one of the largest Spanish restaurants in the world with 1,700 seats in 15 dining rooms taking up 52,000 square feet over an entire city block. Founded in 1905 in, the landmark is still owned by the Hernandez/Gonzmart family and serves Spanish and Cuban cuisine.
Besides the original location in Ybor City, there are Columbia restaurants in Sarasota (opened 1959, Sarasota's oldest continuously operating restaurant); in the Historic District of St. Augustine (opened 1983); on Sand Key (1989); and in Celebration (1997). There are smaller Columbia Café restaurants at the Tampa Bay History Center (opened 2009) and at Tampa International Airport (opened May 2012).
The original restaurant's wine list contains more than 1,056 wines with an inventory exceeding 50,000 bottles, and Columbia has won several awards for their Spanish wines. They feature several private-label wines that were created to honor the memory of family members. The popular house sangria is mixed tableside.
This article uses material from the Wikipedia article "Columbia Restaurant", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0
