When C decided to meet me in Tampa after my conference, his first comment was, "We're having lunch at Columbia!"
With good reason, apparently. Some "historic institutions" end up riding on the coattails of their prior reputations; others live up to their past glory, and even continue to improve. Columbia falls squarely into the latter camp.
Now on their fifth contiguous generation of family ownership and management, Columbia serves up authentic Spanish and Cuban cuisine in a beautiful restaurant with gorgeous mosaic tile, ironwork, and an interior courtyard with a pretty fountain (pictured below).
First off, I need to wax poetic about the bread service here. The bread is this amazing, light but chewy, yeasty sweet stuff with an impossibly crisp crust. (I'm literally drooling as I write about it). The butter was slightly warm, whipped and clearly very high in butterfat. I polished off twice my share, if you can believe it.
From the menu, we picked a starter of Queso Fundido, Tetilla cheese baked in a Rioja-based tomato sauce and served with toasted Cuban bread. The sauce was deliciously tangy, almost like a picadillo sauce, while the cheese was mild and oozy.
C also had a 1905 Salad, name for the year Columbia was started. Tossed tableside, the salad is iceberg lettuce topped with julienned jamon serrano, Swiss cheese, tomatoes, olives and their spicy, pungent garlic dressing. This is a strong salad, and a bit too heavy for my taste at lunch, but ultimately delicious.
For lunch I went with an order of Croquetas y Croquetas, four each of their chicken and deviled crab croquettes. The crab version was my favorite -- sweet blue crab meat, lots of paprika, onions and garlic. The chicken was too "eggy" and bland, and I coudn't finish them. Both were served with Columbia Hot Sauce which was really just a warm, mildly spiced mayonnaise. A little boring...
C ordered an Original Cuban Sandwich--despite Sam's awful experience with a local version of this sandwich, Cubanos really are delicious done right. Columbia's is smoked ham, pork, Swiss cheese, pickle and mustard on pressed Cuban bread, and it was HUGE -- we probably could have shared it and still had leftovers!
After all that food, we had no room for dessert and, besides, we were saving ourselves for our dinner at Bern's that night. The total for lunch was a ridiculously reasonable $38 including tax and tip.
Columbia Restaurant
2117 East 7th Avenue
Tampa, Florida 33605
(813) 248-4961
