Columbia - Tampa’s Spanish restaurant

COLUMBIA RESTAURANT
Where History Comes
Alive Every Night
By Fred W. Wright Jr.

Cuisine history isn’t always where you expect to find it. Florida is still considered part of the New World, still fresh-faced when it comes to tradition and lineage.

Yet the Columbia Restaurant, based in the Ybor City section of Tampa, Fla., the city’s early Latin quarter, celebrated its 100th anniversary in 2005, making it the oldest restaurant in Florida – and the world’s largest Spanish restaurant. Today, fourth and fifth generation family members keep the restaurant and its off-spring alive and kicking.

Some items on the menu remain the same as they did a century ago when the Columbia was a coffee café popular with the local workers at nearby cigar factories – particularly the signature 1905 salad. Family recipes are still the mainstay of the menu, including such items as “Paella “a la Valenciana,” Red Snapper “Alicante,” Pompano en Papillot, Meduza “Russian Style” and Filet Mignon “Columbia..”

But no menu featuring Cuban and Spanish cuisine can exist without a substantive wine list, and the Columbia offers more than 500 Spanish wines along with an inventory of more than 30,000 bottles.

There are now additional Columbia restaurants elsewhere in Florida – in Sarasota, St. Petersburg, Clearwater Beach, West Palm Beach and evne St. Augustine, the state’s oldest city. But only the Columbia in Ybor City offers another tradition that has survived the ages: live flamenco dance performances, two times a night, every night except Sunday. Dinner shows are almost non-existent otherwise in Tampa.

Here, though, the Columbia Restaurant Dance Troupe, led by Artistic Director Faustino Rios, offer traditional Spanish dances consisting of rhythmic steps performed on a hardwood floor. (The flamenco originated with Spanish Gypsies and has evolved through the years to the more structure form found at the Columbia. The classical Spanish dance steps consist of ballet moves in colorful Spanish costumes accompanied by the clack of castanets.

There’s a cover charge for these shows. And there’s live jazz Thursday through Saturday in the adjacent café.

Like a lot of Florida restaurants, there is a busy take-away feature and a gift shop on-site offering hand-rolled cigars and accessories as well as trademarked gifts, including the 1905 Salad dressing, the Columbia’s own sangria mix, Cuban and American roast coffee, hot sauce and Columbia seasonings.

Another welcome traditional Spanish cuisine tradition also found at the Columbia is a tapas menu. Tapas is a style of dining featuring a variety of taste dishes consumed with a glass of wine, preferably sherry. Tapas can feature marinated jumbo shrimp or scallops or calamari or any number of cheeses and other meats.

One nice feature at the Columbia reflects the Spanish tradition of “tapeo,” or sharing of tapas. The Columbia offers either a Tapeo de Mixta (a combination of Shrimp and Crab Meat Alcachofas, Costillitas de Condero and Calamere) or Tapeo de Mariscos (a combination of Scallops Casimiro, Devil Crab Croquettes and Shrimp “Al Ajillo”).

For more details about the Columbia Restaurant locations and full menu, go to www.columbiarestaurant.com .