Ceviche

A counter built for shared plates

Salt, oil, bread and rice carry the working day at Ceviche in St Petersburg, a downtown Spanish tapas bar whose discipline is older than its current address. Ceviche Tapas Bar & Restaurant traces its Florida story to Lee Karlins, who founded the restaurant in 1997 with Barcelona's shared table in mind, and who built it as the first room to bring Spanish tapas culture to the Tampa Bay region. Over nearly thirty years it grew from a single site into a regional institution, with former rooms in South Tampa and Orlando, before consolidating in St. Petersburg. The house moved to 332 Beach Drive NE in 2021 and took a major cosmetic overhaul with it, keeping staples such as patatas bravas, pan con tomate and crispy croquetas while refreshing the setting around them. Karlins described that revamp as a necessary evolution rather than a reinvention.

More than 100 small plates

The method of the place is breadth, but not looseness. The menu runs to over 100 hot and cold tapas, with paellas and cazuelas set beside Tapas Frias and Tapas Calientes. Cold dishes carry the sharper work: Atun Estilo Tartaro, Gazpacho Andaluz, Gazpacho Blanco, Gambas Y Guacamole, Sardinas on crostini, snapper crudo, salmon ceviche. The hot side keeps the bench in oil, bread, ham, cheese, rice and sauce: patatas bravas, pan con tomate, crispy croquetas, Paella de Marisco, Paella de Carne, Cazuela de Pollo, Cazuela de Verduras. Many of the recipes come from Northern Spain and Catalonia, and products are imported directly to hold them where a substitution would soften the dish. Sangria belongs to the house grammar, made by the owners and treated as more than a sweet pour at the edge of the meal. The wine program follows the same path, with Spanish bottles doing the slow work of structure around salt, citrus, saffron, fried potato, tomato and seafood.

The room on Beach Drive

The room works best when plates move in several directions at once. A table may begin with pan con tomate and sardinas, move through croquetas and snapper crudo, then give the center to paella while glasses gather at the edge. The pass has to think in staggered arrivals rather than courses. That is the discipline of tapas when it is taken seriously: not miniature dining, but timing, appetite and conversation held in small increments. Downtown St. Petersburg gives the restaurant a lively floor without requiring ceremony. The mood is upscale casual, though the room's real texture comes from the counter, the bar, the shared plates and the noise of a table deciding to order one more dish. Ceviche sits one block from Tampa Bay, close enough for the waterfront to shape the evening without becoming the subject of it.

A Florida address with another opening ahead

The St. Petersburg restaurant remains the working center of the brand while Ceviche prepares a return to Tampa's International Plaza in Summer 2026, after an eight-year absence from that city. That next room will test the same Spanish method at another address, but the present measure is still on Beach Drive: patatas bravas holding their place after the 2021 move, sangria in the glass, and paella at Ceviche in St Petersburg.