Born in Ybor City in 1928, Núñez is a classic Tampa native—a “Tampeño” as the Núñez family calls the locals. After spending his adolescence in New York, Felipe brought his wife and two young sons back, worked at several of Tampa’s unionized dining rooms and soon accepted a job at the iconic Columbia restaurant, where he’d work for more than two decades and earn a spot in its hall of fame.
After hundreds of nights of serving others—including his own family on occasion—he’ll be served his 97th birthday dinner there this weekend.
Tampa’s Columbia restaurant started as Saloon Columbia in 1903 as a tasting room for the Florida Brewery in Ybor City, then became Columbia Restaurant in 1905. In response to Prohibition, Columbia merged later with La Fonda, which then dropped its name to become the larger restaurant.
Felipe, who was born one year before the Great Depression, worked under second-generation ownership at the Columbia (Casimiro Hernandez, Jr. and his wife Carmita), and at 23 years old was one of the youngest on staff along with the “Singing Waiter” Joe Roman. Some of the many warm memories of his career include serving Carmen and their son Mario (now a WMNF radio personality and host of “The Tampa Natives Show” on TBAE).
Mario once got to see his dad at work when his student council group from Henry W. Grady Elementary visited the Columbia. Felipe took his 12-year-old son and two council colleagues into a then-closed dining room, called “Caesar’s Hideaway” not many had seen before.
Before he developed his skills in service and hospitality, six-year-old Felipe dreamed of being a baseball player when he first moved to New York in 1934. Nine years later, while running around the fields of Central Park, he and his friends were coined the “Marcantonio boys” after Rep. Vito Marcantonio.
In his seven U.S. congressional terms, Marcantonio championed East Harlem’s ethnic diversity, including Italians, Jews, African-Americans and Puerto Ricans. His open door policy meant constituents—even 15 year olds—could visit his office and talk to him about issues in the city.
“I was elected from my group to go talk to this man,” Felipe told CL. “I went over and talked to him and negotiated with him.”
The meeting ended with Marcantonio agreeing to sponsor baseball uniforms for the young team.
Felipe worked at a hotel called Beaux Arts in Midtown Manhattan, not far from Grand Central Station, where he and his family would later set off for Tampa. He learned kitchen skills, like cutting and preparing a duck, and about French cuisine. The hotel had one kitchen for two buildings, so when someone in building two ordered room service, Felipe would have to cross the street to deliver it.
“We would have tables…and we rolled it across the street,” he recalled.
Núñez hit it off with Carmen while crashing a D-Day block party.
“She was selling tickets for the (school) dance … and I said, well, listen, I tell you, I will buy your ticket if you go with me to the dance,” Núñez recalled. “She said yes.”
After Carmen graduated high school in 1947, the couple married months later in April 1948.
Felipe and Carmen had two sons, Philip, named after his dad, and 25 months later, Fernando. Mario was born in Tampa in 1958 at the old St. Joseph’s hospital at E 7th Avenue and N Morgan Street.
In his job hunt, someone recommended to Felipe a restaurant that has been operating for 30 years, the Columbia. Though the French Beaux Arts gave him fine dining skills, Spanish-Cuban cuisine was a new world.
“I didn’t know what a paella was. I didn’t know things like that,” he said.
He does now, and this time he gets to be the one served.
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This article appears in Jun 26 – Jul 2, 2025.