Nana’s Restaurant & Juice Bar celebrates one year of healthy eating in Ybor City

Beware of Nana’s Juice Bar & Restaurant in Ybor City—you could have a plant-based platter and smoothie so delicious and energizing that it might have you contemplating going all-vegan.

The small green building and giant colorful courtyard marked a year on its Ybor City parcel last month, and is celebrating this milestone with a party on Saturday, Aug. 5. Nana’s birthday party features dozens of local vendors, performances from T.Couture, Mila Killa, Sado Smooth and Friki Donya, henna tattoos, and food and drink specials from chef-owner Anisa Mejia (aka “Nana” herself).

Tickets to the Nana's  Juice Bar & Restaurant anniversary in Ybor City on Saturday, Aug. 5 are still available and start at $25. On a humid July day, with Florida’s dark clouds looming above ready to downpour at any second, Mejia sits down with Creative Loafing Tampa Bay in Nana’s courtyard—located at 1601 E 4th Ave.—to detail the many obstacles she overcame to operate Nana’s, let alone open it in the first place.

“So first of all: I had no idea what I was doing when we decided to open this business,” Mejia, 28, says frankly.“I was literally walking up and down 7th Avenue making connections and asking other restaurant owners if I could see their kitchens. I visited NY NY Pizza, Due Amici, and a few others.”

Having to learn the City of Tampa’s permitting process and Ybor City’s business guidelines regulated by The Barrio Latino Commission was one hurdle, and all of Nana’s DIY renovations and remodeling was another. The building was once “The Dojo”, a recording studio run by Tampa rapper Sam Hues’; before that, it was a BBQ restaurant, so Mejia luckily didn’t have to weather the city’s change-of-use permitting process.

All of her and her family’s DIY renovations and personal touches shine through Nana’s customer service and overall ambiance. When waiting for your smoothie in the small dining room (which consists of a single table and a few stools), it’s common to witness employees greeting their regulars by name as they walk into the cozy, foliage-covered building.

And just like how other restaurateurs gave her advice last summer when she was preparing for Nana’s debut, she passes down any knowledge to other new business owners in the area. She recently connected with Rodney Dhanraj who’s opening his Trinidadian concept Pepper’s Island right around the corner at 1701 E 4th Ave., sharing any permit-related and operational knowledge that she’s gathered in the past year.

After enduring the months-long process of opening Nana’s doors in 2022, Mejia is finally looking ahead and starting to hone in her plant-based menu and the business’ eventual expansion. In Nana’s second year, she hopes to host more events in the courtyard, expand the daily menu and eventually open a mobile food truck that can sling smoothies and plant-based plates throughout Tampa Bay.

“I'm really experimental by nature—I love trying new things and challenging myself. We try to do everything homemade, from-scratch and as natural as possible,” she says. “I feel like a lot of people have this misconception of if you’re vegan that means you’re healthy, but that's really not the case.”

In addition to its smoothies—which often utilize health-forward ingredients like aloe, bee pollen, beetroot powder and ginger—Nana’s offers a la carte items like walnut meat empanadas, papa rellenas (stuffed potatoes) and carrot “toona” sandwiches daily.

Each Monday, the restaurant posts its weekly “meal of the day” menu on its Instagram (@nanas_ybor), a perpetually-changing list of plant-based entrees ranging from Dominican-inspired eats like pastelón (think plantain lasagna) to Asian and Italian dishes. Mejia says she never likes to offer the same items for too long, and is always anticipating the next new dish on Nana’s menu.

Mejia tells CL that expanding Nana’s everyday offerings and creating more unique plant-based recipes is at the forefront of her creative drive as a chef and owner. And when she isn’t prepping in the kitchen or taking care of her six-year-old daughter, she studies herbology at Tampa’s Modern Herbal Apothecary and plans to incorporate her education into Nana’s food and drink offerings.

“I'm learning about the study of plant medicine so I can learn how to use it and incorporate it into my kitchen. She (apothecary owner Lyani Powers) teaches us the spiritual aspects of each plant and how to be intentional with it,” Mejia explains. “Food is one of the main medicinal sources we get from nature and when I cook, I’m very conscious about everything I’m creating.”

“My connection with food has always been this deep,” she adds.

Mejia was born in New York City, moved to Tampa in 2006 and spent a few years in Miami before moving back to the greater Tampa Bay area in 2020. Her childhood memories include both grandmas cooking around her all the time.

“Even though they were both Dominican, they had completely different styles and ways of cooking,” Meija says. She feels a deep, ancestral-like connection between her Dominican and African roots and the history of Ybor City, and feels a spiritual responsibility to continue the district’s legacy and community-oriented feel.
She hopes the proposition of new, nearby, development won’t threaten that mission.

There’s a good chance that Ybor Harbor—developer Daryl Shaw’s proposed 33-acre mixed-use development—will start its build out just a few blocks away from Nana’s alongside the northern tip of Ybor Harbor. There haven’t been any recent updates about the massive development that was proposed in early 2023, but Mejia is still concerned about its possible impact on her and other family and Black-owned businesses in the immediate area. Meija said that she was unhappy with how ABC Action News portrayed her feelings about Ybor Harbor earlier this year, saying that her interview conveyed unanimous support for the Water Street-like development, when in reality she communicated various concerns about its effects on the rich history and culture of Ybor City.

Nana’s even offers a 10% discount to everyone living or working in Ybor City, to make it utterly clear that her establishment is dedicated to serving the folks who live and breathe the neighborhood. “It was definitely a learning process just to get the restaurant open in the first place…but the community loves what I’m doing here, they feel the energy when they’re here and I know they’re excited to see us grow too,” Mejia tells CL.

Nana’s Restaurant & Juice Bar is open from 11 a.m.-10 p.m. Tuesdays, 11 a.m.-7 p.m. Wednesdays and Thursdays, noon-8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays and is closed every Sunday and Monday. For more information on Nana’s ever-changing menu and the various events it hosts throughout the year, head to its Instagram at @nanas_ybor.

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