The key word for Safety Harbor’s dining scene is variety. An eccentric army of bars and restaurants lines the streets of its walkable downtown — from longstanding family-owned spots like the Paradise and Athens restaurants, to relative newcomers such as Southern Fresh and Parts of Paris, to busy lunch spot The Sandwich on Main and the tapas-and-wine bistro Tapping the Vine.
There’s mainstream chain fare (Crispers and Starbucks among them), but Indian specialties (on Wednesdays only) at 7 Stars Food Market & Deli and sweet shops like Pick Your Poison Cupcake Cafe exist as well.
The options are plentiful, and there are more and more reasons for foodies to make Safety Harbor a destination.
But it wasn’t always this way.
Mike Kelly moved to Safety Harbor 29 years ago. When he opened 8th Avenue Pub in 2009, the most common reaction was “Are you crazy?”
The pub started out small, Kelly says, and he remembers when Trotti’s Lounge (now the site of Harbor Bar) was the only nightlife spot in town. He noticed the need for a bar while attending the city’s monthly Third Friday gatherings; there was music, food, art — but nowhere to go afterward.
Now Nolan’s Pub and Copperheads Taphouse cater to the after-hours crowd alongside 8th Avenue. Part watering hole, part live music hub, Kelly’s pub has morphed into a place to grab late-night grub from an Italian wood-fired oven.
“The food is doing way more than just feeding people here,” Kelly says. “You gotta be drawing people in, and [chef] Flip [Dempsey]’s doing that with the food.”
Green Springs Bistro’s Kris Kubik and chef Paul Kapsalis know a little bit about food and Safety Harbor. They’ve been serving Gulf Coast-Mediterranean delicacies downtown for 15 years, relocating their staple to Fourth Avenue from its original address on Third, which also housed Brady’s Backyard BBQ (now on Main) and its current resident, Southern Fresh.
“For a while, downtown Safety Harbor was undiscovered. A lot has changed, so it’s been a good growth to see,” Kubik says. “More things are moving off Main Street. It’s becoming a very walkable downtown.”
According to Kubik, the dining scene took off just in the last decade. Kapsalis says the couple “always wanted a town full of restaurants so people would come around,” adding that it can’t hurt to bring more folks to the area.
If Green Springs is booked, people don’t have to make the trek to Bonefish Grill or one of the other franchise restaurants along McMullen-Booth Road. They’re able to find multiple dinner joints downtown, and later on, there’s a handful of spots to score a drink, dessert, or to catch a band.
“Now their evening gets extended,” Kubik says.
Brady Fisher of Brady’s Backyard BBQ doesn’t know what caused the scene to start hopping, but he gives some of the credit to the Safety Harbor Resort & Spa. Once spagoers got a taste of his ’cue with Kansas City-Southern flair, he says, it was “easy to pull ’em back.”
“We have three or four pizza places in a place that never had one,” he says of the food and drink community he’s been a part of for nine years. “With the population and traffic flow we have, it’s just unheard of. And they’re distinctly different.”
Chef Sue Cello, who co-owns the funky Cello’s Charhouse with Ellen Young, attributes the buzz to crowds drawn during the popular Safety Harbor Wine Festival, founded in 2002. Cello has lived in the city since 1956, and says it took six years for her eatery, opened in 1998, to find its groove on Seventh Avenue.
“Safety Harbor was a rough start-up, and a rough market. I wanted to throw in the towel many times, and now it’s poppin’,” she says.
The charhouse doesn’t fall into a specific restaurant genre, but Cello calls it “nostalgic home cooking.” She says she’d like for more businesses to develop as long as Safety Harbor’s eclectic identity isn’t compromised.
Pizzeria Gregario chef-owner Greg Seymour, who launched his Second Street pizzeria in 2013, shares similar thoughts.
“You need growth and progress,” he says, “but it needs to be done tastefully and with foresight.”
Committed to sourcing local ingredients, Seymour says the city could move forward and “become a locavore haven.” Strength in the economy encouraged growth around the area, he says, and so can working with nearby farms, ranchers and the like.
“I would love to see more people saying, ‘I’m not gonna buy commodity products,’” Seymour says.
More than the food or drink, though, the downtown haunts’ most definitive characteristic might be their warm, all-are-welcome atmospheres, distinct yet robust.
Groups push tables together with others they’ve just met. Conversations are shared. Owner-to-patron and patron-to-patron friendships are made and fostered. The destinations function as gathering places that feel like home.
That community thing everybody talks about is alive.
Cello sums it up simply: “I have the best customers on the planet.”
This article appears in Apr 9-15, 2015.