The recently-opened Late Start Brewing and its culinary counterpart Mighty Fine live at the quiet northeast corner of the Tampa Downtown Partnership, where Ybor City meets the Channel District. Late Start Brewing had a long-awaited opening last September after hoping to debut in 2022. Mighty Fine—helmed by longtime Florida chef and native Tampeño Nathan Hardin—has been a welcome addition to the local food scene.
Refined bar grub is offered at lunch and dinner, alongside breakfast options of tacos, bowls and of course, churros; throughout the unassuming brewery menu, Hardin’s fine dining experience and penchant for detail shines. Late Start offers a variety of fruited sours, citrusy IPAs and dark porters that complement Mighty Fine’s spread of burgers, sandwiches and shareables. While most breweries in Tampa Bay shy away from in-house food service and opt for third party food trucks instead, the symbiotic relationship between Late Start Brewing and its 300 square-foot open kitchen makes for a seamless dining and drinking experience—the simple execution of two menus that were designed to work in tandem together.
Late Start—located at 1018 E Cass St.—can feel like an entirely different place depending on the time of day. At 11 a.m. on a weekday, it boasts cozy, coworking vibes, while one may encounter a low lit, bar-like atmosphere with bumping music and televised sports games on a Saturday night. Its Wi-Fi password is even on display for all of the remote workers sipping on coffee and munching on tacos, a semi-rare phenomenon since other coffee shops may not explicitly welcome guests who are in for the long haul.
During daytime service, Mighty Fine offers a menu of $5 breakfast tacos on homemade tortillas brushed with duck fat. Both its bacon and chorizo tacos come with scrambled eggs, Chihuahua cheese and tater tots, with just a slight variation of sauces and toppings between the two. Its Tex-Mex inspired, vegetarian “migas” taco features scrambled eggs, avocado, Chihuahua cheese, pico and totopos (aka crispy little corn tortillas), while its only breakfast bowl is basically a combination of its three taco options.
With the bowl starting at $10, $5 tacos (which are much larger than street tacos, on a tortilla that’s about seven inches in circumference), $4 hashbrowns and Mighty Fine’s beloved breakfast churros coming in at $6 per serving—these daytime offerings are extremely affordable and its a la carte pricing makes it easy to customize to your liking.
The tacos are light—due in part to the fluffy eggs—but still deliver a salty bite from the tots, freshness from the cilantro and onion and a tart spice from their accompanying salsas. They’re perfect for one-handed eating if the other still needs to attend to your laptop’s keyboard.
Mighty Fine’s coffee program is a welcome addition to its breakfast spread, offering all of the expected options like cold brew, lattes, cappuccinos, match and chai—although its food and beer program may outshine its espresso bar by a slight margin. While retail bags of Late Start Brewing’s beans are available for purchase, they don’t offer much information about the origin of the beans—like what farm grew the beans, what altitude they were grown at, whether they are single origin or not and what tasting notes they boast. Local coffee snobs seek this information out when looking for shops to frequent, and Late Start Brewing’s program may not be up to par for these folks.
From 11 a.m.-11:30 a.m, Mighty Fine takes a pause from service while its staff pivots to the lunch and dinner menu that’s served for the remainder of the day.
Mighty Fine’s smash burgers—which just might be the most popular handheld on its menu thus far—are certainly not an item to miss.
Hardin told Supernatural Wine & Food owner Wesley Roderick that Mighty Fine’s beloved burger is an “old school, west coast version of a smash burger.”
There’s absolutely nothing dry about its “Classic Boi” smash burger (since moistness is one of the main concerns of pub-style burger lovers), loaded with homemade pickles, yellow American cheese and “special sauce” on a pillowy potato bun. Things go up a notch with its $9.50 “Deluxe Boi” burger, which comes with “shrettuce” (which should be trademarked), tomato, pickles, shaved onion and special sauce loaded on what can be considered the perfect sesame bun.
Other options that utilize this prized sesame bun include its Southern-meets-Korean fried chicken sandwich—another must-try item alongside the smash burger. The skin-on, boneless chicken thigh is marinated in buttermilk before its breaded, twice-fried, sauced up, and topped with shaved onion, shrettuce and a touch of yuzu.
While the menu uses the word “Asian-ish” to describe the sauce on the chicken sammie, its notes of miso and yuzu may be slightly lost in its ultra-crunchy, savory fried chicken—which leans into the “ish” part of that description. There’s a nuggified version of the sandwich that’s almost reminiscent of karaage, and it utilizes the “Miso-Bama BBQ” as a dipping sauce, too.
Other hearty eats offered on Mighty Fine’s lunch and dinner menu include a classic patty melt on sourdough bread from Miami’s Sullivan Street Bakery, as well as a homage to Hardin’s family’s Cincinnati roots with a cheddar cheese-loaded chili coney hot dog (which still maintains an ideal snap), and the fried mortadella sandwich with American cheese and horseradish cream.
Housemade green pimento with hatch chiles can be ordered with a side of fried saltines (genius), or stacked on a sammie with American cheese, bacon, mustard and spicy pickles.
For dessert, there’s only one of them at Mighty Fine—which is usually a telltale sign that’s going to be pretty damn good.
An icebox cake is always on the menu, with its first iteration being a play on banana pudding with Nilla wafers and whipped cream cheese. Currently, Mighty Fine offers a Biscoff cookie butter-based icebox cake, Hardin’s modern interpretation of the no-bake dessert that was popularized in the 1920’s by American companies like Nabisco.
In 2019, Hardin told Michelle Stark that “one of the big things that drives creativity for me is nostalgia”—and a handful of years and one pandemic later, that sentiment rings true throughout the Mighty Fine menu.
There’s a shelved partition between the kitchen itself and where the front-of-house takes your order, and it feels like a deep dive into Hardin’s approach to Mighty Fine. Amongst the boxes of saltines, buckets of Lawry’s seasoning and large containers of Duke’s mayo are dozens of cookbooks, a molcajete for salsas, framed photos, knick knacks and DVDs—this familiar, tschotske-filled corner of the brewery juxtaposes the rest of the concept’s sleek, minimal decor and adds a ton of character to the natural light-filled space.
Between the moniker itself—inspired by one of Hardin’s grandfather’s go-to phrases—and the chili-smothered dog that pays homage to his family’s roots, Mighty Fine is clearly a passion project in which so much personal preference, personality and nostalgia are on display.
The longtime chef and native Tampeño has a learned career that includes time at fine dining eateries in Orlando and Miami, the now-closed Hyde Park spot Copperfish Grill & Oyster Bar, Hotel Haya and most recently, Armature Works’ Steelbach. After helming the southern cuisine-focused kitchen at Steelbach for several years, Hardin pivoted to his own pop-up and private dinner company called Gather, where he and his now-wife Amber Carregal catered events and parties throughout Tampa Bay. Through Gather, Hardin was able to explore a wide variety of cuisines, creatively challenge himself and branch out as a business owner as well as an executive chef.
Mighty Fine, however, seems like almost a return home for Hardin, who’s now able to create food that not only he enjoys eating, but is also inspired by his family and upbringing. The menu is unapologetically hearty and made without pretense. And it’s absolutely refreshing to see a notable Tampa chef do whatever the hell they want (and have fun doing it.)
While not many places in Tampa have been able to harness the tricky balance of an all-day service, Mighty Fine and Late Start Brewing have created a seamless drinking, eating and late-night experience.
Mighty Fine and Late Start Brewing are open from 8 a.m.-10 p.m. Wednesday-Thursday, 8 a.m.-midnight on Friday-Saturday, 8 p.m.-10 p.m. on Sunday and closed on Monday-Tuesday. Coffee service runs until 2 p.m. on weekdays and noon on weekends, although cold brew is available all day. Breakfast is served from 8:30 a.m.-11 a.m., with its lunch and dinner running from 11:30 a.m. until an hour before Late Start closes.
Follow both @mightyfinetpa and @latestartbrewing on Instagram.
