After only being open since last November, upscale fast-food joint Nojaks, located at 305 E Polk St., announced its downtown Tampa closing on social media.
“Unfortunately the work we would need to have done to make it work isn’t something that we as a small business could yet afford,” a Facebook post stated.
The walk-up window restaurant focused on vegan burgers and seasonal vegetables, but offered meat options as well.
“We are in the process of resolving that issue and building a team to make it better than it was. Either we will rebuild the space we are in or will relocate,” co-owner Wesley Roderick told Creative Loafing Tampa Bay in an email.
For Nojaks, Roderick partnered with Anthony Masters, who was the executive sous chef at On Swann, as stated in a previous CL Tampa article. Supernatural Food and Wine is taking Nojaks place offering “mean sandwiches” according to its bare bones Instagram page.
“We are helping with the new shop,” Roderick said. Though technically the same owners, it will be a different team and unrelated to Nojaks. And Nojaks isn’t disappearing completely.
“For the time being we are going to keep pop-ups rolling and test a few things we had in the bag that never got to [try],” Roderick said.
One pop-up includes vegan donuts on the weekends at the newly opened Meacham Urban Farm.
The Nojacks space, located next door to The Hub, has run through tenants in the last decade including the Lector Social Club and Sunny Side Up Breakfast and Lunch. The most successful of the tenants was Duckweed Urban Market which started off at the small space before moving around the corner to 803 N Tampa St. where it still lives. Duckweed even has a second store at 111 N. 12th St. in the Channelside district.
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This article appears in Feb 11-17, 2021.
