Bern’s Steak House
1208 S Howard Ave
Tampa, FL 33606
A Michelin guide restaurant
… more pix n videos on Google Maps
Probable will return.
Dinner only: 5pm-10pm or 11pm
Reservation: 2 months out
Valet parking: $8.
Service: good.
Decor: ok
Food: very good.
Kitchen & wine cellar tour: great
… more pix on Google Maps
I’ve heard of this restaurant for a while. During a dinner with friends in August at Haven – part of their family, we said we should go to Bern’s next. But it isn’t that easy: IF you want to have a seat at the table, you need to stay up till midnight when the new round of reservations become available… One morning in September I woke up at 6am in Koblenz, Germany. Thought about this and looked it up. Bingo, there were many openings but the earliest one was Nov 15.
For a casual dinner, this is just too cumbersome to stomach. They called me last Saturday evening to confirm. Gosh. Not sure if Tampa lacks decent steak house or what?
Service is good. Our server is a mid aged gent who does it perfectly, personable and professional. He reminds me of the serving staff at Smith & Wollensky or Palm on 2nd Avenue in New York.
Decor: old. The exterior is just a white block plaster structure. Interior, bit arty, Bohemia? I like the exposed brick 🧱. There are many small rooms or halls.
The noise level tranforms quickly. Shortly after we sat, a group of six women came for birthday. They like caged birds finally out for a change, our dinning hall immediately drowned in their shouts, and loud laughs … Come on, this restaurant isn’t suitable for such pollution.
Food is really good. We’ve:
Escargot 🐌 – too creamy and de-shelled. I needed to fish in their thick puree of spinach+herb, and under a thick layer of house blend cheese. I definitely had it better elsewhere, and definitely prefer the simpler cooked snails with shells. The warm toasted focaccia is great, soaked in butter, just the way I like it.
Crab cake is very good.
T-bone steak is very good. I ordered it medium but I think it’s on the medium rare side. All steak meals come with onion soup, salad, baked potato and DELicious onion rings. Did I miss any sides? I think they charge $20 for sharing.
Kitchen and wine cellar. Walking around a busy kitchen is a new experience – maybe this is the reason or reasons for their longevity. Photos are fine, video is no.
From kitchen to cellar, the surface isn’t flat. I kept thinking that U.S. 🇺🇸 is so litigious, and they’re offering this rare oppertunity… oh well. Maybe good faith and decency still exist and mean something. Good to know!
The wine cellar is neat. The staff cited a few figures (if I remembered them right…): three sommeliers; 110,000 bottles of wine on site, which is 15% of their inventory. They’ve the largest collection of wines by a restaurant in the world. By the glass, they offer 100+ red, 100+ white and several hundreds of dessert wines. By the way, my Justin Cabernet is wonderful, better than Northstar Merlot. There is a section reserved for the aged rare wines. They are wrapped in the plastic bag, to protect the labels … This reminds me of the wine scene in Shanghai: stores and restaurants used saran wrap. Although same method and same intend, but the underlying reasons are drastically different. Oh well.
They’ve three bars, one by the entrance, one in the kitchen and one on the 2nd floor.
The second floor with a pianist is used for desserts. We’ve coffee, creme brulee and keylime pie – average.
It’s a well oiled machine. Waiting staff is trained in the kitchen for a year before they can go out to the halls – (did I get this right?)
Other than the tours, they’re no match with steak houses in New York, such as Peter Luger, Smith & Wollensky or Delmonico, etc., more in the league of Pace’s Steakhouse, Angus Club Steakhouse,…
