Bern’s Restaurant In Tampa Is One Of The World’s Best Steakhouses

There are a handful of eateries so notable I feel like when I travel to the cities they are in I absolutely have to eat there or it’s a wasted culinary trip. Examples would include the nation’s best pizzeria, Tony’s Pizza Napoletana in San Francisco (before you argue, read this), Casa Julian outside San Sebastian Spain (read more here), and the original muffuletta sandwich at the place it was invented, Central Grocery in New Orleans.

Tampa’s most famous restaurant, Bern’s Steak House, also makes this list. I just returned to Tampa for the first time in years to catch a couple of Yankees spring training games, and even before I bought airline tickets I made a reservation for Bern’s way in advance, because they are always really hard to get. But if any travel takes you to Tampa, it is absolutely worth the effort.

I have covered restaurants for decades and especially steakhouses, and there are a lot of great ones in the U.S., where cities like New York, Las Vegas and Dallas each have a dozen or more that would qualify as exceptional. But nonetheless, there are several things that make Bern’s notably different from every other venerable steakhouse you can visit, and puts it in a very elite group atop the red meat pantheon.

Bern Laxer was a World War II vet and passionate gardener who visited his aunt in Tampa with his new bride, Gert, and never left. While gardening and producing a gardening newsletter he and his wife opened a small luncheonette which served juice, coffee and cold sandwiches. It was a hit and soon they eventually added hot breakfast and lunch. All of this was in the early Fifties, long before anyone had coined the terms “farm to table” or “localvore,” but from the beginning, Bern and Gert emphasized the best ingredients possible including fresh veggies and fruit from his own gardens. 70 Years later Bern’s is still doing what has recently become trendy among top chefs elsewhere and growing its own. A few years after opening, they moved to a new space and added steaks, and the rest is restaurant history. What is now the Bordeaux Room in Bern’s was once the entire steakhouse, and it has been added to and expanded again and again. The Bordeaux Room held 40 diners and today there are eight dining rooms seating 350 guests and serving about 500 nightly.

Along the way, Bern became a connoisseur and collector of fine wines, traveling to France and Italy and California to select and source vintages, befriending winemakers, and for that reason, several of the dining rooms at Berns are themed after wine country, with paintings and maps, including Bordeaux and Burgundy. Today the restaurant has arguably the single best wine collection in the country, and claims it is the world’s largest, with three quarters of a million bottles and 6,800 labels from all around the world including more than 200 choices for sparkling wines, one-of-a-kind large format bottles and things you cannot get anyplace else, and labels from less common spots like Greece and Turkey. Bern’s perennially wins the highest possible Wine Spectator Grand Award of Excellence, which less than 100 places in the world receive, and has won it ever year for more than four decades. They also won the James Beard Award for Outstanding Wine Program, and the cellars are so extensive and impressive that they offer guests guided tours with dinner, something that stopped in the pandemic and is being re-introduced shortly.

What is not up for argument is the fact that Bern’s has the nation’s best list by the glass, with about five hundred options including vintages of regular wines going back half a century and countless fortified wines much older. There are hundreds of Ports, Sherries and Madeiras, some dating to the 19^th century. Shockingly there are a lot of very affordable wines along with uber-collectible four and five figure bottles, like high-quality steak-friendly Argentinean Malbec for under $40 a bottle. There is literally something for everyone!

So, the wine list itself is reason to go, and one of the standout features that elevate Bern’s above its peers, but that’s just one. Another is the one-of-a-kind Harry Waugh Dessert Room. Waugh was a famed British wine merchant and on one trip, Bern visited him for dinner in his London home. After the entrée, Waugh suggested they adjourn to another room for dessert, port and cigars, and Bern loved the idea. He loved it so much that when he returned to Tampa he turned the upstairs into the Harry Waugh Dessert Room, with 48 private booths, each made from a repurposed redwood wine cask. Today when you first take your seat at dinner, the waiter asks if you would like to book a booth upstairs for dessert and you simply must say yes.

After you finish the main course, you are escorted upstairs, given your private booth and faced with a laundry list of incredibly tempting and delicious desserts, from Florida favorite Key Lime Pie to flaming Bananas Foster and Baked Alaska to giant sundaes – with all ice cream made fresh in house. There is a staggering array of dessert wines, fortified wines and rare whiskies by the glass, with many tasting flight options. and it is like two different superb dining out experiences wrapped into one great meal, and again, something you just cannot do at other top steakhouses. A signature part of what makes Bern’s Bern’s is the dessert course, and some locals come just for it.

But the heart of the meal starts with USDA Prime steaks, dry-aged at least 45-days (which is extra generous in the industry) and cut in house, something only a handful of the best steakhouses do. But what almost no other top steakhouses do is offer you anything with your steak. These places are typically expensive and very much a la carte. But not Bern’s, where every steak comes with French Onion Soup to start (delicious, stock made daily in house), a tossed salad with your choice of 10 dressings, all made from scratch, signature onion rings, a daily vegetable and a baked potato with butter, sour cream, bacon and chives. All of that comes with each steak, which are priced lower than almost all other top steakhouses to begin with. A 12-ounce dry-aged NY Strip is $60 with all the extras, and two weeks earlier I ate at a high-end chain steakhouse where a not as good one was $72 with nothing.

Many steakhouses serve portions too big for many patrons, but all the “regular” steaks at Bern’s, Strip, Filet, Porterhouse, T-Bone, Delmonico and Chateaubriand, are offered in two or three sizes, and because they cut the steaks to order you can get custom sizes as well. All are grilled over natural hardwood charcoal, and for those who prefer rare or medium rare, the menu suggests two people splitting one thicker steak will work out better than two thinner ones totaling the same weight. The menu itself is another wrinkle unlike any you will see elsewhere, incredibly detailed, explaining each cut, each temperature option, which cuts are best of various preferences of doneness, and how all the products down to the baked potatoes and soup stock are sourced and prepared. You could not ask for more information and it is very useful and may well lead you to make a great decision you might have overlooked.

In addition to the Prime standards, they offer Japanese wagyu and grass fed beef from specialty ranches as well as the now trendy ultra-aged option, 100-days. Besides steak there is lamb, quail, chicken and plenty of seafood.

The basic accompaniments are so generous that waiters warn patrons that they need not order starters or sides and many do not – especially if you are having dessert – making Bern’s a truly affordable luxury. But if you want more, they have it in spades, from classic appetizers such as shrimp cocktail, foie gras, crab cakes and raw bar to tiered seafood towers, an extensive caviar service with a dozen domestic and imported options, cheese tastings, and soups. There are also 16 family style sides to choose from.

Finally, there is the staff, and this is a super polished and professional place. Would-be servers spend two years in a training program where they work all different stations to know the process inside and out, there are multiple sommeliers working the floor, and the staff is compensated to the degree where the suggested tip is just 12%. It is akin to the best European professional service, well-staffed teams make sure you never want for anything, and many of the employees have been here for decades.

So, to recap, Bern’s is charming, and has the best wine list you will see, especially by the glass, an unparalleled after dinner dessert experience with delicious options, incredible service, an amazing menu, a great setting, impeccable product sourcing and quality, great steaks cooked ultra-consistently and served every way you could possibly want one, and is a legitimate bargain in this class of eatery. It is still family owned (Bern and Gert’s son), and clearly a passion project. I will absolutely eat there any time I go to Tampa, I may go back to Tampa sooner just to eat there.