Clearwater’s Greatest Tables
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Caretta on the Gulf
Caretta on the Gulf opened at the Sandpearl Resort in 2007 as the flagship dining room of the first AAA Four-Diamond beachfront hotel built on Clearwater Beach in forty years. The restaurant takes its name from Caretta caretta — the loggerhead sea turtles that nest each summer on the sand directly outside the dining room's west wall — and the staff still pause service on summer evenings when a hatch reaches the water. The interior, redesigned in 2022, runs cool palm-green and ivory across an open ninety-seat room that opens through bifold glass doors onto a wraparound covered terrace facing the Gulf of Mexico.
Ocean Seven
Ocean Seven opened in 2023 on the seventh floor of the Hiatus Clearwater Beach — a Curio Collection by Hilton property that took the place of a long-running Sheraton on the south Gulfview block — and was named Best Seafood Restaurant in Tampa Magazine's 2026 Best Restaurants list within twenty-six months of opening. The room is a glass-walled rectangle facing due west, with about a hundred covers split between an indoor dining floor, a covered terrace, and a small outer rooftop terrace that extends directly toward the water. The connected Sielo rooftop bar carries the cocktail programme through the late hours.
Island Way Grill
Island Way Grill opened in 2003 on the small bridge-linked Island Estates causeway that connects mainland Clearwater to Clearwater Beach — a location halfway between the two that has made the room a perennial first-stop on the daily Gulf-boat circuit. The dining-room and patio combination seats about a hundred and ninety, with a curved sushi bar dominating the south wall and a long covered terrace looking onto the Intracoastal where the restaurant's own fishing fleet ties up each afternoon.
Columbia Restaurant Sand Key
The Columbia Restaurant Sand Key is the Clearwater outpost of Florida's oldest restaurant family — founded in 1905 by Cuban immigrant Casimiro Hernandez Sr. in Ybor City, Tampa, and now run by the fifth generation of the same family. The Sand Key dining room opened in 1997 on the Gulf Boulevard side of the small barrier island directly south of Clearwater Beach, with a Mediterranean-courtyard interior — terracotta tile, wrought-iron grillwork, hand-painted Spanish murals — that mirrors the Ybor City flagship and an outdoor deck looking onto the Intracoastal.
Bascom's Chop House
Bascom's Chop House sits on Ulmerton Road on the mainland Clearwater side — five minutes from the St. Pete-Clearwater airport and the corporate office parks of Belleair and Largo — in a freestanding masonry building that has occupied the same address since 1996. The dining room is a deliberately dark, conservative chophouse interior: walnut paneling, oxblood-leather banquettes, dimmable wall sconces, and white-cloth tables spaced for privacy. Service is at the upper tier of the Tampa Bay corporate-dining floor: career captains, side-station discipline, table-side Caesar and bananas-Foster preparations.