Columbia Restaurant Sand Key

The Restaurant

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.

The menu is the same century-old Columbia template: paella à la Valenciana with chicken, shrimp, scallops, mussels, clams, calamari and sausage; the 1905 Salad assembled table-side with garlic, lemon, ham, olives, and Romano; the Snapper Alicante baked in a clay shell with shrimp, mushrooms, almonds and Amontillado-sherry sauce; the Filet Mignon Capri with crab and béarnaise. The sangria de cava is poured table-side from a chilled pitcher and remains the room's most-ordered drink. The flan is the original 1905 recipe.

The wine list is heavily Spanish by design — about ninety labels with proper depth in Rioja, Ribera del Duero, and a sherry programme that few American restaurants still carry. Service is career, multi-generational, and proudly traditional: the senior captains greet by name on the second visit, table-side preparations are still part of the format, and the staff sing happy birthday in Spanish without irony. For a team dinner of ten or twelve, the long table along the courtyard wall is the standing reservation: large enough to feel celebratory, traditional enough to give the gathering an inherited frame.