A classic negroni. Bone marrow with foie gras and a grilled baguette. Spicy beef tartare and a healthy plating of lobster rolls. The sublimely talented Ed John Trio ripping a neo-soul set under warm red lighting. All of which is consumed under a now Instagram-famous ceiling of what feels like a thousand disco balls.
There’s just not very many places you can do this around Tampa Bay.
The Tampa Edition has a myriad of bars and lounges in which you can grab dinner and a drink. But none as singular as Arts Club.
Full disclosure: we tend to poke fun at Tampa’s hippest, in-demand hotel from time to time. We admit it’s low-hanging fruit. Stay too late and you may find yourself in a choppy sea of “self-love.” We also can’t, in good conscience, tell you that the $25 martini in the Arts Club is miles better than, say, the $15 one at Haven or Bern’s Steakhouse.
But the rest? It’s hard to say it’s short of spectacular.
What starts as a trip to something out of a ‘70s Scorsese movie soon becomes a cushy table of incredible food & drink. The menu is small and outstanding. On top of the aforementioned bites, things like the Wagyu Beef Meatloaf Sliders and Popcorn Chicken exceed what you expect. The Tater Tots, for example, are not the kind of tater tots that can be stored in Napoleon Dynamite’s cargo shorts. The poached egg and smoked gouda sauce would simply not cooperate. And unlike too many places these days, the shared plates live up to their namesake—you can, in fact, share them and make it to the final set satisfied.
And that final set? It ought to be good. The live acts are curated from some of the bay area’s most gifted artists and musicians as to heighten the ambience, not overbear it. And like any brand-new music venue, the room’s sound and setting should only improve as the details and dynamics work themselves out. The culture team at The Edition, it seems, takes genuine pride in creating an experience that’s definitively alluring and unique.
In short, sometimes it’s fun to feel cool. The Arts Club does the trick.