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We Scored Google's Top 19 Tampa Restaurants — Here's What We Found

One $100+ fine dining spot scored 27 out of 100

Google's top Tampa restaurants rated 4.5+ stars — but health inspectors told a different story. One $100+ spot scored just 27 out of 100.
Google's top Tampa restaurants rated 4.5+ stars — but health inspectors told a different story. One $100+ spot scored just 27 out of 100. (InspectFL | inspectfl.org)

Google "Tampa restaurants" and the first 19 results look great — 4.5+ stars, thousands of reviews, beautiful photos. But Google reviews measure ambiance and service. Health inspections measure what's actually happening in the kitchen.

We scored all 19 using public state inspection data. The results were surprising.

Ocean Prime — a $100+ fine dining seafood restaurant with 4.7 stars and 4,500 reviews — scored a 27 out of 100. That's an F. Inspectors found 14 violations, including emergency orders, across multiple visits.

Find out what's happening in Tampafor free with the latest updates from Patch.

Naked Farmer has 4.8 stars (the highest Google rating in the group) but scored an 80.8 — a C grade in the kitchen.

On the other end, Hula Bay Club and Beacon Tampa both scored a perfect 100. Ulele, with 11,000 Google reviews, earned a 97.

Find out what's happening in Tampafor free with the latest updates from Patch.

The full breakdown of all 19 restaurants — with grades, scores, and what inspectors actually found — is here:

inspectfl.org/blog/google-top-tampa-restaurants-health-scores

InspectFL scores every restaurant in Florida on a 0–100 scale using public inspection data from the Florida DBPR. The scores aren't an official government rating — they're calculated from the same data inspectors file after every visit.

You can look up any Tampa restaurant for free at inspectfl.org— search by name, see the grade, and read the actual inspector notes.

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