Florida's Oldest

There's more to Florida than old people. There's old places as well. We checked out two of Florida's oldest establishments this past week.

Columbia Restaurant is Florida's Oldest Restaurant (1905). We went to the Ybor City location to have dinner with a friend of Eric's who was in town for a meeting, and several of her colleagues joined as well. It is a monstrously large place - I believe the restaurant is a full city block - and Eric said that it seats 1,500 people for dinner. It is Spanish food, which makes sense, since they were some of the first non-native people in Florida. It could be considered a tourist trap but the food was actually quite good and those who had the made-at-the-table sangria (extra $2 for the Sangre de Toro wine) reported it was worthy as well. They have two nightly flamenco shows and we dined in between, catching the just beginning of the late show on our way out. At the risk of sounding a bit geezer-y myself, I was kind of glad we weren't seeing the whole show because it was very loud, what with all the stomping.

After a beautiful afternoon at Philippe Park on Saturday, the four of us went home the long way with a stop at Dunedin Brewery, Florida's Oldest Craft Brewery (no year given). The brewpub-chic main restaurant area was full so we found seats in "the nook" (official name, with a sign on the wall), a shabby-not-chic secondary bar area. We ordered the sampler so we could taste six of the beers on tap that day and had to explain to Emerson several times that the small glasses did not mean it was all for him. My favorites were the Apricot (I'm a sucker for apricot-flavored beers) and the Pale Ale. They also had a Nitro Stout and a Nitro Pale, which are carbonated with nitrogen like Guinness to give a creamy head. The Red and Brown ales were fine but not remarkable. Again here we left just as the live music was getting started and while I don't know for sure, I expect it would have been louder than my current grandmotherly taste in live entertainment.

Other old things I am interested to check out: oldest Starbucks and oldest old person's home.