Ulele

Ulele sits on the Tampa Riverwalk with a lawn out front and an airy two-story room built around a ten-foot barbacoa grill you can watch working the whole meal. That grill is the restaurant's argument, and it wins it — Gulf oysters and other seafood come off charbroiled with the kind of char that only live fire gives you, no shortcuts.

The menu leans into Native American dishes without turning them into a gimmick, and the three sisters salad, working beans, squash, and corn together, reads as a legitimate dish rather than a novelty plate. The kitchen's real strength is seafood: a risotto loaded with butter-poached lobster, shrimp, scallops, and crawfish is rich enough to anchor the whole meal, and it's the dish worth building a visit around. An on-site brewery pours a few fruit beers that suit the grilled, smoky food better than wine would.

This is a big room with river views and a live-fire spectacle, and it's rare that a restaurant this size and this scenic still cooks with this much intention. Three straight years of Michelin selection back up what the food already shows. Ulele earns the crowd it draws.