Tampa Bay’s ever-evolving restaurant scene is fueled by a great deal of talent, including a growing number of chefs who are quickly rising in the ranks. From running celebratedor established kitchens to branching out to helm concepts of their own, several up-and-coming chefs appear poised for big things in the year to come.
Here are six chefs to watch in 2026.
If you’ve gotten the chance to dine at Kinjo, the new Japanese-Italian fusion restaurant in South Tampa, chances are you’ve already met Jada Vidal.
As chef de cuisine, Vidal is there most nights, helming the partially open kitchen or chatting and joking with guests before jumping on the line to plate dishes like chili-crisp topped burrata or Hokkaido scallop crudo.
Even if you haven’t made it there yet, you may have come across the 24-year-old chef before — cooking for several years at the popular Water Street restaurant Noble Rice, or competing on one of several Food Network shows (she’s been on “Guy’s Grocery Games,” “Beachside Brawl,” “Chopped” and is currently on the current season of FOX’s “Hell’s Kitchen”).
For Vidal, who grew up watching celebrity chefs battle it out on culinary competition shows, television has been a solid fit — she’s a natural on-screen. But the Tampa native and Riverview High School graduate’s cooking dreams go back much further, when she fell in love with culinary arts and started baking and selling French pastries at her middle school.
Her short culinary career in Tampa has been swift and impressive: At 17, she landed a job as a line cook at the Epicurean Hotel in Tampa. A year later she was at Haven, which is where she was when she got the call to be on “Guy’s Grocery Games” (she battled three contestants and won). After a brief period hosting pop-up dinners, Vidal settled in at Noble Rice in 2021, working her way up the ranks to chef de cuisine alongside chef and owner Eric Fralick. It’s there, she said, that her culinary training really evolved.
When Fralick tapped her to helm his newest spot, Vidal jumped at the chance. She was eager for a gig that offered opportunities for growth and challenges. It didn’t hurt that her fiance, chef Adam Finzel, was helming the kitchen next door at Fralick’s other restaurant Koya.
At Kinjo, the concept is wafu or itameshi cuisine — a hybrid of Italian and Japanese cooking. The style emerged in Japan as early as the 1920s but gained prominence in the ‘80s and ‘90s, as Japanese chefs increasingly began adapting Italian recipes and techniques with local ingredients.
The new position is suited to Vidal’s strengths: an ambitious and envelope-pushing cuisine to execute and a restaurant layout that puts her front-and-center with diners. Kinjo’s long wraparound chef’s counter is where the majority of guests sit, and it’s from there that you really get to watch Vidal in action.
“I really like to talk to guests,” Vidal said. “It’s just who I am. And it’s nice because you get that really intimate experience and get to make that connection.”
Vidal said she’s looking forward to Kinjo’s expansion — the restaurant will relocate to a bigger space in 2026. She’s loved being part of Tampa’s culinary evolution, she said, and is hopeful the restaurant scene will continue to grow.
“I am very excited to continuously represent Tampa,” Vidal said. “Obviously this could change, but I don’t have any aspirations to go somewhere else. Tampa is just something that I’m a part of.”
Chef Michael Roberts has had a busy few years.
Hot on the heels of running the kitchen as chef de cuisine at St. Petersburg’s wildly popular restaurant Wild Child, the self-taught chef hit the ground with his nomadic taqueria Taco Wizard, popping up across Tampa Bay at breweries, coffee shops and wine bars.
Late last year, the pop-ups — no longer strictly taco-themed — eventually found their way to Small Bar, the temporary wine bar and restaurant tucked behind St. Pete’s Bandit Coffee Co. In the spring, the Small Bar team asked Roberts if he’d want to come on board full-time, eventually taking over the kitchen at Spitz when it launches in early 2026. Roberts signed on, and since then his fans have been waiting eagerly for the talented chef’s next chapter.
Roberts, 40, grew up near Lake Tahoe, California, and moved to Los Angeles in high school. It was there that his appetite and culinary zeal really evolved. While playing in metal bands and touring the country, he got kitchen jobs along the way and fell in love with the craft.
Roberts recalled eating late-night pho and lengua tacos after shows and has credited “L.A. street food” as inspiration for the many creative menus he’s come up with.
At Small Bar, Roberts has served everything from fried chicken with caviar and oysters to red snapper crudo, crab tostadas and his popular pho birria. When Spitz opens, which Roberts said ideally will happen in February, the menu will include a globally-inspired list of dishes — mostly small and shareable plates.
Lately, Roberts said, he’s been inspired by brasserie-inspired fare, as well as Florida’s own bounty of seafood and culinary lore. There will be oysters, crudos and seafood towers, he said.
But “nothing overcomplicated or fussy,” he said. “I want a neighborhood spot that has destination ambition … delicious food that you want to come back and eat again and again, but that isn’t going to destroy your wallet.”
Sleek lines, vintage vibes, a killer wine list and creative small plates are all on deck at 86 Wine Bar, the latest spot to debut on St. Petersburg’s rapidly evolving Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Street corridor.
Shane Schuch and Kendra Hardesty are behind the petite wine bar where “well-made wines” — including low-intervention and biodynamics options — are the highlight, along with a short menu of small, shared plates and a vinyl record focus (the spot’s tagline is “grape juice, wax, bites”).
The bar, which the couple opened Oct. 4, has quietly but swiftly built momentum, adding additional menu items and extending hours along the way. Word has spread fast: On any given evening, you’ll likely find the 675-square-foot space buzzing amid a glowy backdrop of tall arches, amber glassware and vinyl tunes. Guests sidle up to the long bar or relax at one of the few tables out front.
“You come for flavors, for ambiance, for textures, for music,” Schuch, 45, said.
The bar is very much a labor of love for the couple: Hardesty designed the space at 2930 Dr. M.L.K. Jr. St. N. and is the powerhouse behind the spot’s sleek and warm aesthetic, while Schuch is curating the wine program. Both have culinary backgrounds and team up on the menu, which changes frequently.
Hardesty, 36, worked the past year at Cafe Clementine, the boutique bakery inside St. Petersburg’s Museum of Fine Arts. Schuch has a long history of kitchen gigs at St. Pete restaurants, from helming the kitchen at Nordic-Asian restaurant Lingr for two years and as the chef at Bandit Coffee Co. before that. Most recently, he was the event manager at Golden Isles Brewing Co. while he worked to open 86 Wine Bar on the side.
So far, the foodmenu has included a list of roughly six items, which have rotated since the beginning. Dishes have included a hamachi ceviche with citrus, pickled onions, chiles, avocado, corn nuts and plantain chips; a Brie and herb-roasted bread combo with fennel salad, honey tarragon vinaigrette and sourdough from Cafe Clementine; a radicchio Caesar salad; and a rotating sandwich, including a muffaletta and the “Bourdain,” which featured mortadella, provolone cheese and Dijonnaise on a bun. There’s usually at least one dessert listed, which has included a gelato or sorbet and a filo dough apple pie a la mode.
As the spot evolves, Schuch said they may expand the menu, but guests will usually always find “something cheesy, something handheld and a beautiful salad.”
For now, 86 Wine Bar is open Thursday through Sunday and will eventually open on Monday, too, to accommodate those working in the service industry.
Tampa wasn’t on Seth Temple’s radar — he never thought he’d end up cooking in a kitchen here. But as the current chef de cuisine at Ash, Temple’s view has changed, and it sure does look like he’s here to stay.
It’s a lucky development for local diners: Since he came on board at the Water Street Italian restaurant, the food has hit new heights. Working side-by-side with chef and co-owner Ferrell Alvarez, Temple has helped streamline and fine-tune Ash’s menu. The team said there are still some changes coming, but it’s safe to say the restaurant has solidly hit its stride.
Originally from Lake Charles, Louisiana, Temple attended the Chef John Folse Culinary Institute at Nicholls State University and later went on to work in kitchens in New Orleans as well as in Montreal and London, experiences he said helped shape his culinary philosophy, which is largely influenced by classic French technique and modern European cuisine.
In March, Temple and his partner, Molly, returned to the states, settling on Tampa Bay, where she grew up and still had family. After some prodding by Temple’s friend (and a mutual friend of Alvarez’s) chef Brittany Anderson, Temple met Alvarez and started working the line at Ash, eventually moving up to chef de cuisine.
It was a good fit. Temple and Alvarez found their groove quickly, and Temple said he appreciates the tenured chef’s structure and the company’s work culture.
“I think Ferrell was like the perfect match,” Temple said. “A little high energy and high-strung, but in a good way.”
Working with local purveyors, a vegetable-driven menu and seafood — specifically oysters — are central to some of the concepts Temple has worked at in the past, and a big part of his own culinary ethos.
For now, he’s happy running the show at Ash. And he’d like to stay on board with the Proper House Group — but one day, he can imagine branching out and opening up something of his own.
He’d like to do it right here, in Tampa.
A solid breakfast spot can be hard to find, but for nearly two years now, folks in the know have flocked to Eat Art Love, a petite art-filled cafe in St. Petersburg’s Warehouse Arts District.
Chef Mario Brugnoli’s creative, seasonally-driven menu certainly has a lot to do with it.
On any given morning, folks dig into plates of soft-scrambled eggs hugging kielbasa links and hash browns; bronzed, fried ducks leg atop whipped feta grits with tomatoes and chives; and the popular-since-day-one Poached Egg Dip, served alongside creamed potatoes and crusty sourdough toast sourced from Miami’s Sullivan Street Bakery.
Jose and Natalie Martinez, who also run the downtown St. Pete clothing stores Sartorial Inc. and Style, opened the art gallery-restaurant hybrid in early 2024, tapping Brugnoli to oversee the kitchen. Though just 29 at the time, the young chef had worked at a number of impressive restaurants throughout the Tampa Bay area, including the since-shuttered FarmTable Cucina in St. Petersburg, Tampa Italian restaurant Rocca and Meliora in Sarasota.
Eat Art Love is Brugnoli’s first solo venture, but it feels safe to say it won’t be his last. The chef has built up a short but successful breakfast menu, expanding with brunch and lunch dishes along the way. Occasionally, he’s dabbled with nighttime events, from a limited dinner series that featured his family’s recipes in honor of his late mother to the short-lived elevated dining series Noctivore, which he launched in October with local wine pro Zach Pace.
Throughout it all, Brugnoli said, he’s learned some hard but important lessons about running a restaurant.
“I’ve been learning the business side of things,” he said. “It was, ‘I know how to cook, I know how to do hospitality, but how do I get the business to succeed?’”
Some of those lessons included “marketing, and where to put things on the menu,” along with adding sides and figuring out how to navigate beverage sales. It’s been working, Brugnoli said, but he’s still looking to expand the menu, hours and concept in the future.
For now, guests can expect to find some of Brugnoli’s polished long-running favorites along with a few new items that he plans on changing seasonally. The menu currently features 11 dishes. Of those, four fruit- and vegetable-forward items are always in flux, including a constantly rotating pancake.
A recent visit featured a shoyu egg toast with soy-cured eggs, mushroom cream, pickled mushrooms, scallions and crispy-fried leeks on toast and a bright and zingy sesame ginger salad full of carrots, sweet potatoes and squash with a raisin vinaigrette.
The restaurant is currently open Wednesday through Sunday but, moving forward, Brugnoli has hopes of building the business so that Eat Art Love is open daily for a full breakfast, brunch and lunch.