Tampa landmark steak home has a candy spot, with an expensive eating room that serves solely dessert

Nice-dining landmark Bern’s Steak Home has a candy retreat. 

Reservations on the Tampa, Florida restaurant include not one desk however two — the primary for dinner, the second in a non-public upstairs eating house reserved solely for dessert. 

It’s referred to as the Harry Waugh Dessert Room. It makes for a luxurious, uncommon and maybe even unique-in-America haute delicacies expertise.

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“Every time you e book a desk right here for dinner, we save one other desk for you for dessert,” a supervisor advised one group of gleefully shocked first-time Bern’s diners of the sudden deal with in retailer.

Bern’s Steak Home has earned James Beard honors, worldwide acclaim and a clientele that features jet-setters who fly into Tampa solely to feast on the venerable eatery’s towering seafood plates, globally sourced caviar and signature house-cut steaks broiled over hardwood charcoal.

Every street-level eating room is plush with wealthy pink colours, darkish woods and pictures of European wine nation — Burgundy’s Cote d’Or, for instance. 

Service is attentive, skilled and polished but pleasant. The ready record for a desk, some diners are advised, is seven months lengthy.

However the two-table expertise of dinner, then dessert, makes it a bucket-list eating expertise definitely worth the wait. It’s the spotlight most individuals bear in mind and eagerly inform others about after eating at Bern’s.

“It’s traditional Tampa.” — Kiera Andrews, restaurant influencer

“Everybody ought to expertise Bern’s at the least as soon as,” Tampa restaurant trade trendsetter Kiera Andrews, who chronicles the town’s eating scene on Instagram (@thisbabeeats), advised Fox Information Digital.  

“It’s traditional Tampa.”

Bern’s Steak Home in Tampa, Florida is well known by diners for its candy retreat, the Harry Waugh Dessert Room. Company get pleasure from sweets and spirits within the clubby upstairs house after dinner.  (Kerry J. Byrne/Fox Information Digital)

After carpaccio, caviar and cabernet, diners retire upstairs to a clubby retreat of wood-paneled round cubbyholes. It appears straight out of a Nineteen Sixties restaurant design textbook. So old-school it’s cool. 

The Harry Waugh Dessert Room serves espresso, digestifs culled from an array of uncommon and opulent world spirits, and decadent house-made sweets ready every day by pastry chef Hannah Thomas.

The macadamia nut sundae “took years” to excellent, Thomas advised Fox Information Digital. 

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The macadamias are toasted beneath her watch, sweetened with a easy syrup flavored “with essence of different nuts,” and served with Bern’s personal ice cream and served in a waffle cone bowl.

“It’s actually essentially the most guarded recipe now we have,” the pastry chef mentioned. 

The signature banana cheese pie at Bern’s Steak Home in Tampa, Florida, is proven right here. It is comprised of an “age-old, top-secret recipe,” pastry chef Hannah Thomas advised Fox Information Digital.  (PezzPhoto)

Bern’s peanut butter truffle options layers of peanut butter and chocolate mousse with brownies glazed in ganache. It’s the restaurant’s upscale model of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, mentioned Thomas. 

“Every time you e book a desk right here for dinner, we save one other desk for you for dessert.” — Bern’s supervisor to diners

Bern’s top-selling dessert is its signature banana cheese pie. 

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It’s a mix of banana cream cheese mousse with an almond praline crust and contemporary bananas. 

It’s surprisingly mild and ethereal. 

The “age-old, top-secret” recipe was first created by Gert Laxer. 

Pastry chef Hannah Thomas of Bern’s Steak Home in Tampa, Florida, oversees the decadent menu of sweets on the restaurant’s well-known Harry Waugh Dessert Room.  (PezzPhoto)

She co-founded the restaurant with husband Bern in 1956. 

The couple met in New York Metropolis in 1950 and stopped in Tampa in 1951 to go to a relative on a deliberate journey to California. 

They by no means left.

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Bern’s was initially a beer bar. The couple turned it right into a small 40-seat restaurant and with success expanded by shopping for neighboring outlets. 

Bern’s now seats 350 friends in its eight eating rooms. 

The “world-famous Harry Waugh Dessert Room,” the restaurant claims on its web site, “was in-built 1985 utilizing wine casks to create 48 non-public rooms.”

A mural outdoors downtown Tampa. Tampa is clear, sunny and booming. Inhabitants within the Florida Gulf Coast metropolis surged 15% from 335,000 within the 2010 U.S. Census to the 385,000. Tampa continues to develop.  (Kerry J. Byrne/Fox Information Digital)

Company can select from 45 desserts, 15 flavors of selfmade ice cream, and sorbets, cheese and spirits. 

Reservations only for dessert can be found. However, because the restaurant notes on-line, each dinner reservation comes with a dessert reservation.

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Waugh, the candy spot’s namesake, was the director of French wine property Chateau Latour. 

The Laxers met him whereas touring in Europe.

He invited them into an after-dinner drawing room on the property for port, cheese, cigars and dialog. 

They vowed to recreate the expertise again at Bern’s in Tampa. 

The peanut butter truffle at Bern’s Steak Home in Tampa, Florida, is proven right here. Pastry chef Hannah Thomas calls this dessert a refined model of a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup.  (PezzPhoto)

The restaurant’s progress, and its nationwide and worldwide profile, has turn out to be a notable microcosm of the area’s explosive growth. 

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The Tampa Bay space has grown from about 650,000 residents when Bern’s opened within the mid-Fifties to about 3.3 million at the moment. 

The area added practically 1 million residents simply since 2000 — a inhabitants increase of greater than 40% within the twenty first century.   

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