TAMPA, Fla. — Three restaurants in the Bay area have earned a coveted Michelin star.

What You Need To Know

  • Michelin has awarded three restaurants in Tampa with its coveted star for the first time

  • The three restaurants are Rocca, Lilac and Koya

  • They are some of the newer restaurants in Florida to receive this distinction, after Michelin expanded its star program to the Sunshine State

The restaurants, Koya, Lilac and Rocca, are the first restaurants in Tampa to earn the prestigious award.

Spectrum News visited Rocca, which is an upscale Italian restaurant just north of Armature Works, and spent time with the owner, Bryce Bonsack, who said before all this acclaim, they had quite the adventure getting to this point.

“It’s been a bit of a roller coaster with this place,” Bonsack said.

Because they not only had to deal with the pandemic, but they had to deal with things like flooding in some of the apartments above the restaurant, which caused a minor closure.

“Then two days after we reopened,” Bonsack said, “we had a fire inside of a wall that knocked us out for a while.”

But in a kitchen like the one at Rocca, discipline and perseverance are ingrained in everyone, from the cooks to the head chef.

“It’s that intensity and that discipline, the adrenaline going into work that makes everything else seem boring which is fun,” Bonsack said.

He would know — Bonsack grew up in Tampa, but spent years in culinary school in New York City and working in multiple Michelin star restaurants.

After spending multiple hours a week working in food service for years, he got a bit burnt out, so he decided to take a break from the kitchen.

He moved back to Tampa, and then traveled a bit and eventually spent a year in Italy learning the ins and outs of Italian cuisine before officially opening Rocca in October 2019.

“I already knew how to cook,” Bonsack said. “I already knew how to work in a restaurant. I just needed to find my voice.”

And boy, did he find it.

The food he makes daily has gained so much acclaim that Rocca officially made history as being one of the first restaurants in the Bay area to get a Michelin star.

“It’s just the happiest day of my life,” he said.

He says he’s received so many calls and texts from people congratulating him on the accomplishment, and reservations are filling up even faster than they were before the announcement.

“Being a kid who’s from Tampa originally, to bring home a star and one of its first stars ever and put our name in the history books is really cool,” Bonsack said.

Cool for Bonsack and for all the folks in the kitchen who have spent countless hours making sure each meal that’s sent out to the dining room is up to that star standard.