Billing itself as the only Spanish restaurant in Tampa serving its fine food cafeteria style, the original Mercedes Restaurant was opened in 1937 by founder Henry Hernandez. It was first established as a barbershop and hamburger stand but changed with an influx of cigar factory workers. Many of the dishes served at the eatery were family recipes, and Henry did much of the cooking along with his wife Mercedes, for whom the restaurant was named. In 1954, they added a formal dining room to the cafeteria. The interior walls were covered with paintings of bullfighters. The go-to dish here was Spanish bean soup, but they were also known for other traditional dishes such as ropa vieja, baked boliche, black beans and yellow rice, and even spaghetti. The servings were generous and all for around $2. Steve Otto, Tampa Tribune’s oracle of the rhetorical, gave the restaurant four stars in 1977. Along with the main dining room, a smaller snack shop serving Cuban sandwiches and smaller bites like crabmeat turnovers (deviled crab) served the neighborhood.

The Hernandez lived in a studio apartment above the restaurant until they retired in 1969. Their son, Charles, took over. After Interstate 4 was constructed in the mid-1960s, business got tougher because the road severed the restaurant from the rest of Ybor City to the south. The side wall for the interstate is literally one-half a block away. In 1973, a fire closed the restaurant, but it soon reopened. Another fire gutted the building in 1980. Records indicate it never reopened thereafter, but a new location eventually appeared on Waters Avenue.

Hernandez also died in 1980. The property where the Mercedes once fed so many in Ybor City is now a vacant lot. Notice the fire-prevention water tank from the former Perfecto Garcia cigar factory that still tops the building that is now being rehabilitated. The workers at the cigar factory, which opened in 1914, along with their counterparts from the J. C. Newman Cigar factory “El Reloj” in that same neighborhood, were long-time customers.

© Chip Weiner 2023. All rights reserved