The Columbia Restaurant

Behind the scenes at one of Florida’s most beloved restaurants

The Columbia is Florida’s oldest and most honored restaurant. Founded in 1905 as a cafe catering to immigrant cigar workers in Ybor City, it has grown into one of the culinary touchstones of the state. Handed down from generation to generation, the Columbia remains family owned and operated, with seven locations from St. Augustine to Sarasota.

In The Columbia Restaurant, Andrew Huse provides an in-depth look at the people who made the restaurant great. With a historian’s eye for accuracy and a storyteller’s ear for delicious anecdotes, Huse traces the fortunes of the Columbia from the founder, Casimiro Hernandez Sr., to his great-grandson, fourth-generation restaurateur Richard Gonzmart.

The Columbia’s history is rich with stories of secret stashes of liquor, backroom deals with gangsters, waiters who never forgot an order, business challenges from the Great Depression to urban renewal and beyond.

Keeping in mind why people fall in love with a restaurant, the book includes favorite recipes from across the years, along with hundreds of color and black and white photographs that trace the Columbia’s evolution across the century.