Bern’s Steak House

The story

Bern and Gert Laxer bought Tampa’s Beer Haven in 1956 and slowly expanded it into a famously theatrical steakhouse. A former strip-mall unit became a sequence of dark, individually decorated dining rooms with red velvet, carved furniture, portraits and chandeliers, backed by one of the world’s great restaurant wine cellars and an entire upstairs dessert room.

Why Bern’s Steak House is iconic

Bern’s is gloriously unlike a contemporary luxury restaurant: immersive, eccentric and built up over seventy years. Its elaborate rooms, tableside rituals, cellar tours and dessert finale turn dinner into a distinctly Tampa institution.

Selected by Ernst Aben · Information reviewed July 2026