Sunday was the Buccaneers' first home game of the season at Raymond James Stadium, the opener in a run of nine home dates after the team kicked things off on the road in Cincinnati. If you spent that afternoon watching from somewhere in Westchase, there's a decent chance your seat was inside a building that didn't carry its current name back when the Bucs were still finishing up preseason.
That building sits at 12217 W. Linebaugh Ave., in the plaza at Linebaugh and Countryway, the one with the Publix out front that most of the neighborhood drives past without a second look. For twelve years it was Surf Shack Coastal Kitchen, the kind of place regulars default to without thinking, the answer you give when a friend asks where to catch the game and you don't want to overthink it. Surf Shack closed its doors on March 22 this year. What reopened there in early September, after a two-month remodel, is Eddie's Bar & Grill, and if your Sunday habits were built around the old name, it's worth knowing what actually happened to that address before you show up expecting the same room.
The Fourth Eddie's, Not The First Anything
Eddie's isn't a Westchase original trying something new. It's a Tampa Bay institution that started in Dunedin back in 1985 and has spent four decades building a following on the other side of the bay before ever crossing into Hillsborough County. The Westchase location, opened by Stephen Bishop's Excellence in Restaurants group, is the chain's fourth spot and its first in this county, following existing locations in Bay Pines and Largo.
The remodel wasn't cosmetic. The old Surf Shack games room got folded into dining space, the layout got reworked, and the seat count went up. By most accounts the neighborhood had been waiting. A local food writer who visited on the third night after opening described a five o'clock Wednesday crowd so full it created a bottleneck at the door, parties stacking up because people were simply eager to sit down. That kind of turnout on a random weeknight, before any real marketing push, tells you the old Surf Shack habit didn't disappear when the sign changed. It just needed somewhere to go.
What you'll find there now: wings that have picked up actual awards, burgers built with real intent, and a kitchen that runs Taco Tuesday, Burger Wednesday and Fish and Chips Friday as standing weekly bets rather than one-off promotions. Happy hour runs from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday. There's a staff member named Jaime who reportedly comes in every morning to make the Reuben Rolls from scratch, which is the sort of detail that either matters to you or doesn't, but it's the kind of thing a twelve-year-old neighborhood joint earns and a brand-new one has to build from scratch itself.
One open question locals have been asking: the building also houses Level 19 Gaming Lounge, the arcade Bishop built with its own bar, video games, pinball, darts and a golf simulator. Whether that stays open in its current form after the Eddie's conversion hasn't been confirmed publicly, so if the arcade side was part of your routine, it's worth a call before you plan an evening around it.
The Rest Of The Map Didn't Move, But It's Worth Knowing Why
Here's the part that makes the Eddie's story more interesting than a simple restaurant swap. Everything else on Westchase's game-day map has been sitting exactly where it's been for years, and each spot got there for a different reason worth understanding before Sunday number two rolls around.
World of Beer, 9524 W. Linebaugh Ave. This isn't just a Westchase location of a beer chain. This is where World of Beer started. The neighborhood didn't get a copy of something bigger elsewhere. It got the original, the one that grew into a national footprint of more than 40 locations selling around 300 beers. If you've been watching games there for years without knowing that, it changes how you think about the place the next time you're waiting on a pour.
Tampa Bay Brewing Company, 13937 Monroe's Business Park. TBBC spent nearly two decades as one of Tampa Bay's earliest craft breweries out of its original Ybor City home before deciding Westchase had the density to support a full second brewing operation, not just a satellite bar. The Westchase location runs 24 rotating taps, including hop-forward IPAs, sours and Florida-Weisse brews, alongside a food menu built to compete with the neighborhood's other options. It's a bet the company made on this specific ZIP code, and the taproom's Saturday brewery tours are a nice bonus if you want to see where the beer actually comes from before kickoff.
Irish 31, serving the Westchase crowd. This one has built its identity specifically around watch parties for the Bucs, the Lightning and the Rays, with flat-screen TVs and an LED wall setup pointed squarely at football Sundays. The dog-friendly patio makes it the pick for anyone who doesn't want to leave the four-legged half of the household at home, and Whit's Frozen Custard sits close enough across the way to handle dessert once the final whistle blows.
Eight Sundays Left, One New Habit To Build
The Bucs have eight more home dates on the calendar this season after Sunday's opener. That's eight more chances for Westchase to settle into whatever its new normal looks like, and based on the opening-week crowd at Eddie's, plenty of the neighborhood is already voting with its feet.
None of this is a case for one spot over another. It's a case for updating whatever mental map you've been running on autopilot. If Surf Shack was your default, it's gone, and what replaced it earned a packed room in its first week for a reason. If World of Beer or TBBC has always been your Sunday spot, you're sitting inside a piece of Tampa Bay's beer history whether you clocked it or not. If Irish 31 is where your crew already goes, the dog can keep coming.
Westchase's game-day options didn't get smaller this year. They got reshuffled, and the neighborhood is better for having both a brand-new arrival worth trying and a handful of originals that earned their spot the slow way, one Sunday at a time.
If you're the kind of person who tracks these small shifts in a neighborhood, you probably also notice the bigger ones, the kind that shape a home's value and a family's next move. That's the work Conci, REALTORS® does every day for Westchase homeowners thinking through what comes next, whether that's a downsize, a relocation or simply understanding what your street is actually worth right now. If that's on your mind, schedule your complimentary concierge consultation and let's talk through it over whatever's easiest for you, coffee, phone or your own kitchen table.
