My friend Heather and I had been eating pretty fancy for a few days, so we decided it was time for something more casual. Ybor City is mostly casual spots, with the exception of Columbia Restaurant, which I’ve reviewed separately. This particular night we wanted casual, so we started searching, and the soul food menu at 7th + Grove caught our eye.
We were hungry early, around 5pm, so I did a quick search — the earliest reservation available was 7:30 on a weeknight. I took that as a good sign, figuring the place was already filling up. So we put our hunger on the back burner, waited it out, and headed over.
Walking into that part of Ybor City, you always get to see the classic chickens and roosters that roam the neighborhood — literally, not in a cage, just wandering the streets. They’re used to people at this point, so you can walk right up and grab a photo.
We turned the corner into 7th + Grove and were a little confused at first — it’s a large space with multiple entrances. Turns out the place has two sides to its personality: a restaurant side and a dance-party side, and you can get food on either one. The music was far too loud on the party side, so we opted for the restaurant side instead. Surprisingly, that side wasn’t busy at all, which left us wondering why the earliest reservation had been 7:30 when roughly three-quarters of the tables were empty when we walked in.
Either way, we sat down, liked the feel of the place, and took a look at the menu. It leans soul food — fried chicken, mac and cheese — but with a definite New Orleans Creole flair: gumbo, jambalaya, fried seafood, cornbread. I’d call it soul-food-ish and Creole-ish, some blend of the two.
For appetizers, we decided to try two, which turned out to be a bit of a mistake given the sheer quantity of food this place serves. But hey, better than the reverse, right?
We started with their deviled eggs, which they call just “D’Evils.” Fairly traditional deviled egg as a base, but topped with little fried chicken bites, lemon pepper dust, and green onions. Really good — and even though there were only four of them, they packed a lot of calories into those four bites.
The other appetizer was what they call the Nolia Clip — “Nolia” as in NOLA, New Orleans. They also have the Nolia Clap, which is a vegan-style gumbo with no meat, and then the Nolia Clip, which is that same vegan gumbo base loaded up with fried shrimp, crabmeat, turkey sausage, and a full catfish filet right on top. When they say “loaded,” they mean it — this was an entrée-sized bowl of gumbo dressed up with every protein they had. We enjoyed it, but by the time we’d finished the eggs and about half the gumbo, we decided to slow down since we still had entrées coming.
Entrées came next. Heather tried the fried chicken, which they’ve dubbed “Let’s Stay Together” — a good portion of fried chicken alongside braised collard greens and mac and cheese. The mac and cheese was excellent, the chicken stayed moist with a nice crispy crust, and the collard greens were pretty darn good. The one complaint was the little cornbread muffins that came with it — some of the least flavorful corn muffins I’ve ever had. They tasted like corn and water. I took a nibble after Heather flagged them, and I had to agree.
For my entrée, I ordered the “Burning Blues,” their jambalaya rice served with shrimp, smoked turkey, and a catfish filet. If that description sounds an awful lot like the gumbo appetizer, you’d be right — technically it was a bit thicker, more true jambalaya than gumbo, but outside of the consistency, the ingredients were nearly identical, just a larger portion. I enjoyed both the Burning Blues and the Nolia Clip, but they were basically the same dish wearing different names, and had I known that going in, I probably would have ordered something different to mix things up.
We ended up with to-go boxes holding a full meal between the two of us, and were far too full for dessert. So on portion size, 7th + Grove gets a big thumbs up. Food quality, with the minor exception of the cornbread, was also great — another thumbs up.
Service was pretty slow, though. Nobody was at the hostess stand for three or four minutes when we walked in, and table-side service stayed slow the rest of the night. Slow enough that if we had been in the mood for dessert, we probably would have gone elsewhere for it.
If you’re in the mood for soul food with a little Cajun-Creole flair, I’d recommend checking it out.
