RESTAURANT NEWS | FLORIDA
O-Ku Brings Sushi, Robata, and Wagyu Sandos to Tampa’s Bayshore Neighborhood
By Eric Barton | 1:56 p.m. ET, May 21, 2026
AUTHOR BIO: Eric Barton is editor of The Adventurist and a freelance journalist who has reviewed restaurants for more than two decades. Email him here.
Tampa has a new Japanese restaurant on Bayshore, which means dinner can now involve otoro, robata, plum martinis, and trying to figure out how many wagyu sandos count as too many.
O-Ku is on the ground floor of Bayshore Gardens, bringing The Indigo Road Hospitality Group’s modern Japanese restaurant to one of Tampa’s best-known waterfront neighborhoods. It sits steps from Maru, Indigo Road’s Japanese-Peruvian restaurant that opened in Tampa last year, giving the group a growing presence in a stretch of the city that now has another reason to make reservations.
The kitchen is led by chef Billy Brannen, a Gohan Society Scholar whose time in Japan shapes the menu’s focus on technique, seasonality, and seafood. The menu includes sushi, sashimi, and nigiri, with otoro and uni among the premium options. But O-Ku isn’t treating sushi as the whole assignment.
There’s king crab and miso-glazed snapper sourced from seafood markets in Tokyo and nearby waterways, along with pork belly baos and A-5 wagyu sandos. The robata section, built around Japanese-style charcoal grilling, brings smoke and char to dishes like steak with wasabi, shishito peppers, and kinoko mushrooms.
The bar follows the same polished but approachable lane, with cocktails like the Plum Martini, made with vodka, plum sake, agave, lime, and grapefruit, and Under the Sun, with reposado tequila, mezcal, hibiscus, Japanese pear, and soda. There’s also imported sake, wine, local beer, and several zero-proof options.
Designed by David Thompson Studio, the restaurant includes an outdoor patio and a private dining room for 22 seated guests or 33 standing. O-Ku serves dinner daily, Sunday through Thursday from 5 to 10 p.m. and Friday and Saturday from 5 to 11 p.m.
The Tampa waterfront has always done scenery well, but dinner now comes with otoro, charcoal smoke, and a very persuasive case for ordering another sando.
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