RESTAURANT NEWS | FLORIDA
Michael Commins Returns to Lead Michelin-Starred Rocca
The returning chef plans to protect the pastas, sharpen the sourcing, and know when a dish has enough on it.
ROCCA | MAP | INSTAGRAM
By Eric Barton | Photos by Melissa Santell
6:30 a.m. ET, Sept. 17, 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.
Some dishes survive a change in leadership. At Rocca, that protected class includes the tagliolini al ragù, agnolotti, and burnt cheesecake. Michael Commins, the restaurant’s new executive chef, calls them sacred.
The dry-aged Rohan duck comes close too, although Commins may occasionally change its accompaniments. Everything else is open for discussion.
This is the kind of culinary mathematics that Commins has been calculating since he returned to the Tampa Heights restaurant where he previously served as executive sous chef, working beside chef Bryce Bonsack as Rocca earned its first Michelin star in 2023. The restaurant has held onto the star every year since, making this a homecoming with considerably higher stakes than showing up to discover someone moved your favorite chair.
Michael Commins
The Florida native left Rocca for leadership positions at Sorelle in Charleston and Ômo by Jônt in Winter Park. At Bresca in Washington, D.C., he worked his way from junior sous chef to chef de cuisine. He came back to Tampa a better technician, he said, and with a stronger appreciation for restraint.
“Earlier in my career, particularly the first time I was at Rocca, I always wanted to add one more thing,” Commins said. “If a dish was good, my instinct was to ask what else I could put on it to make it better.”
Bonsack worked to curb that impulse. Experience finally made the lesson stick.
“More components don't necessarily make a dish more thoughtful or more refined,” Commins said. “Sometimes the hardest thing is knowing when you're finished.”
The same applies to taking charge of a restaurant with a Michelin star and a collection of regulars who already know what they plan to order before sitting down. Commins wants Rocca to change gradually, through better ingredients, longer menu development, and small adjustments that make dishes prettier or easier to eat.
“Taking over a restaurant like Rocca isn't about proving that I can change everything,” he said. “There's a lot here that works extraordinarily well, and I have too much respect for what has been built—and for the people who built it with me—to change something simply because I have the authority to do so.”
The early additions suggest that Rocca will remain Italian while allowing Commins to wander a bit. Ricotta gnocchi come with truffle-infused pecorino, summer corn, truffle butter, and black winter truffle shaved tableside. Key West pink shrimp are fried in tempura batter and served with a sauce made from their shells, aromatics, and ’nduja. For dessert, basil custard arrives with passion fruit sorbetto, mango, coconut meringue, and black pepper streusel.
“More components don't necessarily make a dish more thoughtful or more refined. Sometimes the hardest thing is knowing when you're finished.”
The clearest look at Commins’ approach might be the pesce alla Ligure. The kitchen scores and salts a whole branzino, stuffs it with lemon and thyme, and grills it until it is nearly cooked through. The fish finishes as it rests, a method that keeps the flesh moist and delicate. Cherry tomatoes, roasted Spanish onions, two kinds of olives, toasted pine nuts, and Ligurian olive oil plant the dish firmly along Italy’s northwestern coast.
The sauce takes a brief trip elsewhere. Commins starts with fish fumet, white wine, olive oil, lemon, and herbs. When that needed another layer of depth, he reached into his experience with Japanese cooking and added kombu and bonito. The amounts were adjusted until the ingredients settled quietly beneath everything else.
“For me, it has to solve a problem or make the dish meaningfully better,” Commins said. “I don't want to incorporate a technique or ingredient from another cuisine simply because the combination sounds interesting on paper.”
The goal is for diners to taste more salinity, umami, and a faint hint of smoke without suddenly wondering whether the branzino has taken a wrong turn toward Tokyo.
“You may not necessarily identify either ingredient when you taste the sauce; you just recognize that there's another layer there,” he said.
Commins will continue working with Bonsack, who remains involved with dishes, openings, and culinary operations throughout Tastes Pretty Good. The Tampa hospitality group also operates Bar Terroir, Streetlight Taco, and Lumbre, with White Wolf expected later this year and two additional restaurants planned for 2027.
At Rocca, Commins’ return is built around smaller movements: a vegetable harvested at the right moment, a sauce tested six times, or a system that allows the kitchen to send out the same dish with greater consistency.
“I want them to recognize it immediately and then, over the course of dinner, start noticing all of the ways it has continued to get better,” Commins said.
That means protecting the pastas people love, leaving room for kombu beneath the Ligurian olive oil, and knowing when the dish needs one more thing.
It also means knowing when it doesn’t.
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