Have you ever ordered a steak from a restaurant and, when it arrived at the table, thought to yourself, “I bet this would be better if it were served to me on a sword and engulfed in flames!”? Well, that must have been what diners were thinking back in the 1950s because restaurants across the country embraced the flaming steak fad. In Tampa, Joe Licata, Jr. added the dish at his Italian restaurant located in downtown Tampa, and it became an instant hit.
Licata was a third-generation restaurant owner in Tampa. His grandfather, Victor Licata, operated El Aseo Restaurant at 1701 Seventh Ave. beginning around 1920. Licata changed the name to El Mecca in 1922, and the restaurant remained an Ybor favorite for many years.
Victor Licata’s son, Joe Licata, opened his own restaurant in downtown Tampa when he bought Sullivan’s Tavern near City Hall. Joe’s son, Joe Jr. opened Licata’s Steak House in the early 1950s at 108 E. Jackson St. Though he followed in his father’s and grandfather’s footsteps by offering mostly Italian and Spanish favorites, in 1953, Joe Jr. added the item that made him famous – steak served on a flaming sword.
Like many fads, the flaming steak gimmick started in California. Joe Licata wasn’t the only restaurateur to offer the specialty, but he made it an art. And he advertised extensively. His small restaurant grew busier every year, and by the early 1960s, he was ready to expand. In 1965, Licata spent $100,000 (about $1 million in today’s dollars) to renovate the basement of the old Knight and Wall hardware store building on the southwest corner of Tampa Street and Kennedy Boulevard.
The Knight and Wall excavated the basement space when they built their store in 1895, and Licata thought it would be the perfect location for his new restaurant. He also went all-in on his steak concept and renamed his place Licata’s Flaming Sword Restaurant.
Licata’s new location was busier than ever, but changes in downtown real estate prompted the sale of the old building to a development group that eventually built, at the time, Tampa’s tallest skyscraper. Now the Bank of America building, Licata’s steakhouse was not in the plans for the new tower. The last fiery sword was extinguished on March 13, 1982. Though the smoke has cleared, Licata’s legacy will never be completely snuffed out.
Rodney Kite-Powell is a Tampa-born author, the official historian of Hillsborough County and the director of the Touchton Map Library at the Tampa Bay History Center, where he has worked since 1995.
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