LARA, the Ybor City restaurant, apothecary bar and bazaar from chef Suzanne “Suz” Lara, has announced it will close. The 52-seat spot at 1919 E. 7th Ave. opened in February 2025 and built a menu blending Latin, Asian and Italian influences before its owner announced plans to close it nearly two years later.
According to the Tampa Bay Times, LARA occupied the former Stone Soup Company location in the heart of Ybor City. As Creative Loafing Tampa reported, Lara announced she would close the restaurant without giving an exact closing date, and pointed to a lack of a regular dinner crowd and the difficult economy as factors.
Lara explained her reasoning in blunt terms. “Rather than continue to stretch it thin, slowly bleed it dry, or turn it into a dive bar – I’ve decided it’s time to let it go,” she said, per the same outlet's reporting.
Inconsistent Crowds, Tough Economy
Lara pointed to shaky dine-in traffic as a core problem for the business. “We haven’t seen the consistent dine-in business needed to sustain a place like LARA,” she said, according to the report. She also cited broader financial pressures weighing on the restaurant's survival.
“We're also operating in an incredibly difficult economy. Without the steady support and resources needed to grow,” Lara said, per the same account. The chef's comments suggest the closure was less about any single misstep and more about the accumulated strain of running an independent concept through a shaky stretch for small businesses.
A Concept Built on More Than a Dining Room
When LARA opened, it was pitched as something bigger than a typical restaurant. 83 Degrees Media described the 52-seat space as conceived as part apothecary bar and part bazaar alongside its dining room, with a menu drawing on Latin, Asian and Italian traditions.
Lara told 83 Degrees Media that her customer base skewed heavily local. “About sixty percent of our guests are locals from around Tampa Bay, and the rest are tourists,” she said. That mix underscored how much LARA had positioned itself as a neighborhood fixture rather than a purely tourist-driven stop along Seventh Avenue.
Earlier coverage from the Tampa Bay Times had described LARA as the restaurant, apothecary bar and bazaar from Suzanne Lara, capturing the ambitious, multi-part identity the business carried from its earliest days. The Times' food and dining editor, Michelle Stark, oversees the publication's coverage of Tampa Bay's restaurant scene, including this closure report.
