I’ve gotta share with you one of my favorite places to grab food in Westchase…actually in the whole Tampa Bay area.
So special, in fact, that I did my gender reveal there. I’ll get to that in a minute. But let me tell you all about Fresh Bites. It’s a Lebanese restaurant located on the corner of Countryway and Linebaugh Avenue. It’s close to the three county apex: Pinellas, Hillsborough, and Pasco.
I didn’t know anything about Lebanese food until I tried it, and it is amazing! From chicken shawarma to coconut potato chips, they have so many delicious menu items to choose from. My personal favorite is the Max Baba Ganouj Platter. It’s pasture-raised minced beef, roasted with coconut oil and pine nuts, served on top of a bowl of baba ganouj.
Fresh Bites is a family-owned restaurant, and the owners Samir and Anissa Khalife came to the U.S. in the 80’s. Once here, they started their family, and Anissa was looking for good healthy food to feed her children. It’s hard to find those healthy options. What, exactly, are the ingredients in the foods your eating in restaurants? So Samir and Anissa opened Fresh Bites. It is truly fresh, clean food with simple ingredients but extraordinarily flavorful.
They are such a sweet family. We dined out there all the time before we had kids. (Now we do more take-out because we don’t want our one-year-old terrorizing the restaurant.) But back in 2017 when I first found out I was having a girl, I told Doug to meet me there, and I greeted him at the restaurant with pink balloons to signify a girl was on the way! A healthy girl after eating all that Fresh Bites! To find Fresh Bits online, go here.
Written by Roxanne Wilder
Hear more about Fresh Bites in Westchase (5:17) on the Experience Tampa Bay in 10 Minutes or Less podcast. You can also hear more the concerts coming to town (1:03) and experience WTR Pool & Grill (3:53).
Produced by Micaela Figueroa
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