WESTCHASE — After months of teasing the move on social media, Eddie’s Bar & Grill opened its fourth location — and its first in Hillsborough County — on Aug. 10 at 12217 W. Linebaugh Ave.
The self-described “family sports bar” replaces Surf Shack Coastal Kitchen, which announced in March that it would close. The seafood spot had anchored the corner plaza at Linebaugh and Countryway Boulevard since 2011 and was a Westchase favorite for its attached arcade, golf simulator and weekend all-you-can-eat crab legs. Stephen Bishop’s Excellence in Restaurants hospitality group had owned it since 2014.
Eddie’s gutted the space and rebuilt it to match its other restaurants’ branding and color scheme, general manager Kristin Cheeseborough said. The eight-seat bar was torn out and replaced with one that seats 24, and the restaurant added about 40 large-screen TVs and more outdoor seating in front of the entrance.
Cheeseborough, who has been with the company about a year, most of it at the Largo location, said the renovation left the restaurant “brighter and more welcoming.”
The Westchase restaurant joins locations in Dunedin, Bay Pines and Largo.
Eddie Turner opened the original in Dunedin in 1985 as what the company’s website calls “a little bar and grill in a narrow sliver of a building across from the Gulf of Mexico.” Turner died in January 2025.
An ownership group led by Tom George took over in 2016 and remodeled the Dunedin restaurant into its current form, then opened the Bay Pines location and, in late 2025, the one in Largo. Each has an arcade, and all carry the chain’s gator mascot, which the website says has changed with the times.
Cheeseborough said more locations could follow. George is “always looking at a new location or has something up his sleeve,” she said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if he has something already in mind.”
She said George is actively looking to add a location in Safety Harbor.
“We’re just going to keep Eddie’s coming in Tampa Bay,” she said.