Bogey's Tavern Opens Across From Largo Central Park With Cod, Haddock and 1930s Golf Decor

Bogey's Tavern opened its doors Monday at 300 E. Bay Drive in Largo, putting a full-service bar and restaurant directly across from the main entrance to Largo Central Park. Owners Pam Dufour and Matt D'Ottavio held the grand opening at the MJ Village Plaza space, and the tavern is now serving lunch and dinner six days a week, with Sunday brunch to follow.

The pitch is unusual for a county where every other menu leads with grouper. Bogey's leans Northeastern: North Atlantic cod, fried haddock, Rhode Island calamari, maple-bourbon glazed salmon, vinegar-pepper pork chops, steaks, burgers and hearty pastas. Dessert includes fried dough, the powdered-sugar fair pastry that New Englanders will recognize on sight.

The theme is post-Prohibition golf, not sports bar. The name nods both to the game and to Humphrey Bogart, and the room is built around vintage bar decor, black-and-white portraits of golf legends, and cocktails from the era: old fashioneds, Manhattans, sidecars, with bourbon and gin anchoring the liquor list.

What to know before you go

The dining room runs about 2,500 square feet, with a roughly 700-square-foot outdoor patio and a private room for parties. Ceilings are 14 feet. Live acoustic music is planned during the week.

Hours, according to the restaurant, are split by day, and Monday is the short one:

Day	Hours
Monday	4 p.m. – 10 p.m.
Tue – Thu	11 a.m. – 10 p.m.
Friday	11 a.m. – midnight
Saturday	Noon – midnight
Sunday	10 a.m. – 4 p.m., brunch only

The kitchen closes earlier than the bar: 9:30 p.m. Monday through Thursday, 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday. Sunday is brunch and nothing else, with eggs Benedict, omelets, French toast and mimosas. The first Sunday brunch is Sept. 6.

A long road to opening night

This has been coming for a while. Local reporting last year flagged the project when the couple signed on at MJ Village, and construction delays pushed the target from late spring to summer and then to August. The owners built the space out from scratch, and by the week before opening they had cleared inspections and licensing and run two private soft openings.

Dufour is from Massachusetts and D'Ottavio has New York roots, which is where the menu comes from. The two have said the restaurant idea goes back more than 20 years, to their first date, when they found out they both wanted to open one. The decor reflects that patience: golf memorabilia, old Hollywood collectibles, vintage advertisements and maps of the Northeast, much of it genuinely from the 1930s and '40s, hung under restored pendant lights alongside leather captain's chairs.

The corner it landed on

Location is the interesting part. East Bay Drive at the park entrance means walk-up traffic from Largo Central Park events, the playground crowd, ballfield parents and anyone parking for a concert. It also puts Bogey's a few minutes from Horizon West Bay, the $85 million City Hall complex at 440 West Bay Drive that opened in May and moved city services downtown.

More is queued up behind it. In January the city issued a request for proposals to redevelop its 14-acre municipal campus at 201 Highland Ave., the site of the old City Hall, police department and emergency operations center. Details on the city's downtown projects are posted at downtownlargo.com.

For now, the practical question for anyone driving over this week is parking and patience. New restaurants in their first days tend to run long on ticket times, and the plaza lot is shared. If you are heading to something at Largo Central Park first, the Monday 4 p.m. open and the 9:30 p.m. kitchen cutoff are the two numbers worth remembering.

Keep up with new openings across the county at Pinellas County Community Website, follow us on Facebook, and if you have eaten there already, join the conversation in our Community Forum. You can read more local business stories and dining and entertainment coverage any time.

Header photo: MatthewHoobin / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)