Ladies and gentlemen, Cephas Gilbert has left his building and, as a result, Ybor City does not have a Jamaican component for the first time in four decades.
A little more than a year ago, Gilbert said, he was diagnosed with a vitamin D deficiency.
He had run Cephas’ Hot Shop, which sold Jamaican food and juices on Ybor’s Fourth Avenue, for 38 years. In 2020, he transitioned the business into a juice bar inside Tequilas Ybor on Seventh Avenue.
So, Gilbert, known for challenging NFL players to handshake tests of strength, holding coconuts in one hand while cracking them open with a machete and turning a corner of Ybor into a Jamaican oasis, did possibly what only he would do.
“I started an organic farm,” he said. “Too many hours for too many years inside my restaurant were to blame. I needed more sunshine.”
The farm started as a part-time endeavor.
Then, in November, the Tequilas building sold and became Showbar Ybor.
Rather than looking for a new brick-and-mortar location, Gilbert decided to become a full-time farmer and traded Ybor’s chickens for the ducks that inhabit a pond near his land on S 56th Street.
