Lee Roy Selmon's Opens in Time for Bucs Regular Season-Opener

Today's the day for the grand opening of the Lee Roy Selmon’s sports grill restaurant at 11310 Causeway Blvd. in Brandon.

The restaurant, named for the legendary National Football League Hall of Famer, opens 11 a.m. Sept. 9 near the entranceway to the expressway named as well for Selmon, the first recipient of the Ring of Honor for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

"We're at the end of the Lee Roy Selmon Expressway, which is very fitting," Miles McConnell, the restaurant's managing partner, said in an interview earlier this summer. "We've been looking [to open a restaurant] in the Brandon area for a long time. It's a great family environment out here and we're a great family restaurant."

The Brandon location is the chain's eighth restaurant, all of which are in business in the Greater Tampa Bay area and beyond.

The chain typically opens a new restaurant on a Monday but today's Sunday opening is set to coincide with the first game of the season for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

Game time for the matchup between the Carolina Panthers and Tampa Bay Buccaneers is set to begin at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa at 4:25 p.m.

Selmon's playing days as a defensive end with the Bucs began in 1976 as the team's first-ever draft pick and included six straight Pro Bowl appearances. A back injury forced Selmon to retire in 1984, and in 1995, he was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame, the franchise’s only honoree to date. In 2009, he became the first inductee in the Bucs’ Ring of Honor.

Sept. 9 marks as well the first anniversary of Selmon's memorial service at Idlewild Baptist Church in Lutz. Selmon died Sept. 4, 2011, after suffering a stoke. He was 56.

"To us, he's still a driving force in what we're doing," McConnell said. "It meant a lot to him to be out in the community and to have these restaurants. Just like he played football with passion he had his restaurants with passion and he did a lot for charities."

Lee Roy Selmon's features “stadium seating, authentic sports-theme ambiance and state- of the-art sports viewing, with high-definition screens,” according to a company release.

"We consider ourselves a sports grill and we're really focused on food, food is our number one priority," McConnell said. "You can't beat our baby back ribs, our Selmon's wings are really legendary and we have really amazing, large-entree salads."

According to a company news release:

Lee Roy Selmon’s features fire-grilled favorites and bold original specialties, with many entrees starting at just $10. Specialties include smokin’ Hall of Fame ribs and Soul-Good Pulled Pork (with a choice of four homemade sauces), as well as Pro Bowl burgers and sandwiches. Other favorites include Fried Green Tomatoes, Mama’s Meatloaf, Selmon’s Sweet Heat Fried Chicken and Mama’s Cajun Gumbo. The lighter fare includes a wide variety of salads such as the Tropical Spinach Salad and Grilled Shrimp Salad, as well as delicious flatbreads. The selection of desserts includes Georgia Peach Cobbler and Selmon’s Bread Pudding.

The restaurant also features seafood and has a gluten-free menu, McConnell said.

McConnell said the restaurant seats up to 225 diners, including in a comfortable and large outside dining area. Twenty-three flat-screen TV's were to be "tastefully placed" so that people interested in the game could watch and those with no interest would not have to.

Lee Roy Selmon's hours are for lunch and dinner from 11 a.m. to midnight on Friday, Saturdy and Sunday, and for dinner only on Monday through Thursday, from 4 to 11 p.m.

The restaurant opens in space that once housed Giordano's, and before that, Hops. With renovations, "it's a completely new building," McConnell said. "It's going to be a very upscale restaurant but our prices are very reasonable."

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Good Things To Know About Lee Roy Selmon's

• The first Lee Roy Selmon's restaurant opened in Tampa in 2001.

• Many of the dishes on the restaurant's menu trace back to Selmon's boyhood days, growing up on a farm in Oklahoma, including "Mama's Meatloaf, fried green tomatoes, pulled pork, cornbread casserole and cheesy bacon grits," according to a company release.

• Other menu items include prime burgers, sliders, creamy macaroni and cheese tossed with braised short ribs and contemporary salads, including bruschetta chicken salad and the Lee Roy Selmon Chopped Salad.

• Drinks include buckets of cold beer, craft beers, signature cocktails (including the award-winning Smokin' Tampa Tea), wines by the glass and fresh-squeezed lemonade.

Out and about from Brandon? Here's where you can find a Lee Roy Selmon's sports grill on the road:

• Bradenton: 6510 Cortez Road / 941-798-3287
• New Tampa: 17508 Donna Michelle Drive / 813-977-3287.
• Fort Myers: 5056 Daniels Pkwy. / 239-690-3287
• Palm Harbor: 34200 North U.S. Highway 19 / 727-216-6566
• Sarasota: 8253 Cooper Creek Blvd. / 941-360-3287
• St. Petersburg: 2424 Tyrone Blvd. / 727-347-5774
• South Tampa: 4302 West Boy Scout Blvd. / 813-871-3287

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RELATED COVERAGE:

• Lee Roy Selmon Remembered in Quotes by Friends, Colleagues

• Lee Roy Selmon Memorial Service Held Sept. 9 at Idlewild Baptist Church