The Old City is where most visitors eat, and the problem is not finding a table. It is telling the rooms with a real reason to exist from the ones that exist because St. George Street has foot traffic. These six each have a reason you can check.
Columbia is the St. Augustine branch of the family group that has been cooking in Tampa since 1905. It opened on St. George Street in 1983, and you go for the tiled rooms and the fountain as much as the Spanish and Cuban plates. Catch 27 is named for Florida as the 27th state and cooks fish caught in Florida waters, with a Minorcan chowder and a datil pepper ketchup to remind you where you are.
Nonna's Trattoria sits on Aviles Street, the brick lane of galleries, where the owner and his two sons cook the family recipes and greet the tables. Casa Maya is a Second Spanish Period house turned seafood-forward Mexican kitchen, with a patio stage three or four nights a week.
For lunch, Cafe Alcazar seats you in the deep end of the old swimming pool of Flagler's 1888 Alcazar Hotel, with classical guitar or piano from noon to three. And for a drink after, Forgotten Tonic mixes shrub cocktails on Aviles Street and funds health insurance and paid leave for its staff through a surcharge it explains on its own site.
None of this is ranked. Everything we track in the Old City lives on the neighborhood page.