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Named in honor of the artist Frida Kahlo, Viva la Frida Cafe y Galeria serves creative Mexican food in an inviting and colorful setting.
By CHRIS SHERMAN, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times, published February 7, 2002
TAMPA -- You don't have to be a fan of the artist Frida Kahlo to enjoy the new restaurant named Viva la Frida Cafe y Galeria in her honor. But by the time you leave you'll have a new appreciation for the artist, for art and that rare creature, the art restaurant.
You'll also have had the chance to sample authentic moles and come to the realization that tortillas can be wrapped around scallops, mushrooms, cactus leaves and even mangoes.
Still, Kahlo may be the biggest surprise. If you know her only for the harsh self-portraits weighed down by the heavy eyebrow and heavier torment, she may seem more martyr or pop icon than good dinner companion. Yet food and fiestas were part of the Blue House and the life she shared with Diego Rivera, as much as her anguish and the beginnings of Mexican modern art. Look more closely at her portraits and you'll find that she made pride and beauty out of her pain and hardship.
A similar triumph is inescapable at Viva La Frida, where five years of struggle has turned a used car lot on a forlorn stretch of N Florida Avenue through Seminole Heights into a stunningly warm, charming oasis of art and imagination.
Elsewhere the street is lined with chainlink fence and burglar bars. Here a blackboard on a huge artist's easel announces the restaurant in front of long concrete walls saturated with deep paprikas and cobalt.
The gate is part Gaudi and more local glass artistry. Inside are long open spaces between the big, bold colored walls that Luis Barragan brought to modern Mexican architecture. One side is for outdoor dining, the other is filled with a large, kitschy collection of wrought iron furniture for pure slacking off. Inside, the yellow walls are lined with local artwork, on a Frida theme. At last count, nooks and crannies held five candlelit shrines to St. Frida.
And when on a Friday night you find this one spot on Florida Avenue lit up with a full house of Seminole Heights homesteaders, USF profs and artist pals, you have to do something rather un-Frida. You've got to smile. Smile a big, glad-to-be-here smile.
The artists (and Frida fans) behind this are Angelica Diaz and husband John Ames, whom we last met in an Ybor cafe feeding starving artists and occasionally serving up quail with rose petals a la Like Water for Chocolate. But that was in 1997, pre-Centro Ybor (and off-Centro too). After that, Diaz moved to Seminole Heights, a reviving neighborhood with lots of right-thinking dreams, but darn few places to eat.
Building this place took years of physical effort, bureaucratic battles, BYO art openings, unofficial Friday night parties and endless postponements. But when the doors finally opened to paying customers late last year, Viva La Frida had grow from a shoestring dream to a professionally run restaurant, well-equipped and well-staffed. Diaz, with daughter Allegra, remains in front, along with a hustling crew of servers. Chef is Alfredo Llano, who once worked in the kitchens at Mise en Place, assisted by Nicholas Scalise; they collaborate not just in food but in some of the artwork on the walls.
Cooking here gives familiar Mexican dishes artful presentation and new variety. Vegetarians get a wide range of choices, with entrees of tofu, portabella, spinach and nopales (Diaz is from Nogales in Sonora cactus country), but Viva La Frida is not afraid of chicken and beef.
I'm glad to see creative, even alternative Mexican. If you must have more rustic tacos autenticos, Mi Mexico on N Armenia is not too far away. So I hope Viva La Frida continues to try new things. (Quail with rose petals will be back for Valentine's Day).
My best dish was vegan flautas, where the filling was a combination of mushrooms with mashed yucca (you can get it with flank steak too). I found good tastes, old and new, in many dishes: the mole colorado had the genuine savory flavor of peppers and Mexican chocolate; chile verde had the tart punch of green tomatillos; the rice billed as arroz Frida had a kiss of licorice that I suspect comes from Mexican tarragon.
However, soup was quite thin, and quesadillas filled with cheese, chopped scallops and shrimp seemed skimpy, and helpings of rice and beans should be more substantial to fill out the plate and the belly. I'd also rework the vegetable shish kebab, skewers of grilled peppers and zucchini, which seemed parsimonious. Granitas are a good Latin idea for dessert, but the one here was too watery.
You can cure that, however, with miniature chocolate almond chimichangas, dusted with cinnamon and filled with chocolate custard.
The flaws can be fixed, and I'm sure they will be so the food catches up with the building. This is a work in progress, but Viva La Frida is already a work of art playing to a gallery of starving artists and hungry neighbors.
It would make Frida smile, too.
5901 N Florida Ave.
Tampa
813-231-9199
Hours: Lunch, 11:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. Wednesday through Monday; dinner, 5:30 to 9:30 p.m., Wednesday through Monday.
Reservations: Suggested
Credit cards: Most
Details: No smoking inside; diners may bring beverages while beer, wine license is pending
Wheelchair access: Good
Special features: Art for sale, outdoor seating
Prices: Lunch from $4.99; dinner $6.99 to $11.99