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Ole for Redwoods? Not yet
[Times photo: Bill Serne]
The nuevo Latino menu at Redwoods includes Argentinean beef tenderloin with Yukon gold mashed potatoes, a chocolate lava cake dessert and tuna and salmon tartar. |
By CHRIS SHERMAN, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times
published April 11, 2002
The pioneering St. Petersburg restaurant switches from Pacific Rim fare to nuevo Latino, but there's not much gusto on the plate.
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Don't let the bright lights of baseball or BayWalk fool you. Running a dinner restaurant in downtown St. Petersburg is a problem.
There are indeed weekend nights when the sight of so many people on foot downtown is so intoxicating that you forget that the Tropicana halo rarely gets out of the parking lot and the glow of the movie mall extends no more than a block after dark.
It's been a problem even for Redwoods, which has been a fountain of the optimism and creativity of downtown entrepreneurs Emanuel Roux and Franck Bouvard. When they opened three years ago, they gave Central Avenue its first taste of the Pacific Rim, exceptional fish and slick design.
That glow of success dimmed in the last, arduous year. After the arrival of BayWalk, the departure of a chef, a slump in tourism and a recession, Redwoods has switched to a "nuevo Latino" menu.
That is not the solution.
The idea was to grab something of the tapas trend and serve less elaborate meals at less expensive prices with more tropical flair. Nuevo Latino, which invests traditional Mexican, Caribbean and South American fare with new flash and trendy ingredients, has been a strong current in New American cooking, although the Floribbean version has had limited success north of Miami.
You can still get a good meal at Redwoods -- I had one, sticking to more straightforward beef and chicken -- but it will not be cheap and it won't have much Latin flavor. My other experience was dreary and still expensive.
Redwoods' definition of the Pacific Rim was broad and loose, which is how culinary innovators like it, but the switch to Latino is jarring. Although European explorers included Asia and the Americas in their "New World," and other New American chefs do pluck from a wide range, this is a big stretch at Redwoods.
And this time, the experiment doesn't work so well; it's more confusion than fusion. Except for pipings of cilantro avocado cream and plantain chips stuck in various foods, I got little taste of the sun and less justification for most of the Latin names on the menu.
The best dish I had was a chicken breast quarter stuffed with a tart and creamy queso fresca. The chicken was cooked moist and crisp in the right places, but it was not especially Latin.
Chef Eddie Raye King had made an elaborate gratinee of yucca, yam and purple potatoes, but it ultimately tasted like great scalloped potatoes. Likewise, a big filet came from Argentina, and the potatoes had some chorizo and the sauce a little chipotle, yet the bottom line was a hearty plate of meat and potatoes, good viejo americano eating.
Spinach salad was the best combination of traditions: spinach and bacon in a basket of fried Asiago cheese and a dressing kissed with the Madeira of old Portugal. Whatever its geographic roots, that's a hearty salad. Elsewhere, the Latin antecedents seemed quite distant.
Why invoke the name of feijoada, Brazil's mighty and meaty national dish, for what is merely a scoop of undercooked black beans and corn served with coconut rice in the middle of a fish stew?
Escabeche marinates food many ways from the Caribbean on south, sometimes with sweet cinnamony spices, sometimes with peppers and tomatoes and especially vinegar, but duck escabeche here had no more than red wine and a few tomatoes. And the meat itself was closer to raw than rare.
Taquitos were closer to the original, a dubious Mexican contribution to snack foods. It has become a popular format for innovation, but for me, filling fried tubes with lobster and goat cheese did little except to bump the price up to $10. Hardly an inviting or filling casual bite.
And prices have dropped only a five spot here, leaving $10 appetizers and $25 entrees that still add up to the $100 dinners that have never been an easy sell in downtown St. Petersburg.
My expectations and standards rise with prices, and I suspect yours do, too. Too much else at Redwoods -- a disappointing bread basket, smoked duck much too dry, tired walnut-pineapple salsa, thin espresso -- doesn't meet them. The artwork currently hanging, fascinating handmade boxes, gives it a fresh contemporary edge, but the tree-trunk hostess podium, once so clever, now seems faded (and from the rear view most diners get, more like a toolbox).
Desserts include a killer chocolate lava cake (thank the Aztecs for xocolatl), but berries and sabayon cream didn't match up.
I'm pleased to say service knows the food and is proud of it but doesn't know the art of gauging breaks in table conversation.
Everyone at Redwoods seems to be working at or beyond capacity to make it succeed, and many diners root for sophistication to become a downtown fixture.
It will take time, dreams, loyalty, hard work, false starts and broken hearts. And better food.
Redwoods
- 247 Central Ave., St. Petersburg; (727) 896-5118. Hours: 5:30 to 10 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday, 5:30 to 11 p.m. Friday, Saturday
- Reservations: Suggested
- Credit Cards: Most
- Prices: Entrees $15 to $25.
- Details: No smoking permitted; full bar.
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