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Welcome to breezy coastal cuisine
[Times photos: Bill Serne]
Owner Michael Peel works with Scott Pardo in the kitchen of the Crazy Conch Cafe on Tierra Verde. |
By CHRIS SHERMAN, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times
published August 8, 2002
The Crazy Conch offers simple ''Southern Coastal'' flavors new to our shores.
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TIERRA VERDE -- It is refreshing to find a place like the Crazy Conch Cafe at this time of year.
Temperatures are at the highest and spirits in restaurants at the lowest. Dining rooms are empty, menus dumbed down and a good barbecue sandwich and a cold beer are the best we hope for.
Yet just now a small independent restaurant of ambition and promise opens up in Tierra Verde, which has been tucked away from culinary breezes for decades.
Forgive the Crazy here. Michael Peele, who was a chef on Captiva and before that a wine importer, and partner Sally Herb are serious about the restaurant business. They carefully rethought every detail of the casual cafe as it is found within a whiff of a Gulf breeze, taking a small menu of simple foods in an unpromising space and packing it with modern style and innovation.
Not to mention homemade potato chips, wickedly dark gumbo, a whale of a veal chop and an invigorating salad of grilled potatoes, green beans, olives and endive.
What was a dreary and unsuccessful place on the second floor of the island's wood frame restaurant row has been dramatically transformed on the inside: The bright view of the Gulf is expected; terra cotta floors, copper bars and tables, crisp white walls and Pottery Barn chairs are not. Open kitchen? Communal tables? Natch.
The menu is what some call Southern Coastal cuisine, dipping into that rice-eating belt that swings from Charleston and the Low Country around to New Orleans, food cooked with a little spice and ethnic flavor and a lot of country warmth. Plus, they tip their hat a bit to Cuba. All is served with flashy, herb-sporting presentation. Not fusion at all; there's a panino sandwich but no pasta in sight.
So what if coastal cuisine is foreign here? It provides a rubric for what many restaurateurs are trying to do, make good food modern and casual.
That's enough to draw a crowd, although the place has been open only a month and the kitchen and service are not yet up to speed.
Seared tuna on a kalamata olive, potato, green bean and herb salad. The greens are arugula, basil and fennel. The potatoes are grilled Yukons and the tomatoes are roma and grape.
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The menu is brief -- a dozen large plates and a handful of small plates and other munchies -- and the best dishes so far are meats and salads. The veal chop was sampled in a buttery sea of mashed potatoes on a blue plate special. For a solid taste of beef and fire, you can get the churrasco steak or a split filet mignon over grilled vegetables. Best starters are the gumbo, deep brown and fiery, a rare serving of an oyster pan roast from New Orleans and the owners' special endive salad, with gobs of warm bacon, and surprise, a poached egg on the greens, a thoroughly modern (and classic) trick not seen hereabouts.
But the Crazy Conch needs to crank up the heat on seafood. I'd expect a prize catch of the day such as pompano, hog snapper or wahoo; one more serving of grouper or yellowtail with mango salsa isn't brag-worthy. Seared tuna on endive, beans and potato was imaginative, but it was a flimsy piece, overcooked and with barely a char mark. Crab cakes are dull, although they were largely lump meat and spiked with capers.
Shrimp come by way of Charleston, crisp fried with black sesame seeds for a starter or in a silky thick brown gravy over grits, a dish with good flavors but weak textures (I love grits fried).
There was limpness in the homemade potato chips too, although they were still hard to resist. The apple crisp, too, needed more crisp. Rum-soaked bundt cake showed the most homemade charm.
There's nothing too crazy about the wine list. Peele has kept it to a comprehensible 40, offered half by the glass, and he'll open any bottle if you'll pop for two glasses (which amount to about half the bottle price). The selection ranges from $15 Italians to $80 Far Niente and Beaucastel, with an emphasis on "anything but" chardonnay and cabernet sauvignon. Good thinking here, too.
The staff knows that the owners want to do something special but they haven't mastered the translation. I had to shoo away one server who was too talkative and intrusive; another bobbled an order, but apologized and hustled out a replacement entree.
But Peele and Herb are there all the time, and have put a lot of thought and work into the conception of one of the first new ideas on Pinellas shores in years. It'll take time to make the execution as quick and clever, train the staff and set up the supply lines, but they've made a promise that's worth the wait.
We'll be back for more.
Crazy Conch Cafe
- 1110 Pinellas Bayway, #206
- Tierra Verde
- (727) 865-0633
- Hours: 5 to 10 p.m. Sunday through Thursday; 5 to 11 p.m., Friday, Saturday
- Reservations: No
- Credit cards: Most
- Details: Full bar, wheelchair access, smoking outdoors only
- Special features: Outside seating, water view
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