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Up and coming
[Times photo — Dan McDuffie]
Manolo’s Italian Restaurant was last seen as an Army-Navy store. The remodeling includes bead board wainscotting and sienna walls, and the memorabilia on the walls includes real pizza shovels and cutters, and posters for mob movies.
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Manolo's Italian Restaurant serves pizzas and subs, but it's the not so run-of-the-mill offerings that give it a step up in dining style.
By CHRIS SHERMAN, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times
published December 5, 2002
ZEPHYRHILLS -- To an outsider, Fifth Avenue in downtown Zephyrhills is a main street of dreams -- or Frank Capra movies. It's a place where you can get anything: lawyers, bedroom suites, wedding rings, insurance, saddles and, because this is the 21st century, computer repairs and after-school tutors.
Locals, however, knew it desperately missed something: a place to eat other than the tea room or the 7-Eleven.
A pizza joint or a sub shop would have been a breakthrough, but this fall, Fifth Avenue got a lot more. It's a restaurant that makes pizza and subs but goes far beyond: white tablecloths, wine, lobster ravioli and tiramisu. And someone sings opera on weekend nights.
The restaurant, Manolo's, may sound as out of place here as a pair of Manolo Blahniks; it's just trying to put on a little style. It comes from restaurateur Joseph Abed, whose family's pizza shop put pizzazz and hefty calzones in Dade City's historic downtown. In Zephyrhills Abed has raised the ante, restoring an old storefront and installing a full-service restaurant.
[Times photo — Dan McDuffie]
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Veal Saltimbocca, foreground, and Pollo Florentine pizza are on the menu at Manolo’s Italian Restaurant in Zephyrhills.
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Though the food is a work in progress, he has the look and setting down. He has done it with a good eye for many modern tricks, keener than many independents with bigger budgets in more sophisticated precincts.
Last seen as an Army-Navy store, the old building is now an inviting, long, tall space, with bead board wainscotting and sienna walls. It feels like the kind of Old World places evoked in chain restaurant ads. Midway through my second meal, I realized that it's also a homespun version of the layout of Romano's Macaroni Grill, but better.
Part of that is the deep shape of an old store space, with chandeliers and servers ropes stretching 60 feet over century-old hardwood floors. The memorabilia on the walls has authentic local flavor, too: real pizza shovels and pizza cutters and, among the mob movie posters, one for Donnie Brasco, Pasco's own goodfella.
The place and the menu change from lunch to dinner, but the food always comes in hearty servings. It's long on red sauce but not limited to that.
At lunch, when servers are in knit shirts and the fluorescent lights are on, the menu has a pizzeria feel. No complaints about the pizza. Abed's is crackling crisp, and toppings run from the usual to a Mediterranean with feta and eggplant. It's good eating, but at $16.95, it's unlikely to be a big seller.
More often, locals get the required bang for their buck. At lunch, a good bet is manicotti stuffed with ricotta in tomato sauce as thick as tomato paste and just as intense. Add a bowl of Italian wedding soup with a high-schmaltz chicken stock, and it's plenty of food.
I tried to go light with pasta primavera, hoping for more vegetables and pasta and less sauce. Instead I got penne and squash hip deep in sauce (big hips at that), and the sauce was too thick.
The best sauce, by the way, is the house's a la manolo, a rosy blend with artichoke hearts, but it, too, needs to be fluid and sparing if you're watching calories. On salads, go for the feta vinaigrette and keep it on the side.
At dinner, when the chandeliers light up and servers don bow ties, the menu runs to baked pastas and steaks, prime rib, lobster tails and other high-end fare. The veal came out overdone for me and too heavily sauced, but the seafood did much better. Shrimp in the scampi were bright and plump. Linguine and clams was close to the right standard. The pasta was still toothy and a mix of chopped clams with a few in the shell, but I'd put more garlic and clam broth in the sauce.
A simple bowl of pasta -- or even the heaping spaghetti with meat sauce that steamed pass me -- is the stuff of the best restaurants in Italy. Manolo's could succeed at emulating that.
It'll need to kick up its baked goods. Breads should be crustier, old-fashioned stuff with more crunch than puff, and tiramisu should not come straight from the freezer.
But pastas are solid; served with a lighter hand on the sauces and combined with fresh vegetables, seafood and steaks off the grill, that's plenty. The only thing I might add to the menu would be chef's specials or maybe a roast on weekends.
Although Manolo's stands out in Zephyrhills for its rare sophistication, its success will be in day-to-day eating. A growing population within 10 miles is hungry for good, fresh everyday food. Produced with Abed's style, this kind of Italian would be an elegant treat anywhere.
It might prove that small-town downtowns are not the last frontier but the last great opportunity for independent local restaurants.
Manolo's Italian Restaurant
- 38445 Fifth Ave., Zephyrhills
- (813) 715-7077
- Hours: 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Monday through Saturday
- Reservations: Accepted
- Details: Most credit cards accepted; beer, wine; wheelchair accessible; nonsmoking section provided.
- Special features: Live music Friday, Saturday nights.
- Prices: $7.99 to $23.99
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