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Dine
A triumph of marketing . .
[Times photos: Michael Rondou]
Sloppy Joe’s on the Beach, at the Bilmar Beach Resort in Treasure Island, has outdoor seating. |
By CHRIS SHERMAN, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times
published January 9, 2003
. . . but little else is the new Sloppy Joe's in Treasure Island.
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TREASURE ISLAND -- The old man had tried fishing these waters before, but he rarely found anything worth eating. But some hope, some memory made him keep going out. He came back empty-handed again.
Sorry, Santiago. Many people were excited by the prospect of Sloppy Joe's, the first substantial new restaurant in decades on the blandest of our beaches, but the catch isn't even bad Hemingway. Sloppy Joe's, which carries the banner of Key West's most storied bar, is just another place serving burgers and fish (and breakfast) to hotel guests. New and fresh, almost antiseptic, it would fit better in a new mall than an old motel strip. The outside has decorator paint -- an improvement on the Bilmar's blinding goldenrod redo -- but that's not the kind of color that distinguishes a beachside speakeasy like the original Joe's that Hemingway loved.
The namesake menu item, the sloppy joe, is anything but sloppy.
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That kind of personality can't and shouldn't be cloned, but that won't stop modern marketers. Any famous name will do. And Hemingway didn't mind being famous, but you have to think he would eventually have drawn the line at becoming a furniture brand or the standard of a white beard contest.
Here, he does get good biographical notes in the menu, but in the gift shop (and what theme joint doesn't have one?) there is not a book to be found. Hemingway is only the image on Frisbees, beer coolies and black T-shirts, fitting treatment for a postliterate age.
That doesn't keep the menu wags from calling the chicken wings "A Farewell to Arms" (get it?) and the captain's platter the Old Man and the Sea (would Papa have eaten grouper tenders?).
I could allow the cornmeal humor if the food matched any of the spirit of Hemingway or was as simple and robust as his best writing.
The kitchen makes a few clever modern efforts. For sides, you can get a salad of mixed greens, hot sweet potato fries or tropical chips. The chef's most elaborate effort is grouper with a macadamia nut crust on sweet potato mash with a vanilla sauce waving crisp plantain chips. Sweet, but my complaint (and Ernie probably would have concurred), was that the fish was mushy.
The big, thick onion rings have a mild remoulade, not "the romance of Paris in the '20s" promised on the menu. I don't think Hemingway saw Idaho as the home of great potatoes (and I doubt that farm-raised salmon has the taste of an Idaho stream).
Items that suggest a lusty appetite don't feed it. There's a sloppy joe sandwich, and it's big, but the bun and meat sauce are dry and anything but sloppy. The 8-ounce stuffed burger at medium looks like a fast food seasonal novelty on a wide hot dog bun. The one dessert I tried, a Guinness sundae, does sound fun. You can make ice cream from dark beer -- our best microbrew chefs make one from porter at Tampa Bay Brewing Co.; Joe's imports the Guinness brand -- and topping it with beer nuts, pretzels and caramel sounds like my kind of party. But the ice cream had refrozen and iced over; no fun.
There's a long list of what's missing. The namesake shellfish of the Conch Republic isn't here, cracked in fritters or chowder. (New England clam was the flavor of the day on my visits.) No chicken and yellow rice, and no Cuban sandwiches, either. The bar has pretty blue fish set in tile in front, but the shelves are skimpily stocked. Why no Hatuey beer, the brand Santiago liked and which is on sale in the United States again? And the choice of rum in Cuba and the islands went beyond Bacardi.
Service is young and well-scrubbed but nowhere close to Key West in attitude. Getting a seat even with a dozen empty tables involved being shunted and shooed between four sections, servers and hosts, all determined to obey a system they did not understand. One kid even told some outlanders not to worry about the sunset because it was cloudy, when moments later proved what we know: clouds make for some of the best sunsets.
Sure, the place is brand new, and it will take some seasoning, maybe 70 years of beer stains to get like the real Sloppy Joe's.
Meanwhile, Papa would probably be happier across the street drinking beer and eating tacos in the shadows of the old VIP Lounge or sitting outdoors on the unglamorous curbside of Ricky T's, where an old man and his friend could still sit under the stars with a drink and a good story.
Sloppy Joe's on the Beach
- Bilmar Beach Resort
- 10650 Gulf Blvd.
- Treasure Island
- (727) 367-1600 Reservations: No
- Hours: 7:30 a.m. to 2 a.m. daily
- Details: No smoking indoors, credit cards accepted. Full bar.
- Special features: Outdoor seating, children's menu.
- Prices: $4.59 to $14.99
- Web site: www.sloppyjoesonthebeach.com
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