|
Cover story
Hoop du jour
[Times photo: Stefanie Boyar]
The Channelside complex is a 2-year-old open-air fun zone adjacent to the cruise port. |
By CHRIS SHERMAN, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times
published March 20, 2003
Have you worked up an appetite cheering on your basketball team? Here's a culinary full-court press.
|
 |
TAMPA -- Your team's made it to the NCAA Tournament, and you're here to cheer them on.
But there are hours and bellies that can't be filled by basketball alone. What to do?
First, get your bearings. When you come out of the St. Pete Times Forum facing the Tampa skyline, you have three choices: Dead ahead are the sports bars; to the right is Channelside and Ybor City, to the left is the rest of Tampa, including downtown.
Sports bars
The sports bars are a natural given the location, and a good place to start -- even before the games begin. For folks who come early to beat the traffic or snag a prime parking spot, Newk's, the Outpost and Beef O'Brady's are handy. On the back side, you could hang out to let the crowd thin out before heading home.
Sports bars aren't entirely about beer, TVs and T-shirts. A place like Newk's has more than 200 seats, a huge crew hustling any game night and a food menu that goes surprisingly beyond wings and shooters.
Given its full name, Newk's Lighthouse Cafe serves seafood as well as half-pound burgers and husky sandwiches. Most of us don't roll grouper in almonds and cornflakes, but Newk's creation is a clever trick. However you have grouper cooked, the fish is fresh (and back in season as of March 15).
For a taste of Florida in a hurry, try the smoked fish dip, grouper gumbo or a basket of fritters, little balls of cornmeal, shrimp and conch.
Channelside
If you've got more time, turn right and walk to Channelside, a 2-year-old open-air fun zone, where the offerings range from burritos and margaritas at Banana Joe's, to dueling pianos and Billy Joel sing-alongs at Howl at the Moon.
The best local contributions are espresso from Tampa-based Joffrey's Coffees and Stump's Supper Club, a restaurant-bar concept you might call Buca di Bubba.
The decor is trailer-park flea market, from John Wayne velvet paintings to a rainbow of plastic flowers; the music is honky-tonk and roadhouse rock, and the food is cornpone Southern.
It's all in relatively good humor, and in the case of the food, fairly good taste. Fried chicken and ribs are solid versions of the country originals, and the sides of collard greens and black-eyed peas are better than you'd expect from city-slick jokesters. The bar serves up too-cute booze in moonshine jars; better stick with drinks you know. This is one of the few spots with valet service that serves PBR and MD 20/20.
Ybor City
[Times photo: Stefanie Boyar]
The menu at the Columbia in Ybor City features traditional Spanish dishes, including Paella a la Valencia, front center.
|
For a longer buffet of theme restaurants, concept bars, more beer and more food, consider Ybor, a historic Latin neighborhood that was remade into Tampa's wet zone 20 years ago. If you'd rather not hassle with parking, streetcar service will take you there from the Forum or Channelside. The trolley requires $1.25 in exact change (or $3 for an all-day pass); you'll get a ride and views of the city, the port and a bit of air.
Ybor itself was a neighborhood of beautiful old brick stores and social clubs that was the heart of the cigar industry and its immigrant workers until it was abandoned 50 years ago. It now comes back to boisterous life on weekends when La Setima (Seventh Avenue) is lined with clubbers from frat partiers to punk moshers.
Much of the nightlife takes place outdoors, given the large number of street vendors, roofless bars, and that locally made cigars are the smoke of choice and best enjoyed on a stroll.
Food aimed at visitors comes in two big servings. At the far end of Seventh, the ornately tiled Columbia Restaurant has served chicken and yellow rice and other Cuban favorites since 1905 and now seats more than 1,400 with flamenco shows nightly.
The newest addition is Centro Ybor, a movieplex and open-air mall in the middle of the action. It houses Barley Hoppers for an international line of sandwiches and beers, Loudmouth for burgers, shakes, salads and sass, Blue Samurai for sushi and a double shot of hip, plus a GameWorks and an Improv comedy club.
Centro's biggest restaurants are Dish, with build-your-own stir-fries, and Big City Tavern, serving uptown contemporary food in a grand old ballroom.
Look past the bars and chains and you can find a few bites of hometown flavor and clever cooking. Moses White has old-fashioned barbecue, Ladies of the Sea has fried crabs and mullet sandwiches and the Cauldron cooks up Jamaican meat pies, curry oxtail and steam fish. Tropicana and the Silver Ring make up plenty of Cuban sandwiches, and Carmine's fries deviled crab.
In its prime, Ybor also was heavily Italian, and that heritage is still around. For a contemporary slice, try Bernini; for old-world romance, La Terrazza.
The most creative cuisine in Ybor, however, is made for sports fans. Tampa Bay Brewing Company not only crafts a dozen sharp beers from Iron Rat Stout to ales of many pales, it cooks with them too. Chefs toss fresh hops in salad, brewers yeast in pizza and porter in ice cream and the glaze on the rack of lamb. It'll be the best beer, solid, liquid, hot or cold, you taste all weekend.
Other options
For more civilized dining and tamer celebrating, head to your left when you leave the games.
Next door to the Forum is Tampa's big convention hotel, the Marriott Waterside, with an American cafe and Il Terrazzo, a high-end Italian restaurant. Across the river from it on Harbour Island, the Wyndham Hotel's Luna di Mare specializes in seafood and Italian. Jackson's sets the splashiest tables and happy hours with a view of the water and the skyline, a deep wine cellar and a menu that runs from pork tenderloin to sushi.
Keep going and you'll get into dining neighborhoods aimed at locals more than tourists. Just past Harbour Island is Davis Islands, where a small-town main street is lined with sidewalk tables of a half-dozen modest restaurants. My favorites are Estela's for traditional Mexican fare of moles, steak, shrimp sopes and ice cold Negra Modelo, and Pipo's for Cuban chicken, terrific roast pork and Hatuey beer. In good weather on weekend nights, you'll also get a mariachi band at Estela's and a smooth Cuban combo for dancing at Pipo's.
Farther west, Howard Avenue is the home of the famed steak and wine of Bern's Steak House and the crowded Soho Restaurant Row. Howard's menu includes good dim sum at T.C. Choy's and late night tapas at Sangria and Ceviche, plus Thai, Caribbean, contemporary, steaks, seafood and a lot of pizza in between.
There's a smaller, more diverse collection of fine eating on MacDill Avenue from Bay to Bay Boulevard south to Gandy: salads and sandwiches with Pane Rustica's fresh bread, Byblos' upscale Lebanese, Spartaco's sensual Italian, La Fonda's hearty Cuban, Rigoletto's rustic Tuscan and Mad Dogs & Englishmen for pints and sport with an English accent.
And if you find yourself in the hotel and shopping mall corridors of Dale Mabry Highway and West Shore Boulevard, you can eat at all your favorite chains, including Roy's, Lee Roy Selmon's and Flemings, Outback ventures with headquarters here.
You could also stop into Havana Village on Dale Mabry or La Teresita or any Cuban spot on Columbus Drive, for a taste of why we call the street Boliche Boulevard.
That robust rump roast stuffed with chorizo sausage, with yellow rice, black beans and fried plantains won't cost much more than $7. A Cuban sandwich of ham, pork, salami and cheese on bread flat, hot and crisp right off the press, will cost you half that.
Back to Weekend
© 2006 • All Rights Reserved • Tampa Bay Times
490 First Avenue South • St. Petersburg, FL 33701 • 727-893-8111
|
