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Friendly fine dining

Warm hospitality and bargain prices on good wine set Caleb's apart from the snooty crowd. Now they just need to rework some of the dishes.

The all-clear has sounded: It's May and the beaches are ours again. The water's warm enough even for a Floridian.

When you go back, you'll find braver locals already have discovered Caleb's, a new and surprisingly upscale spot that opened in a St. Pete Beach strip center six months ago.

Mark and Jill Holdridge, the couple who started the place, arrived with no restaurant experience - he was an investment banker and she was in real estate - just common sense, an outsider's innovation and a Chicagoan's nose for pizza.

So far the menu and the food haven't found their focus - part Continental, part veal-and-seafood Italian, and part thin-crust pizza - and some of the service is unsteady, but Caleb's wows on two other points so well that the 40-some seats go quickly most nights.

The first comes directly from Holdridge's inexperience: He's got wine bins lining one wall of the place but he doesn't know how to price wine and doesn't see why he should give it the 200 to 300 percent mark-up most places do.

That meant my bottle of Hanwood Estate syrah was $8. This is a well-made Australian in the McWilliams group. Smooth, smoky and plummy, pretty darn good quaff. And $8! Some places charge that much for a glass that's not half as good.

Don't expect a formal wine list or smart recommendations; Holdridge admits he's no expert. He just buys at good prices and sells at about retail, which is unheard of in the restaurant business.

The other feature is an irresistible family atmosphere. The wine, nice china, dark greens and rosemary sprigs sticking out of the steaks might intimidate some pizza buyers, but the genuine welcome puts anyone at ease. Come twice and, local or tourist, you're family (almost everyone spoke to me on my return).

That may come from their sales background or because this place is a family affair: Namesake Caleb is the couple's 2-year-old son, and some nights he does seem to own the place.

Good wine prices and generous friendliness go a long way to compensate for any problems in food, even for a food-first diner like me.

The menu can't be called Italian but the short selection leans that way with bowt-ti pasta, tomato sauces and veal as well as red meats and grouper. Many sauces are heavy, punched up with cream or brandy, more so than I like. Then there's the pizza, included to feed locals daily supper, which has already proven to have a rare Chicago crispness and an un-Chicago range of toppings (from sausage and pepperoni to feta, pineapple and grouper).

There are some odd flashes of experimentation. Warm sweet potato salad is a signature side I hoped would work but the bell peppers made it a veggie stew more sour than sweet; go for garlic mashed instead. Yet seaweed salad with capers, olives and teriyaki, which seemed a clashing mix, worked.

Of the entrees, the house veal special with artichokes and mushrooms was best but needs a sauce that's thinner in texture and deeper in flavor so that the components have more identity.

I'd rework the golden grouper entirely: The menu says it has a touch of red sauce, but mine was covered with enough sauce for a spaghetti dinner. This dish and the clam chowder brag on baby clams, but both would look and taste better with fresh Cedar Key littlenecks in the shell.

Of the steaks, the 14-ounce New York strip is a good piece of meat but I'd like it trimmed more sharply and given a crisper sear on the edges. Indeed, I think the big stone pizza oven offers an opportunity for heartier fire-flavored cooking.

Service on my first visit was letter-perfect, friendly and thoughtful from the door to the kitchen, but the waiter lottery wasn't so kind on the second, with the server failing in theory and practice.

He didn't know if the grouper was black or red (he said it came from the bay, not the gulf), described the source of the dessert as "from a box," didn't split the salad for two as requested, forgot bread, delivered a box of leftovers to the table before dessert (my pet peeve), made terrible espresso, and did not seem to note or report that we had eaten only half our entrees.

Still I left pretty happy, and not because of the deal on the wine, but because Caleb's delivers the virtue the restaurant industry invokes more than it delivers: hospitality.

There's work to be done, but Caleb's has the hardest part right.

6700 Gulf Blvd.

St. Pete Beach

(727) 368-0081 Hours: 4:30 to 10 p.m., Monday through Thursday; 4:30 to 11 p.m., Friday-Saturday.

Reservations: Recommended.

Details: Beer, wine, take-out available.

Prices: Pizza, $7 to 12; entrees, $10 to $22.