Spoto's keeps up with the times while staying true to its identity.
By CHRIS SHERMAN
Published February 12, 2004
[Times photo: Jamie Francis]
Twin elk chops are crusted with espresso coffee, pan-seared and finished with a chocolate port wine demiglace. They’re served with garlic mashed potatoes and asparagus.
Bob Spoto calls his restaurants steak joints and the name fits. A joint is not a dive but a place where the food is hot, the drinks are strong and the handshake of hospitality is both. If that has a ring of old Chicago speak-easies or seems archaic, Spoto doesn't mind.
He wants to celebrate dining from an era when dinner out was special, when cocktails, a good steak, potatoes and maybe creamed spinach summed up a fine meal. While that may not seem endangered in some parts of Tampa Bay, a closer look shows that their numbers are shrinking fast as the roadsides fill up with corporate outlets.
Step into Spoto's, however, and you may feel you have stepped back decades into a silk-flowered supper club of the 1950s or '60s, especially at the Dunedin location. Its warren of wooden booths are warm, deep and dark. I expected to find a wishing-well fountain at the door and a red matchbook and a metal relish tray on each table.
Instead, crackers came with a mousse of chopped liver, with a touch of wine and sweetness, a traditional nicety hinting that the house makes an extra effort (and makes its own).
Perhaps you're not surprised by the mousse, but I'll bet you don't expect venison, elk or caribou, or espresso-crusted filet mignon, crusty bread, new sauces and food-savvy service. Yet they do show up here as Spoto's enters the new millennium.
Some contemporary trimmings don't quite work or seem out of place; a concern for quality and willingness to adapt aren't.
Although farm-raised game is new to this menu, Spoto has cooked steaks and ribs in Pinellas restaurants for more than 30 years and peddled meat in Chicago before that. And, as at many restaurants of such lineage, red meat is the stock in trade here, with or without Atkins, regardless of beef prices.
No server bragged to me about the branding or grade of the meat. Spoto's just buys all choice or better Angus beef, and the owner does the careful trimming. If you and he get lucky, it could be prime.
With most entrees at $20 or less, that's an accomplishment for a small independent steakhouse in a top-price era when even some corporate-backed restaurants and bulk-buying chains have to rely on USDA Select or Australian beef.
So red meat is the first choice here, either a slice of prime rib cut from a whole roast (better and juicier than the shortcut pre-cut slabs) or a steak.
The coffee crust on the filet is a one of my favorite modern tricks and on the filet here it gives a sharp, toasty edge to a rich cut of meat. Add a demi-glace and that's high-end meat and potatoes that will satisfy the adventurous as well. Think of it as red-eye gravy for the smart set.
The game is a new addition here and in other restaurants as an odd counter to the rising price of beef. Venison, buffalo and elk, although raised on farms, not hunted in the wild, remain exotic but they also have an appeal for being lean. And if some of it is still exorbitant in price, top beef is, too. So if you're up for a splurge, why not give it a try?
I did and the elk was delicious, possibly because I pressed the server to go beyond the chef's recommendation for medium. At medium rare it was rich and not too red, flavored a bit like lamb but not gamy, dense solid meat with little fat.
There may be a sense of totemic transfer - eating flesh of a strong, fit animal makes the consumer hardy and fleet, too - but the main payoff for me was good eating. However I would have given it a sauce with more personality, perhaps mustard-based or something woodsy like rosemary and juniper berries.
While smart buying, cooking and saucing of meat, old favorites and new, star at the center of the plate, the trimmings are uneven; vegetables especially need to catch up to modern tastes.
The best touches were two starters. A crackling crisp rendition of fried calamari with zucchini slices was a mild-mannered frito misto (I'd skip cherry peppers). The other was a shameless serving of lobster meat in butter-filled escargot dishes; punch up the sherry and garlic to ameliorate the guilt and it would still be best shared.
Bread is finished to a good crisp in house and is good for dipping in lobster butter, the mousse or anything else. It is, however, oddly served, wrapped in paper and standing upright in a beer mug; both are made with yeast but the presentation is more silly than inviting.
Desserts were the usual suspects, even a server described a big slice of chocolate cake as "your chocolate . . . whatever." While they looked good, I opted for homemade original pineapple coconut bread pudding with a thick caramel sauce. So sweet we didn't finish it and you shouldn't either: one of these a year should do you.
Not surprisingly, greens and green vegetables are the hardest for a red-meat restaurant, even one with a newfound conscience. Caesar was the better of the salads, but only old reliable creamed spinach passed muster in the vegetables. Asparagus was too thick for me, and sugar snap peas, which I love, dropped their middle name and picked up some oil in the overcooking.
Meat-eaters have no fear, however. Spoto's may be putting on a little modern style and adding a few new cuts on the grill, but good steaks and big smiles are still the meat and potatoes of the business.
Spoto's the Steak Joint
4871 Park St. N
St. Petersburg
(727) 545-9481
1280 Main St.
Dunedin
(727) 734-0008
Hours: 4 to 10 p.m. Sunday through Thursday; 4 to 11 p.m. Friday and Saturday
Reservations: suggested
Details: credit cards, full bar, no smoking indoors, wheelchair access
