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CHRIS SHERMANOr drink. Or just hang out. The weather is perfect, and the outdoor offerings are plentiful.
In Florida, the calendar is different. April, not February, seems to be the shortest month, a brief, fragile period between Winter Finally Got Here and Oh No, It's 95 Already.
The best days, maybe just moments, come now when the daylight stretches past the dinner hour, temperatures hang around 70 at night, and if we luck into a breeze or a shower (plenty of which we've had this week), the oak bloom blows away.
It's perfect weather to be outdoors. And not just to run triathlons, but to eat, drink and just hang out at an outdoor cafe.
We've rediscovered the public virtue of street life. Oddly, it is thanks in some ways to our vices. Twenty years ago Hooters made the outdoor deck a big part of its recipe for a year-round spring break. To serve a never-ending wet-zone party crowd, Ybor City club owners turned every vacant lot into a roofless disco. Last year's ban on indoor smoking started a statewide building boom in decks and porches and sales of plastic curtains to fend off the rain.
The biggest fuel of sidewalk dining is caffeine in the stylish coffee bar where people can sit all day nursing a latte, nibbling a sandwich or just reading, an idea that came from rainy Seattle not the sunny Riviera.
Sneer if you want at the chain purveyors of coffee, bread and books, but they are inexpensive and open to all, all day long. They are that place between work and home to meet friends, or strangers.
They are different from waterfront places. Florida has always had those, from the Hurricane and Bertoni's on Pass-a-Grille to the Island Way Grill on Clearwater Harbor, Rick's on the River in Tampa, Catches on the Pithlachascotee in Pasco County and many dozens more. Breezes will make them cool and enjoyable longer into the summer.
What has really changed the landscape are establishments that are part of everyday life, catering to the shopping, work, business and family needs of locals, not tourists or partying club kids.
And just as with the busiest sidewalk cafes of Europe, traffic fumes and noise are not detractors. One example: The homely corner of St. Petersburg's Fourth Street N and Ninth Avenue sees full alfresco tables at Starbucks and Tijuana Flats Burrito Co.
The trend is off to a slow start, but it will spread. Tampa's Old Hyde Park Village, which pioneered the idea here, still has busy outdoor tables at the Wine Exchange and the Samba Room but needs to fill the gaps in the spaces that once were the Cactus Club and Mia's. And the charm of Grand Boulevard in New Port Richey cannot go without a few outdoor tables much longer.
Here are my favorite spots to leave the car behind and enjoy the street from a more human perspective:
1. BEST OUTDOOR DINNER MENU: E Davis Boulevard, Davis Islands.
Dancers salsa around the fountain at Pipo's on weekends as if it were old Havana, but this insular bit of suburbia has the city's liveliest sidewalk dining every night of the week. Ten restaurants set outdoor tables stretching for a block on both sides of the street. The offerings range from steaming bowls of shrimp soup with avocado at Estela's to pitchers of draft and pizza at Tate Bros. Pizza. Parents and kids are in shorts and T-shirts, although the dancing crowd dons guayaberas and Saturday night finery. Slackers and strollers alike park at Java and Cream, where everyone goes for moose tracks ice cream. Their dogs get Milk-Bones.
2. BEST SIDEWALK LUNCHING: Downtown St. Petersburg.
When Starbucks and Atlanta Bread Company planted their umbrellas on First Avenue N, the street felt city-slick at last. In truth, the past five years have seen more tables and people outside since the days of the green benches. On Central Avenue between Second and Third streets, more than 40 tables are set out at noon for everything from polenta casserole and butternut squash soup at Integrity Organic Restaurant and uptown entrees at Redwoods to pizza at Fortunato's Italian Market and pastas at JoJo's in Citta. Or drift down to the water for curry and pub grub at Moon Under Water or sandwiches from Marketplace Express on the patio at the Cloisters.
Swing around to First Avenue N and you can dine alfresco on hamburgers, pizza, ice cream, gyros and the jump-up flavors of Tangelo's, one of the city's oldest places to sit outdoors.
3. BEST OUTDOOR HANGING OUT: Main Street, Dunedin.
No town enjoys the outdoors and the sidewalk more than Dunedin with its hiking and biking on the Pinellas Trail, Friday night movies in the waterfront park and monthly festivals on Main Street for art, antiques, blues, Mardi Gras and more. Actual streetside dining is limited, but you can perch on picnic tables at Skip's Bar and Grill, chat over espresso and pasta at Olivia's, eat breakfast all day at Main Street Deli, munch on scallop pizza at Bon Appetit's Marina Cafe. The best view of the passing parade, European style, is at Cafe Alfresco, where you can lounge for hours over coffee and pastries or heftier meals while watching the more earnest trudge the trail.
For the American version of barbecue under the oaks, try Eli's, open by the trail on Fridays and Saturdays only. Other outdoors spots not visible from the street: the deck with a reggae beat at Jolli Mon's Grill, the patio (and pale ale) at Dunedin Brewery and the silly 'tinis under the massive new awning in the backyard of Kelly's for Just About Anything and the Chic-a-Boom Room.
4. BEST IMITATION CITYSCAPE BY A MALL: International Plaza, West Shore and Boy Scout boulevards, Tampa.
Bay Street is one of the few malls that gives the illusion of outdoor urban space. You can grab a corned beef at TooJays, sushi at Blue Martini or lamb shanks at Gallery Eclectic Bistro, nibble gelato or wait for a table at the Cheesecake Factory and watch an entire city pass by with Brownie uniforms and turbans, baggy 'Sixers satins and Build-A-Bear boxes.
5. BEST SLICE OF EUROPE: Dodecanese Boulevard and Athens Street, Tarpon Springs.
The good people of Tarpon Springs whiled away decades sitting at small tables with cups of thick, sweet Greek coffee. Today, coffee, pastry and gyros are served indoors in most shops and restaurants lining the Sponge Docks, and the sidewalks are cheek-to-camera with tourists. But a block away up Athens, it's still an Old World village. Outsiders are welcome to get a small cup or a big gyro at the Dodecanese Bakery and Cafe, a perch to watch working townsfolk (and the shirkers, too) buy supplies and daily bread, honk and wave at cousins, and stop in coffeehouses for drinks and backgammon.
6. BEST REPLICA OF FRATERNITY ROW: S Howard Avenue at Azeele and at Inman, Tampa.
Outdoor dining is scattered all along SoHo's restaurant row from Bella's to Mangroves Seafood Grille. The strip suffers gaps at the darkened Primadonna and Old Meeting House, but it still hops most nights.
You'll find the most people outside in clusters around Starbucks, Panera, Whiskey Park and 717 South and at Mac Dinton's and The Dubliner Irish Pub, which sometimes resembles a postgrad fraternity party. On busy nights, Cappy's Pizzeria, the Yellow Door and Sangria spill out onto the sidewalk as well.
7. BEST REPLICA OF 1960S KEY WEST: Beach Boulevard S, Gulfport.
There are outdoor tables and open-air drinking spots along Shore Boulevard, patios and porches at the Portuguese Adega, the Southern-fried Backfin Blue Cafe and the Raffles-ish Peninsula Inn. It's not for big city boulevardiers; most patrons are local and walking. Don't hurry, be happy.
8. BEST GRAZING MADE IN THE SHADE: Florida Avenue at 12th Street, Palm Harbor.
True sand-in-your-shoes eating and drinking has migrated from Ozona to the shelter of the live oaks in the old downtown. Old-timers, newcomers, hard workers and idlers pull off Alt. U.S. 19, slow down, shake off the dust and seek cold drinks and warm friends along the sandy streets. The old favorites are still here: tacos at El Jalapeno Otra Vez, wet burritos at Demer's Den and seafood at Thirsty Marlin, all with beer, but there's latte, tea and Eric's New World Bistro cooking for the modern grazer, too.
9. BEST NEW URBAN CAFE SOCIETY: Gables Westpark Village, Westchase, Tampa.
Developers and architects made Montague Street an instant town center, but there's nothing artificial about the pedestrian traffic here. People stop in the morning for bagels or Starbucks coffee, for ice cream after school or dinner, to grab pizza or have a pasta dinner at Bellisimo's, seafood at Catch 23 or a drink and munchies at the Oak Room. There are sidewalk tables and benches all along. And hundreds of homes within walking distance.
10. BEST WALKING WORTH A DRIVE: Main Street, downtown Sarasota.
You don't need to go out to St. Armand's Circle. Real Sarasota gets its fill of coffee, books and sandwiches in town. Italian trattorias start practically at Tamiami Trail and, while some streets are lined with art galleries and posh antique stores, Main Street continues on past bookstores, Mexican restaurants, coffee shops, bars and sandwich places as well as high-end restaurants, bakeries and a movie theater.
-- Chris Sherman dines anonymously and unannounced. The Times pays for all expenses. A restaurant's advertising has nothing to do with selection for a review or the assessment of its quality. Chris Sherman can be reached at 727 893-8585 or sherman@sptimes.com