The reincarnation of a down-home Safety Harbor restaurant revives Southern flavor in a neighborly setting that recalls summers of yesteryear.
By CHRIS SHERMAN
Published June 10, 2004
[Times photo: Scott Keeler]
Dawn Algieri, owner-chef of Lincoln Heights Bistro, offers a menu with Southern fried chicken with cream gravy, collard greens cooked with salt pork and ham hocks, and corn fritters served with maple syrup.
SAFETY HARBOR - A summer's Friday night - don't tell me it's not summer yet - is a great time to taste the flavors of the old part of this old Southern village, the way it was before Main Street got cute and condos got, well, everywhere.
Dusk softens the colors on the hundreds of painted bowling balls that frame an artist's front yard. In the cool of the evening, ice cream and beer refresh a crowd of folk music fans at the picnic tables under the trees at the old Whistle Stop burger stand. Even the still air on Elm Street wants to jump up and testify with the gospel hymns pulsing from a tent meeting.
Not far away, Lincoln Heights Bistro is trying to bring all those tastes together in a different kind of revival on Elm, the historic Main Street of Safety Harbor's African-American community.
Lincoln Heights is tucked away on the west side of town, almost to McMullen-Booth Road. Elm Street is just off M.L. King (Fourth) Street and was once the town's commercial artery. Today, the area is mostly residential, but it still has two churches, a school and a restaurant.
The restaurant began as takeout and for decades was known as the C&C. Beginning in 1967, "Miss Clara" Cushnie served up the fine meat pies and goat curry she knew from her life in Jamaica, as well as the snacks and sundries essential to working people in the South.
In recent years the restaurant fell on hard times, but there's new energy and big helpings of Southern comforts from an unlikely source. Dawn Algieri is Italian in heritage, Brooklyn in accent and gourmet chef and instructor in trade. Despite all that, she makes the best greens I've had in years, not too salty but rich and meaty enough to make Popeye switch to collards.
Actually the operative color, however, is orange. Algieri has rehabbed the building with buckets of vibrant Dreamsicle and filled the interior with black wrought iron, sort of thrift-store New Orleans patio.
The food's heritage is indisputably Southern, the smothered pork chops, fried chicken, macaroni and cheese, meatloaf, cole slaw and creamy grits beloved by both blacks and whites and too rare today.
Lincoln Heights sets the finest table of soul and country fare we have on either side of the bay. The bistro goes a touch uptown on Friday nights, but the daily lunches are the best deal, a full range of the classics, and most of them less than $5.
Certainly Algieri can and does add some modern imagination and professional touches, including grits with shrimp and andouille and bottles of Red Stripe and Black Sheep shiraz. There's cilantro in the orange sauce for the country-style ribs, but the star of the plate remains those meaty ribs that home cooks always knew were the best pork going.
The fact that she adds chipotle pepper doesn't spoil the old-fashioned warmth of squash casserole with cheese and butter crumb topping. And Algieri does know how to cook summer squash and zucchini with bacon. Boy, does she.
Granted, Friday night fare puts on more style, with a short list of entrees, including the likes of pan-roasted duck or salmon, that changes weekly, but the big thrill is still country vegetables with bacon and trimmings, such as corn fritters fresh out of the fat with maple syrup.
And dessert is just as good. Pudding on one visit was made from banana bread and pie on another was peach.
"Is it fresh?" the server said "I peel them myself." Is there another restaurant that can say that? (The rest of you have two months to learn how). The house staple is, of course, carrot cake with three layers so there's extra cream cheese frosting, too much of a good thing for some, but the cake is moist and richer in carrot than sugar.
Service is not rote or corporate-perfect but fresh-faced and neighborly, more like a first-time dinner with cousins you'd never met before. It's nice to have family treat you like company.
Lincoln Heights Bistro is slowly drawing Safety Harbor back to Elm Street to the takeout window and to the dining parlor. Food like this should warm the hearts of the entire village family.
And if the long-suffering dieters at the spa ever hear about it, a bistro lunch could end their good intentions.
- 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. He can be reached at 727 893-8585 or sherman@sptimes.com
Lincoln Heights Bistro
602 Elm St.
Safety Harbor
(727) 726-4210
Hours: Lunch, 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., Monday through Friday; open for dinner Friday only, 5:30 to 9 p.m.
