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Channeling new flavors

The restaurants at Tampa's Channelside have matured into sophisticated spaces with some dishes already hitting the mark and menus that promise more.

Million-dollar diner-tainment malls, such as International Plaza, BayWalk, Centro Ybor and Channelside, have created more successes for restaurateurs than for diners.

Why? Developers, designers, bartenders and brand managers can build clublands and wet zones. It takes a cook or two, ideally a chef and maybe a pastry chef, to make a good restaurant. Too often rent and decor come before talent and ingredients.

Four years into Tampa Bay's mall boom, we wait for good eating from these venues - places soulless enough to be called venues - but there are small bits of flavor: International has gelato, Centro has Samurai Blue and BayWalk has green-sauce tacos.

Oddly, Tampa's Channelside, still half-empty upstairs, has matured the most in its cuisine. You wouldn't know it to look at it. Initially a grownup alternative to Ybor with the sophisticated look of an Italian piazza, it broke bad quickly. It started with Stump's faux white trash supper club and soon morphed into South of the Border or old Vegas with so much mismatched neon it looked like a blocklong pinball machine.

Yet crowds have come, and so have tenants (from Hooters to the Chamber of Commerce), and slowly a few corporate restaurateurs cranked up its taste.

Tinatapas

Wow. With a huge, round dining room, Barcelona mosaics and logs for rafters, this is the most distinctive design to come from Channelside's pioneer tenant, Millennium. This is the gang that created Stump's and Howl at the Moon and then moved uptown with Splitsville and Sally's Alley.

Small plates of any kind are perfect for the cruising set, and tapas have a special resonance on our Spanish coast. Plus, dishes of cold munchies are custom-made for the no-fuss bar kitchen. That is where they came from, verdad?

Yet tapas, cold or hot, need flavor, which traditional tapas gets from distinctive ingredients. If you think Spanish food is comfortably bland, then you haven't gotten enough garlic, olive oil, sherry, pimiento, capers and aioli.

You won't find it here, although there are a few good bites. A red gazpacho with croutons has a good splash of olive oil. And I enjoyed a New York strip (no side dishes) with a sturdy red wine sauce.

Bigger disappointments were in the vegetable tapas. Pisto, a cold ratatouille, was long on peppers and short on eggplant. Potatoes brava, simple cubed potatoes in tomato sauce, desperately need pepper.

The tapas include little seafood beyond ceviche, shrimp Louis and smoked salmon, which is odd just 150 feet from the water. This channel's not great fishing, but the classic sardines, anchovies and pickled seafood should be naturals.

The bar naturally makes mojitos as a signature drink but failed the rum test. Asked for good rums, the stock was lots of Captain Morgan and Bacardi and only one Myers. There are many more out there.

It's all too sweet, better for a beach bar's all-mango, all-Jimmy buffet, when some of the most beloved tapas are simple plates of olives or salty Serrano ham.

But the themesters showed smarts in decor and wit in twisting the name of the famous Tipatina's in New Orleans. They'll do better on the food, too, eventually.

The Signature Room Grille

This branch of the Chicago chain opened with Windy City bluster and brag that it didn't meet except in Da Bill. But three months later, it serves one of our more sophisticated steakhouse menus.

The rolling salad cart, limp breadstuffs and tepid music I encountered on my first visit have all been replaced. Now I tasted citified food in entrees and trim all the way through and heard a bluesy bass-piano duo with sultry vocals, a glimpse of the metropolis we wish for. Not flashy, simply up to date.

Rack of lamb came in two big double chops with an invigorating crust of nuts and mustard, but I could have skipped them for the lentils. Honest. Lowly beans had been nursed with carrots and other vegetables into a side as meaty as the chops, with a demiglace reduced to house paint thickness. Not expensive or exotic, just skillful.

Alaskan king salmon was full-flavored, moist and perfectly crisped on an Atkins-frendly stack of zucchini with light but spunky accents of tomatoes and olives and a lemon-caper sauce.

Shrimp and scallop ceviche had a kick, and flourless chocolate cake was a near-perfect slice of deep, dark chocolate. The three-fer flights of wines (To the competition: Steal this idea, please) remain a bargain.

Dinner here is still a $100-a-couple indulgence, but that now buys a C-note's worth of taste.

Grille 29

At first bite, this venture from Restaurant Partners of Orlando (it owns Sloppy Joe's on Treasure Island) seemed one more updated and overdecorated corporate fern bar, stronger on martinis than food, with eager but clumsy service. A great view of Tampa's working harbor, but otherwise unexceptional.

The Grille has since solidified its service and food and mastered the modern mainstream "grill," from comfort food and trendy appetizers to near $30 surf and turf. That's an appropriate menu to graze mingling singles, fuel families and movie fans, and impress dates.

What impressed me more than lobster quesadillas and sesame tuna was smart cooking and baking on the most familiar dishes. The puffy crust on the chicken pot pie would shame a generation of grandmothers. And if you love ordinary gooey creamed spinach, imagine it with fresh spinach and real cream.

Steaks and thick lollipop pork chops come off the grill with robust character and good sides at a fair price range (from $14 up). To the staff and buyers, "premium-grade" beef means little. One server said it was choice, which is fine; another said it was like prime, which is doubtful.

Scallops stuffed with lump crab on lobster mashed potatoes could have been purely piggish, but instead the big tender scallops, fine fresh crab and indulgent mash were smoothly sauced, silky and almost light. Well, almost.

The star of the place is a big elliptical bar converted to a "dessert island," actually a garde-manger station where chef Matt Ripley and team assemble smart salads, starters and classy pastries. The apple tart is a rare one that captures French flavors, and the berry bomb is a fine display of crisp pastry and fresh fruit.

Grille 29's name, er, number came from the placement of copper on the periodic table - and also the California highway through the Napa Valley. Why not? The wine list wisely includes more than a dozen wines from cab to rieslings at $25 or less and even enjoyable bubbly (Domaine Ste. Michelle) for less than $30.

Tastes of promise in a mall? That's worth a toast.

-- Chris Sherman can be reached at 727 893-8585 or sherman@sptimes.com

615 Channelside Drive, Tampa

Parking available from $1 to $10.

Phone: (813) 514-8462

Hours: 4 to 10 p.m. Monday through Thursday; 11 a.m. to 2 a.m. Friday; noon to 2 a.m. Saturday; noon to 10 p.m. Sunday.

Details: full bar; outdoor seating.

Prices: tapas, $3.95 to $10.95; entrees, $11.95 to $17.95.

Phone: (813) 319-8888

Hours: 5 to 10 p.m. Monday through Thursday, 5 to 11 p.m. Friday, Saturday. Bar opens at 3 p.m. daily, closes at midnight Monday through Thursday, at 1 a.m. Friday, Saturday.

Details: full bar; no smoking indoors; live music.

Prices: Entrees, $15 to $42.

Phone: (813) 221-2929

Hours: 5 p.m. to midnight daily.

Details: full bar; outdoor seating.

Prices: $7 to $29.