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Restaurants

Dinner plates push out CDs for space

By MIKE CANNING
Published February 9, 2005

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Stefanie Boyar/tbt* Mike Martin relaxes in the bistro of his music store, The Music Spot, on S. Dale Mabry.

Food appears to have the edge over records at Mike Martin's restaurant and record store, the Music Spot, at 1902 S Dale Mabry Highway in Tampa.

Success of the restaurant has prompted Martin to shrink the record store area to create more room for dining and music listening.

At the year-old Music Spot, customers can browse through record bins, order a meal in the bistro and listen to live music. Perhaps it's a concept better suited for Ybor City's Seventh Avenue than Dale Mabry, but Martin seems to be doing something right.

Still, he wants to tweak things. "I was scaring people away with (some of) the musical acts," he said. "Nobody really wants to come here for a really fine meal and hear some knucklehead on his guitar trying to be the next reincarnation of Hendrix."

So Martin is creating a second dining room by using 1,000 square feet of his 2,600-square-foot record section. Martin plans to book lower-volume acoustic acts in the second dining area. The original dining/music room will host louder music acts.

Martin expects to finish construction by late March or early April. In the meantime, he's having a clearance sale on his used CDs and old 45 records to make room for the changes.

New chef Jeffrey Ricca, formerly of Roy's and Bonefish Grill, will expand the Music Spot's lunch and appetizer menu with items such as seared scallops and pesto mash on wilted spinach with smoked tomato jalapeno buttersauce, chilled avocado and cucumber soup with croutons and melted brie, and filet mignon tornadoes topped with crab meat and finished with asparagus and bernaise sauce.

Heady stuff for a music store. But Martin promises to continue offering live entertainment nightly.

[Last modified February 9, 2005, 09:16:10]

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