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New cafe aims to gratify bellies of a boomtown

The co-owners of 2 Chef's Cafe say that culinary choices should also grow along with Spring Hill and the county.

By MICHAEL KRUSE
Published December 30, 2005

SPRING HILL - 2 Chef's Cafemakes a new kind of food for this area in a new hot spot in Hernando County.

Interested?

The two chefs are cousins and are in their 20s.

Interested now?

Just go on and try the cheese-crusted chicken.

Still not interested?

Then hear this:

"I'll put my pasta up against anybody in Spring Hill," said Craig Jaynes, one-half of the 2 Chef's team.

"Outback?

"Carino's?

"Bring it."

Jaynes is 29 and lives in Spring Hill. Dylan Chamberlain is 28 and lives in Lutz.

Their simple storefront restaurant in the new Spring Hill Retail Center has been open for about four months, and word is starting to spread: In a community chock-full of Chinese food and pizza places, the same old chains and cheap, bland early-bird buffets, 2 Chef's Cafe is serving up something called French Floridian cuisine.

The location is telling, too: The almost-finished strip center at Anderson Snow Road and Spring Hill Drive is near the Suncoast Parkway's Spring Hill exit and within a few miles of a bunch of subdivisions that are done or are in the process of going up on the Barclay Avenue-Anderson Snow corridor.

Hernando's population is more than 157,000 now, according to the county Planning Department's latest estimate. That's up almost 30,000 since the 2000 census, and the Spring Hill Retail Center sits in one of the fastest-growing spots in one of Florida's fastest-growing counties.

"It's a good spot," Tampa-based strip center owner Paul Jallo said this week.

SunTrust Bank opened its 10th Hernando branch catercornered from the strip center in early September. Advance Auto Parts opened across the street not long after that.

The nearby communities include Hernando Oaks, Pristine Place and Silverthorn, and Trillium and the Villages at Avalon are on the way on Anderson Snow.

Asked why here, why now, SunTrust/Nature Coast boss Jim Kimbrough answered with a tried-and-true real estate maxim: "Location, location, location," he said.

"We have tried to be out front trying to put offices on the precipice of growth."

Jallo is no different in that respect.

The 38-year-old owner of five strip centers and more than 20 gas stations has businesses from Tampa to Punta Gorda, he says, but this is his first push into Hernando.

The Spring Hill Retail Center has a 23,000-square-foot plaza, a 7,000-square-foot carwash and oil change place and a 7,500-square-foot BP gas station that is expected to be finished by next month.

Open already: an ice cream parlor, a furniture store, a paint store, a tanning place and a nail salon. Not yet: a seafood restaurant, a dry cleaner, a hair salon and the gas station. One day not too long ago parts of the parking lot still smelled like asphalt.

Jallo is putting up another, smaller strip center across the street on Spring Hill Drive, and says he's talking with Dunkin' Donuts, a New York-style pizza parlor and a hair salon.

When he comes up to Hernando to check on the progress of his properties, though, he almost always stops at 2 Chef's. He says the cheese-crusted chicken is his favorite dish.

"Oh, God," he said. "Fantastic."

Jaynes and Chamberlain, fourth-generation Floridians, have worked as electricians and in construction and as short-order, "turn and burn" cooks. They have associate's degrees from a culinary school in Lakeland, but they always wanted to start their own restaurant.

They did the electric and the drywall and put on the countertops at 2 Chef's. They did everything. Including taking out second mortgages on their homes.

"We have everything riding on this," Jaynes said.

He moved up here from Lutz in 2001. He decided to open this place in 2003. He signed a lease in the summer of 2004.

What he saw, he said this week, were those booming population stats, and that Suncoast Parkway exit, and the rest of the restaurant "scene," too. And with a few exceptions, and there's no need to point fingers or name names here, most of the Hernando County cuisine is, well . . .

"Tastes like hospital food," said James Kirby, 42, a 2 Chef's regular who was in for dinner one day this week.

There are only 10 seats at 2 Chef's. It's almost cafeteria-style. The food comes in Styrofoam clamshells, and it's not real expensive, either, but Jaynes says the place is "like a wolf in sheep's clothing."

The menu includes sandwiches, salads and soups, using roasted meats, but it also has pasta dishes with portabella cream and wine butter sauces, and chicken pot pie, pork loin and the popular cheese-crusted chicken.

"People underestimate the food quality that's coming out of here," Jaynes said.

"Until they eat."

Benita Matthews is a co-owner of the UPS Store next door. Sometimes she can smell the guys getting ready for the lunch rush.

"I guess it must come through the vents," she said. Which makes her and her co-workers want to eat there. Which they do. A lot.

One late afternoon earlier this week, at a not-prime time of day, and in the slow week between Christmas and New Year's, 2 Chef's still had something of a crowd. Ditto for the next day's lunch crowd, which had a guy with a shirt and tie and slacks, a guy with paint-splattered shorts and work boots and an older couple. A Hummer pulled up.

"Everything's fresh here," said Kirby, maybe the most regular regular so far. "No garbage, no preservatives, no MSG. I don't like garbage in my food."

Michael Kruse can be reached at mkruse@sptimes.com or 352 848-1434.

[Last modified December 30, 2005, 00:57:15]