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Food

Captains of crunch

Let these St. Petersburg entrepreneurs treat you to cereal as you’ve never had it before. Or stir your own.

By JANET K. KEELER
Published April 26, 2006

[Times photo: Bob Croslin]

Margaret Guidicessi runs the 4th Street Granola Bar in downtown St. Petersburg. “Cereal is cool now,’’ she says.

	[Times photo: Lara Cerri]
	Tim and Lara Newman opened the Surreal Bowl in downtown St. Petersburg in January. They stock 33 commercial cereals.

We eat millions of bowlfuls a year, hot and cold. And we aren't content anymore to crunch it at the table or in front of Saturday morning cartoons. From New York to Los Angeles, Miami to downtown St. Petersburg, folks are bellying up to the cereal bar for pours from a box and even homemade granola, which since its hippie heyday has become an adjective for a lifestyle as well as a breakfast food.

Think about the lifelong appeal. Cereal is a baby's first solid food, usually made from rice and served sloppy wet and bland. As baby becomes toddler, compact containers of Cheerios follow. Then comes school and the desire for "bad" cereals with good names such as Count Chocula and Franken Berry.

"I've got people who are just cutting their teeth and people who take them out and everybody in between," says Tim Newman about his customers at the Surreal Bowl, the cereal bar/art gallery/jazz joint he owns with wife Lara in downtown St. Petersburg.

After the at-home introduction, the love of cereal goes off to college where it makes a cheap snack (and sometimes a meal). And so it goes, on into adulthood when any diet predilections can be served by cereal. Need more fiber? Try Weetabix Crispy Flakes & Fiber, 11 grams for 1 1/4 cup. Want to lower cholesterol? How about Quaker oatmeal with the healthy heart on the box?

Cutting back on sugar? There are plenty of artificially sweetened offerings. The government is after us to eat more whole grains and the cereal manufacturers are tripping over each other to get them to us. Somehow, though, whole grain Froot Loops just don't seem right.

Cereal lovers connect with kindred spirits at www.lavasurfer.com/boxtop, a monthly newsletter that invites fawning tributes to favorites. The Breakfast Cereal Gourmet by David Hoffman ( Andrews McMeel Publishing, 2005) celebrates a century of flakes, frosted and otherwise. And, believe it or not, one of Planet Hollywood's most popular dishes is chicken with a Cap'n Crunch crust.

"Cereal is cool now,'' says Margaret Guidicessi, owner and master granolamaker at the 4th Street Granola Bar in downtown St. Petersburg. Guidicessi's local following began when she was a chef at Mazzaro's Italian Market and continued on to her booth, Margi G's Bowl-A-Granola, at the Saturday Morning Market, an open-air bazaar of food, plants and people. She opened the shop in November and has been surprised at how many people pop in for breakfast, lunch and afternoon snacks.

She also serves savory and sweet baked goods and fresh vegetable and fruit juices made to order. A little ginger in your carrot juice? A little more? The baby needs a few slices of banana? Coming up. Guidicessi, 39, likes the idea that the shop, as she calls it, is a place where customers get sustenance from the company and the food.

"People find comfort in granola,'' she said. "They stay here for an hour just to have cereal."

She offers free refills on a $3.25 bowl but not many costumers go for it. With all those seeds, grains and dried fruits, one helping is usually enough. The granola is served plain for munching, with milk - cow or soy - or in a parfait with fresh fruit and yogurt. Granola can be purchased in varying amounts.

Chris Carten, 22, stopped by for a bowl on a recent morning on his way to class at St. Petersburg College. He sat on a stool and chatted for a bit about the downtown condo revolution and the need for more unique stores and places to eat, like beloved St. Petersburg haunts Munch's, Coney Island and Skyway Jack's.

One bowl and he was good to go, perhaps until dinner when he just might pour himself another one in his apartment around the corner. Those bowls add up for Guidicessi, who makes and sells up to 300 pounds of granola a week. Online sales at www.bowlagranola.com contribute to that, though most of her sales come at the Saturday street market.

A no-sugar granola sweetened with Splenda is the most popular mix at the Granola Bar. Chunky Monkey, a melange of oats, maple syrup, brown sugar, cinnamon, vanilla, peanut butter, coconut, peanuts, chocolate chips and peanut butter chips, is another favorite, though customers with highly sensitive taste buds might notice a slight difference from batch to batch.

Guidicessi, who has been making granola for about 15 years, uses no recipes. She knows, mostly by feel, when the ratios are right. For that talent, she credits her training at the California Culinary Institute in San Francisco and her work in the kitchens of Campanile in Los Angeles, China Grill in New York and Nemo in Miami Beach.

Around the corner on Central Avenue, the Surreal Bowl is tapping into the overgrown kid market by selling bowls of Honey Bunches of Oats and Cocoa Puffs for about $2.50 a bowl with toppings and a choice of three kinds of milk. The Newmans stock 33 commercial cereals which can be accessorized with chocolate chips, marshmallows, fresh fruit and Gummi bears, among other treats. The biggest sellers are the "monster cereals,'' Tim Newman says. That would be Count Chocula, Franken Berry and his buddy Boo.

There's jazz on Wednesday and free Wi-Fi and Internet access.

"One of the typical customers will come up, stand in front of the counter, stare at the menu board, and just look completely baffled and bewildered, almost like they want to turn and run," Tim Newman says.

"Then all of a sudden, their eyes light up, and they start to get it. You can see the wheels turning. They're like, 'Ohhhhh, I get it.' "

Cereal, it's what's for breakfast, lunch and dinner, whether you're 8 months old or 88 years.

Times staff writer Jay Cridlin contributed to this report. Janet K. Keeler can be reached at jkeeler@sptimes.com or (727) 893-8586.

CEREAL BARS

THE 4TH STREET GRANOLA BAR (230 Fourth St. N, St. Petersburg; (727) 251-7137) is open 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday and 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday. Homemade granola also is sold at St. Petersburg's Saturday Morning Market on Central Avenue at Second Street. The market closes in late May and reopens in October.

The SURREAL BOWL (661 Central Ave., St. Petersburg; (727) 278-0178) opens at 8 a.m. every day but Tuesday. It closes at 6 p.m. weekdays and 8 p.m. on weekends, but stays open late for live jazz on Wednesday nights.

Granola

4 cups old-fashioned rolled oats
2 1/2 cups sliced almonds
1 1/2 cups sweetened flaked coconut
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup honey
1 cup dried cranberries
1 cup golden raisins

Put oven rack in middle position and preheat oven to 270 degrees. Line a large shallow baking pan with foil and oil foil.

Toss together oats, almonds, coconut and salt in a large bowl. Whisk together oil and honey, then stir into oat mixture until well coated. Spread mixture into baking pan and dry in oven, stirring occasionally, for 1 to 1? hours. Stir in cranberries and raisins, then cool completely in pan on a rack.

Makes about 10 cups.

Source: Adapted from Gourmet, December 2003

[Last modified April 25, 2006, 15:56:59]