This Tedesco's may be the one
The new go-round for Tedesco's Grillside in St. Petersburg brings together a new chef and a new concept in a winning combination.
By Laura Reiley, Times Food Critic
Published June 21, 2007
ST. PETERSBURG - Some restaurant locations just seem cursed.
They cycle through cuisines and concepts - coffee shop to low-budget noodle house to frenetic fusion -and it's hard to be optimistic in the face of each new iteration.
It has been that way in the old McCrory's dime store on St. Petersburg's Central Avenue, but the current occupant - Tedesco's Grillside - may change the luck. It has got a secret weapon, and his name is chef Daniel Womack.
Womack came to the project just about a month ago, joining owners Maurice and Pamela Haengel in a new version of Tedesco's Grillside, formerly Tedesco's Flame Broiled Grill and several other incarnations.
The vision was Pamela's: foods of the American South, everything homemade, a catfish and pecan-crusted-fried-chicken kind of thing.
Womack, formerly of the highly regarded Sotto Sopra in Baltimore, came here for the same reason a lot of people do: His mom wasn't doing well, and he wanted to be on hand to help out. As he was walking on Central, Tedesco's caught his eye.
Now the young chef is in residence, with carte blanche to amp up the Southern cuisine with his French techniques and tropical accents. Opened in January after a fairly extensive renovation, the cafe is still a simple rectangular storefront with a long exhibition kitchen counter. Unclothed tables and a paucity of art give the decor an on-the-cheap vibe, but Womack's proficiency in the kitchen readjusts expectations.
Not that everything is sweetness and light. He relies overly on squiggles of balsamic vinegar, dashes of orange-colored coulis and dramatic vertical use of breadsticks or twigs of rosemary. It's all unnecessary on dishes like a delicate herbed catfish $15.95 on a bed of sweet, slow-roasted fennel with soft, almost Greek-style potato wedges.
No incongruous fripperies needed on another successful dinner entree of pan-seared pork loin ($16.95), served atop corn-studded mashed potatoes and simple but perfect sauteed collards (without a long simmer and a heavy dose of salt pork, the just-wilted greens are an addictively healthy side).
A long list of salads holds several winners. An iceberg version ($8.95) at dinner shuts up iceberg snobs with lengths of crisp lettuce drizzled with a maple-tinged balsamic vinaigrette, a flurry of blue cheese and a handful of candied pecans. A sliced tomato salad ($8.95) was nearly as good, with flavorful rounds overlapping the kind of mozzarella most often seen grated (not water-packed fresh) - and more balsamic and coulis, but this time totally appropriate.
At lunch, if you order the fried sweet potatoes ($4), you will be inclined to eat the entire crisp, greaseless pile, dusted lightly with salt and powdered sugar. You've been warned.
Also at lunch, fried green tomatoes ($7) are well done, layered with unnecessary mozzarella. At night the tomatoes' delicious cornmeal crust is employed on fried asparagus ($8.95), unusual and very nice.
A more demure pile of the sweet potato fries accompanies a fat chicken breast sandwich ($7.50), encrusted with pecans and situated on a soft roll with lettuce and tomato.
One senses that Womack and team are still getting their bearings and tinkering with the menus, but the overall direction is a good one. Maybe a few more desserts (one night it was only a perfunctory N.Y. cheesecake) and a few more interesting wine offerings, and that waft of "disaster cafe" will be little more than a dim memory.
Laura Reiley dines anonymously and unannounced. The St. Petersburg Times pays all expenses. A restaurant's advertising has nothing to do with selection for review or the assessment. Reiley can be reached at (727) 892-2293 or lreiley@sptimes.com.
Tedesco's Grillside
437 Central Ave., St. Petersburg
(727) 894-2802
Hours: 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Monday through Thursday; until 11 p.m. Friday and Saturday; brunch 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday
Details: MasterCard, Visa, American Express; reservations not necessary; no smoking; beer and wine.
Prices: Appetizers $6.95-$9.95, entrees $14.95-$20.95