restaurant

Malio's Prime, Tampa

The restaurant brings new life and good food to downtown. The noise level, however, is an unwanted accompaniment.

By Laura Reiley, Times Food Critic
Published September 13, 2007

Malio's Prime
400 N Ashley Drive, Tampa
(813) 223-7746
Cuisine: steak house
Hours: 11 a.m.-11 p.m. Monday through Thursday, until midnight Friday, 4 p.m.-midnight Saturday
Details: V, MC, Amex; reservations recommended; full bar; valet parking and parking lot
Prices: lunch entrees $7-$24, dinner entrees $21-$38

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TAMPA - It's a story that people love to tell of the small family restaurant on Dale Mabry that would be king.

Mayors Dick Greco, Rudy Giuliani, sports coaches and owners (John McKay, George Steinbrenner) and assorted luminaries (Burt Reynolds, Muhammad Ali) patronized the place, lifting it into the big leagues alongside Bern's, the Columbia and Donatello.

But what made Malio's Malio's was Malio.

He knew everyone, made people feel good, kissed the ladies. Malio Iavarone was the consummate restaurateur and showman, his restaurant an iconic dining destination.

It opened in 1969 and closed in 2005 - a long run in restaurant years. And now it's back, kind of.

Malio's son, Derek, and his buddy Jason Fernandez, owner of Ybor City's Bernini, have launched Malio's Prime in downtown Tampa's 31-story Rivergate Tower (you know, the Beer Can Building). It's an anchor of sorts for the whole Riverwalk initiative, a vote of confidence that Mayor Pam Iorio's vision of a riverfront renaissance will become reality.

Malio's Prime is a welcome addition, filling a void in a restaurant-impoverished area, especially at lunchtime. Malio isn't a presence here, more of an inspiration.

Derek Iavarone and Fernandez hired Urban Design Studio for the architectural work on the soaring lobby space. The company made excellent use of the cylindrically shaped building, with riverfront windows, cascades of natural light, multilevel dining and curves and swirls that visually soften the hard lines.

This leads to my biggest beef with Malio's Prime. Those hard lines and volume ceilings lead to deafening noise (see accompanying story, Page 33). It's an acoustical nightmare.

On my first visit I was seated across from my companions. While their lips moved, I could only hear the ladies across the room, their laughter ricocheting across empty space. We talked louder, so others talked louder. We shouted and gestured, eventually giving up and asking to be reseated on the quieter upper floor.

On my second visit, it took me a few minutes to realize the management had begun to deal with noise. The tall iced tea glass in front of me tipped and wobbled like a Weeble. The tabletop, it turns out, had been thickly padded with sound-swallowing foam. They may have to replace the iced tea glasses with shorter versions, but it was a good first step toward noise mitigation. I say first because sound persists as the restaurant's biggest problem.

At lunch it's thick with downtown business folk wheeling and dealing, the menu a pleasant array of salads, sandwiches and more substantial entrees. One day, the soup ($6) brought a dense, creamy spinach-brie concoction, nurturing as an accompaniment to a special chicken salad wrap sandwich ($14 for soup and sandwich together). The house cheeseburger ($11), a huge affair served with a choice of crisp plank-style fries or crunchy battered onion rings, relies too heavily on Worcestershire sauce in the meat.

The kitchen is also somewhat fallible with cooking temperatures - the burger came medium, not medium rare, same with the lamb chops at dinner. Better than the burger was a lunchtime special prime rib sandwich ($14), the rosy slices of beef elevated with a sweet onion relish.

At dinner you find a smattering of the dishes that made the original Malio's beloved. A disk of warm house-made bread gives way to a rip and a tear as you peruse the menu. Jumbo shrimp "Theresa style" ($14) has an aura of nostalgia, the five-pack of garlicky-buttery, barely breaded crustaceans getting an extra mop-up with a hank of bread. Salads tend to be overdressed, from the straightforward Caesar ($7), emphasis on the garlic, to Malio's famous gorgonzola salad ($7), greens gussied up with crumbles of cheese, tomato and an assertive vinaigrette.

Steaks are the main attraction, but it's easy to get sidetracked by a 16-ounce Australian rack of lamb ($32), juicy and flavorful, accompanied simply by a lemon in a cheesecloth skirt and a bit of mint jelly. The lobster fra Diablo ($32) is a less successful distraction, a pedestrian marinara (where the devil's the devil?) supporting chunks of sweet lobster in a sea of noodles.

The bone-in ribeye ($37) reflects the kitchen's no-nonsense approach with steaks: Ordered Pittsburgh rare (charred on the outside, near raw on the inside), it came a hair toward medium rare, on a hot plate with just a dab of butter and a wedge of lemon - you can add a lush bearnaise or a dusky cabernet reduction (each $3) or a side of salt-crusted baked potato ($5; huge and tasty, it didn't really have the advertised salt-crusted exterior) or delicious tiny sauteed button mushrooms ($7).

As the evening progresses in the 8,000-square-foot restaurant, the noise level swells, making lingering somewhat unattractive. Chocolate decadence ($10) sweetens the deal, with a huge molten tureen of intense chocolate cake and whipped cream. Very shareable, it beats out the changing fruit cobblers ($7), which lack a substantial cobbler top.

If noise can be dealt with effectively, Malio's Prime is a downtown destination restaurant (heretofore an oxymoron) that Malio Iavarone can be proud of - one that may lure its own share of mayors, sports legends and other luminaries.

Think she missed the boat? Tell Laura Reiley at her new blog: www.blogs.tampabay.com/dining. 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. She can be reached at (727) 892-2293 or lreiley@sptimes.com.

[Last modified September 12, 2007, 11:16:55]