Bern's loses executive chef

Jeannie Pierola leaves the landmark restaurant in Tampa over a difference in vision with the owner.

By CHRIS SHERMAN, Times Staff Writer
Published November 6, 2007

Jeannie Pierola, right, former executive chef/partner, SideBern's and Executive Chef, Bern's Steakhouse, Tampa, works in the SideBern's kitchen during a recent Italian wine tasting dinner for guests. Pierola has left both restaurants.
	[Scott Keeler | Times]

ADVERTISEMENT [Michael Rondou | Times (2003)] Pierola, a self-taught chef who grew up in a hospitality family on Bradenton Beach, will remain in the area. "Obviously I'm not leaving Tampa. I love this town."

TAMPA - Jeannie Pierola, the flavor-bending chef who brought modern cooking and global flavors to Bern's Steak House and SideBern's, has left the Tampa landmark after nine years of revamping its kitchens.

Pierola split last weekend with David Laxer, whose father founded the steak house in 1956, over a difference in outlook. Neither would cite specific issues.

"David and I have extremely different visions on how the restaurant should go in the next step," Pierola said Monday.

The restaurant's newest expansion is a boutique hotel across S Howard Avenue, designed to be a gourmet destination for wine and food classes and tastings as well as lodging and a casual restaurant. However, the details were still in the design phase - and subject of internal debate.

"It's very sad," Pierola said "but everything changes and it will be for the best."

Her own plans are uncertain. "Obviously I'm not leaving Tampa. I love this town."

Laxer declined to comment. Spokesperson Heather Sherer- Berkoff said: " What he's said to me is that her contributions to the business were tremendous. He certainly hopes she does well."

Pierola was executive chef of both Bern's and SideBern's, often called the steak house's "little sister." The new chef or chefs replacing Pierola at the restaurants will be promoted from within, Laxer's spokesperson said.

Pierola agreed and said the Bern's/SideBern's kitchen staff members are ready to succeed her.

"Without a shadow of a doubt," she said. "They all have the talent and professionalism. I expect the food to be as good and probably better. This is a chance for everyone to shine."

The news of the split between Pierola and Laxer stunned local food and wine fans.

Despite their strong egos, the partnership over the last decade had bought the steak house new prominence and given Pierola national recognition on network television and appearances with the James Beard Foundation in New York.

It raised Pierola to the elite of Tampa Bay chefs, a leading woman in local restaurants and one of the most imaginative and artful cooks.

"That's a bummer," said owner of Fine Wine Warehouse Mike Kwasim, a fan and friend of Pierola's. "A damn shame. She was doing so well, too."

Bern Laxer, a New York entrepreneur and adman, had started Bern's Steak House with his wife Gert in the 1950s when fine dining was rare in Tampa and most of America.

He eventually won world recognition for its elaborate array of aged steaks, polished service, ornate red decor and one of the largest wine cellars in the world.

Laxer was obsessed with hand-made quality, had his own vegetable farm and metal shop, made his own crackers and built a dessert room of old sherry casks atop the steak house's plain white warehouse of a building.

But a 1993 crash crippled Laxer, and son David took over the business at age 28. He continued to run it after his father's death in 2002.

The younger Laxer expanded operations by opening SideBern's as a dessert cafe, adding a wine store and starting an annual wine festival. In 1999 he hired Pierola as Bern's first chef and culinary brains since his father.

Pierola is a self-taught chef who grew up in a hospitality family on Bradenton Beach. She had her first restaurant, Tia Lena's, at her parents' motel, worked a while for Bern Laxer and then created Cool Beans and Boca, two of the first local restaurants to bring Miami's nuevo style to Cuban and Latin foods.

On her return to Bern's, she and Laxer propelled Bern's into contemporary dining. First, they turned SideBern's into a full-meal restaurant with hip decor and endlessly inventive cuisine. She called it "one world under food" for its mixed artisanal food, exotic ingredients and tastes from Asia, the Mediterranean and the Americas, sometimes all in one stack of dim sum appetizers.

At the original steak house, David Laxer embarked on major redecorating and Pierola slowly updated that menu with more choices, including a Kitchen within a Kitchen with dishes as modern as SideBern's, a room for rare cheeses and most recently a long line of elaborate new desserts.

In the process, a kitchen that had focused simply on great steaks was converted into a modern culinary academy.

The next project is the Epicurean Hotel between Howard Avenue and the Crosstown Expressway, which drew opposition from residents in New Suburb Beautiful but is now progressing.

The framework of a multi-story parking garage has been built and architects' initial plans call for a handsome street-scale complex that would include rooms, conference space, a teaching amphitheater and a wine store.

Making that hotel into a food and wine destination with wine bars, nibbling and teaching all at once has been a dream of Pierola's. Now the hotel will continue without her. Instead she will preside over some new venture, "something that will be cool and will be fun."

Pierola's departure from Bern's was the second recent chef change at a prominent white tablecloth restaurant around Tampa Bay. Redwoods, one of St. Petersburg's first fine downtown restaurants, lost Domenica Macchia, a New York chef, who took over early this year.

[Last modified November 5, 2007, 23:07:31]