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Madeleina Cottage, St. Pete Beach

The restaurant touts its traditional British fare, but the welcoming atmosphere is as much a draw.

By Laura Reiley, Times food critic
Published December 6, 2007

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The "No Bone" T-Bone Steak is a 12-ounce sirloin and 6-ounce filet with onion rings, grilled tomato and more. Tampabay.com Beach Guide: Find more reviews of restaurants near the beach
	[Times photo: John Pendygraft]

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Madeleina Cottage Restaurant
357-363 Corey Ave., St. Pete Beach. (727) 367-1727, www.madeleinacottage.us
Cuisine: British

Hours: 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. Sunday through Thursday, until midnight Friday and Saturday

Details: Amex, V, MC; full bar; reservations accepted
Prices: Brunch entrees $7-$12.95, lunch entrees $6.50-$28.50, dinner entrees $18.50-$29.50.

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ST. PETE BEACH - English food.

For years, it was the punch line of a joke. Then a spate of audacious young chefs, world-rocking culinarians like Gordon Ramsay, Marco Pierre White and Tom Aikens, made British grub exciting and new again. London became a hotbed of innovation, a place to make a name for yourself in the kitchen.

But traditional English food - Yorkshire pudding, toad in the hole, meat-and-two-veg, mint sauce with lamb well done - still has its following and its place. In St. Pete Beach, that's the Madeleina Cottage Restaurant.

It's a big space, with a long bar, a couple of private dining rooms and a deep row of booths. There's a nighttime sky mural painted on the ceiling by local artist Mike Jenney - inspired by a mural owners Gary and Diane Scott saw at Epcot's Morocco pavilion during a 1991 visit.

The Scotts moved to the States in 2005. They opened Madeleina a couple of months ago.

It certainly fills a gap: It's a good-time bar, the kind where bartenders are garrulous and where you frequently hear, "Oh, I really shouldn't have another, but . . ."

And the food is pure British.

That doesn't mean everything is perfect. The portions are just too big and the menu too vast. The former is a problem mostly for the owners and for those of us with more delicate appetites. The latter is a problem for customers and kitchen alike: With dozens of entrees to husband along, it's tempting to double up.

The mustard-intensive sauce on the filet mignon Paige Melissa ($26.50) also becomes the central element of the beef stroganoff ($24.50). A sturdy onion-lashed brown gravy makes appearances in multiple dishes. And the workhorse chicken liver pate appetizer ($7.50) appears in reckless abundance as the topper in tournedos Rossini ($28.50).

With a shorter menu, more care could be taken with each dish's sauces and garniture. With smaller portions, the restaurant could focus on quality product (and there will be fewer doggie bags threatening to leak brown sauce in our back seats).

As I said, the menu is a long read. Still, it's worth lingering over the brief history of Yorkshire pudding. The Scotts' last couple of restaurants were in Yorkshire, so it's a subject of which they have ample knowledge. Their version is a round pudding disc with a divot in the middle that cradles an onion gravy and/or two English sausages (if you opt for toad in the hole, $6.50 at lunch). Crisp exterior and puffy moist interior, all of it flavored subtly with meat fat - maybe it's not healthy, but it sure feels good.

That could be said of many of the best dishes. Fried Camembert ($9.75), the Barnsley lamb chop ($24.50), steak Diane ($24.50) - there's lots of butter, cream, brandy, Madeira, melted cheese and meat involved. (If you like your meat medium rare or rare, ask which cuts can be prepared this way and be insistent. Well-done is the norm, but the waiters are chummy, solicitous and willing to go to bat for you.)

Seafood options are few, but one evening's Dover sole ($32, but market price) proved pleasant - a fresh little boned-out fish, simply prepared and served up with not much more that a lemon wedge and accompanied by a delicious mesclun mix salad (salads are served British style, with the meal).

Madeleina Cottage Restaurant, it seems, was named after a restaurant the Scotts visited on one of their more dismal vacations, the trip's single bright spot, savored forever in their memory. With just a little tinkering, our own Madeleina Cottage Restaurant could be a bright spot for local Anglophiles.

Contact Laura Reiley at (727) 892-2293 or lreiley@sptimes.com. Her blog, The Mouth of Tampa Bay, can be found at www.blogs.tampabay.com/dining. Reiley dines anonymously and unannounced. The Times pays all expenses. Advertising has nothing to do with selection for review or the assessment.

 

 

[Last modified December 5, 2007, 11:40:52]