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Palm Harbor's Mecca beckons to all who love comforting foods with international flavor, from soba noodles to panini.
By CHRIS SHERMAN
© St. Petersburg Times, published February 1, 2001
PALM HARBOR -- We don't demand enough of lunch.
Ladies still lunch decorously on occasion and a big shot may order a martini (but never three). For most of us, though, midday feeding is fueling.
Warm soup would be nice, a fresh salad will do if we've been good (with decent tomatoes if we're lucky); a sandwich, even a Quarter Pounder with lukewarm cheese, will tide us over. We can even grab a smoothie or eat at the work station.
Not if you're within range of Mecca, a mild-mannered former coffee bar in a strip center that's taking lunch to new lengths and heights.
Mecca serves lunch all day, from 11 until early evening (and perhaps eventually later) in a stylish lunch counter (you place your order and they bring it to the table). Its definition of lunch is intriguing, although in the traditional spirit of light and easy foods. Mecca fits the classic format of soups-salads-and-sammiches, only they're elevated to Asian noodle bowls, baby green salads and Italian panini.
This may be common fare in the metropolis of our dreams, but it's scarce in local real life. Asian groceries and restaurants, Italian bakeries, gourmet caterers and hip chains are slowly adding these delights to our menu.
Mecca is a rare independent that puts all three upscale treats (and no wraps) on the table at once. It's a brain child with good pedigree. Robert Stea of neighboring Blue Heron is one partner; chef Louis Venne, a PTEC grad who cooked at Blue Heron and then scaled Everest and other high Chicago kitchens, is the other. The location is classy, too: Mecca adjoins Harr's Surf & Turf, one of the liveliest butcher-fishmonger-and-wine-merchants in Pinellas.
Noodles are my favorite at Mecca. Not just because I'm a sucker for big city trends and oodles of noodles from Thai have been on hip all-noodle menus from Washington to Los Angeles for five years. Even if rice noodles, udon or buckwheat soba are new to you, surely you can understand that a bowlful served with fresh vegetables and herbs in a warm spicy broth is a universal comfort.
There's chicken long noodle here that will nourish the soul as easily as Campbell's or Grandma's. Soft warm noodles in a bright, peppery broth filled with julienned cabbage, mushroom, chicken and baby corn is a lovely thing and, served in a handmade blue bowl on a raku tray lined with bamboo, a touch of beauty in a weekday lunch.
Mecca pairs different noodles with shrimp and duck and tofu, and I'm partial to the shrimp, especially with the ginger and sesame kick.
From Italy, half a world away, Mecca brings us panini, an upscale sandwich most Americans will recognize as a close cousin of a grilled cheese or a pressed Cuban (with good bread you can probably make one on a George Foreman). Not Velveeta but Gruyere with pastrami, fontina with tuna and tapenade, and sharp Cheddar with Black Forest ham. It's just as warm and ooey-gooey as if you had used the All-American processed stuff.
Mecca puts its fillings between thick slices of a rustic peasant loaf rather than focaccia. Yet when it emerges from the panini iron, the crisp, golden crust is as good as white bread gets. Something about the bread is sweet and fragrant, as if dusted with nutmeg or cinnamon. Could be that fried bread is just plain wicked.
What's inside the panini is key -- even a vegetarian version, with artichoke hearts, roasted peppers and tomato, melds with mozzarella and basil oil into satisfying pleasure. Cured black olives come on the side, but I'd like heftier, more imaginative garnish. Roasted potato salad maybe?
Entree salads are more familiar -- Caesar, Mediterranean and seared tuna -- but handsome, made with good greens and drizzled with lively dressings. Tuna salad's especially sharp with dots of hot horseradish and sesame lime sauces and pretty puffed wontons. The house salad is smart too, with cold asparagus and Parmesan shavings -- more saladmakers should be this clever.
What's wrong on the salad plates is the usual culprit, the tomato. A place that boasts "heirloom tomatoes" on its menu ought to get ripe beefsteaks or own up to the poverty of our inheritance and do without ("Yes, we have no tomatoes today.") Finding and buying good ingredients is crucial.
One flaw that can't be blamed on produce is cold panko chicken as a salad topper: Japanese bread crumbs should make food crunchy, not soggy.
The only big gaps in the concept involve bread and wine, the utilities of modern life, especially mine. I'd like a big variety of fresh artisan breads and maybe a cheese plate. While Mecca does have Illy espresso, bottled waters and new age sodas, I'd love to have even a small selection of the wines next door.
Sure, it's not yet finished and a wee trendy. But we're trending in the right direction toward fresher, more interesting food.
Mecca
3235 Tampa Road, Palm Harbor; (727) 773-8839
Hours: 11 a.m. to 7 p.m., Monday through Saturday
Reservations: No
Credit cards: AE, DC, V, MC
Details: No smoking in the restaurant; wheelchair accessible; no beer, wine
Special features: Outdoor seating, takeout, catering
Prices: Lunch all day, $6 to $9.