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Shopping for good food
[Times photos: Stefanie Boyar]
Kevin Jarvis removes a freshly baked pizza from a wood burning oven at California Pizza Kitchen at International Plaza in Tampa. Pizzas with odd toppings such as barbecue chicken, Japanese eggplant or Philly cheesesteaks, are just part of the chain’s menu and formula. Thanks to strong staff and careful training, CPK delivered pizzas, pastas and salads with high energy coming out of the blocks. |
By CHRIS SHERMAN
© St. Petersburg Times,
published October 4, 2001
At the new International Plaza mall, California Pizza Kitchen will win hearts and taste buds. Two other restaurants get honorable mentions.
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TAMPA -- Forget waiting for the Cheesecake Factory to open.
The breakout success in new dining for shoppers at International Plaza isn't even in Bay Street, the theme park of restaurants still taking shape at the edge of the mall.
Nope, the winner in my nibblings so far is California Pizza Kitchen, tucked in a corner of the first floor by Nordstrom. At CPK's 125th location, the staples of New America, from Santa Fe pizza to Thai linguine, are knocked out with the old-fashioned noise, speed and charm of a Horn & Hardart's or any dime store lunch counter of your memory.
The plaza's restaurants, which include many of the newest concepts in midlevel chain dining, are not all open or prepared for a full review. Less than two weeks out of the box, many staffers are still finding their way, and much of the food is mundane. Yet the open restaurants are a veritable showroom of the latest Murano glass, curved banquettes, twisted wrought iron and hip server uniforms.
And wood-burning ovens, because mall pizza today can be a thousand slices away from the stuff of my first malls.
On my first go-round, I concentrated on places that featured the New American amalgam, a homogenized fusion of Italian, Mexican and Asian flavors born on the West Coast, garnished with goat cheese and field greens, often served on a pizza shell. None at International Plaza are as wild as Wolfgang Puck's original duck sausage pies, but some are still silly enough to be banned in Naples.
California Pizza Kitchen toned down Puckish pizza, delivered it to the masses and is now king of the category with 27 combos, from thin and crispy classic Margheritas to the likes of chicken burrito or Peking duck on a thicker dough. I can vouch for BLT and a stranger Gorgonzola with pear, caramelized onions and hazelnuts, a surprisingly mild and sweet pie. Combined with lettuce in ranch dressing, it amounted to good bread, dessert and salad on one plate. I'm not embarrassed to say I liked it.
The menu is playful with more than pasta, tossing salami and garbanzos into chopped salads, making spring rolls of tortillas and guacamole, or dressing shrimp linguine with cilantro and peanut sauce. You can play it straight with a pretty good version of cold rice paper rolls from Southeast Asia or a plain bowl of lunch counter soup. Okay, I did have two in the same bowl, tomato tortilla as hearty as a salsa and a split pea barley with as much comfort as it had in the 1950s. The only loser I tried was apple crisp, with limp apples and limp crisp, too.
You could get sharper, more authentic versions of most of these elsewhere, but California Pizza turns them out with amazing quantity, speed and freshness, and almost all are under $10. The place does have cool lighting, but the stars are the staff. The joint was jumping with 10 cooks working the oven and on the line, two chefs expediters, three or four neckties supervising, plus servers all in constant motion.
If you're in the business or a diner who likes action, get a front row seat at the counter. My server worked the register and takeout, waited the counter and practiced as a bartender simultaneously. The staff was ready to rock opening day because of the strength of corporate training: CPK has seven teams of 11 each who work with new stores for four weeks. Then five trainers stay behind for another week.
The result is quick, friendly and affordable dining perfect for grabbing a bite while shopping, in families or alone.
Server Jennifer Ingelido grinds fresh pepper for diners Sally Garsh, left, Sonia Esposito and Hortense Angard at Nordstrom’s Cafe Bistro.
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Cafe Bistro in Nordstrom sounds like another tradition updated: the department store tearoom. It is that, combined with French bistro style, in good ways and bad.
Rich creme brulee is one of the dessert offerings at Cafe Bistro, inside the Nordstrom department store at Tampa’s International Plaza.
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The decor is a sharp mix of warm colors and retro shapes, and the kitchen staff sports black French flat-top caps. The food fuses Asian traditions with Franco-American comforts and dresses it all with quality ingredients and sharp sauces.
The old club sandwich is here, but the bread is rustic, the chicken sliced from a freshly roasted breast, topped with avocado, field greens, bacon and a few haricot verts, plus crispy frites and a great improvement on ketchup, a kalamata mayonnaise. Those superthin green beans are even better as a side order, hot and crisp with hoisin, Szechuan heat and sesame seeds, both black and white. The wood fire here does only a few pizzas, and the one I tried with Asian chicken and a ginger salad was surprisingly dull eating.
For a department store with a pianist playing next to the escalators, Nordstrom's cafe was hardly genteel and almost as raucous as the Pizza Kitchen. To speed service at lunch, an insane system requires that you read the menu while in line, then place your order and pay for it at the register before sitting down at your table. The process, part of a new concept in three Nordstrom stores, does deliver food faster and turn seats over faster, but it doesn't fit the store's legendary courtesy or the $7 to $12 price tag on lunches.
At Bay Street, the bulging cluster of restaurants outside the mall's food court, the most intriguing food so far is at Prezzo, a chainlet from South Florida. With high ceilings, soft colors and classic jazz, the setting is calmer and more upscale. Here dinner prices move closer to $20, but the cooking is more ambitious, and the Cal-Italian mix gets clever infusions of heartland favorites and Middle Eastern flavors.
The oven bakes focaccia, plus an exceptional flatbread as crisp as a cracker. The pizza has the crunchiest of crusts. The topping I tried, baba ghanouj with pine nuts, eggplant, goat cheese and spinach, bursts with spice. Maybe it ain't pizza, but I like it.
At the upscale Prezzo, the prices are higher and the cooking is more ambitious. This grilled salmon is served with toasted almond couscous, baby green beans and a citrus vinaigrette.
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Linguine with jumbo shrimp and pencil asparagus, tomatoes, lemon and garlic sounded like a good idea until the kitchen weighed it down with a too-oily sauce. But the chef compensated with a crab- and corn-crusted dolphin with leek crispies and a delicate Champagne sauce. The apple dessert from the wood oven was a "tart" of puffy phyllo topped with apples, ice cream and hot caramel, simple and good.
Prezzo's service is still divided between the experienced and the clueless, but I trust the knowledgeable will prevail. Of the restaurants with loftier pretension and higher prices, Prezzo is one to watch.
There is more to come, aside from Cheesecake. The Bamboo Club chain from Phoenix has just opened, the Mah family's Profusion is not yet up to its full menu, and the Todai seafood buffet has yet to open.
I'll be back to try them to see if International Plaza and its entertainment center can be more of a gourmet destination than other malls.
International Plaza is on the north side of Boy Scout Boulevard between West Shore Boulevard and Lois Avenue, near Tampa International Airport. Mall hours are 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Saturday, noon to 6 p.m. Sunday.
California Pizza Kitchen
- (813) 353-8155
- Hours: 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Monday through Thursday, 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. Friday and Saturday, 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Sunday
- Reservations: No
- Credit cards: Most
- Details: Beer, wine
- Prices: $4.79 to $12.49
Cafe Bistro at Nordstrom
- (813) 875-4400
- Hours: 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday through Thursday, 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Friday and Saturday, noon to 6 p.m. Sunday
- Reservations: No
- Credit cards: Most
- Details: Beer, wine
- Prices: $5.95 to $12.95
Prezzo
- (813) 877-7455
- Hours: 11:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. Sunday through Wednesday, 11:30 a.m. to 11 p.m. Thursday through Saturday
- Reservations: For parties of six or more
- Credit cards: Most
- Details: Full bar
- Prices: Dinner, $7.95 to $18.95
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