|
New restaurant marks a rite of passage
With Big City Tavern bringing sophistication and style to Ybor City, Tampa reaches urban status in more than just its size.
By CHRIS SHERMAN
© St. Petersburg Times, published November 2, 2000
[Times photo: Stefanie Boyar]
At Big City Tavern, the range of tastes is as large as a metropolis. From left, carpaccio with Japanese rice with wasabi-soy sauce, an appetizer; herb-marinated grilled pork chop and sweet potato and bacon hash, with vegetable, an entree; and vine-ripened tomato and herb salad with goat cheese and cilantro oil offer palates sophisticated variety.
|
Need proof that monster redevelopment projects like Centro Ybor might actually create the city life of our fantasies? Get in line at Big City Tavern.
Granted, Big City and Centro are brand spanking new and curiosities. The other big restaurant, Dish, is running long waits, and there are still more restaurants to come, but in my mind, this restaurant was the Big Test.
If Centro Ybor was to be more than a theme park for grown-up mall rats, Big City Tavern would have to be a sophisticated spot, urbane in the way cities used to be, full of people who got out of their cocoons. They stopped in for martinis (which didn't have silly names), saw their friends (who maybe did) and stayed for a square meal. Restaurants didn't have big gimmicks, just the presumption that even adults want a place to hang out, eat solid food, drink solid drinks and talk politics and business and gossip.
That's what Big City's founders did on Clematis Street for the movers and shakers of West Palm Beach, but would it work here in Ybor, a real neighborhood turned quaint backdrop for a weekend bar scene, miles from the corridors of power?
You bet. After only two weeks, the 50-foot bar is packed almost every night, and big mirrors reflect a huge room full of excitement. The place is packed, some tables held down by young executives who penciled in "Thursday night: Vamp" on their Day-timers and others by old West Tampa folks who worked in restaurants where you could get a full meal for the price of a glass of wine.
It helps that this restaurant is in the old Centro Espanol, one of the few genuine pieces of the new party zone and Ybor's literal heart. Much of old Tampa grew up courting in this very building, or their parents did. They're delighted to come back, and they bounce from table to table, seeing old friends and blessing the place with real memories. You can hear the old-timers remembering as they walk the tile floors and look up at hallway chandeliers, but it never looked quite like this. There's new old here. The brick walls have been stripped bare, the look of a tin ceiling added and bold pink and blue lights hang like Sputniks. Outside the huge windows, Ybor glitters.
If you think it looks glamorous at night, you won't be shortchanged in the day time. The proportions seem grander and the colors brighter and richer.
The menu aims to deliver a similar mix of elements, all done with extra class and substance: pad Thai (with lobster) and sesame chicken skewers as well as American and Italian favorites, even a paella. While the range sounds like Bennigan's, real chefs are found among the kitchen staff -- enough that the menu credits sous chefs and a pastry chef -- and the ingredients are high quality.
The result is food with familiar names but packed with surprises and classical skill. The pork chop is punched with the surprise of rosemary and a bay leaf perfuming the inside; the hamburger is stuffed with gorgonzola. The kitchen is perfectly positioned for the newest trend -- the egg as comfort food and as a display of classical technique. Here you can have breakfast for lunch (poached eggs over spinach, perchance), an asparagus egg tart, a souffle for dessert and the top dollar item on the menu, scrambled eggs and caviar.
I found myself going more for Italian than meat and potatoes. Big City promotes its pasta and its Asian noodle dishes and even paella under the rubric of "Bowls." How else to sell you on whole wheat penne with porcini, prosciutto, arugula and zucchini? What an earthy combination.
Nothing newfangled about chicken and grilled sausage with a sauce that tastes as if the tomatoes sat for hours on a wood fire. It is hearty, but more imaginative than what happens to a lot of chicken. But not everything works. Lunchtime tacos with a slaw of jicama and watermelon sounded more imaginative than it tasted. I'd rather have tacos del dia or a hearty pork and salsa verde. Fries were hand cut but soggily fried. Bad tomatoes on a sandwich are just as bad as on salad. Can't someone just say "No, we have no tomatoes today?" Please.
This kitchen staff is too large and too well-trained to let those things continue to happen. At their best they seek out good artisan products like Great Hill blue cheese, use an expanded list of vegetables including grilled fennel and escarole, put fun back into the side dishes with the likes of potato lasagne. Management does its part with a good wine list that includes 30 wines for $30 or less and, of course, a bar stocked with competent staff.
Big City will get sharper, I'm sure, but it has already done the hard part, creating a lively meeting place for a city of grown-ups in a place they had abandoned. St. Petersburg's Bay Walk hopes for that too, and it will have two other South Florida imports that might do that, Dan Marino's Town Tavern and Toojay's delicatessen.
Big City shows that maybe development promotion and design can bring back what they once destroyed. But before we give too much thanks, let me ask one favor. It has been noted the remodeled Ybor City, for all its new attractions, lacks a Cuban sandwich.
It would be appropriate to correct this glaring omission at Big City in honor of the people who first gave Tampa a right to that name.
RESTAURANT REVIEW
Big City Tavern
1600 E Eighth Ave., Ybor City, Tampa; (813) 247-3000
Hours: Open daily for lunch 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., and dinner 5 to 11 p.m. Late-night menu: 11 p.m. to midnight Sunday through Wednesday, and 11 p.m. to 1 a.m. Thursday through Saturday. Bar open until 2 a.m. Sunday through Thursday, until 3 a.m. Friday, Saturday
Reservations: Accepted for parties of six or more (and no more than 20)
Credit cards: AE, D, DC, MC, V
Details: Full bar, non-smoking section provided
Wheelchair access: Good
Prices: Lunch, $7.95 to $11.95; dinner entrees, $8.95 to $28
Special features: Outdoor balcony seating; cigar smoking allowed
Back to Weekend
© 2006 • All Rights Reserved • St. Petersburg Times
490 First Avenue South • St. Petersburg, FL 33701 • 727-893-8111
|
