Daily Loaf

Shackleton’s Folly is the new enterprise by Dan Soronen, formerly of Old Northeast Tavern. Domenica Macchia is the former chef at MJ’s Martini and Tapas. A combination of the two could make for a fantastic restaurant.

Macchia just accepted the job today, after pitching Soronen on a gastropub-style menu for Shackleton’s.

“I said ‘A sports bar? Not another one please,’” explained Macchia. “I told him I’d do what other cities are doing, a gastropub, with affordable food that’s good. In New York, you don’t go out to eat before you hit the bar, you eat there.”

She plans on having traditional favorites — some brought from a three-year stint in London — with lots of blue-plate specials and braised meat. “I was brought up on braising,” said Macchia, “why not have great beer and something sitting in a crock for people?”

Shackleton’s Folly is supposed to open in early March at the Coquina Key Shopping Plaza (4300 6th St., St. Petersburg), way down in the restaurant hotbed (?) of south St. Pete. Ernest Shackleton was a famed explored who headed quixotic expeditions to the South Pole, hence Soronen’s choice of moniker. It’ll have an outdoor volleyball court and the requisite TVs, but with an upscale bent, according to Macchia. She’s also not afraid to cook the kind of food people expect from a sports bar.

“Daniel Boulod told me — ‘If you want to cook the food you want to cook, do it at home. Here, we cook the food they want.’ Although I will put my own touches on it.”

On the phone, Macchia sounded ebullient, happy to have found a new job after several months of testing the waters. And even happier to be back in a kitchen. “If they have a mouth, I want to put something in it,” she joked. “I guess i coulda been a hooker, too.”

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