Eat My Florida

This flew under the radar last week, but Dave at Eating Tampa snagged it.

The James Beard Foundation sent out ballots for its annual chef and restaurant awards to the judging committee, and New York Magazine leaked the list. Here’s the shocker: Tampa has a couple of names on the list. And they’re related. Guess who?

Jeannie Pierola is up for Best Chef in the South Region, with a lot of stiff competition from the Miami area and someone, egads!, from Punta Gorda. Bern’s is up for the national Outstanding Restaurant award, a category filled with restaurants just as staid and tired as our local favorite. I wonder if Jeannie’s departure from the old brothel will help or hurt either of their chances? It’s probably bad news for Bern’s, and good news for Jeannie.

Let’s place bets: I’ll give Bern’s 2000 to 1 against and Jeannie 70 to 1 against victory.
Here are my predictions: Michael Schwartz of Michael’s Genuine takes the South chef award and Magnolia Grill in NC takes Outstanding Restaurant. New Yorkers love that Southern food.

Winners will be announced in June.

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I’ve been pounding on this muscle-bound mook ever since he announced the name of his “future” restaurant in St. Petersburg. Something about his unrelenting tight-assed demeanor, pseudo-military appearance, pointy head, bad teeth and, well, let’s face it, the fact that he works for the Food Network really rubs me the wrong way. Or it might be the name of the restaurants. Ooze and Schmooze? For fuck’s sake.

I blasted the name (here and here), I questioned whether the restaurant would ever be built, I did everything but launch a full-fledged investigation into Robert Irvine’s character as a businessman. That’s why we have the St. Pete Times.

According to an article in the Times on Sunday, Irvine owes a bunch of people money, lied or exaggerated repeatedly in person, on his Food Network resume and in his book Mission: Cook!, and is sort of little and sad when cornered. And he impersonated a knight, which means the queen will be sending some beefeaters after Irvine’s hide when she gets around to it.

Maybe I should feel bad for him, but why waste the glorious schadenfreude! And with Ooze and Schmooze still in the works, we might have Robert Irvine to kick around for months or years to come.

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In the past two years, Fly has shown that not only can restaurants succeed in downtown Tampa, they can thrive. The lively restaurant and bar has made a name by drawing crowds in for the bar scene, rooftop deck, late hours and upscale small plate dining. Now, owners Leslie Shirah and Matthew Sturm want to up the ante.

They’ve imported a chef from Brick – one of their three San Francisco restaurants – to update the menu and elevate the food. Rene Caceres is a graduate of the New England Culinary Institute and has worked at several restaurants in California. “He had to leave a city known for food, with a very supportive environment for restaurants,” says Fly GM David Bromberg. “But out there, he wasn’t the executive chef.”

In the month that Caceres has been in charge of Fly’s kitchen, he’s already exerted a hefty influence on the menu, steering it towards the seasonal California cuisine he’s familiar with, along with a dash of French influence. Wild salmon comes poached, with dill infused pomme puree, while pork loin is accented by kumquat confit.

Caceres hasn’t shed all of the other Bay area’s influence. He still doesn’t own a car and he lives in downtown, right next to the restaurant.

New Year’s Eve will be Caceres’ coming out party, with a seven course tasting menu entirely devised by the new executive chef.

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Yesterday’s San Francisco Chronicle had a fantastic story about the economics of paying restaurant personnel. That Bay area’s independent restaurateurs have it really tough, with server wages tagged to the city’s minimum of $9.14/hour and extensive benefits mandated by the city. Good for servers, but not so good for cooks, according to the article. Line jockeys end up with very low pay in one of the most expensive cities in the US.

Part of the problem has to do with the expectations of culinary school graduates, which I wrote about a few months ago. Even without massive school loans, though, making it in the shadow of the Golden Gate on $15 an hour is almost impossible. Around these parts, the pay is about the same, but benefits are meager at best. Working in a kitchen is a tough life all over.

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Chef Jeanie Pierola left Bern’s this past weekend after ongoing disagreements with Bern’s scion David Laxer came to a head. All I can say is that it looks like good news for the rest of us. C’mon, who out there wasn’t getting a little tired of the relentlessly eclectic menu and overweening bar crowd at SideBerns?

Now, likely, we’ll get a brand new place with the accomplished Pierola behind the menu. And it’s not likely the ever-static Bern’s itself will change for the worse now that she’s gone.

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Don’t really know what that title means, but I have news about celebrity chef and all-around scary fella Robert Irvine’s poorly named restaurant in St. Petersburg. Ooze and Schmooze was originally scheduled to open this month at 400 Beach Dr., but that’s not going to happen. According to the building’s developers, the earliest they expect the restaurant to be ready is March, due to the complexity of the construction and permitting.

Perhaps Ooze and Schmooze should be the next episode of Dinner Impossible.

I will now go into hiding to avoid a beat-down from the burly chef.

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Local Coffee & Tea - the Sarasota-based minichain of coffee houses - has joined forces with Susan Huff of Integrity Organic. For a while, Local owner Mike Duranko had avowed to CL that he wasn’t going to get in the food business at the St. Pete location. Well, he isn’t. Susan is, using his kitchen. She’ll be managing 330 1st Ave. S location and preparing the home-made, largely organic fare that she’s become known for.

Both Duranko and Huff share eco-sensibilities, so her food combined with the best coffee in the Bay area should be a good match.

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I talked to Chef/Owner Darwin Santa Maria of downtown Sarasota’s Selva Grill this weekend to get the skinny on his new endeavor.

Santa Maria will be taking over the former home of California Bistro Grill on Ringling and replacing the bland sandwiches and soups with casual Peruvian fare like rotisserie meats and, well, different sandwiches. “It’ll be fast food, but high quality,” he said. There will be scooter delivery, a “spicy bar” and more downscale versions of the upscale modern Peruvian-inspired cuisine Santa Maria has made popular at Selva.

“I think Peruvian is going to be the next Mexican,” Santa Maria told me, when I asked him why he thought there was a seemingly disproportionate number of Peruvian joints in town. “There are actually a lot of Peruvian restaurants everywhere.”

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Just had a scouting report on Rand Packer’s Mariposa from our own wine maven Taylor Eason (as well as this blurb from the Times). She’s not too impressed:

“Didn’t eat there since it really looks like an upscale Tijuana Flats (and we wanted sit down, upscale service that night)… You order at the counter and they bring it to you. He spent a fortune on décor but uses plastic trays, forks, etc. Kinda shocking actually… But maybe it reflects what he wants at this stage in his career…”

I guess you can’t blame a guy for wanting to take a more casual route. She could at least have tried one of his popsicles.

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Let’s recap the events leading up to the exciting conclusion of America’s Next Food Network Hack next Sunday! Who will be tapped to “host whatever Sunday morning ghetto slot they have in store for the winner”(Bourdain’s gone soft on the show over at Ruhlman)?

I haven’t updated you on the status of this titannic competition since the beginning because, well, nothing’s really happened. People stammered and stuttered on camera, mediocre food was made to look edible and people were dropped. No big whoop.

Let me help out the judges. If you were still, this late in the game, looking for that indefinable “star quality” out of the final contestants, you may as well give it up. All this show has proved is that almost any schmo with a little training and minimal stage presence can host a show on the Food Network. Is that the message you want to portray, Tuschman and friends? Mission accomplished.

This week, though, things have changed — there’s some drama! The judges slotted JAG into the final two, then managed to pick busty Rory over the milder, but vastly more competent Amy. But wait! Don’t vote yet!

It turns out that JAG likes to pad his resume. Maybe it was a typo - “I meant to say that I had never been to Iraq and I did not graduate from cooking school.” In a tearful confrontation, he comes clean with the judges, who pat him on his back and send him on his way with no hard feelings. Sad, ’cause he was the best cook of the bunch.

That does bring Amy back into the fold, which makes me happy. Her “gourmet next door” or whatever she names her “style” is always just an excuse to bring some serious French cooking into the kitchen. Me likee.

The final battle is up to you. Do you want Busty Horseteeth? Or Frenchy McNoLips? Go vote already.

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Rand Packer — formerly of our local Roy’s and Taylor Eason’s pick for hottest Bay area chef — will be opening his own Mariposa Mexican Grill on July 1, wayyyyy up N Dale Mabry. I haven’t seen the menu yet, but the chef promises “Pacific fresh Mexican”, with homemade fresh tortillas, fresh fruit featured in popsicles and juice blends, and a whole lot Mexi-cuisine loaded with fresh herbs and dried chiles. Did I say fresh?

Mariposa Mexican Grill - 17623 N Dale Mabry Hwy., 813-264-1212

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I haven’t really commented yet on Top Chef, mainly because I wanted to give it a little time. In the past, it has run second place in my summer reality show hit list, behind Hell’s Kitchen. Needless to say, considering the neanderthals Fox has recruited for the past two season’s of HK, Top Chef has easily managed to take center stage. Here’s a few reasons why:

1. Pretty much all of the Top Chef contestants can cook, some of them extremely well. That has become surprisingly rare in TV food shows.
2. The weekly competitions have morphed from the goofy scenarios of season 1 into interesting culinary challenges, where the framework is just a reason for some fine genre cooking.
3. The judges are a heck of a lot better. Colicchio and Simmons are almost likable.
4. Padme Lakshmi.

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