Eat My Florida

I don’t actually know what the news is, but it’s big! OSI — the Outback folks — are trying to drum up interest in a Lee Roy Selmon’s press conference this afternoon. Lee Roy will be there, as will OSI CEO and all-around big-shot Bill Allen. But really, what kind of big news would necessitate an honest-to-goodness White House-style press conference?

Here are some headlines you might be seeing tomorrow morning:

1. LEE ROY SELMON’S UNVEILS NEW USF BULLS BANDWAGON BURGER! (For a limited time only.)
2. MAMA SELMON UNVEILS NEW RECIPE: — The deep fried onion is a classic Southern staple enjoyed by Lee Roy in his youth, and served with a spicy dipping sauce.
3. LEE ROY SELMON APPOINTED VICE-CHAIRMAN OF TAMPA BAY AREA REGIONAL TRAFFIC AUTHORITY –Chairman Shelton Quarles: “The best offense is a good defense.”
4. FREE RIBS DISTRIBUTED AT TOLL BOOTHS FOR ALL CROSSTOWN EXPRESSWAY SUNPASS USERS — Bill Allen: “We just want to maximize the cross-genre marketing potential of Lee Roy’s name.”
5. UNRESTRICTED FREE-AGENT LEE ROY SELMON’S TRADED TO PIZZA HUT – Bill Allen: “No one wants to see him go, but we couldn’t come to terms on a new contract.”

I guess we’ll see soon enough.

UPDATE:  Turns out that the press conference was just about Selmon and Selmon’s president — Peter Barli — buying the chain back from OSI. Big whoopty-do.

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.

Painters are busy covering the atrocious pink facade at Soho’s Chateau France outpost; the number for the N. Dale Mabry location is disconnected; both locations have vanished from Chateau France’s website. Looks like impressario Antoine Louro is in complete retreat to his base in St. Pete.

According to former Chateau France (SoHo) chef Tony Savage, the partnership between Louro and the owners of the SoHo property (Barry Smith and MaryAnn Stiles) was dissolved last week. There won’t be much interruption of service, though, since the spot will immediately re-open as Chateau SoHo, with Savage as executive chef and a more appetizing exterior.

“I was in New Orleans for 23 years before Katrina,” says Savage, who will be sliding some French-inspired Creole and Cajun favorites onto the menu, along with more medium- and lower-priced French dishes to temper the previously ultra-expensive fare.

A call to Louro’s Chateau France St. Pete to confirm returned this helpful advice – “I can’t help you. Goodbye.” That may be because of this. Or this. Or this.

UPDATE: I just received a return call from the ever-gregarious Antoine Louro. He confirmed that the North Tampa location was closed — he sold it about six weeks ago — and that his partnership with Smith and Stiles was over. “Partnership doesn’t work if you’re not in the business,” he said, explaining that Stiles’ is a lawyer and doesn’t understand restaurants.

After the aborted expansion of the past two years, he has no plans on opening any more outposts. “Every person wants to open a Chateau France,” he said, “but I’m done with it. I’m happy here in my house in St. Pete.”

The Dutch, in partnership with catering giant Sodexho, have built an entire restaurant as an ongoing behavioral experiment. I am curious and horrified at the same time.

Forget the side issue of audio and visual recording throughout the place — most people will know all about it before walking through the doors. Do we really want Sodexha to know the visual, auditory and olfactory triggers that make us pick where, when, what and how much we eat – the culinary equivalent of poker tells?

Imagine the subliminal cafeterias that will comes, where every aspect is contrived to force us into spending as much as possible on the highest profit margin items. What a a way for shepherd’s pie to make a comeback.

I win again! The past few months — ever since Laura Reiley took over for Sherman — the Times and CL have reviewed the same restaurants on the very same week on several occasions. I’m sure that she follows similar rules about waiting long enough to let the restaurant find it’s footing, but not so long that the place is old news, whenever possible, so the coincidence is understandable. I’m just glad CL comes out on Wednesday, so my reviews get a 24 hour head start.

More interesting than that, however, is when our opinions differ. With Cheap, we differed a lot. Chalk it up to a difference in palate, the usual night-to-night variances in a restaurant’s performance, or even a fundamental disagreement in what food should be like. In any case, restaurant reviews are like any other type of criticism: you need to figure out how well the reviewer matches your own preferences before you can determine how to use the review.

When it comes to Cheap, who do you guys agree with?

No, don’t start re-working your resume in the hopes that the Bern’s Waitstaff Training regimen has gotten any easier, despite my suppositions here. Just got an email from the Bern’s PR machine with a delineation of the entire training process. The gist is: it still takes a long, long time before you’re fit to work the floor at the old place. And you still have to work on the Company farm, if only for a solid 40 hours.

Here’s the break-down, according to Captain Al of the Bordeaux Room:

“The current training regimen is approximately 1-1/2 to 2 years from the day someone starts as a Waiter Trainee until they finish training with The Captains and are put on the schedule as a Bern’s waiter.

They will spend anywhere from 7-12 months in the kitchen, learning about the operation of the kitchen and doing all the chores that it takes to keep the kitchen clean and ready for our guests to tour. During this time, they have to pass weekly quizzes from Waiter Trainee Manager Joseph Donoian, on food, wine, and their general knowledge about the restaurant. When they are released from the kitchen, they go to the dessert room and work with the waiters upstairs, to begin learning how to wait on guests. They are permitted to keep the tip money they receive while working upstairs, as well. After approximately 2 months, and provided their performance in the dessert room meets Bern’s standards, they are sent back downstairs, where they spend one week working (one night for each) at the reservation office, the front desk, the service bar, and the wine station.

The final phase of training then begins. They put on their Bern’s uniform (Burgundy tie) and begin 14-18 weeks of training in the dining rooms with the room Captains (Gold ties). By this time, they must have completed 40 hours of work at Bern’s farm. Once they finish with the last Captain, they begin their career as a Bern’s waiter the next night.

After they are on the floor for a minimum of one year, they are eligible to take their Silver tie test, a 40 question oral exam on the menu, wine list, and any other information relevant to their duties as a waiter. The passing score is a minimum of 85%, and while, most pass on their initial attempt, not all do, meaning no Silver tie for now!

Sweetwater Organic Farm, the subscription based CSA tucked into a residential neighborhood in Tampa, has expanded into Clearwater.

The new farm is at Gateway Nursery, formerly a landscape plant grower, and is owned and operated by Pamela and Hank Sindlinger. Crops will be coming in this year, with about 40 full-year shares available (part-time shares can be had as well. According to Sweetwater’s Exec. Dir. Rick Martinez, they’ve sold about 60% of the shares.

Another interesting point I learned talking to him is that Sweetwater took over management of Bern’s Steakhouse’s famous farm plot on South Tampa. Sweetwater has long had a relationship with the restaurant, using some of Bern’s land for their own crops, but now the CSA runs the whole shebang. What does that mean for the legendary practice of forcing Bern’s waiter-trainees to till the soil and get their hands dirty? According to Bern’s Publicist Heather Sherer-Berkoff, they still do, but she’s checking to be sure. Expect an update in the next day or two.

The NoHo Bistro will start doing brunch on Sunday, Oct. 14 which, by itself, is news of a sort. That section of Tampa is a bit starved for decent restaurants, especially since NoHo’s neighbor Vivia’s closed earlier this year. But brunch? Not terribly exciting.

Unless you have a “southern grits bar”. I can imagine a burbling pot of engorged cornmeal surrounded by bowls of butter, cheese, chili, sausage, peppers and onions, with fruit and sugar for the sweet fans. Maybe even shrimp. I’m salivating.

Blueberry-cinammon sausage and fruit sushi also sound intriguing, but only in small portions. More room for grits.

UPDATE: A copy of the first menu is after the break. (more…)

I have a special place in my heart for chain diners. Not quite fast food, not quite real restaurant, these in-betweeners have the freedom to present tasty treats that drive-through joints can’t, all the while ignoring the niceties of sit-down eateries. The best of the bunch? Steak ‘n Shake.

Where else in the Bay area can you get a classic Cincinnati three-way (except perhaps, at 3 a.m. behind a gas station on MacDill)? It’s overcooked spaghetti topped by chili and shredded cheese, perhaps with a chocolate and vanilla side-by-side (another back alley MacDill specialty). Unlike real, pureed Cincinnati chili sauce, though, Steak ‘n Shake’s is actually tasty, with chunks of meat, beans and a bit of roasted chile spice.

The S’N'S patty melt is a necessity, buttery fried rye bread balancing out two cheesy beef patties impregnated with grease. Need to cut through the heavy food? That’s why the French fries are so salty! The sodium acts as an abrasive, scraping the cholesterol right off the walls of your arteries, as far as I know.

Steak ‘n Shake does have a drive through, but it’s a fool’s game to wait that long in your car. And you’ll miss the clever Amex Halloween marketing campaign on the placemats, as well as the dichotomy between the depressing older people and chirpy teens manning the joint.

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.

Abut a month ago, the New York Daily News hired a brand new restaurant critic with a gimmick: she’s a food blogger and she’s not anonymous. You can read here in the corporate fluff piece how she feels it’s important for “readers to have someone to identify with” and how “her radar will be tuned to determine whether she’s getting special treatment.” A bit naive, in my opinion. A lot of people seem to agree.

You can read Ruth Reichl’s Garlic and Sapphires for copious examples of how recognition can affect a dining experience – her Le Cirque review is a classic treatise on the subject – but the culture of dining critic anonymity isn’t universal. At The Times of London, pics are posted with critics’ bylines; no matter where you are, a Google image search can often turn up a pic or two of even the most circumspect reviewer. Here’s my pic.

As always, I’ll be dressing in drag, undergoing regular plastic surgery and faking my own death every few months, just to keep my mystery man image intact. Maybe image was the wrong word.

I got a call from Dave Hackett today about his website gototell.com. Don’t worry if you’ve never heard of it, it’s new. Along with a lot of empty content he’s working on filling, gototell has a fantastic search page that lists restaurants that have been fined by the inspectors of the Florida Department of Hotels and Restaurants. Start here and you’ll be able to plot the worst offenders on Google Maps, see a list off all the places fined over the past 2 years, or navigate the State page to look up inspection reports.

Think it’s cruel? Don’t. The State is pretty lenient and usually gives restaurants time to correct problems before it escalates to slapping a fine. According to Hackett, “the fact that you’ve been fined says to me that you were at the very best, forgetful, or at the very worst it was something seriously bad.” Check it out before you eat out.

According to this report, Florida restaurants are Number One! Yeah! More food poisoning than any other state!

Screw you California (#2), with your paltry 62 cases of food-borne illness. What up Ohio (#3)? 38 is the best you can do?

These numbers are for 2005, so let’s hope that we can continue to keep the crown through the end of the decade.

(Thanks to Dave Hackett.)

“I’m not dead,” she said, in a not-so-ghostly voice left in a message.

A few weeks ago, we pointed out that Vivia’s Kitchen had closed, which was true. What we didn’t know was what she was going to do next.

“I’m closing soon on a place on MacDill,” she explained to me later. It seems the regulatory hurdles of serving dinner at her tiny place on Armenia were too high. Plus, she was getting worn out by the pressures of running the business all by herself. “I cant produce the food I want doing so much alone.”

So, she’s got some partners and a bigger space (”ink is almost dry”). The new Vivia’s should be opening by the beginning of November.

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.”

Sangria is adding the former home of Grey Flannel Gallery to its Main Street Sarasota location. This expansion will add over 2100 square feet (roughly doubling the space) and should be completed sometime in the Fall. The restaurant will remain open for most of that time, with a short week to two week closure just to complete the renovations.

This comes on the heels of Selva’s expansion (which will not be at the old DJ’s/Munroe’s spot, we have it on good authority) and the oncoming Ceviche juggernaut (scroll to the bottom). Looks like downtown Sarasota is going to be awash with Rioja this winter. Let’s hope the dining public is ready for a tapas glut.

The latest rumors had Sarasota’s Selva Grill seeking a new location for it’s kick-ass fancy Peruvian cuisine. The truth is so much better.

Selva is negotiating a location for a brand-new restaurant. According to chef/owner Darwin Santa Maria, “we’re working on a whole new concept.” No details until he closes on the property, hopefully next week, but the place will definitely be downtown.

According to Santa Maria, the restaurant could open in as little as a month, which is way too quick if there is going to be much of a remodel. Maybe an existing place? Let’s start the guessing with – the old Munroe’s/DJ’s? Just noticed this morning that there is a Leased sign in the window. That would give us back the clubby upstairs bar area, but likely with a South American twist.

If that’s the case, Selva might need to start worrying about the massive complex St. Pete’s Ceviche will be opening on 1st Street in just a few months.

Looks like Vivia’s Kitchen didn’t have the stamina for Tampa’s summer doldrums, although there may be other reasons the short-lived but tasty spot headed by Vivia Grier has closed its doors. Nothing has been confirmed, but the For Sale sign in the window and the fact that the phone is disconnected speaks volumes. (Thanks to Chris Madalena for the info.)

And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.

We broke it open yesterday and here’s The Table’s official press release released today (after the break).

(more…)

Just confirmed that The Table, one of my favorite restaurants in Sarasota, is planning on giving birth to a twin in downtown St. Pete. The new place will be on the 500 block of Central — although I haven’t yet driven by to see what space they’re taking over.

Anyone not familiar with the “Atlantic rim” cuisine Rafael Manzano and Pedro Flores should check out The Table immediately. For those of you in the Bay area, it’s worth a drive down to SRQ so you can be prepared for The Table’s St. Pete debut in 3-5 months.