TampaBayEats.com

Several weeks ago I took a vacation to San Francisco and for a whole week I consumed some of the best food and wine in my life.  Needless to say, returning to the reality of everyday life has been especially hard and I’ve done my best to come down from the vacation bliss.  Imagine my shock yesterday morning when I opened up the local paper online and was met with a picture of a former Tampa chef, in San Francisco! 

According to the article by Chris Sherman,  Chef Scott Howard cut his culinary teeth in Tampa at top-notch restaurants such as rg’s, Capriccio and Mis en Place.  Unfortunately for Tampa, Chef Howard felt that in order to make it big, he had to leave the area for a city more serious about food.  So he moved to San Francisco and is now doing things with food that Tampa won’t see for a long, long time.  I am ecstatic that a Tampa Bay chef has moved on to find great success, but in the same note I find it disheartening to learn of such a talented chef who felt the need to leave the area in order to succeed.

Sherman interviewed Chef Howard about his “move to California, his cooking philosophy and how the chains are eating Tampa Bay.”  One of those topics struck me particularly close to home, especially since I have done quite a bit of writing on the subject:

On what Tampa Bay needs to become a “food town”:

“…I talk to my friends every week on the phone. When I speak to Marty (Blitz) and B.T. (Nguyen of Cafe BT in Tampa’s Hyde Park), they say it’s become so saturated with chains. That’s the big difference. Chains don’t survive here. Or maybe, they don’t thrive. There may be an Outback around, but I don’t know where.

People here support individual restaurants and chefs; they really demand quality.

Of course you’ve got some really great restaurants (in the Tampa Bay area), but the competition from the chains is really strong, especially in the casual restaurant segment. You (Tampa Bay diners) just can’t support many good independents.

How do you feel about this statement?  I do my best to promote independent restaurants but I’ll admit that I have an occasional meal at Bonefish or Fleming’s.  Are we doing our best as a city?  If you are a frequenter of chain restaurants, what makes you gravitate toward them?  What would you like to see from independent restaurants to win your business?  I have my own opinions about these questions and freely admit that the some of the chains do a great job with customer service and marketing.  But is the food really better?

Local restaurants mentioned:

Restaurant BT
www.restaurantbt.com

Mis en Place
www.miseonline.com

For anyone in the Tampa Bay area remotely interested in food, I suggest picking up this week’s issue of Creative Loafing. Titled the “Food Issue,” David Warner and Brian Reis head it up with a comprehensive article about “Restaurant Rows,” featuring streets that contain clusters of great dining in close proximity. In addition to the usual mentions of Howard Avenue in Tampa and Central Avenue in St. Pete, he opens up the world to hidden treasures in Dunedin and Gulfport. Now that I’ve got my road map, it looks like it is time for me to make a day trip.

In his regular column, Reis makes the official announcement of his transition from freelance food critic to the position of full time food writer and editor. It may have been a long time coming, but the timing was right for Creative Loafing to get serious about food. Since Chris Sherman’s recent retirement, Brian Reis has stepped up to the plate and proven himself to be one of the area’s best food writers and critics. I believe he will be the anchor for the future of the food writing community in the Tampa Bay area. You can quote me on that.

In the span of three months, two national publications have named Bern’s steakhouse in Tampa the number one steakhouse in the country. This month’s issue of Saveur, aptly named “The Steak Issue,” is packed full of talk about steak, ranging from steak knives to steak sauces and even a photo laden tutorial on the various cuts of meat. But the most important to me is a list called the “Magnificent Seven,” naming the nations top steak houses. Of course, the number one steakhouse is Bern’s, right here in our own backyard. We may not be well known in the culinary world, but when it comes to steak, we can hold our own with the likes of New York and San Francisco. But it doesn’t end with a quick mention in a food magazine. If you are one of the rare few that buys Playboy magazine for the pictures, you may have missed the list of America’s Top Ten Steakhouses on page 30 of the May issue. Yes, it’s the issue with Anna Nicole on the front and the lovely pictorial of the Girls of Conference USA, (featuring several from UCF), but I just subscribe for the articles anyway. Bern’s, according to Playboy:

“The dry-aged beef is impeccable, and exacting waiters have been known to apply the vermouth to your martini with an eyedropper.”

I’ll agree about the dry aged beef, but applying vermouth with an eyedropper to me just sounds ridiculous. I’m just here for the beef. This is a serious list and is no page filler; also appearing in the top ten is Crescent City Steakhouse in New Orleans, the old-school joint where Ruth Fertel got the idea for the sizzling platter of steak and melted butter. Once again, we take the number one spot show the nation that not only do we have beautiful women in Florida; we know how to eat a good slab of beef.

Since the last time I posted to this site, the world of food writing in Tampa has changed quite a bit.  Yes, It’s been a while since you’ve heard from me, but I’m hoping you can cut me some slack.  Brian Reis is still banging out solid restaurant reviews week after week for Creative Loafing.  The Tampa Tribune still has a pretty weak and unknown food critic (I generally don’t waste my time reading them), but the biggest news is the retirement of Chris Sherman, the longtime restaurant critic and food writer for the St. Pete Times.  It seems all of the dining out, eating and drinking got the best of him and he decided to step down into other writing roles that didn’t require him to eat as much.  It’s probably the best for him, but with his retirement I’m afraid we may have lost the foundation for food writing in Tampa.

For several weeks, the St. Pete Times had several guest writers take turns writing restaurant reviews before they finally chose Laura Reiley, a local writer and author of Florida Travel books.  I’ve only read a couple of her columns, so the jury is still out on her expertise in the food world.  That being said, I realized that we’re in trouble after reading her glowing review of two brand new chain restaurants making their debuts in Tampa.  Yea, you read me right, chain restaurants as a review in the paper.  Is she kidding?

I can understand a review of a higher class chain restaurant, like Ruth’s Chris or Roy’s, but the fact that she chose to write a column so early in her tenure about two mediocre, mid priced chains is alarming.  I’m not really sure where we are headed, but I don’t like the looks of it.  Another noteworthy retirement is that of Matt Ragas, a New Orleans native who’d been writing the food reviews for Sticks of Fire, a popular Tampa blog.  When I first moved here and was featured in the New York Times, Tommy at Sticks of Fire did a neat little article about me that created quite a buzz.  Unfortunately Matt will be moving out of the area in a couple weeks and guess who has stepped in to write a weekly food column?  Yes, it’s me.  Check out the site often and keep an eye out for some exciting talk about food in the Tampa Bay area.  Just in case you miss a post, I’ll re-post everything here as an archive of my food writing.  See you soon!