Delicious History

This is another review i wrote for Metro Mix Tampa Bay, The Cork in the Hyde Park area.

Check it out here.

To read the review, click the link below the summary for “more.”  It is set up in a slide show format.

Here’s my latest review for Metro Mix Tampa Bay.  I love Chopstix (in North Tampa).  I love the Du sisters.  I love the lo mein. I ate there again for lunch today and wanted to beat my chest I felt so good.

There are some good pictures, too.  Thanks to my imaginary friend.  But that’s another story.

Read the review and see the pictures here.

It has been a grueling week on a number of levels.  But it has passed.

I submitted my manuscript for the Columbia Restaurant: Celebrating a Century of History, Culture and Cuisine, yesterday.  I met with Richard Gonzmart, the 4th generation president of the Columbia group, and Meredith Morris-Babb, director of the University Press of Florida, to discuss some particulars.  When we started talking about release dates and marketing, it finally dawned on me that after five years working with the company, and close to three years associated with the book project, it is finally going to print.

The publication process has taxed my time and patience in ways i never expected, but the work will soon pay off.  It is unbelieveable that publishing books is still so slow and archaic, when all i have to do is click once to publish this piece.

Nonetheless, the book represents a great launching point for the rest of my writing career.   I have long been irritated by how much food studies has been dissected into all all of these smaller disciplines: nutrition, recipes and technique, pop culture, and so on.  Food as a whole dominates so much of humanity’s waking hours that this shabby treatment, especially by historians, is incomprehensible.  But the genie is out of the bottle.  The Food Network is part of the mainstream, and is here to stay.  And academia is now beginning to catch up.

It still amuses me to think of how one of my history professors was so incredulous that I would pursue food as a subject of scholarship.  I look forward to outselling his books, most of which are pretty lame.  I must give credit to Gary Mormino and Ray Arsenault for their encouragement beginning way back in 1997-98 when i began graduate school.  They are both extraordinary.  Their Florida Studies Program at USF St. Pete is a great asset.  Teaching there was a great honor.

Anyhow, the Columbia book is due out in September and marketing will begin in October if all goes well.  I look forward to hitting the road again to promote the book.  It is very special to me and the Gonzmart family.  The recipes kick ass, too.  See the mojito chicken that I posted here months ago.  More about the book later.

Keep an eye out for teasers!

My latest at the Daily Loaf includes a special recipe for mom.  I made it for her birthday, and it was appreciated.  I’ve made the same tomato soup recipe a half dozen times now, and everyone loves it.

Check it out here.

Just thought I’d share a piece i wrote about the nice food available every Sunday at the Tampa/Riverview Thai Buddhist Temple. There some nice photos as well. While the quality of the food varies, for the prices (and the cause), the Thai Temple is a sweet spot.

check out the article here.

my faves include the glazed sweet potato, banana, and taro deep fried and served in paper bags. if you can find them, the shrimp fritters, for lack of a better description, are awesome: small whole shrimp (heads, shells and all) clumped in batter and fried till crispy with a nice sauce studded with fresh cucumber. don’t forget the little coconut/green onion cakes/custards. The papaya salad is nice and hot, and in general i like to explore the offerings.

Delicious history will be back better than ever soon enough.  I’ve been asked to blog for Creative Loafing about food and history.  I will share more details when arrangements have been made.

I’ve been writing some reviews for Metro Mix Tampa Bay, a massive and ambitious web magazine that is part of a national web presence.   The first two assignments were lots of fun.  In the first, I featured five of the best cocktails I could find in Tampa.  Read it here. I also wrote a feature on Ybor City’s ten best Rum drinks, which you can find here. Both were lots of fun to research, but they were not my ideas, hard as that might be to believe.  I have been getting help from a special photographer who will remain nameless for now.

So while delicious history has languished under renovation, I have not been completely idle.  More soon.

A restaurant review without photographs is like mediocre, overpriced Italian food.

I had a meal at Gio’s Italian Grille and was rather disappointed in the food for the price.  I their defense, my companion and I ordered a few things that are easy to bungle.

The fried calamari was innocent enough, with a pleasantly simple tomato sauce that seemed to be made from actual fresh tomatoes rather than some canned specimen.  The salt and sugar content were well below the norm, and in this case, it worked well.

The Caesar Salad was a disappointment, especially for $7.  The dressing was like an overly rich paste with no hint of anchovy or real flavor beyond the creaminess.  The croutons were crumbly, and the salad was a great big blah, with the only other ingredient being iceberg lettuce— water suspended in a leaf.  Glad we split it, as i didn’t eat much.

The eggplant parmasean was eq2ually disappointing: a stack of naked eggplant smothered in a heap of tomato sauce, mozzarella, and ricotta cheeses.  No pasta.  No vegetable.  And the thing cost $18.  What a joke.

The only highlight of the meal was the filet with black peppercorns and brandy sauce with a hint of cream.  The flavor of the steak and pepper pleasantly punched through the smooth, simple sauce.  The accompanying vegetables were fresh and cooked perfectly.   This was a treat, and the only decent thing we ate that night.

The bill for this muddle: $64 before the tip.  My only consolation was that we had arrived with a coupon that hacked $25 off the price, but $50 after tip, it still felt like a waste of money.

In these troubled economic times, restaurateurs need to level with us.  We catch on fast, and we won’t come back.

I should have taken the coupon as a warning sign.

I like to use pictures for this blog, but the luxurious, uncompressed photos were too much of a good thing.  So I will henceforth be using Flickr to host my image content.  I will go live with the Flickr account in the coming week or two.  It will make lavish visuals much easier to manage.

Ah, computers.  Having trouble importing media.  I hope to have the problem resolved by the end of the week.  Not sure if the problem is WordPress or what.  I may be making a big change.

I wrote this article in 2005 and ended up publishing a radically different version instead. The later version appeared in a 2006 issue of Forum magazine, published by the Florida Humanities Council. I originally wrote the piece that appears below, which chronicles the troubled final years of the Seabreeze restaurant and the hard work of Robert and Helen Richards, the last owners.

Forum wanted a nostalgic piece about the old idyllic days at the Seabreeze, and I obliged. But this piece is the one that actually supplies new information. The great old memories of the place are already featured nicely in the Seabreeze by the Bay Cookbook, which i co-wrote with Helen. She and Robert are wonderful once in a lifetime people to meet, and I treasure them as friends.

This piece attempts to conjure the feelings of loss: for the community, for Florida fishermen, for places like the Seabreeze. (rant deleted)

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The salt water of Tampa Bay laps gently against a seawall at Palmetto Beach. A rusty hulk rises from the water some thirty feet into the air. Below, a vacant building stands by the shore, with little evidence that a cultural and culinary landmark once thrived here.

Eighty years ago, Victor Licata opened the Seabreeze Restaurant on the site, blending his beloved Italian cooking with Cuban and Cracker influences. The Seabreeze culled a blue collar clientele from the workers of nearby industrial facilities. The Licata family arguably invented the deviled crab, a spicy croquette of crab and tomato sauce. Today, his restaurant is defunct, and a fishing family lost its livelihood. The price of doing business in Florida has climbed too high for most fishermen.

Robert Richards and Helen Chattin grew up in Palmetto on the outskirts of Tampa. They went out crabbing one night as a first date. Helen shone the light and held the tub for their catch. During the 1950s and 60s, young folks ate, drank, and fell in love in the Seabreeze’s crushed shell parking lot. A temple of American drive in culture, the restaurant’s good times and savory aromas drifted over the waters of the bay. If the Licatas didn’t mind offering illegal liquor, Bolita tickets, and friendly women with their food, Robert never paid much attention. “That was their business,” he said.

Robert and Helen married in 1954. He worked as a roofer and boilermaker, but saltwater flowed in his veins, and he longed to spend his working years on Tampa Bay. One day when Robert admired a tub full of live shrimp and learned they were caught in the bay, inspiration struck. “I got the bug then,” he said of his desire to become a commercial fisherman.

After a few part-time shrimping seasons, Tony and George Licata—Victor’s sons—told Robert that they needed soft shell crabs for their Seabreeze Restaurant. The men had been friends for many years, so Robert agreed to help and built a seafood market beside the restaurant. By 1970, Robert went deep into debt to build a fleet of shrimp trawlers, and the fresh seafood attracted crowds of customers.

Only a family passionate about fishing could persist in such a career. For many years, Robert and Helen adhered to the same exhausting routine. Robert shrimped all night, Helen woke before dawn to make him breakfast and take the kids to school before putting in a day at the market. When she returned home with the kids, Robert woke, ate supper and returned to the shrimp fleet. While he set out for the night, Helen put the kids to bed and rested while she could. By 1980, the couple built a strong business and brought more family into the operation.

Today, such a business is nearly impossible to start on the coast of Florida. Historically, the state’s business and political leaders valued profits over sustainability, and people like the Richards paid the price. Tampa’s sewage, dumped into the bay after being treated with a cocktail of bacteria-killing chemicals, disrupted sea life (Rich in bacteria, untreated or partially treated sewage produced bumper crops of shrimp). Planes dusted the bay with deadly poison meant to exterminate nearby red ants. A regular series of chemical spills from phosphate plants and incinerators took a deadly toll on the bay’s ecology, bleaching sea grass and seafood alike. Just last year, a phosphate company’s gypsum stack collapsed into the bay, perpetuating one of Tampa’s less savory traditions. Robert estimates the late 1980s as being a low point for the health of Tampa Bay.

The Richards maintain that overfishing was never a problem. Net bans missed the real problem entirely. Pollution rendered many fish infertile. Legislation favored tourist sports fishermen over commercial fishing. Of politicians and their new laws, Robert said, “They abolished the commercial fishing industry.” Sporting anglers blamed their lack of catch on the fishing industry, “even though the shrimp boats were not catching any of the fish that they caught,” Helen said.

New pressure came from inland. Industrial farm-raised seafood, treated with preservatives and plumping agents, filled the seafood cases of supermarkets, bypassing local fishermen and markets alike.  In 1990, a new crisis struck. George Licata announced he would sell the Seabreeze, and the Richards would lose their base of operations. The Richards feverishly searched for a new home for their fleet and market. “We looked everywhere,” Robert said, among “the dwindling space that’s available on the gulf coast.” Waterfront development occupied all the land. The remaining spaces commanded too high a price for consideration.

Once again, the Richards risked all for their chosen profession and bought the Seabreeze. They passed the market and fleet to their eldest son Jimmy. This preserved their beloved fishing business, but also made them restaurateurs, which they knew little about. George Licata promised to teach them the ropes of the Seabreeze after a vacation. He died of cancer soon after. Upon taking over the Seabreeze, the couple endured “much worse of a grind,” according to Helen. When asked if they considered selling out, Robert laughed and said, “As soon as we bought it!”

It soon became apparent that neither the restaurant nor the market could prosper on their own. At the market, young Jimmy Richards struggled, “as hard as he tried he couldn’t make a go of it,” Robert said, “even though we had five boats then.” Many prospective customers preferred the convenience of supermarket seafood, however expensive or lacking in quality. “As production declined in the seafood industry,” Robert explained, “instead of selling a lot of the products wholesale, our son would bring it to the restaurant, process it there and sell it at a profit.”

Robert and Helen welcomed the reliably fresh seafood. New laws prohibited them from buying product from fishermen without expensive permits. The Richards became wary of unscrupulous wholesalers who marketed questionable product at premium prices. “Robert had to watch it all the time,” Helen said of their wholesale purchases. Jimmy’s fresh seafood allowed the Seabreeze to maintain quality without raising prices.

The Richards family squeaked by despite mounting pressure. Helen remembered, “We had a tiger by the tail, you couldn’t turn it loose.” A legal battle over property with the Tampa Port Authority—still in litigation today—exacerbated the problems. Robert suffered a serious heart attack.

By 2002, Robert and Helen reached the end of their rope. They “couldn’t stand it another day. We weren’t staying afloat anymore.” They sold the property to International Ship Repair, searched Florida’s gulf coast for new property, but found nothing suitable. The fishing industry is so weak that they cannot find buyers for their trawlers.

Robert showed understandable frustration when he recalled that commercial fishermen could not catch mullet under a foot long. “Now that the fishing industry’s all but gone, sports fishermen are allowed to catch those little finger mullet to use for bait. You can throw a bait net and catch two or three hundred sometimes. But we weren’t allowed to catch them and sell them for food.”

Despite those hardships in the past, the Richards enjoy their lives in retirement. They might even be able to forget the disappearance of their livelihood if they could find buyers for their remaining fleet. Selling three shrimp trawlers to Florida’s vanishing fishermen is no easy task.