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.

Choosing a place to eat Chinese food in Tampa just got a little more difficult.  The public is about equally divided on the superiority of China Yuan or Yummy House, and the befuddled critics haven’t even tried to choose a favorite.  You all know I don’t shrug off tough decisions, but it would be expensive ande time consuming to sample enough of all three menus to make a definitive judgment. If I could secure corporate sponsorship, it would be within reach.  Probably an anti-cholesterol drug.

I think this calls for a group evaluation.  But this will be no simple clash between two Chinese dragons, but three!  (Insert exaggerated anime gasp here!)

The new Chinese dragon is Chopstix, which i stumbled across quite by accident.  I was attending a show at the Brass Mug on Fletcher Avenue.  My neighbor invited me to see his friend’s metal band play.  I arrived hungry and a little tipsy.  I walked past a storefront where a lousy Chinese fast food place had resided.  I discovered a new restaurant had opened in its place, and although it was late (11 at night), the sight of their empty restaurant made me want to like the place.  They invited me to sit down and sample the food.  Soon, various small dishes of food graced the table: steamed chive dumplings, a seafood and tofu hot pot, shrimp— like from the tank— with garlic sauce, and crispy milk balls— a milk custard battered and fried.  All washed down with jasmine tea.  (Sometimes I order oolong just because i like to say it.)  I was in heaven that night.  After the great food, the concert and flying headbanger hair rather bored me.

Brand new upstart Chopstix has some fire to breathe of its own in the upcoming tournament of Chinese dragons.  Opened in September by three siblings: Michelle, Eva and chef Stan Du.  For a man of just 28, his skills are impressive indeed and boasts of training in China as a young man and honing his restaurant kitchen skills in places such as T.C. Choy’s, a Hyde Park Chinese/Pan-Asian “Bistro” with prices higher than the quality of its food.  Down there, you’re paying for waterfalls, slick decor, and the “bistro” monikker.

After my first night of bliss, I returned a couple weeks later with some friends to sample the menu further.

The watercress soup was delightfully subtle, with sliced pork, soft tofu, and the namesake vegetable, which was cooked just right, not boiled to death.  The honey and black pepper short ribs arrived sizzling and steaming.  They did not disappoint.  The sauce was slightly sweet, and the white mushrooms were lovely in the dish.

The seafood and tofu hot pot was excellent, with shrimp, scallops, fish, squid, and a more firm tofu.  It also arrived steaming in a pan, with some folded Chinese newspapers to protect the plate underneath from the intense heat.  This was not a  giant pot of gravy, but all of the ingredients cooked immediately in the pan with a slightly spicy sauce.  So simple and so good.  This could be the best tofu I’ve yet tried.  Someone on Chowhound mentioned that tofu is normally like eating water, and I must concur.  The heat and sauce of hot pot at Chopstix improve it.

The beef with ginger and scallion stand up well to China Yuan’s, but lacks the large pieces of ginger that I love so much.  Then again, I like the ginger to burn my mouth a bit, and I imagine most people aren’t this fond of it.

Bok choy flowers out from a shitake mushroom to the right of the vegetable pan fried noodles.  The noodles varied between crispy and softened with the subtle sauce.  The baby bok choy with mushrooms were beautiful and glossy.  I loved the meaty texture of the mushrooms and the bok choy was perfectly cooked.

I returned again for a weekday lunch, and was disappointed to find only a menu of typical lunch specials.  I later discovered that I should have been given a regular menu as well.  The food was still good, but the lunch special menu was too limited.  If you have company, skip the cheap lunch specials and pay a couple extra dollars for the family style portions off of the real menu, which is quite extensive.

Call it what you will, a clash of the three Chinese dragons, or a menage a Chinese, but I look forward to comparing Chopstix, China Yuan, and Yummy House side by side.  It will probably feel a little promiscuous, but sometimes that’s okay in service of a good cause.

I wrote this piece back in 2002 or so just for fun.  I miss the Palios Brothers’ fried chicken, and happy to still have Snack City’s ice cream— especially the coconut.  And the mango.  And the cashew-raisin.  And the ginger  (Snack City appears in Culinary Crawl Down Boliche Boulevard below).   The two friends depicted in this story are two of Florida’s top historians.

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Two friends invited me to accompany them to dinner the other day. One—whom we’ll call “Jimbo” to protect the guilty—had found the best fried chicken he’d ever eaten. I was not surprised when he said he found the best golden-brown bird at the Palios brothers’ fry shack on MacDill. Our mutual friend “Adam” is one of those poor souls condemned to eternal health food and rice cakes for medical reasons. The doctor makes the rules, and Adam’s vigilant wife enforces them.

Jimbo had learned that Adam’s wife would be out of town on this night and he discreetly called him to arrange our meeting. I fasted in preparation, and I’m sure my buddies did, too. Unfortunately for Adam, he had a doctor’s appointment the next morning, in part to have his cholesterol tested.

Walking into Palios—which is named after the brothers who run it—is like taking a few steps back in time. The board on the wall displays their entire menu, almost all of which is fried. Fried chicken, fried shrimp, onion rings, etc., all served with Cole slaw and French fries. For those wary of grease, they make a good Greek salad, too. The only proof that time has elapsed in the building is the prices on the hand-painted board. When decades of cost of living increases forced them to raise prices, the brothers nailed new boards over the old prices rather than paint them over again.

Jimbo and I started off with some great onion rings while we waited for Adam. We did not have to wait long—Adam could hardly contain himself. We ordered a big plate of chicken and Adam ate the crumbs of the onion rings directly off the table, relishing the only grease he’d tasted in many months.

Then, the chicken arrived and we dove in. The most striking thing about Palios’ chicken is the slightly burnt flavor that lends a bold heartiness where there normally would be simple breaded saltiness. The best fried chicken is not uniformly cooked, but has slightly burnt edges around the browned surface. Although I suspect it is deep-fried, their chicken tastes more like it comes from mom’s cast iron skillet, and everyone should know that taste at least once.

Before long, we sat wiping the grease from our lips, eyes rolling back in bliss. Adam could not resist eating the crumbs from the table once again. We had not even finished lavishing praise on Palios’ fried chicken when Jimbo suggested another indulgence, ice cream. “The place looks like a 7-11,” Jimbo said of the store he had in mind, “but they have great Cuban ice cream. Do you want to go?” Without a tinge of guilt, newly-liberated Adam nodded, and we were off, a two-car convoy on a classified mission to indulge in Cuban ice cream.

Snack City is a simple-looking store, an utterly unremarkable structure at Howard and Columbus that one can drive by without so much as a glance. Even inside, the building looks slightly run-down with a few tables and a counter. The robust, friendly man behind the counter had just finished taking an order for one hundred one-gallon buckets of mango ice cream from an Indian gentleman. “People from India are crazy about mangoes,” Jimbo quipped. When asked about the ice cream, the Indian gentleman said simply, “It is the best I’ve had.” His massive order would supply a party he planned on throwing. Images of a vast ice cream orgy sprung to mind, except that the participants would be fully clothed and the moans would be mango-induced.

There are many flavors to choose from, but Jimbo insisted we try the maméy (pronounced ma’am ay) flavor, derived from a Cuban fruit of the same name. Maméy is considered to be Cuba’s national fruit, and looks somewhat like an avocado with a red interior. The ice cream resembles a pink sorbet, with a subtle and intriguing flavor, somewhat like guava and not too sweet. After hearing the Indian man’s praise, we tried some mango as well. The mango and maméy contrasted each other in glorious fashion, but shared qualities delicate and delicious, light and refreshing. Cuban ice cream is neither as sweet nor as creamy as its counterpart here in the U.S. Unlike the decadence of American Heath Bar Crunch and Cookies ‘n’ Cream flavors, Snack City offers ice cream made with dignity and restraint that seems to touch off subtle possibilities instead of cloying extremes.

We thought we’d done it all at Palios, but Snack City offered something more exotic and slightly less sinful. Once again with our eyes rolling about, Adam and I thanked Jimbo for the generous invitation to explore Tampa’s culinary delights.

In parting, Adam said, “After all this, I think I’m going to reschedule my doctor’s appointment.” He rescheduled the appointment for one week later. His cholesterol went through the ceiling, but it sure tasted good.

Let’s face it, the Tampa Bay area can’t get enough good Mexican cuisine.  For years, the middling Mexican food in our metropolitan area left us awash in bad margaritas and blankets of oily orange cheese.  The increasing Mexican population in the the bay area has brought a few good places, but has yet to stabilize.  Sometimes our bashful suburban dwellers need to experience ethnic food “once removed” from its rustic roots.

Mekenita (once known as Mariposa) is casual, the prices are reasonable, and the decor is kinda groovy.  “Chef Rand and Tiffany Packer” have created a manageable business model, with a simple menu and solid flavors.  For squeamish suburbanites and fans of the flavors of Mexico, Mekenita is definitely several notches above Chipotle or Tijuana Flats.  To raise this restaurant further, a couple details should be addressed.

The salsa bar is appreciated.  The best variety was surely the guajillo salsa (center), made from the tough, dark chile found in Mexico.  It is tangy, with enough spiciness to keep me interested.

I have a major weakness for tamales (among many other things), so I ordered one of Mekenita’s Oaxaca style tamales with mole.  The smoked pork adds wonderful deep notes to the mole sauce and tender masa.  I must commend chef Rand on the presentation.  Very little of the mole pool on this plate remained two minutes after serving.

The “crispy tiger shrimp salad” was a rather unfortunate affair.  See those weird slugs sitting on a lump of refried beans and rice?  Those are the shrimp, which were more spongy than crispy.  There is ostensibly a salad under this mess.  I was hoping for an actual salad, with no rice and no refried beans.  Make it lighter and brighter.  When you want shrimp, you don’t want these lumpen beasts.  When you order a salad, you don’t want a burrito in a bowl.

The enchilada special was quite good, but i soon tired of the sauce, which was plenty tangy but could have used more body.  Although I’ve quibbled about some of the details, Mekenita’s does a good job, and I look forward to trying more of their food.  I’ll post an update soon.