Cuban Chicharrones: One of Cuba's Primary Gifts to the World

Cuban chicharrones in a gas-station where we get our Cuban sandwiches in Tampa, Florida.

I'm a Cuban sandwich freak and I think Cuban food is pretty good too, but holy crap, these chicharrones were GOOD. My dad and I put a bunch of lime on them and topped them off with some Tapatio hot sauce - freshly fried, a little bit of meat hanging on them - and inhaled them in roughly five minutes while waiting for our sandwiches to be made.

I am now desperately seeking a Cambodian equivalent. As for where this place is in Tampa? I think somewhere off Hillsborough. But honestly, I think that as far as neighborhood Cuban delis go, sometimes you just gotta find your own.

South Beach Grill: Boca Grande is Hell on Earth

South Beach Bar and Grille
777 Gulf Boulevard
(941) 964-0765
Boca Grande, Florida

Ah, Boca Grande. It's a little island about two hours or so north of Tampa, and it is absolutely beautiful, the kind of place that gets slapped on tourist brochures - or would, if the people who own property on the island weren't clever enough (or well-heeled enough) to keep it off the beaten track. My grandparent's owned a condo here when I was a little kid in Florida, and I went there yearly every year until I was about 11 or so.

They sold it when my aunt and my cousin's moved away from Florida, but family members still come back here - my mom has been coming here since she was a kid, as well. For my cousin's graduation, we came back once again. A home-coming of sorts. It's funny how me and my two cousins remembered almost every inch of even the drive - the mangrove stands, the little podunk towns you drive through, the massive, yellow Sunshine Skyway bridge, the tragically now-closed Dairy Queen with the barbeque sandwiches - and then crossing the tollbridge to get to the island.

No color manipulation needed. God, it's nice.

The island is all white sand and beautiful sunsets and one large lighthouse, and people riding golfcarts, except not many people, because they really do manage to keep the riff-raff out. We had rented a very large and lovely vacation home and a bunch of us arrived to hang out and eat tamales and wander around.

Not that I really appreciated it, this go-round - you see, I was flying to New Orleans the next day to see my boyfriend, who I had gotten back with over the Internet (sort of) over the course of a couple months, and now he was moving to Phnom Penh.

And we were pretty certain we were going to still like each other, but how could we be certain? It was terrifying. I believe I spent about half the day at Boca Grande hiding under a blanket on a couch, squinting to read my new Kindle, but not really reading, more just being trapped in a haze of existential, relationship-and-future-of-your-life based terror. The timing in other words was a bit off, but it's not your fault, Boca Grande.

(My boyfriend is moving to Phnom Penh in less then a month. I had nothing to worry about. But you never know that before.)

Awful place.

Oh yes, this is a food blog. I did eat one meal "out" on Boca Grande, which was at the South Beach Bar and Grille (with the obnoxious e). It's right on the beach and serves slightly fancified Florida beach shack fare. Think lots of grouper, fried seafood, pastrami sandwiches for the NY transplants, salads of various kinds, seafood chowder, hamburgers, and other seafood-themed stuff. It's expensive as hell, but food on Boca is expensive.

Curiously enough, despite the awesome location, the food is really, really good. (Just don't try parking there then hitting the beach, apparently, judging from Tripadvisor. Seriously. They don't like that.)

What is it with me and grouper? To me, it's like the madeline of the fish world, the protein that takes me back to childhood. My dad used to fry grouper at the beach all the time when I was a kid - some of my earliest food memories involve getting grouper sandwiches after preschool with my mom at this colorfully decorated restaurant in Tampa.

Whenever I'm in Florida, I eat prodigious quantities of the stuff. This was an excellent grouper sandwich, a good specimen of the genre: Plenty of fish, lots of mayo, lettuce and tomato, keep er' simple. I prefer my grouper sandwiches fried - doesn't obstruct the flavor profile - but some would beg to differ. Liked the coleslaw fine. I'm on a coleslaw kick lately. $15. Can be done reuben style. I almost went for it but decided that would either be perverse or awesome, and I didn't feel like wasting my one shot in 2011 for a grouper sandwich.

Must add that the fried grouper fingers were also very good, as determined by myself and my cousin. My mother was also very pleased with her seafood chowder, which was thick, Boston-ish, and absolutely terrible for you, as it should have been. We hung out for a bit and watched people on the beach. I worried about my boyfriend and worried about sun protection - oh god, what if I get a cold sore? - and worried about the universe and my job and probably individual atoms if I got right down to it.

I'm not very good at beaches.

Pho Quyen: Fish Sauce Galore in Tampa, Florida

Phở Quyên
( Hillsborough )
8404 Hillsborough Ave.
Tampa, FL 33615
Tel: (813) 885-9424

I always like to have a good Vietnamese restaurant nearby. This is a universal desire of mine, carried across state and international lines: if I can't get my fish on in a timely fashion, I get all nervous. Thus I was thrilled when a Vietnamese restaurant opened a mere five minute drive from my grandparent's house in Tampa, and was even more pleased when I discovered Pho Quyen was uncommonly good. A few years later, the food is just as tasty and the service staff just as efficient, dishing up some of the more unusual Vietnamese specialities (Salted eels and frog legs, anyone?) to an appreciative and diverse crowd. I recommend it highly.



My first visit, I ordered my beloved papaya salad with pork and shrimp, with a fish sauce dressing. A very nice and fresh rendition, though it could have used a little more cilantro (Sez I). This is about the perfect hot weather meal when you're congenitally unable to eat anything involving pork grease or fried food, and those days happen a hell of a lot in Florida. (I am amazed people actually manage to be fat down there, but humanity is a fascinating and multi-faceted thing). Yeah, I love papaya salad to distraction.



I also scored with these pea greens, a weekly special. Pea greens are my favorite Chinese vegetable, with a flavor pleasantly in between spinach and bok-choy. These were prepared perfectly, with a lovely roasted-garlic flavor, and cooked just-long enough for maximal succulent crunchiness. Aces.



My grandmother and I returned for lunch a few days later. First up was the make-your-own-spring-roll plate, a tremendous $10.95 dollar platter full of a protein of your choice (lemongrass pork for us), vermicelli noodles, daikon and carrot, bean sprouts and other vegetable fixings, and plenty of rice paper wrappers. We ended up having enough left over for two more meals, and the pork had a nice, meaty lemongrass flavor. However, don't be fooled into believing you will roll pretty lovely spring rolls yourself. It is a lie. Your spring rolls will look like misshapen abominations before God, but at least they will taste pretty good. I don't know how the hell little old Vietnamese ladies manage to roll them up into delightfully symmetrical little packages, but it probably involves a chicken sacrifice ritual. Everything worth knowing involves sacrificing a chicken.



My grandmother tried the pho and deemed it mediocre, although she said it perked up considerably when she added various condiments to the shebang. I thought it tasted pretty good post-doctoring but cannot assess pre. Finding good pho is a mysterious art, and the really annoying thing is that good pho in the same restaurant as good entrees is well-night impossible. Hopefully I will be able to taste pho in Vietnam someday soon and thus be able to haughtily proclaim that I KNOW what pho ought to taste like and that is NOT IT to all who ask. Which they probably won't, but I hold out hope, I really do.


If you find yourself suffering a fish-sauce related attack of cold sweats, vapors, and ungodly pain fathomless to man in the West Hillsborough region of Tampa, direct thyself to Pho Quyen and order some Vietnamese stuff. You'll be much happier.

Hellas Restaurant: Tarpon Springs Greek Food, No Tacky Souvenirs Included

Hellas Restaurant 785 Dodecanese Blvd Tarpon Springs, FL 34689 (727) 934-8400

Hellas is one of the few jillion tourist-oriented Greek restaurants in Tarpon Springs, Florida. Why all the Greek restaurants in this little Florida hamlet, you ask? Well,n not surprisingly, Tarpon Springs is full of Greeks, who came to the little village to sponge-fish and never really left. I've been going there roughly since birth - I have vivid memories of hoovering down giant plates of fried calamari and smelts when I was five or so, to the great pleasure of nearby snowbird grannies. The giant fake great white in the shopping area, the little aquarium with the sting-ray touch tank, the sponge museum with the gory DIVER DYING FROM THE BENDS, it's all coded in my DNA, right down to the tacky-ass souvenir shops and the constantly playing, insanity-inducing sound of Greek pop music. I refuse to hear anything against Tarpon Springs. And you know you actually secretly want a freeze-dried gator head wearing sunglasses. Just admit it, for God's sake.

Hellas has a large bakery with a profusion of Greek style baked goods - think every kind of Baklava known to man - and strong, gritty Turkish coffee that could probably kill you from sheer potency. The adjoining restaurant is pretty good, and has a sort of entirely authentic character that can't really be replicated. You got your waitresses with cigarette smoker voices, you got the dining room full of people in tank tops and pink hats with flamingos on them, you got the guys shouting OPAAAA when they flame up a plate of Saganaki. I love that shit.



This is it: Tampa style Greek salad. You got your Greek salad, you got your potato salad with it, buried beneath a mantle of leafy greens.. Shut up and go with it. The combination somehow manages to be delightful, as the potato salad melds with the herbaceous Greek dressing to take on an oily, incredibly bad for you flavor. The salads at Hellas are insanely huge - this was the salad for one. The salad for five probably generates its own garlicky gravitational field. As local-style Greek salads go, it's pretty good, though ask them to go easy on the dressing.



I chose the grouper special, with Greek style tomato sauce, rice, and potatoes. I adore grouper, especially because it's as rare as unicorns outside Florida, and this was pretty good. The flavorful tomato sauce has plenty of oregano and lemon, and is a worthy accompaniment to seafood. Only gripe? Could have been hotter. Not hot enough food is a big no-no. The piece of fish was caveman sized, which is nice to see. Potatoes and rice pilaf were good enough as side-line carbs go. The bread here is crusty and light, if you're into pre-eating bread.

Also: that fish plate? That fish plate. That fish plate is amazing. I didn't even notice that pinnacle of awesome until I loaded the photo onto my computer. I need 200 of them.




My dad chose pan fried smelts and calamari. Smelts are kind of an acquired taste. They're nothing more then deep fried whole entire little oily fish, complete with bones. (They do lop the heads off). The flavor is unctuous and rather pleasing in a marine way, although I find that I'm perfectly satisfied after eating about three of them.



The calamari was pretty good, if non-descript. Again, not quite hot enough.

We declined a slice of baklava cheesecake larger then our collective heads, and stepped out again onto the street. Incredibly, it was a cold day - 60 degrees, cold enough to cause a native Floridian to run screaming towards a heater, and I am a native Floridian. We bought some lovely goats-milk soap then hustled to the car. I had satisfied my grouper consumption requirement for a trip to Florida. I wish I had bought a freeze-dried baby alligator reclining in a lounge chair, but there will be a next time.