Kaiko's Sushi: Back to Basics Japanese in Clearwater

Kaikos
2475 North McMullen Booth Road
Clearwater, FL 33759
(727) 791-6640

The sushi disease has infected Tampa, just as it has pretty much everywhere else, barring (perhaps) certain grasslands in Nebraska and the wilds of Upper Mongolia. There is a sushi restaurant on just about every corner, sushi at the grocery store, and sushi-making classes on offer at your nearest convenient library location. Most of this sushi is absolutely horrible. Thus, I'm happy to relate that Kaiko's Sushi in Clearwater is tasty, fresh, and suitable for human consumption. Back away from the Publix stuff. I mean it, you dirty little animal.

Kaiko's is what I'd call a traditional style sushi bar, Thank God. This means the rolls are

1. Small enough so that they can be fit in a standard-issue human mouth.

2. Not drenched in mayonnaise based sauce in wacky colors.

3. Put together with an eye towards fresh ingredients and the interplay of flavors, not with an eye toward "How much random shit can we stuff in this sushi roll for ten bucks? And how much sake do we have to sell to the pale-faces to get em' to eat it?"

All of these elements are Good. The menu is short and exists in the form of a piece of paper on which one marks off one's choices.



Sunonomo salad with seafood. Fresh and a good selection of fish - that's a plus here. Too much vinegar.



The Tampa roll. People in Tampa are nuts for fried grouper, totally nuts and thus this roll - fried grouper and onions, no more, no less. Too simple for me - grouper isn't exactly a hyperactively flavorful fish - but certain family members go nuts for it.



Ah, that's the stuff. I liked the 7-ingredient futomaki, which featured a whole bunch of crunchy vegetables, some preserved, and was very refreshing indeed. Also liked the simple unakyu with avocado and eel. The chopped conch special was all right, but not sure how I feel about the (thankfully not over the top) mayo mixture. Conch on its own is an interesting sort of flavor experience - not sure if that lily needs to be gilded. A very nice sashimi selection - these guys are sourcing and cutting their fish well. I can't stand sashimi that's been cut so thickly and so poorly that one needs a steak knife to get through it.


The two guys next to us were friendly in that older-guys hitting on you in a courtly fashion way to me and my cousin, and we shot the shit merrily throughout dinner. It's a convivial place, and the older guy manning the sushi bar is funny as hell, berating a regular who identified himself as "crazy, just crazy." (Not in my eyes: a lot of middle aged guys trying to seem wacky have this habit of identifying themselves as Crazy, as if I will leap back all astonished and horrified but at the same time aroused. I have (I think) looked into the Eye of Crazy on a couple occasions on my life and you sir, wacky as you may be, do not qualify as bona-fide crazy. That is darker and much more complex. Such things do not need to be discussed over austere and good sushi somewhere in the depths of Clearwater.

I have forgotten where I was going with this.

I recommend Kaiko for back-to-basics sushi in the Clearwater area.

Franciale: Good God I Love Cuban Sandwiches

Franciale
5635 Memorial Hwy
Tampa, FL
813-249-7227



My earliest food memory involves a Cuban sandwich.

I was out in the wood-chipped and (to my four year old eye) extremely large backyard at the Learning Tree Preschool, and for some reason, someone, somehow, had brought Cubanos. The Cuban is Tampa's most beloved native culinary treat, surpassing snackies like deviled crabs, Cuban bread and butter, and Hooters chicken wings, and they inevitably show up at any social event or gathering in the region, cut into triangles and laid out on the table. In any case, I vividly remember eating this thing, and I remember the flavor of it - new and unusual indeed to a person who has not yet been properly introduced to concepts like "mustard" and "pickles - and I was immediately charmed, devoted, pleased. Salami, cheese, roast pork, ham, pickles, mustard, and cuban bread, pressed and toasted until melty and delicious - this might indeed have been the very gnosis or beginning point of my life long food obsession, the point from which all else radiated. Maybe I should credit the sandwich itself as one of my very first mentors.

Okay, that could be going too far. Long story short. Them things taste good. Real good. I was in Tampa this June, visiting my grandparents (who live off Dale Mabry) and I had to get myself a Cuban. There was a second motivating factor: i had just survived a particularly aggressive bout of food poisoning, and I felt a powerful and near reptilian urge within myself to restore my fluids, to bump-up my electrolytes, to heal myself. What better food to do that then a ridiculously huge sandwich? Thought so.

Franciale is located in a Shell station. When you pull in, it doesn't look like a damn thing like a restaurant. In fact, it looks more like a front for a cunning yet down-trodden Cuban drug running operation. The front is a standard 7-11 type food shop with a bunch of dusty candy bars and a startling selection of pork rinds. The actual cafe counter is near the back and seems to be staffed exclusively by one Umberto, a highly energetic and extremely friendly Cuban-Italian guy, who has decorated his three table dining room with romantic 1970's posters of Pisa, Rome, and Sicily. There's a selection of Cuban dishes on the menu, but you should probably go for the Cuban.



Which is a fantastic Cuban, the best I've ever had. The pork is slow roasted in citrusy mojo sauce and falling-apart tender, and when combined with a giant hunk of buttered Cuban bread, nice quality ham, cheese, and salami, a boatload of mayo and mustards, and some crunchy lettuce and tomato - heaven on earth. Umberto makes the sandwich and presses it right in front of you so there's no doubt about the vintage of the ingredients. "You gonna eat that entire thing?" the high school football coaches (as I'd figured out by overhearing their conversation) asked me, when the puppy-sized monstrosity was handed to me.

"I can try," I said, vaguely. I figured I would eat half.

But I needed to restore my electrolytes and animal spirits, so I fell to the sandwich with an almost obscene vengeance. It was gone in about four minutes, the entire damn thing. The football coaches were sharing a single, and looked at me with something close to horror in their faces when I was done. "Good lord, you did finish it," the older one said. "That's incredible."

"I was very, very hungry," I said. This was probably obvious.

Umberto high-fived me on the way out.

I felt infinitely better, as if the dismal day of food poisoning had not actually happened but was in fact an unpleasant memory belonging to someone else. I drowsed the rest of the day, in the manner of a golf-course alligator that has just gorged itself upon a fat and complacent Labrador.

I love Cuban sandwiches.

An Ode to Key Lime Pie

Key Lime Pie is my favorite dessert.



We have all got our favorites of course, and our preferences can (I theorize) be traced back to early influences. Jeb likes apple pie because his mama made it on Thanksgiving, Tricia favors pineapple cake because she was born in Hawaii, and me, well, me: I like key lime pie because I am a native Floridian, and they have it at Florida Publix grocery stores, and brothers and sisters, it is damn good.

Don't cast up your noses immediately at the mere thought of consuming a mere grocery-store pariah, a foodie pariah-pie, a rightful outcast. After all, Key Lime Pie is in and of itself a low-rent operation, a food that is essentially unable to be dandied up, to be turned into gourmet cuisine. No matter how artisan the limes are, no matter how hand-whipped the whipped cream is or how organic the graham cracker crust is, no matter what, key lime pie is still made with condensed milk.




Match, set, the hipster foodie contingent is out in the cold, they have no defenses against condensed milk. For a key lime pie would be nothing without condensed milk, would not possess its cool and delightfully smooth creaminess, would not be the delightful hot-weather treat that it currently is. Condensed milk is key.

I went to Florida early last month, to visit my grandparents. I had one request for my grandmother. "Have a key lime pie for me in the fridge." The same request I make every time. You can't get good ones in California - they do key lime tarts, which are sissified, do not fufilll my needs completely. No, I need key lime pie in total, the right stuff, and I got it. That evening, watching Rick Steve's in Amsterdam on my grandparent's television, I popped open the box of key lime pie. I cut myself a large slice. I sat Indan style on the rug and ate it. Mostly with my hands, like a wild jungle savage. It was more delightful then I can say. I licked my fingers.

Where did key lime pie come from? From what genius brain did it emerge?


William Curry himself.

The Key Lime pie story, most agree, begins with a Mr. William Curry. Curry began life in 1821, born into a dirt-poor Bahamian immigrant family in Green Turtle Cay. He soon became a salvager, rescuing people from the water after their ships had been ransacked by pirates. His success as an early search and rescue stud led him to bigger and better things: via clever manipulation of the stock market, he would become Key West's first millionaire, and began building the elaborate and still-standing Curry Mansion in 1855. He died in 1896 as Florida's richest man. His descendants still reside in the Keys, keeping up the mansion and maintaining it as a luxe bed and breakfast.

So what does Mister Curry have to do with Florida's most excellent dessert? His cook,of course. Only known as "Aunt Sally," this delightful woman is thought to have created Key Lime pie in the mansion's kitchen in the late 1800's. Some posit she got the idea from local sponge fisherman, who often brought condensed milk, limes, and eggs with them on their expeditions, producing an ideal climate for Key Lime pie creation. Many credit Key West's lack of fresh milk as a major agent in the pie's genesis- condensed milk was what people used instead of the fresh stuff, and condensed milk is what makes key lime pie so damn good in the first place. Some say the first key lime pies weren't even baked, relying on the reaction between the juice and the milk to firm up. The first official mention of Key Lime Pie occurs in a 1930's newspaper, pitched to tourists as an exotic treat. Key lime pie has been going strong ever since. I suspect Florida restaurants lose their food-service license if it isn't on the menu.



So what about the key limes? Odds are good they're not what you're getting in your pie. The tiny, intensely flavorful fruits arrived in Florida from Malaysia around the 1500's. The hurricane of 1926 and Citrus canker disease devastated South Florida key lime plantations, and growers replaced the plants with hardier Persian limes. This means that finding an actual key-lime in a key-lime pie is somewhat akin to finding a magical unicorn in your bathroom.

Try telling that to Florida State Representative Bernie Papy, who in 1965 attempted to pass legislation that would slap a $100 fine on anyone selling pie made without real key limes. Needless to say, it didn't work. (Watch out, there be pie bandits among us! Oh no, Aunt Irma's in lock up! She lied about the limes!) Most of today's key limes pies are made with juice imported from Mexico and South America.


How does one define a good key lime pie? Everyone's got their sweet spot, but I like them simple. No green food coloring, for Christ's sake - a vaguely yellowish color is all that should be going on. The filling should be creamy and solid, with a nice give to it. The flavor should be tart, more crisp and bright then creamy and sweet. A fresh graham cracker crust, not too sweet, delightfully crumbly. Some real whipped cream around the edges. Some swear by key lime pie with a healthy adornment of meringue in top, which sounds good to me - I just haven't run across one made like that before. Key lime tarts, needless to say, are just wrong somehow.

As for real key lime juice vs. plain old lime juice? What's the taste difference? Is it really noticeable? Someone needs to do a taste test and report back. Maybe I will someday. Perhaps.

More links:

An excellent newspaper article on Key Lime Pie's history.

The Curry Mansion's official website.

The Blonde Giraffe Key Lime Pie factory. These guys have it all: from pie to key lime pie cookies to pie on a goddamn stick, they've thought of everything.

Kermit's Key West Key Lime Shop. Every key lime product known to man available here, including key lime moisturizer, key lime spicy barbeque sauce, key lime pretzels, and yeah, maybe a pie or two.

Steve's Authentic Key Lime Pies. These look pretty good, and these folks are committed to using real fresh squeezed key limes, all the time, no ifs-ands-or-buts. God bless em'.

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.

Cafe de Siam in Tampa: Papaya Salad and Family Tradition

Cafe De Siam
11242 W Hillsborough Ave, Tampa, FL
(813) 855-1108 ‎

Cafe de Siam is our family's go-to Thai place, located very close to my grandparent's home in Tampa. It's a small, family run place with a pleasingly interesting menu and a basic but comfortable dining room: I believe I have been eating there for at least 8 years, possibly longer. The owners know my grandparents and are always happy to see us - we like seeing them, too.



My grandmother and I started off with some spring rolls. These were pretty unusual, with a flour crepe-like wrapping instead of rice paper. To my surprise, the crepe treatment worked very well: the filling of egg, bean sprouts, crab, and pork was fresh and crunchy. I didn't quite grasp the squiggle of Chinese mustard down the side, but then again, I have never quite grasped the Chinese mustard concept. (It just doesn't go with stuff! What the hell do you use it on? What the hell is pink "duck sauce"? NO ONE EATS THAT IN CHINA GOD okay i'm finished)



Next move: Thai papaya salad (som tam) with shrimp and peanuts. I love green papaya salad to distraction. It's one of my favorite foods: crunchy, deliciously fresh green papaya, spicy-ass fish sauce dressing, crunchy peanuts, and shrimps, in one delightful combination. In Thailand, som tam is considered to combine the four primary tastes of Thai cuisine: sour lime, hot chili, salty fish sauce, and sweetness from sugar. I've been told you can buy this stuff on the street in Thailand and dictate how much you want of each element - wish we had that going on in the USA. Really authentic versions are made with brined crabs, small and delightfully funky - order them if you see them available, as they're rather rare in the USA. This was a particularly finely grated and delicate version, with a pleasing slow burn and a bunch of crunchy peanuts. Entirely successful.



A dish of seafood in spicy garlic sauce proved to be another success - the fresh, high quality seafood was a pleasant departure from the usual soggy out-of-the-bag seafood combos most Thai places serve up. The sauce had a pleasantly powerful preserved garlic flavor, and I especially liked the chunky snow crab legs, as most places use fake krab and call it a day with this dish.



Red vegetable curry with coconut milk wasn't as much to my taste - the vegetables were a little overcooked, and the sheer richness of the dish ain't really my deal. I'm much more interested in the snappy, fresh, explosion of fresh style Thai cooking, although light-handed coconut milk preparations do have their place.

No dessert for us, although my cousin's swear up and down by their sticky black rice dish. We took back a whole bunch of leftovers. I'm always glad to see this place when I come into Tampa.

Good Asian food acts as my anchor point, the proof positive I need that I can like and thrive in a place, without it I'm adrift and confused - I must have readily available papaya salad or the world goes pear shaped, I'm lost. I am going to have to settle in California or actually finally in Asia, but this is a price I am prepared to pay up.

Paul's Shrimp House: Mmm, Alcoholic Shellfish

Paul's Shrimp House
530 Athens St
Tarpon Springs, FL 34689
(727) 937-1239



(All photos borrowed from the Paul's Shrimp House website.)

Mmm, Paul's. Whenever I visit Florida, my grandfather inevitably packs myself and any other lingering relatives into his Cadillac for one purpose: to get us some boiled shrimp in Tarpon Springs, the small and touristfied Greek community close to Tampa. Not that we mind.

Paul's is a typical Florida seafood shack, full of miscellaneous plastic aquatic critters on the inside, and lots of geriatric snowbirds on their weekly outings. The middle-aged waitresses wear uncomfortable looking shorts but bustle with heart-warming efficiency, slinging beer (which comes in pitchers), squid parts and cocktail sauce with fluent skill. You may not be able to tell from the sign, but the shrimp mascot emblazoned on it is holding a beer mug and is obviously piss-drunk. That's the kind of place we're talking about here.

The menu reflects the Greek roots of Tarpon Springs, including such Mediterrenean delights as pickled octopus, Greek salad, and baklava. Fried seafood all sorts is also amply represented, along with a decent variety of sandwiches and even a few land-based animals, although you really shouldn't be going there unless you want people to laugh at you.



In my family, we are convention bound to order the same thing every time we visit this fine establishment, spirit of adventure be damned. We begin with at least three orders of the Greek salad for 1 ($2.75) with a healthy scoop of potato salad ($2.00) on top. This might sound strange to you gentrified California weenies, but let me assure you, the combination is both unique to Tampa and utterly delicious, as the starchy potato salad absorbs the oily and tangy Greek dressing. And the salad itself doesn't disappoint - bristling with sharp, tangy feta chunks and plenty of anchovies, peppers, and olives, it's a pungent beginning to any meal.



We move on entrees, which are generally left open to the individual (gasp.) On my most recent visit, I ordered the simply but delicious broiled grouper ($12.95), which came in a very considerable portion, served alongside buttery vegetables and some expertly prepare coleslaw. The meat was flaky, tender, and cooked just long enough - I wolfed it down. My cousin went with the broiled scallops ($10.95), which were tiny and tender little pearls of tastiness - everyone at the table sniped a few.

But you can't pass up the fried food, can you? Paul's fried oysters ($9.95) are excellent, with a sharp and crispy exterior crust and a juicy and briny inside. They're infinitely better then potato chips and just about as addictive, and everyone I'm related to seems to be able to go through immense quantities of them with little to no trouble (including me.) I also like the fried smelts ($6.95), though be forewarned: these pungent and oily little fish might make a tasty appetizer, but plowing through an entire plate of these as a main course is...daunting. Share.

Finally, the Greek-style squid ($8.50) is incredible - a big, sizzling plate full of lightly fried squid parts, peppers, onions, and olives and feta cheese. It's pungent, delicious, and deeply Greek - you must try this.



What's for dessert? You can always have baklava, but we prefer a pound of Paul's signature dish: boiled shrimp ($13.95.) Big, plump, and shell on,they're boiled in some mysterious combination of Greek herbs and spices, doused in lemon, and served on a plate - and they are good, cooked just long enough to become tender but not mushy. Slap on some tangy cocktail sauce and you have entered shellfish heaven, at least by my estimation.

Paul's is a wonderful specimen of the Tampa fish house - it's a must-visit if you're in Tarpon Springs and can tear yourself away from the many other fine Greek establishments that dot that magnificent, touristy row. Eat fried oysters until you experience gastric pain then come back for more.

Carmines Tampa: Smushed Sandwiches, Evil Crab

Carmines Seventh Avenue
1802 E 7th Ave
Tampa, FL 33605
(813) 248-3834




Ybor City is the requisite old-town section of Tampa, full of old fashioned Cuban flavor, cigar shops, and drug addicts in silly clothing. It's also an excellent place to go if you're interested in eating some decent Cuban food, even if it is interpreted through a tourist-centric eye.



Carmine's is rather prettified by my standards (and Jesus Christ, the menus are laminated) but the wide open warehouse space the restaurant sits in is certainly inviting. We all began with a millky and extremely potent cafe con leche ($2.95), which had a delicious caramelized flavor and enough caffeine to make me a happy puppy for the rest of the evening. You can, of course, also order booze.



Beverages aside, I quickly decided on the Cuban sandwich, with the devil crab to start.

The Cuban sandwich ($6.99), fair mistress of Tampa cuisine, is Carmine's bread and butter, and it does my Floridian heart good to see the rows of unpressed Cubans aligned along the counter here, ready to be slathered with butter and smushed under a hot iron for a bit. The Cuban came out fairly quickly, and although I was somewhat nonplussed by the inclusion of (gasp) lettuce and tomato, the sandwich worked well, with the requisite crunchy Cuban bread and plenty of delicious, delicious mayonnaise. Only critique: it wasn't pressed flat enough to my liking, and fell apart just about as I was finishing it up. The Cuban Sandwich Guy up front should be leaning on that iron more.



The devil crab ($4.79 for one) was also tasty, a football shaped mass of crab meat mixed with spices, deep fried into a croquette-like form. The giant egg of crab-meat deflated slightly when pierced with a fork, and although I found the bready coating mostly extraneous, I enjoyed the crab-meat rich and flavorful inside (though it could have been more spicy.) In the future, I'll step on it with some hot sauce.

Around the rest of my table, the black beans and rice were proclaimed a worthy carbohydrate fest, though you're a fool if you don't add hot sauce in ample quantities. My cousin's fried grouper sandwich ($9.99) was absolutely monstrous and he proclaimed it delicious, though from the size of it one might conclude he had just downed the Mother Matriarch of the entire grouper species.

Service was fairly quick and certainly efficient, although the Cubans and rice took a little longer then we might have ideally preferred. People watching on the street is pretty darn good though, ranging from old timer Floridians with sun-beaten skin and cigars, to waddling and confused looking tourists in palm tree hats. What can I say, I love Florida...in small controlled doses.

florida food: a brief primer

I am that rare creature: a native Floridian. I was born in Tampa 19 years ago and have moved many times since, but something of my native states humidity, weird politics, and love of alligator meat has stayed with me. I'm always happy to go back, to visit my grandparents, to sit out in the sun that keeps everything warm and toasty even in the deadest and dankest bits of winter. But there's another appeal to the Tampa area: food.

Floridian food isn't a cuisine that's regarded highly (or regarded at all) here in California, and that's a shame. Food in Tampa is a wonderful mix of Cuban flavors, Greek cuisine, Creole and Cajun influences, and good ol' Southern home cooking. Add in some tropical tastes and a good amount of fresh, delicious local seafood, and you've got an enclave that can serve up some damn fine treats.

So what defines Tampa food? What do I gravitate towards first, moth-like, when my feet hit the pavement in Tampa and the humidity begins to curl my hair?


(Image from Food Reference.com.)

Cuban sandwiches were my first love, that's for sure. A Cuban sandwich is oft-debated, but I think of a roll of Cuban garlic bread, filled with swiss cheese, mojo-marinated roast pork, ham, and salami in the Tampa variant, combined with pickle (THERE MUST BE PICKLE), mustard, and a very healthy slobber of mayonaisse. Once the sandwich is composed, it is pressed under a large flat thing over heat - like a panini without grill marks - and quickly devoured, all that melty, cheesy goodness fully sustaining belief in a heavenly deity,or something like that. Cuban sandwiches are special and run deep in the soul of every Floridian. I have a fierce memory of being in preschool in a palm-tree studded backyard, eating a salami-festooned Cubano for a school project of one sort of another. And it was delicious. I have been demanding them ever since when I return to Tampa, seeking them out across the city. One of the best versions I've had was served out of a gas station deli (with a side of neon gummy worms.) These kind of things happen in Florida.

We make them at home whenever the urge to roast a big slab of pig comes upon my dad, but it's never quite the same. The trick is that delicious, crusty garlicky Cuban bread, and no one has bothered to bring it to Sacramento yet. Someday I will find a supplier, and I will be able to be fully content with Sacramento. Maybe.


(Image from the Frenchy's Cafe website, purveyors of fine grouper sandwiches.)

Grouper is my second Tampa food fixation. A grouper is a large, corpulent, and somewhat depressive looking fish that is common in Florida, with firm white meat. It is unspeakably delicious, especially when deep-fried, slathered in tarter sauce and put into a bun. Grouper appears inevitably on almost every Florida menu (including Thai and Italian restaurants) and is served in almost any way you might want to serve firm fleshed white fish, though the deep fried version is almost always most delicious. The Greeks do it up fine too, even when broiled, which while less likely to kill you is not quite the same. I am bound by family convention to say the very best fried grouper is found at my grandparents house where you are unfortunately not invited unless I know you, but grouper of equal deliciousness may be found at Frenchies in Clearwater Beach, originators of the grouper sandwich. But most restaurants in the Tampa area know their way around a good grouper...order with confidence.



Greek food has a strong presence in Tampa, due to an influx of Greek immigrants who came to the nearby town of Tarpon Springs to sponge dive. Tarpon Spring is another integral part of my early childhood, walking down the street and squeezing every big ugly dried sponge displayed out front, gawking at the sharks in the aquarium and the blood-stained model of a victim of the dreaded undersea bends at the world-famous Sponge Museum. My grandfather still speaks with great and ineffable pride about my love for calimari and delicate, pungent fried smelts. When I was two or three, we would go out to our favorite Greek restaurant on the water and order a big plate of calamari and smelts, which I would (apparantly) proceed to messily devour to the great delight of the Greek waitresses who staffed the place.

My love of smelts, squid, and Greek food has never left me, and I anticipate my return to Tarpon Springs every year eagerly indeed. We always eat atPaul's Shrimp House (which I will do a review of in a little bit), but there are rows and rows of Greek restaurants present on Tarpon Spring's main tourist drag, almost all of them good. Amble up and down the street, pick up a dried and gory alligator head or perhaps a flamingo pen, and then sit down wherever strikes your fancy.

Recommended dishes? Seafood is king here, so eat all the squid and fried oysters you possibly can. Greek style squid, sauteed with olives, peppers, onions and feta is incredibly delicious, as is almost anything fried. Boiled shrimp in herbs and spices are another wonderful local treat. If you see Greek salad offered with a scoop of potato salad, a variation found far as I know only in Tampa, please, please go for it - something about Greek salad served with a scoop of savory and smooth potato salad is pure tastiness, oil related calories be damned to hellfire. Round off your meal by walking up the street to one of the various and delicious Greek bakeries, where super-flaky honey drenched baklava, chocolate parfaits, and slices of creamy and cool key lime pie await you. Get some gritty and intense Greek coffee and watch the tourists waddle by. Bam, you're in Florida.


Key lime pie image from PRWeb.com.

Which leads to my final must-eat: key lime pie. This tangy, smooth dessert might have migrated inexorably across the country - it's too good not to - but it is done best in its native home, in Florida. I order it almost everywhere I go, but I know what makes a really good key lime pie. Color is important: none of this neon green food coloring junk, but a delicate, yellow color indicates you're looking at the real thing. A tangy and sharp flavor is also key - no inispid sweetness, a tiny bit of puckertude. Finally, the graham cracker crust must be crumbly (but not too crumbly) providing a perfect offset to the smooth and cool filling. Combine these elements with a spot of whipped cream and you have my absolute ideal dessert - refreshing, not too sweet, with just a little bit of crunch. This may be minor blasphemy, but Publix grocery stores do a pretty darn tasty interpretation of this Florida delight, and they'll even sell you half a pie so you can convince yourself you're exercising restraint. See, wasn't that easy?

There are some odds and ends of Florida eating, of course. Odds are good you'll encounter alligator, which really and truly swear to God does taste like chicken, albeit with a not-unpleasant fishy tang. Order the fried gator' nuggets once or twice and convince yourself you have had an authentic experience - gator ranching is now such a common trade out here that you are in no way damaging species survival. (Fun Florida tip: for God's sake, don't swim in any canals unless you're okay with being eaten.) Another standby is deviled crab, a tasty and spicy croquette like item, filled with crab meat mixed with spicy sauce, onion, and whatever spices the maker finds pertinent. These are very good appetizers and since they are usually football sized (or near to it) will rarely leave you hungry. We had a tasty and humongous version of this at Carmines in Ybor City, but many other area establishments will hook you up good.

Finally, it may sound pedestrian, but keep an eye out for black beans and rice. This distinctly Cuban carbohydrate is delicious, flavorful, and will certainly provide you with the energy required for a day of lying out on the porch and not doing a goddamn thing. I love going to Florida. I love eating in Florida.