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.

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.

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.

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.