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Archive for the 'restaurants' Category

Rodie’s — a great breakfast in Tarpon Springs

There was time not too many years back when one of our favorite breakfast stops was a place called Rodie’s, in Tapron Springs.

Rodie's Restaurant in Tarpon Springs

Rodie’s was a small hole-in-the-wall diner kind of place on Alt. 19 just south of the Tarpon Springs downtown area.  It was a place very much favored by the locals, and the Rodie’s folks put out a very good breakfast for a very fair price.

Rodie’s did so well that they acquired a piece of land across the street from the original restaurant and built a new place — much fancier, much bigger, and a lot more upscale, at least in appearance.  They still are only open for breakfast and lunch — they close at 3 p.m.

They may have lost a little bit of the charm they offered when they were in the older, smaller place across the street. But they still really pack the place on weekend mornings, a testament to their excellent food and fair prices.

Rodie’s offers some very good burgers and sandwiches, but breakfast is when I like to go there. Besides the good assortment of pancake dishes and omelettes, they also offer some southern favorites and some Greek-inspired dishes, everything from biscuits and sausage gravy to gyro rollups and Greek salads.

Rodie’s is right next door to the brand-new Sweetbay supermarket on South Pinellas Avenue (Alt. 19).  I’m going to post something about that Sweetbay a little later on.

Tags: breakfast, pinellas county, restaurants, Tarpon Springs

Kelly’s: fun dining in Dunedin

Kelly's Restaurant, Dunedin

We had dinner on Sunday night at Kelly’s on Main Street in Dunedin.

We don’t go there that often, mostly because when we eat in downtown Dunedin we often end up across the street at Cafe Alfresco. But Kelly’s has good food as well as a certain avant garde attitude that’s fun.

When we first lived here Kelly’s had a pretty ordinary outside dining area in back. Now, that area has been re-designed and enlarged, and there’s plenty of room for entertainment and for a very active bar area off to one side. When we were there, a few people were eating inside and many more were out back, eating and drinking and listening to live music.

Also, the owners of Kelly’s have acquired and developed the next-door Chic-A-Boom Room, a cocktail bar, as well as Blur one door down, a night club.

Kelly’s puts on a very good breakfast, and many people head there on the weekends for eggs benedict and other breakfast goodies. If you go, get there early, or you will have to wait for a seat.

Kelly’s puts a premium on fun. There’s a manniquin near the front door (named Peggy Sue) who greets diners as they enter, and the tables feature unique salt-and-pepper shakers as well as wildly different coffee mugs.

Kelly’s fits nicely into the old Our Town style of Dunedin’s downtown, but at the same time it sports a kitschy bit of new wave color. It’s hip and fun, and the food is great.  Don’t miss it.

Tags: dining, Dunedin, real estate

The great North Pinellas County roadside barbecue tour

I am from northern New England, home of pine trees, good seafood and plenty of snow.

Eli's, a Dunedin barbecue institution

What northern New England DOESN’T have is barbecue. And that’s enough to keep me here for the rest of my life. That, and the lack of snow.

When we lived up Maine and got a hankering for barbecue, we had to pile into the car and head south to South Portland, home to the only barbecue restaurant in the entire state of Maine.

(Now, before my old Maine friends get on here and attack me for my incredible lack of modern Maine barbecue awareness, I do have to acknowledge that, in my absence over the past 16 years, there is now something called the “Mainely Grillin’ and Chillin’ Country BBQ State Competition” that takes place in Eliot, Maine in August. Also, a Google search does reveal a few new barbecue restaurants scattered around the state. Wish they were there when we lived there…)

Anyway, there is no lack of barbecue in Florida, or throughout the entire South. Around here, there’s a barbecue joint on every other corner, and we go to most of them.

One thing that I really enjoy, though, are the little roadside pit barbecue places. Usually, these operate out in the open with not much more than a big black smoker and perhaps a couple of picnic tables. The more grandly financed outfits may operate out of a trailer of some kind.

Anyway, there’s enough of them around here that I thought I’d do a little blog tour of North Pinellas County’s outdoor roadside barbecue places. Here are three of them:

Eli’s

Now that I’ve just gotten through describing roadside BBQ joints as not having any permanent real estate, I start off with Eli’s, s which actually does. But here is why I’m including it: It’s a Dunedin institution; it’s only open on Friday and Saturday; and while it does have a small permanent building, only the help can go inside — customers must order through a window, and then have to take the food home or eat it outside on a strange collection of picnic tables and old restaurant booths.

One order of ribs -- to go!

There’s a big ol’ smoker out back that has a name of its own — “Bigfoot.” And it turns out very good barbecue that Eli sells at very good prices — a chopped pork sandwich with beans and cole slaw was just $6 on a recent visit.

The parking lot at Eli’s is often full or nearly so on Friday’s and Saturday’s, the only days that Eli’s is open. And on the day I was there, one customer actually rode in on a riding lawn mower, got his order of ribs and rode out, balancing his white bag of food on his lap.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: barbecue, North Pinellas County, restaurants

Palm Harbor’s Ahern’s Ice Cream

Ahern's Ice Cream

When we first moved to Palm Harbor from Maine in 1993, one thing we looked forward to was a whole new world of ice cream shops. We figured that Florida, being a hot and outdoorsy kind of place, would be a great place for ice cream.

As it turned out, we were a little disappointed. The ice cream we found was pretty good most of the time, but there just wasn’t all that much to choose from, and we found that to be a little surprising.

Later, I read somewhere that New England, a place with long, cold winters,  was one of the most popular places in the country for ice cream. Who would have guessed that?

Anyway, we did manage to find some good ice cream places, and the longer we live here the more we see new ice cream places opening up. When that happens, we fall all over ourselves going to the new place and trying out the ice cream.

Yep, that's me, windowing-shopping the ice cream

One of the newest around here is Ahern’s Ice Cream, located in Palm Harbor on Alternate 19 just south of Alderman. We’ve been there a couple of times recently, and we like the ice cream as well as the people who work there. We spent one visit talking to the owner (and eating ice cream, of course), and we spent the next visit eating ice cream and talking to the very nice young woman behind the counter. She goes to St. Petersburg College and drives a very funky red 1970 Volkswagen bug, which was parked outside.

One thing that’s interesting about Ahern’s is that it sells ice cream made over in Tampa by Old Meeting House Ice Cream, a small, independently owned and operated ice cream business that has been making and selling ice cream since 1947. Old Meeting House still makes ice cream in small batches by hand, just as it did when it started out in the ice cream biz 61 years ago.

Ahern’s (and Old Meeting House) definitely passes our critical Ice Cream Test.

Tags: ice cream, Palm Harbor, pinellas county

Old Town Cafe in Old Palm Harbor

Old Town Cafe in Old Palm Harbor

We’ve written a fair amount about Old Palm Harbor, the historical section of Palm Harbor in the Florida Avenue area of town, near Alternate 19. It was the site of the recent Palm Harbor Citrus Festival, and it hosts a number of street fairs and art shows throughout the year.

One place we like there is the Old Town Cafe, which is at 1019 Florida Ave. This is a very casual and laid-back place that invites lingering over a cup of coffee or a beer, maybe some gelato or a light lunch.

Owner Dan Kauffman has put together a very nice ambiance at Old Town Cafe, with an outside deck and an inviting interior. They serve Baby’s Coffee from Key West, and while the are open until 9 p.m. ( 4 p.m. on weekends), the food is more breakfast and lunch — paninis, bagels and croissants for breakfast, sandwiches, salads, paninis and Cuban sandwiches for lunch and dinner.

Dan at Old Town Cafe

If you care about the environment, Old Town Cafe lets you know theycare, too — cups, straws and bags are made of corn, to-go boxes are made of sugar cane.

This is the kind of place where you take your morning newspaper and then linger over a good cup of coffee and a light meal. Take your time and enjoy — no one will rush you here.

Tags: old town cafe, Palm Harbor

Mystic Fish in Palm Harbor wins award

Mystic Fish

One of our favorite local restaurants, Mystic Fish on Tampa Road in Palm Harbor, has won Best Overall and Best Use of Ingredient at the All Childrens Iron Chef Challenge at the Renaissance Hotel Tampa. It’s the second year in a row that Mystic Fish has won that honor. The winning dish was Steamed Maine Lobster with Spicy Slaw and orange -Apricot Curry Sauce and Togorashi Shrimp with Orange Marmalade brushed Bacon and Blood Orange Sabayon.

To learn more, go to their website — www.3bestchefs.com/mystic. To see our review of Mystic Fish, look over to the right of this page and click on “restaurant reviews” under “Local Resources.”

Tags: Add new tag, Palm Harbor, restaurants

Is this the best pizza in Pinellas County?

Monty's Pizza

There’s all kinds of different pizza. There’s thin crust, thick crust, Chicago style, New York style and Sicilian pizza, just to name a few. People are particular about their pizza, and not everyone thinks the same way when it comes to deciding what’s good, and what’s not so good.

All that being said, we like Monty’s Pizza in Clearwater. A lot.

We go there just about every Sunday night, and we always order the same thing: a medium deluxe. At Monty’s, a deluxe pizza has five toppings of your choice. For us, that means pepperoni, sausage, extra cheese, olive oil and mushrooms. (There’s one waitress there who doesn’t think olive oil should be a topping. When she waits on us, we order onions, too.)

Monty’s is owned by a family from Connecticut, according to the story on the back of the menu. They have been turning out pizzas in Pinellas County since the early 80s. The restaurant itself is a bit funky, and that adds to the charm. Also, there’s an old Ford outside in the parking lot painted up to look like a NASCAR racer sponsored by Monty’s. If you drive by, you see the Ford before you see the actual “Monty’s” sign on the building.

Monty’s is in mid-county on Nursery, just west of Belcher. If you come on a Sunday night, we’ll probably see you there.

Tags: Clearwater, pinellas, pizza, restaurant

Hops is back in Palm Harbor, and it’s good!

 Hops Grill & Brewery is a chain of casual restaurants that also brew their own beers. There is a Hops in Palm Harbor, on the southbound side of US19 between Tampa Road and Nebraska, and we used to eat there quite a bit. They had good steaks that were well-priced, they had an entree called South Beach Chicken that I liked a lot, and they had very good burgers.

Then we got the feeling that Hops sort of lost its way. Their prices went up quite a bit, and they changed their menu. In February of 2004 the chain’s parent company filed for bankruptcy, and about 15 Hops restaurants were closed.

To make matters worse, our local Hops restaurant was struck by lightning a day or two after Christmas, and the resulting fire did about $200,000 worth of damage. The place was closed for weeks, and we wondered if it would ever re-open.

I recently noticed that Hops had re-opened, so last night we gave it a try. And we were plesantly surprised. They were offering a 9-ounce steak for $10.99, and we both ordered it. It was quite good, and more than enough to eat.

We were also glad to see that Key Lime pie was still on the menu. We tried that, too, and found that the Hops key lime pie is still among the best you can find, just like we remembered.

Here is how Hops describes itself on its website: “We are a casual dining microbrewery restaurant that offers fresh, made from scratch menu items in a relaxed atmosphere featuring signature dishes that are created from high-quality, fresh ingredients and prepared in a display style kitchen that allows you to view the cooking process.”

We were pleasantly surprised to see that Hops is open once again, and pleased to note that it has returned to its roots of good food and good prices. Other people must be feeling good about it, too — the place was just about full.

Tags: Palm Harbor, restaurants

Maybe doggie dining wasn’t such a great idea after all

Back a few months ago I posted a blog entry about a new Florida state law that allowed restaurants to let diners bring their dogs along. There were a number of restrictions — the local communities had to sign on to the bill, and the restaurants had to have outside dining facilities, for example — but a number of restaurants signed on.

One of the local restaurants was Moon Under Water in St. Petersburg. Plenty of Moon Under Water patrons started bringing their dogs along for lunch and dinner. (The dogs had to stay on the floor, but still…)

Well, things got a little out of hand at Moon Under Water. Lots and lots (and lots) of dog owners started bringing their dogs. People and their dogs lined up out on the sidewalk, waiting for tables. Dogs urinated (and worse) on the sidewalks. Some dog owners were outraged that their dogs had to stay on the floor, so arguments weren’t unusual.

So on Jan. 11, Moon Under Water changed its mind. No doggies allowed anymore.

Tags: dogs, pinellas county, restaurants

Where are the restaurants going?

If you visit this blog or my web site with any regularity, you know that I like restaurants — a lot. So when a new restaurant comes to town, it’s big news to me. Unfortunately, the opposite is also true — when a restaurant packs up and leaves, that’s news to me, as well.

Lately, it seems that we have been losing more restaurants than we have been gaining, and I’m not sure why.

The latest news is that Sam Seltzer’s Steak House on US19 north of Alderman Road has been closed. That restaurant has been open for about a year and a half, and we’ve eaten there a number of times. Honestly, we didn’t like it as much as the Sam Seltzer’s further south on US19, down south of Gulf-to-Bay Boulevard in Clearwater (there’s a review of that restaurant on my Restaurant Review page).

Sam Seltzer’s management says that the company felt that the Palm Harbor restaurant was taking business away from the Clearwater restaurant as well as the location up in Port Richey.

Another big surprise is that the Hooter’s restaurant, which was also on US19 north of Alderman, has closed down as well. No word from Hooter’s on what happened, but there is some speculation that it had to do with a rent increase. Hooter’s puts out a pretty good burger, but honestly it has never been one of my favorites and we almost never go there.

Not too long ago, the Fred Fleming’s barbecue restaurant on US19 at Nebraska closed. We miss that place, because we used to like to take our two granddaughters there. Another fairly recent closure was the Palm Harbor Ale House, on US19 just north of Tampa Road. That was a place for a fairly young crowd, kind of a sports bar atmosphere, and we didn’t go there very much either.

But not all the recent restaurant news has been negative. Dagwood Deli recently opened, and Wild Fish has been open on US19 south of Curlew for a number of months now. We haven’t tried Dagwood, but we’ve been to Wild Fish a couple of times. I’ll try to get a review of Wild Fish up on the web site in the near future.

Tags: North Pinellas County, restaurants