Sixteen people gather at the Hooker Tea Company on a Thursday evening for a food tour of downtown St. Petersburg. Most don’t live in St. Petersburg and know little about the city’s food culture. They come from Chicago, New York City, and beyond but live in the Bay area now. Everyone self-describes as a “foodie.”
Our tour guide is Deborah Molise, owner and operator at Eat. Sip. Indulge. She’s done food tours of downtown St. Petersburg and Gulfport since June. Now that the weather is beginning to cool off, business is picking up. Molise’s tours focus on locally owned restaurants and specialty food stores.
Hooker Tea Company owner Raymond Ritola tells the group the difference between white teas, green teas, rooibos, mate, chai and more. Each tea has its purpose, from calming to energizing to medicinal. He prepares our first tea, a lavender vanilla peppermint. It tastes sweet sans sweetener, and the combination of flavors brings out a very light creaminess in the caramel-colored tea.
For round two, Ritola pours everyone cups of freshly brewed rooibos tea. It’s a deep red tea and very tart.
“It tastes like gelatin without any sugar,” says an older woman from New York City who later tells me all about her ballroom dancing hobby.
Everyone finishes up his or her cups and Deborah shuffles the group out the door.
Onto our second stop, Le Macaron on First Street and Second Avenue North. Rows upon rows of delicious treats are visible from the street.
Le Macaron is run by two brothers from France. One of them tends shop, handing out each person’s chosen macaron with a charming smile. Unlike America's coconut-heavy macaroons, Le Macaron’s delicacies have a crispy outer shell made from soft meringue and ground almonds, giving way to a soft center of cream or jam. The selection includes several mouthwatering varieties like basil white chocolate and black vanilla. They're impossibly decadent.
Molise stops outside of Vladimir’s Russian Collectibles and tells the history behind St. Petersburg’s name.
City founders John Williams and Peter Demens flipped a coin to see who would name the city. Demens won and named the city after St. Petersburg, Russia, where he spent a good part of his youth.
“It’s probably a good thing Demens won,” she explained. “Otherwise we’d be standing in Detroit, Florida.”
Two cups of tea and a macaron in, some are starting to worry this food tour won't provide enough to eat. Our next stop is Meze 119 on Second Street and First Avenue North. We nosh on sample-sized spinach cakes with tzatziki sauce and mushrooms and Chikk’n (fake chicken) with couscous. Everyone talks about food, family recipes and new places to find ingredients. Next stop, Primi’s Urban Café. Executive Chef “Tony Macaroni” brings out steaming platters of pasta Bolognese, gnocchi with Gorgonzola, manicotti, and bruschetta. Any worries about not getting enough food on this tour have completely subsided.
We take our Crowley’s food to go — crispy Reuben egg rolls with creamy thousand island dressing — on the way to St. Pete Brasserie for dessert. Our tour ends a few minutes past the quoted time, with individual trays of mint chocolate chip ice cream and slices of rich fudge-like cake.
Molise is from England originally, but came to Chicago 20 years ago as an au pair. She fell in love with the city’s food culture, and now lives in Gulfport with her husband and children.
“I had participated in many food tours over the years,” Molise said. “It just seemed a natural fit to create a food tour company right here in St. Petersburg and Gulfport.”
All of the stops on her tours are locally owned and operated. That caught Keep St. Petersburg Local founder Olga Bof’s attention.
“In highlighting them [local businesses] she’s reinforcing what makes our community special,” Bof said.
This article appears in Sep 20-26, 2012.