I wonder how many meals I've eaten in Ybor City. Hundreds, maybe thousands.
Before Ybor got pricey, one of my friends lived in an apartment above a theater on Seventh Avenue where we would play cards all night, then at dawn, adjourn to the bakery around the corner for fresh guava turnovers, sold through the back door right off the cooling racks.
We ate often at a Spanish restaurant called Alvarez, fulsome plates of ropa vieja and huge Cuban sandwiches. It was a modest family-owned place with spare Formica tables and a long counter populated with single diners in a hurry. It's long gone, but the space it occupied now shelters a new restaurant — 8th Avenue Grille.
My sentimental attachment to the building helped, but even if I'd never set foot in there before I would have liked the restaurant. The food is good, the service acceptable and I was cheered to discover it still carries at least a semblance of its former aura: One day when I was there at noon, its owners sat convivially joking at a table in the back.
Now, instead of cheap brown floor and Naugahyde booths, the restaurant is done in deep gray with modern touches, tables sophisticated in white linen. On one side of the restaurant is a private dining room, on the other side a big bar and lounge, complete with sexy, curvy couches and billowy curtains. Though dinner service ended at 11:30 p.m. that night, at 1 a.m. the lounge was just kicking into gear with a flashy, youngish crowd.
The menu sports a wonderfully eclectic mix of dishes, everything from Asian-inspired blackened chicken spring rolls, to big hearty salads, pasta, veggie dishes, a complex duck confit with Mandarin-orange risotto and orange Grand Marnier sauce, and even a nod to the restaurant's previous incarnation — a pressed Cuban sandwich. I liked the low-key, easy lunch buffet, with a dozen well-done dishes; everything from simple steamed broccoli to a calorific, creamy risotto topped with an accomplished beef carbonara.
Michael and Adriana Rendas own the restaurant; the chef is Mark Jasko, who previously cooked at the Saddlebrook Resort.
The Martini Tester started with his usual, Bombay Sapphire martini up with olives ($8.25), while I ordered an orange cosmopolitan ($9). It takes only a few minutes to gauge whether the martini is any good because it if has a real punch, the M.T. develops a spacey grin reminiscent of the brainless Joey on Friends. Hi, Joey.
We started with lettuce wraps ($7), an appetizer with big, moist chunks of teriyaki grilled chicken, served with three different sauces and crispy Boston lettuce leaves for wrapping. It could comprise a meal in itself.
My favorite dish was Caribbean conch chowder ($2 cup, $3 bowl), spicy red chowder heavy with yucca and conch, expertly seasoned with scotch-bonnet peppers. The tomatoey broth left a gentle burn in my mouth. The lobster bisque ($3 cup, $4 bowl), its flavor heightened with good-quality sherry, was delightful as well.
One of the few disappointments was my entrée, lobster lasagna ($28, but market price varies) — Maine lobster layered with eggplant, spinach, red bell pepper and accented with red and yellow tomato-pepper coulis. The dish was good, but fell short of perfect. While the pasta was so-so and the veggies were fine, the chunks of lobster had cooked too long.
The M.T. was going light that night, so he tried the grilled veggie plate ($16), eggplant, summer squash, mushroom, potato, broccoli, carrot, red pepper and onion served with white rice and grilled chicken (it can also be ordered with salmon). Simple, but effective.
Another day, I sampled the lunch buffet ($7.50 Mon.-Thurs. and $8.50 Fri.) and came away happy, as the kitchen happened to be featuring Italian dishes. That meant I got linguini topped with fat meatballs and a thick, homemade red sauce, Caprese and Caesar salad, risotto, beef carbonara, steamed broccoli, eggplant Parmesan and crispy, buttery bread, not to mention a creamy tomato soup that was really spectacular.
Each day of the week at lunch, the restaurant features a different cuisine: Mexican Mondays, Euro Tuesdays, Hawaiian Wednesdays, Asian Thursdays and Fridays are dedicated to seafood.
On the third Wednesday of each month, the restaurant also sponsors a "gourmet smoker," a full steak dinner and five to seven premium cigars for a fixed price of $40.
Save room for dessert. A knockout is the orange tart ($6), crunchy browned phyllo dough shaped into a nest and ladled with an orange-flavor creme Anglais and a garnish of orange slices. Light and yummy. The chef does a good job with a standard-like creme brulée ($5), too.
The restaurant's weak spot was its service. It felt disorganized because our servers kept changing and we became confused about which one was ours. The restaurant also needs to improve its billing, since one night, we were accidentally (I think) overcharged by $33. The server apologized and provided a re-figured bill, but it left us wondering, especially when I later noticed another error in the cost of the drinks — less than it should have been — on the second bill.
Despite its shortcomings, I can recommend 8th Avenue Grille as a quality joint on the strength of its artfully seasoned, creative fare, its hip lounge and street level locale — and with the hope of making new memories to savor in Ybor City.
Food Editor Sara Kennedy dines anonymously, and Weekly Planet pays for her meals. She can be reached at sara.kennedy@weeklyplanet.com or 813-248-8888 ext. 116.
This article appears in May 21-27, 2003.