Even though The Kitchen was opened in St. Pete just four months ago by the Granola Lady and that Z Grill guy, it doesn't feel brand new. Instead, the space has the comfortably awkward layout and ad hoc organization of a joint that's been around for years. Music blares. Midriffs are bared. Fried garlic perfumes the air down the block. The Kitchen fits right in on downtown St. Pete's Central Avenue. It feels lived in.
Walk in and you'll be confronted by a series of plastic bins dispensing granola — you'll have to bang the low-fat cashew canister to coax the oats down the spout — with a convenient milk spigot just inches down the line. It's a nod to the cereal that has made Margaret Guidicessi a fixture in St. Pete. She sold 150 pounds of the stuff on her first day at the downtown farmer's market two years ago; soon after, she opened a Bowl A Granola retail shop to keep up with demand for the tasty oats.
Here at The Kitchen, though, oats are merely a sideline. From healthy, crunchy snack food, Guidicessi — with the help of Z Grill's Mark Gross — has branched out into a whole line of hipster cuisine: prepared foods that are whimsical and heavy on the spice, baked goods from bygone eras and sandwiches that will bust your gut. The food doesn't always hit the right notes, but the experience is always enjoyable.
When it comes to sandwiches — which are the most consistent dining options at The Kitchen — Guidicessi evinces a happy disregard for both culinary propriety and dietary concerns. That's the only way you can end up with three thick slices of toasted whole-grain bread layered with rich peanut butter, slices of ripe banana, crunchy granola doused in honey and a schmear of habanero jelly ($4.95), which is restrained enough to merely brighten the other ingredients with a tingle of spicy heat.
The Kitchen's sandwiches are so appealing because they're like something you might concoct yourself home alone, with no one to shoot questioning glances at the massive stack of meat you're trying to crush between two slices of fried bread. No one will question your choices, here, either; comforting excess is part of The Kitchen's menu.
Hot sandwiches are built on a hybrid of focaccia and boule, given serious crunch by an aluminum-foil-covered press. Not only can you get Kitchen-roasted beef seasoned (a little too subtly) with espresso, sliced paper thin and piled high with sweet Vidalia onion marmalade ($8.50), Guidecessi makes sure to put cheddar on both the bottom and the top of the other fillings, resulting in two layers of gooey goodness in every bite. Fool around with a George Foreman for a few days and you'll learn that trick, but it's surprising how many pseudo-panini press joints never learn it.
The Mexican Hat Dance is basically the same, replacing the beef with sliced dried chorizo, the Vidalia onions with grilled poblanos and the cheddar with jack.
The cold side of the menu displays the same appreciation for caloric pulchritude: an overstuffed ham-and-salami grinder; the aforementioned pp&j; and a veggie-and-falafel sandwich aptly titled "big fat greek veggie." The Kitchen also tucks a little chile pepper into the butcher paper that covers each sandwich, like a bright yellow bow on a wrapped present.
At breakfast you can sample some of that famous granola, a burrito special (bacon and onion on one day, $4.95) or stick with a soon-to-be morning classic: jalapeno, cream cheese and bacon stuffed into a crusty baguette ($3.99). That'll wake you up before a busy workday.
At least on the surface, this joyful excess seems to find its way into the refrigerated cases containing The Kitchen's wide variety of prepared foods. It's tough to find anything in there that isn't labeled with jalapeno, habanero, chipotle, poblano or just plain old generic chile. Spice is apparently king.
The variety is exciting, as well. You might find skewers of grilled baby octopus right next to innocuous pasta salad, or pork loin smeared with an odd sauce that glows a neon red.
It looks cool — and a little titillating — but the execution is off. Finding the right balance when cooking something that will sit in the fridge for an indeterminate time, then likely microwaved before being wolfed down during a quick meal in front of the TV can be tough for the best cooks. Guidecessi, formerly the prepared foods chef at Mazzaro's, should have it nailed.
But then I taste turkey that sucks all the moisture out of my mouth, salads that range from blindingly spicy to stupefyingly bland and sides that somehow manage to avoid any of the whimsy present in The Kitchen's more straightforward sandwiches. Fritatta is spongy, while almost every meat I sample is bone dry. All the typical pitfalls of prepared foods are present here.
Baked goods are little better. I like that there is bundt cake and those little cinnamon pinwheels we used to make from store-bought pie dough when I was a kid, but the execution at The Kitchen is little better than we managed back in my childhood, most everything dried out or innocuous. One exception is spiced banana bread that manages rich moisture from the mashed fruit.
Yes, The Kitchen has its problems, but it's only been four months, and Guidecessi still seems to be making plenty of adjustments to both the menu and the offerings in the cases. There's plenty of opportunity for this gung-ho entrepreneur to find her footing in the prepared foods while still churning out those beautiful sandwiches.
In the meantime, I'll continue to test out that pretty prepared food on occasion, just to see where it's headed. But most of the time you'll find me sitting out on The Kitchen's sidewalk, stuffing a giant grinder or jalapeno cream cheese baguette into my mouth, happy that I don't have to make these gorgeously grotesque sandwiches under the critical, health-conscious eyes of my family.
This article appears in Nov 28 – Dec 4, 2007.