Georgie's Alibi is not a place people visit for the food. St. Pete’s iconic and dominant gay bar is more about providing a safe and friendly place for like-minded individuals to gather, dance, down drinks or watch sports on TV. Visit the Georgie's website and you’ll see a hell of a lot more about cocktail specials, marriage equality news and upcoming events than the late-night menu or Sunday brunch.
Which is a shame. Not because the menu at Georgie’s Alibi is anything special, but because the food is a subtle indicator that, at least in one respect, the LGBT crowd has managed to take the middle-American tropes that are fundamental to everyone in this country and make them their own — celebrating similarity instead of highlighting differences.
Georgie’s is proof that bar food — good, bad or mediocre — has no sexual orientation.
Look at it from a philosophical perspective. Although the trappings may be different from a typical primarily hetero sports bar or watering hole, the food is the same, proving that everyone has the same right and access to spicy wings and patty melts, chicken sandwiches blanketed in cheese, deep-fried mozzarella and grilled filet mignon. This is very inclusive food.
And, again like most bars, that food strives for little more than being serviceable and meeting a need. Like buffalo chicken sliders on doughy buns, the meat crisp and spicy and simple. Or fried green beans that range from tender-crisp to limp and listless.
Burgers at Georgie’s are big, hand-formed and cooked to the right temperature, with a toasted bun for a base and fresh, crisp veggies on top. More salt would make them better, but even that is such a common bar kitchen mistake it’s cute.
And, like most bars, when Georgie’s stretches to try for something a little fancier than expected, there are problems. Take the ahi tuna won-tons, a beautiful plate of four fried pasta shells piled with sesame oil-seasoned wakame seaweed salad, cubes of barely seared tuna and a drizzle of wasabi cream. The seaweed is overwhelming, easily enough for two or three more plates of won-tons. It ends up mounded on the plate in a massive pile of discarded green.
Actually, maybe there is something special about Georgie’s kitchen, since it’s one of the few bars that can do a salad right. Instead of standard iceberg, here the lettuce is romaine or spring mix, topped with very fresh veggies and a variety of cheeses, meats, nuts, dried fruits and dressings depending on which menu item you pick. Georgie’s understands that bar salads are primarily about how much stuff you can cram onto the greenery.
Otherwise, the menu plays out as you’d expect: simple but tasty deli sandwiches; a capable reuben, bland grilled chicken sandwiches loaded with extras to make them palatable; entrees that will usually have you wishing you’d picked a sandwich instead; and tater tots.
The bar serves a wide variety of food — from poppers to burgers — until 1:30 a.m., but the best thing to order at Georgie’s is actually breakfast. Sunday brunch features short-order treats like steak, eggs and tater tots that are executed well, plus a host of benedict preparations. It’s also a great time to sit outside on Georgie’s long sidewalk patio, off the main drag with a vista of the diamond-pattern building across the parking lot. When it’s warm out, the misters are on, cooling the air and giving the vista beyond your table an air of mystery, or at least a hazy glow.
Not that you want to cut yourself off from the outside world, even here at Georgie’s. You’re just like anyone else, enjoying a beer or a bloody mary, noshing on fried bar grub and glancing at the remixed Lady Gaga video on the televisions when the conversation wanes, just like any other red-blooded American bar patron.
This article appears in Jun 23-29, 2011.