St. Pete Brasserie
4 stars
539 Central Ave., St. Petersburg, 727-823-3700 or stpetebrasserie.com
The space that's home to St. Pete Brasserie, on Central Avenue in downtown St. Petersburg, has been fraught with difficulties over the past couple years. It started when The Table — formerly a highly-regarded Sarasota restaurant — opened a second location there. The Table closed the same day it won CL's Best New Restaurant readers' poll award. Then a parade of owners and chefs tried to keep the new The Table open for another year and a half, in easily the worst economic environment for restaurants in decades.
Enter Andrew Wilkins, aka Wilko. Formerly of Mad Fish and Ceviche, Wilkins was brought in as a new managing partner by George and Linda Rahdert (restaurant partners and owners of the building). They knew they needed a change, and after throwing a whole bunch of ideas at the wall (and into the local press), they finally found one that stuck: an inexpensive French brasserie with classic Gallic comfort food, and a name — St. Pete Brasserie — that's slightly more descriptive than The Table.
"I had some deals working, but now that I have my own restaurant I wanted to do what I wanted to do, which was a brasserie-style restaurant," explained Wilko. "You can't have a foofy restaurant in St. Pete right now." He says that the Rahderts will likely phase out of restaurant ownership, excepting the high-quality organic beef George Rahdert supplies the restaurant from a ranch he owns north of Tampa.
This article appears in Dec 16-22, 2009.