Maybe it's a given that the kitchen part of Vivia's Kitchen would be larger than the seating area. A spare half-dozen padded stools snuggle up to a chunky, wooden bar facing Vivia Grier's personal workshop, with room for maybe another 10 or so diners at the few high tables squeezed into the corners of this, the one and only dining room. Sure, there are tables outside as well, out on the front porch of this converted house on Armenia, but it's a small place. I think Grier wants it that way.
For the first six months the restaurant was open, Grier served a stripped-down menu of breakfast and lunch designed to make it easy for a longtime chef but first-time restaurateur to push out the plates. Dinner is coming, maybe as soon as next week, but she's being careful. "Sometimes when you open a big restaurant, you can get lost in it," she explains.
On a Saturday at Vivia's, eggs and bacon in a variety of guises, with a couple of fruity pancakes for variety, fill out the breakfast options. Don't get me wrong, though; most of this fare is far above short-order standards.
A massive fresh croissant ($7.95) is packed with fluffy scrambled eggs that feel light, even with the decadent amount of gooey Swiss cheese and crisp applewood smoked bacon tucked into the golden curds. Take a bite of an omelet ($8.95) and it's clear that Grier respects eggs — this one is almost as airy as the scramble and stuffed with simple lump crab that can assert its buttery richness without competing with other ingredients.
Pancakes ($7.95) are thick, the interior packed with a honeycomb of pinprick holes, big enough to easily hide plump, sweet blueberries under the golden exterior. These spongy discs suck up the maple syrup, but there is enough fragrant lemon flavor infused into the batter to cut through the sweet and brighten the whole experience. I normally treat pancakes as little more than a side dish, but these are hotcakes to be reckoned with.
As you can see, there is nothing terribly fancy about a brunch at Vivia's, just simple, accomplished and extremely tasty fare. That's Grier's M.O. For the past 15 years Grier, a native of Jamaica, traveled around the world as a personal chef, settling here in Tampa about five years ago. Why trade the one-on-one personal chef life for the daily grind of a restaurant? "I think it was the next step on this journey I'm on," she explains. "And I fell in love with the location."
The converted house on Armenia once served as the café for the defunct Santaella cigar factory across the street (now the West Tampa Center for the Arts), so it has some history in this North Tampa neighborhood. Even better, according to Grier, is how small and intimate the place is. "I can still be a personal chef," she says.
At lunch, Grier's crab cakes ($10.95) could be a lesson for any restaurateur. The crab is lump and the seasoning and binders are present, but serve merely to accent the main ingredient; then the discs are given a serious pan crisping. Classic crab cake, subtly accomplished. Just like Grier.
N.Y. strip ($11.95) is heavily marinated, seasoned, seared and sliced on top of greens or toasted bread, with a crumble of gorgonzola, which also appears on the homemade potato chips served with every sandwich. Turkey burgers ($8.95) see more of that gorgonzola, along with crisp lettuce and sweet tomatoes atop a patty that is at once meaty and light, with the distinct flavor of fowl lightly accented by a vein of barely noticed minced onions cooked into the meat.
Vivia's shrimp and papaya salad ($6.25) feature picture-perfect shrimp, tender and clean with just a bit of salt to bring out their natural butter and brine. The papaya is under-ripe, but I'm happy to see that Grier doesn't use the now-ubiquitous mesclun party mix of greens.
At this point, with a few Vivia's meals under my belt, it's easy to see the shortcuts that Grier takes. Lunches are drizzled with either extremely mild horseradish aioli or her blandly sweet and herby mango cilantro dressing. There are those homemade chips with every sandwich. Sides of fresh fruit — notably some incredibly ripe slices of fragrant mango — grace every plate, thankfully.
Don't take that as a criticism. Instead of "shortcuts," maybe we can call it Grier's technique. It's another sign of what happens when an accomplished chef with a long history of successful cooking for small and large groups opens a restaurant. She's canny, understands her limits and uses her knowledge to put damn tasty food on the table, even without the benefit of a long background of restaurant management or a large staff.
Lingering over an intensely floral glass of orange blossom oolong tea on Vivia's patio, I watch the traffic whiz by on Armenia. I wonder how long it will be before more businesses follow the path that Vivia's and NoHo Bistro (a block down the street) have blazed. Considering the development happening down the residential side streets, it feels like it's going to happen soon.
Grier does a brisk business cooking dinners that people pick up after work (she also delivers), so she and her staff are already prepping and cooking past the afternoon hours, but when I ask her about the impending addition of dinner for Vivia's, she becomes cautious. "Maybe it'll be next week," she says, but claims that the hours will be short. Yet again, she seems more concerned with making everything work than with pushing the limits of her potential business.
If it means more meals like the ones I've had recently at Vivia's Kitchen, I'm more than willing to wait.
Brian Ries is a former restaurant general manager with an advanced diploma from the Court of Master Sommeliers. Creative Loafing food critics dine anonymously, and the paper pays for the meals. Restaurants chosen for review are not related to advertsing.
This article appears in Jun 6-12, 2007.