You haven’t lived until Cephas Gilbert looks you up and down before calling you “fat.” Yes, the man behind the counter at the Fourth Avenue Ybor mainstay Cephas’ Hot Shop will lecture you about the pitfalls of salmon and shrimp (spoiler: it’s the mercury, people) and your sorry excuse for a diet, but you have to stick around. His advice is given in earnest, and the tamarind tea and aloe shakes have been revitalizing Ybor denizens since the ’80s. The dishes — curried goat, oxtail, fresh veggies — are healthy belly-busters, and he even opens his backyard on Saturday nights, offering an escape from the madness of the Seventh Avenue strip.
This article appears in Sep 18-24, 2014.