Memorable Restaurants

An important part of my memorable travels has been places we have eaten over the years, and although I have a separate food site, I feel this would be more appropriate for posting here.  As a "foodie" personally, a restaurant can express my identity well, and therefore I wanted to just tell you about a few places we have eaten at that have been good experiences.

The Chattaway, on 4th Street in south St. Pete, FL

We had the privelege of eating at the Chattaway Restaurant in St. Pete yesterday, a place that is a local institution around here.  Started by a couple from England I believe, the Chattaway has been serving good food for decades here, and its reputation is well-deserved.  It doesn't look like much from the outside - it looks rather like a decrepit Florida "Cracker cottage," but that adds to its charm, as I love it! - but the food is excellent.  Although noted for its "Chattaburgers" (Barb had one and loved it - no leftovers for her!) I personally don't eat burgers so I ordered the fried chicken, which was the most delicious fried chicken I have had in a long time.  Also, we got to eat inside the "tea room," which is a quaint little dining area decorated with all sorts of vintage bone-chinaware and all sorts of other charming bric-a-brac, and while we were enjoying the dining experience, we also had the pleasure of the company of two of the most adorable little cats which the owners recently adopted from a rescue - they were mother and daughter, and the mother, Alice, was a black shorthair while her baby was the most beautiful little tortoiseshell-marked kitten.  The wait staff too was some of the most friendly I have seen in the area.  We will surely be going back, as they have a fried shrimp basket I am dying to try!

Allen's Historical Cafe, Auburndale, FL

This place, which unfortunately closed several years back, was Allen's Historical Cafe in the Polk County town of Auburndale, FL.  Started by the late Carl Allen, a late "Florida Cracker" historian, this place was one of the most enjoyable, but one of the most unique, dining experiences I have ever had.  If you wanted to try "Cracker cuisine" in its most authentic form, this was the place!  It was where I first tasted alligator actually, and have loved it ever since.  Allen's also had on the menu such delicacies as (all deep-fried!) softshell turtle, rabbit, rattlesnake, catfish, and some nasty things even such as deep-fried dill pickles (yuck!).  Also, if you were up to the challenge, they served as a side swamp cabbage (the inner trunk of a saw palmetto bush) and other such stuff.  The place looked like a museum inside also, with about every old artifact imaginable festooning the walls, ceilings, and shelves.  And, if you had the fortune of eating there at least one Saturday a month, they had an impromptu Gospel sing where you could even join in and "jam session" with local musicians.  If you want to learn more about this place, there is a book of Carl Allen's articles for the Lakeland Ledger over the years called Root Hog or Die Poor.  It is really too bad the place closed, as it would have attracted people for years to come.

Bay Island Seafood on Pratt Street in Baltimore, MD

Back when I was a kid - around 5 or 6 - we lived in Baltimore, and on Friday nights Mom, my Uncle Ken and Aunt Flo, and other family would get together and play cards and Yahtzee and would order out. This was the place they ordered from too - one of the best seafood places in the city!  Their fried oysters - one was the size of a small steak - were the best.  After all these years, the place is still there, and they still serve fantastic seafood.



Twin Oaks Barbecue, on Norwich Street in Brunswick, GA

My father, Wayne Thrower, lived in Brunswick, GA, and I used to spend time with him and my stepmother Debora when I was around 9 years old or so.  For a number of years - and it is still in business today! - the premiere BBQ place in town was this one.  Twin Oaks had excellent food, and their signature was these battered seasoned French fries - people would actually go there to just eat those! 

There are two restaurants in Graceville, FL, from my college days which unfortunately I don't have pictures of, but they were excellent.  One was Felter's Seafood, which unfortunately closed when its owner, Clyde Bailey, passed on a few years back.  Felter's was the home of one of the best seafood buffets in the area, and for around $10 you could eat to your little heart's content on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays (as Clyde and his wife Sybil were devout Baptists, the restaurant was closed on Sundays). I actually worked there a short time as a busboy and prep cook back in 1991 to earn a little extra money while in school at BBI up the street, and had the privelege of getting to eat a lot of that good stuff free.  Clyde had every seafood imaginable on that buffet too - fried oysters, clam strips, shrimp, scallops, catfish, mullet, froglegs - and it was good stuff.  After Felter's closed, the gap was filled by another good local restaurant, Grady's Seafood House.  Back in my college days, Grady's was as I recalled more of a homestyle restaurant, but in recent years it has become a first-rate seafood place, with some of the best oysters (both the owner of Grady's as well as Clyde Bailey used to get all their oysters from Wayne's Oyster Bar, a friendly rival up the street) as well as HUGE succulent Gulf shrimp and some of the best onion rings.  If you go to the area, it's a good place to stop and eat at.



Desert Inn Restaurant, Yeehaw Junction, FL

This place is one of those small-town off-the-beaten-path restaurants in Florida you have to give a try if you go down US 98 between Lakeland and West Palm Beach.  Although the place don't look like much, the food is good.  Also, it has that rustic "Cracker" look that provides some enchantment for Florida culture as well.



The Crab Shack, on the Gandy Bridge in St. Petersburg

Now, THIS place will REALLY fool you, because when you drive past it on Gandy Boulevard just before you cross the bridge into Tampa, your first thought will probably be "Good Lord, what a dump that is!"  Back in 2005, when I was working at a title company doing closings near here at a condo conversion project called Itopia, my boss discovered this place and figured, "What the hey??" and ordered from there.  Turns out though the food this place had was excellent; as a matter of fact, it was some of the best seafood I have had!  Therefore, in this case, don't judge on first appearances - you may be pleasantly surprised!

Galley Pizza, Palm Harbor, FL

Next to fried chicken and fried oysters, I also have an eye for good pizza places, and this is one of the better ones in the area I have come across.  Like most businesses in Palm Harbor, Clearwater, and Tarpon Springs, a lot of good restaurants are owned by the sizeable Greek community, and I have learned that Greeks can do an excellent job with pizza.  The reason I like this place is that you can order a pizza with feta cheese (very good on pizza, BTW!) and it was one of the first places I was introduced to the art of eating fresh basil as a pizza topping. 

Christino's Coal Oven Pizza, Clearwater, FL

This is another excellent pizza place that has opened in the past couple of years here in Clearwater, and it has some of the best pizza I have eaten in many years.  Their specialty that I like is that you can get gorgonzola cheese as a pizza topping, which adds a little zing to the pizza.  Their sauce and ingredients are all made fresh and to order, and if you have room, they have a homemade gelato that makes a refreshing dessert. 

Another place too that is good that we discovered about a year ago is in north Clearwater, in a small mini-mall on Myrtle.  The place is called Raco's Chicken and Ribs, and if you like "soul food" this is a great place.  The owner, an African-American fellow named Oscar, has the friendliest service and he will make whatever you order to your liking.  The fried chicken is delicious, and to wash it down they have some of the best homemade lemonade I have tasted since my great-grandmother's.  Our monthly tradition now is to order out from Oscar, and we take a big bunch of fried chicken and BBQ ribs over to my mother's in Lakeland to eat - she has raved about those ribs too ever since.  They also have a classic "soul food" dish too that many people unaccustomed to it would think is weird, but they actually go well together - chicken and waffles.



Frog's Landing, Cedar Key, FL

This is another one of those out-of-the-way places, located on the water in the little hamlet of Cedar Key in north-central Florida.  This place, which we ate at in 2002, had some of the best local Gulf seafood.  If you want to avoid the "tourist traps" of Florida and see what Florida is supposed be like, Cedar Key, as well as Everglades City (which also has a good local restaurant, although I cannot recall the name of it at present) are two places for you.

Some other good restaurants in the Tampa Bay area which are no longer around (many of them cannot keep up with the highway robbery called the county commission in this area, which taxes them out of existence!) were the Apple in Madeira Beach, Angelo's in St. Petersburg, and Pep's Sea Grille which also used to be on Fourth Street in St. Pete.  Another excellent place that unfortunately closed was the Miramar on Euclid in south Tampa, which served some excellent authentic Cuban food.  And, there is one fast-food place I have to mention, as it was something I remember fondly from my childhood:

Artist's rendition of the old Red Barn restaurant

Back when I was around 5 or 6, there was a fast-food chain called the Red Barn that served some of the best fried chicken then.   At the time, Mom and I were staying at my grandfather's in Bedington, WV, and just south of there, on the outskirts of Martinsburg, there was a Red Barn near the shopping center where Goldie, my step-grandmother, went grocery shopping at the Acme Store every week (no joke - Acme was a real supermarket chain then!).  One treat of the shopping outing was that we would eat at the Red Barn, and I always looked forward to that.  The Red Barn as a company is gone now, but to this day I still remember that unique fried chicken they had, and have found the recipe for it. 

That was a small culinary tour of my life, although not exhaustive, and hopefully you enjoyed the trip as much as I did.  If you get a chance to try some of these places, please do - many of them are quaint and somewhat unique, which adds to their charm.  Anyway, good eating until next time!



Telling Tales on the Wife

If you have been married for a while and understand the intricacies of the marital relationship, you often find out things about your spouse you never expected.  Barb and I have been married now for almost 19 years, and in that blessed time there have been those moments which serve to amuse and stimulate memories and are just worth retelling for others to enjoy because they are so good!  What I am about to share will probably make her want to kill me, but there are a few amusing stories about my dear little woman that definitely fall into that category.

Barbara is one of those type of people that will make you laugh without trying.  She doesn't try to be funny usually when she says some of the things she's said or done some of the things she's done at times over the years, but it comes out so amusing that I catch myself chuckling when I think about them.  I have a few of those gems I want to share here as well.

Barb and I of course met when both of us were attending Bible school in Graceville, FL, back in 1990, and we were friends almost a full two years before we even considered dating.   As a matter of fact, the reason I met her in the first place was due to the fact I had an interest in her roommate at the time, a girl named Rachel King, and one night in January of 1990 I finally worked up the nerve to go ask her out.  Lo and behold she wasn't there, and Barb answered the door instead. So, we stood there and talked for hours, and we began to become close after that.  It wasn't until Christmas of that year though when we realized we were put together by God, and we officially became a couple then and were married in May 1992.  However, even in those early days Barb proved to be something unique, and one incident happened on a night in October 1990 that illustrated that point well.

That night, we were going to a Bible study at Dr. Barry Nolan's house just north of Graceville - Dr. Nolan was a devout Christian and a member and adult Sunday School teacher at First Assembly of God there in Graceville, and many of us thought very highly of him because he was a godly man.  Mind you, Graceville is not a big city, and being the small town it was the roads tended to be dark out.  Around Graceville, and into Alabama a couple of miles north, the area is noted for a lot of peanut farms, and one of those lie just south of Dr. Nolan's house on SR 77 north as it snaked toward the Alabama state line.  The way into this peanut farm was by a dirt road that went a ways back into where the farmhouse was, and at night all these driveways looked somewhat alike in the darkness.  Well, in trying to find Dr. Nolan's house, Barb turned down this peanut farmer's driveway, and upon arriving at the farmhouse I knew it wasn't Dr. Nolan's.  Advising Barb of the same, she turned around, and as she was backing up there was a loud "CLANNNGGG!" Turns out she had backed her little Datsun into the guy's peanut silo!  Swaying in the wind with a shrill creaking of its thin metal legs, it got the attention of the farmer, whose porch light came on and out he stepped with this sawed-off shotgun!!  Barb hit the gas, spun some rubber, and we were out of there fast!  It wasn't long though before we actually did arrive at Dr. Nolan's though, but that experience is one I have razzed her about for years.

A second incident happened a couple of years after we were married, when I was attending Southeastern University in Lakeland and we lived in an apartment on Colorado Avenue.  The apartment, originally owned by a retired Pentecostal evangelist by the name of Rev. Clarence Pansler but later bought by a Canadian "snowbird" by the name of Bill Oxford, was originally a makeshift parsonage attached to the back of an old church that then served as a storage shed when we lived there, and inside it had high wooden ceilings in the kitchen.  One day in 1994 I believe, Barb decided she had the inspiration to make homemade guacamole for herself, so she began preparing the stuff to put in a blender to chop up.  For some weird reason, she didn't have the lid on the blender, and the stuff shot upward when she switched it on, subsequentially painting a section of the high kitchen ceiling green!  That stain was still there years later, when we moved in May of 1998 from there.  I am happy to report though her culinary skills have greatly improved since then!

Later on, after we moved to St. Pete, I formally became Catholic and we attended a Byzantine parish on 13th Avenue North, a couple of minutes from our house then, that was called St. Therese of Lesieux.   Now, my wife has her own rules of grammar and pronunciation, and while taking my mother who was visiting one day out for dinner, we drove past the church - it is a beautiful structure, BTW, with an octagonal construction and a beautiful gold cupola crowning the main sanctuary.   So, Barb turns and says to my mom, "Yep, that's where we attend church, Saint Terese of Less Sex!"  After busting out laughing over that, I said, "Well, I certainly hope so - she was a nun after all!" to which my mother almost fell out the door cracking up.  I told that story to our vicar at church this morning too, and his face was so red from laughing that I thought for sure he ruptured a blood vessel.  A Catholic comedian by the name of Doug Brummel also liked the story, and saw it as potential material in his act too! 

A final story involved a drive down Ulmerton Road here in Largo one day a year or two back.  We were stopped at the traffic light, I'd say over around 66th Street, when Barb noticed this car in front of us with a Marines sticker on the back of it.  So, just out of the blue, she says, "Look, he's in the Marine Corpse!"  to which I busted a gut laughing.  The only other person I know with such a unique twist on the English language was probably my late Uncle Bonzo, who more or less could have written a dictionary of the stuff he came up with.

These stories are not meant to embarrass my beloved wife, as I do love her, but rather to show people what fun she can be without even realizing it.  It is one of the things I love about her, and I wouldn't change a thing - life would not be the same without those "Barbara-isms" of hers.  I hope you enjoy them as much as I do, although they are better to hear in person. For some of you that have the privelege of knowing her, don't be surprised if she doesn't come out with one of those gems sometime when you least expect it, as God seems to have given her a gift of unintentional humor.  And, I hope to have many more years of those with her myself, as they are priceless.