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The Stew

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By JEFF HOUCK

The Tampa Tribune

Published: July 2, 2008

DEPTH IN DINING

Tampa Bay gets slagged for being dominated by restaurant chains. There's certainly truth behind that image, but from what I see and hear, it's a gross exaggeration. For every Outback, there are dozens of great neighborhood places such as Bungalow Bistro in Seminole Heights or Romano's Greek and Italian eatery on State Road 60 in Brandon.

There are plenty of intimate food experiences to be had. You just have to look for them.

You'll find them in places like the FishHawk Ranch SAS (Stories and Salads) Book Club, which held a "proper afternoon tea" last month at the home of book club member Debbie Cook. Providing the British tea ceremony was FishHawk resident Joa Harpster, owner of Lah-Tea-Dah Inc., which throws "stylish tea parties for all occasions."

The group, which included Donna DeCrosta, Sharon West, Marilyn Nencetti, Debbie Cook, June Miller, Jan Sulick and Janet Flower, enjoyed "dainty sweets, fruits, petite sandwiches and various flavors of tea" and dressed for the occasion in floppy hats, boas and "tea attire" as they were served by Harpster.

Need another example? Two weeks ago, I attended a seafood-themed Italian buffet dinner at Delizie Italian Bakery & Deli in St. Croix Plaza on South MacDill Avenue in Tampa. Titled "Italian Dining and Details" with chef Franco Barlettai and host Francesca Caramello, the $30 fixed-price, four-course dinner featured salmon, halibut and snapper with various sauces. My favorite dish was the tender calamari and shrimp on a fresh-greens salad with pesto-smothered crostini. About two dozen patrons attended the wonderful midweek dinner. The restaurant hosts the dinners about once a month.

Know of other examples of intimate dining? E-mail me at jhouck@tampa

trib.com.

I WON'T WATCH. YOU CAN'T MAKE ME.

Despite professional obligations, dignity keeps me from following "The Next Food Network Star." I won't even soil my DVR with back tapings. The contestants seem like nice folks. It's just that the show is stiffer than a stalk of celery.

YOU GAVE ME A CHOICE

Note to grocery clerks and baggers: When you give me a choice and I pick paper, don't shoot me a look like I just ran over your kitten. It's just a bag, and I have my reasons.

POINTING IT OUT

One of my favorite blogs is "Stuff White People Like" (www.stuffwhite

peoplelike.com).

The site is full of hilarious and painfully true observations about all sorts of Caucasian predilections: sweaters, Netflix, being offended, music piracy, the Sunday New York Times, hating parents and Mos Def. In the food realm, the list calls out dinner parties, organic food, sushi, wine, kitchen gadgets, microbreweries and coffee.

The blog recently held a contest to see who could write the best addition to the list. (White people love submitting to "best entry" contests that make fun of their Caucasianess, by the way.) The winning topic by Mark Huber of Roxbury Crossing, Mass.: menus with no decimal places. Huber wrote:

"Most of these restaurants, save McDonald's, are posh upscale restaurants with abstract names or hardly even names at all. M, The Lavender Chateau and Rendezvous 387 (Prime) are a few of the restaurants white people can count on for easy math, a tasty dinner and, of course, other white people. Don't forget to look at the tapas menu; those items are only 3! Would you like to upgrade your aged prime rib to the 12-ounce portion? Sure, no problem, it's only a 4 increase! If decimals were thrown into the mix, it would throw the entire equilibrium out of balance.

"Plaza Greens for $5.99, or Plaza Greens for 6? Throw the nines in the mix and that's way too many numbers for any white mind to deal with. Even Jane in auditing would have to break out her financial calculator."

As the saying goes, it's funny because it's true.

VOTING WITH YOUR MOUTH

Former U.S. Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill's famous quote: All politics is local.

It's also true that all local food is now political.

The Wall Street Journal reports that the Democratic Party has stipulated some stringent food demands for its convention in Denver in an attempt to make some so-called environmentally friendly habits a permanent fixture after they leave town. To help local caterers and hotel and restaurant owners, the city has held "greening workshops" to get the point across.

The demands include:

•No fried food shall be served.

•Each meal should include "at least three of the following colors: red, green, yellow, blue/purple and white." (Garnishes don't count.) The idea here is that colorful food is more healthful.

•At least 70 percent of ingredients should be organic or grown locally, to minimize emissions from fuel burned during transportation.

This is proving problematic. Colorado wine, for example, lacks the cachet and flavor of California and France. Also, it's hard to find compostable utensils that haven't been shipped from Asia. Even a biofuel made from beer waste from local brewer Coors Inc. has been assailed because of the company's hiring practices 40 years ago.

"It's the new patriotism," Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper says.

No, it's the new browbeating, Mr. Mayor. Political conventions used to be fun celebrations of party unity instead of mechanized infomercials fronting for social lecturing. For local pols, getting to go to the convention was the whole reason to slog it out on the grass-roots level.

Surely there must be some Corn Dog Democrats out there willing to stand up for free-thinking blue-collar food lovers.

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