New World is one of those spots in Ybor that we’ve been going to for a long while now.  Excellent beers on tap. Great selection on and off the tap. I kept hearing about the BBQ Buffet but just never managed to make it over.  We work on the opposite side of Tampa and most of the time if I’m driving out that way I’d rather just eat at home. So, since we took a day off Matt, Phil and myself decided to head out to lunch somewhere.  We were thinking about grabbing a Falafel sandwich from the new Greek restaurant in Ybor. We parked and started walking down there when I spotted New World and remembered that they just started the Monday through Friday BBQ Buffet. Fucking. Wicked.

It’s also kind of weird being in/around Ybor around lunch time. Normally we stop by for a bite to eat at night or for drinks.

Anyways, one of my favorite things about establishments in Florida are the open air layouts.  New World is easily one of my favorite spots for this. There is the main bar area that opens up into an atrium with seating.  They have bands playing almost every night. The paradigm seems kinda strange coming from Michigan, you go out to a place and in the winter they keep the doors open but they roll out the space heaters to keep you warm and enjoying the outside. Anyways, they have things hanging on the walls, like a horse riding a bike and a mounted marlin guarding the beers. The atmosphere is inviting, but it’s the food we’re interested in.

Now, it’s BBQ, but they’ve put their twist on all of it. You come in and grab a plate and load up.  You pay by the pound, so you can grab as little or as much as you’d like.  There is also a current reigning champion for who has eaten the most.  Andre Jones is the current champ.  I don’t know how but Andre has dominated a couple of the local eating challenges. He’s also on the wall at this local hotdog place, Frankie’s. Anyways, back to the food. The potato salad is a curry potato salad, just absolutely ridiculous. Curry really pops, but it marries really well with the dish. I would come back just for the potato salad. Coleslaw was fairly standard, but it’s freshly made and the slaw sauce is good. The corn salsa was good, although I can’t recall the flavor that well now. I skipped on the macaroni salad, but that’s probably pretty legit as well. The corn muffins were light and I really like the presentation. Bite size if you have a big mouth, but otherwise a 2 bite endeavor.

One of my biggest beefs with chain restaurants and mall restaurants (shit.. most restaurants) is how they treat vegetables. They’ll give you a big heap of steamed broccoli, but then they drench it in a tankard’s worth of butter. Just give me some fucking greens that haven’t been converted to a saturated fat. Anyways, New World Brewery doesn’t do this. The green beans are clean and fresh, with a hint of salt to help bring out flavor. It reminds me of my Grandma Michael’s freshly picked green beans from the garden. The collard greens were pretty good, I thought it could use a little vinegar but that’s all personal preference.  The baked beans have some chunks of green pepper that still had some snap to it, which was nice. I’m not a huge fan of baked beans but these are good as far as that goes.

They have some curried rice with pineapple.  Awesome. A little kick, and just delicious (you might have noticed that I enjoy curry). I also sampled the mac and cheese, which is pork mac and cheese. Personally, I would like just little bits of pork, this is more of a casserole sort of thing.  It’s good, just not what I prefer.  The mashed potatoes were good, but nothing really out of the ordinary.

Onward to proteins! The smoked chicken is amazing. Tender, delicious and smoky. The sausage was completely stand out, I was dipping it in the Carolina style BBQ. Mustard base sauce to go with some ridiculous sausage. The pork was good, tender but not too tender.  If it’s overcooked it will tend to fall apart too much which I don’t really like. The Kansas City and Carolina were my favorite sauces, but you gotta drop by and pick your favorite some time. You just can’t go wrong here, everything is good.

I’d prefer to be more critical and I don’t like to give these out, but this is definitely worth the rating. Rating: 5 out of 5 stars experience.

Queen of Sheba is celebrating their 4th Anniversary, November 11th and 12th. They are putting a full spread out each day, I would definitely suggest trying to visit during that time.

Before coming to Queen of Sheba I had never had Ethiopian food. Due to my friend Jacob’s, and my brother’s enthusiasm for Ethiopian cuisine we wound up hearing from a young lady about Queen of Sheba; in particular their beef tartar. I’m always up for trying something new (except for Balut… unless I am REALLY hungry), so off we went to try Queen of Sheba for lunch.

Normally I write my reviews immediately after, or shortly after eating at the restaurant. In this case, I had eaten at Queen of Sheba and taken some notes on my phone… and then promptly became a lazy shit and didn’t write anything for months. I’ve since eaten there several times (most recently went for dinner with my roommates and one of my friends, Jamie, when she was in town this previous weekend). I’ve lost some steam from my original notes, so I’ll post what I had noted and let you suss out my experience from that (lazy, I know):

*2nd time here, had the buffet the first time, it was excellent. Costs around $10.

*Note the hand sanitizer, traditional Ethiopian eats with hands using “injera” as your fork, amd it’s a little plate basically.

*Harar beer is basic lager but good. The Hakim stout is delicious, recommend.

*Music is really laid back, and the setting as you can see is very casual. Fresh butcher paper goes down for each table and the proprietress, Seble Gizaw, works everything with a good word for all customers. She explains how to go about eating Ethiopian for any first timers.

*Ordered Queens Special (cook’s choice of items), Beef Tartar, and the Chefs Choice Veggie Combo Platter.

*Jake and Dan talking “shop”, discussing boring work nonsense.

*Food came out and impressive. Each time we come we enjoy the food thoroughly. The tartar was tender, spiced without a lot of heat in it. All of us thoroughly impressed but we all agreed that the veggie dishes are our favorite. Rich flavors, satisfying cravings for curry flavor. With the tartar you get an assortment of sauces and spices to add heat and we added those in providing an additional kick. Definitely advise coming back.

Synopsis: Definitely try something new and go to Queen of Sheba. Every trip has left me feeling contented and with a smile on my face. I give it a consistent Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

-Matt in Tampa

Let me preface this review with: Holy shit, Honey’s chicken wings.

Other than Google confusing me on what I should list as the proper name of this restaurant, I couldn’t find anything wrong with my chicken wing crushin’ experience at Honey’s (caveat, their credit card machine was down and usually that’s a deal breaker as I am wont to never have cash in my pocket… except today I had some greenbacks in my wallet!).  Honey’s was so good that it broke me out of my writing malaise. Before I ramble on about how much I liked the food, I’ll build out the atmosphere for you. Honey’s is a sports bar. When you step inside it’s fairly dark to give you a better shot at watching the game you want to see, without glare from the Florida sun. Honey’s has a fairly similar ‘feel’ to that of one of my old haunts in Lansing (see Bonnie’s Place), in that you can get a good bite to eat without a bunch of bullshit and maybe catch the game you wanted to see while you’re at it. Likewise the wait-staff aren’t scantily clad young ladies, serving you tender vittles with a side of silicone. Don’t get me wrong, I like the sight of pleasant looking young lasses as much as the next guy, but I don’t like feeling like a fucking creeper because my server is all T&A’d up so I wind up goggling at her while trying to mow down a burger. <insert stale ‘breast/chicken breast’ joke here>, yeah that’s not me.

One thing I find myself craving in Tampa are hole in the wall joints to grab a bite or a beer. Pyschoanalyzing this desire aside, finding these kinds of places in Tampa is fairly difficult.  One reason Lansing may have a plethora of these kind of places could be due to the town’s blue collar residents. A city that was home to several GM plants and specifically to a large GM car assembly factory from 1901 until 2005, the longest operating factory in the US when it closed (all that remains are the gates and plots of land full of rubble); generations of line workers defining the culture in the Capitol City, subtly dictating the kinds of establishments that thrived and remained open throughout the years. For better or worse, the same culture that likely led to Lansing having more bars per capita than any other capital city in the United States. (This being a factoid I’d heard years ago and I can’t speak to the veracity of the previous statement, but suffice it to say that there are a shitload of bars in Lansing in comparison to the population density.) Another likely factor is the presence of Michigan State University. Cash strapped students are always looking for a good deal, and any joint with competitive prices that serves up a good dish can keep itself in business. While not all hole in the wall joints serve up the best experience (or the best of anything, sometimes they’re a hole in the wall because they just plain suck), there is something to be said for a place that must simply stand on its drink or food without reliance on being prettied up. My love of these places could be to due to being a general malcontent, or it could be the value of these places and the experiences I’ve had at them. You can only dine at an Applebee’s so often before wanting to kick and punch your way out of manufactured mediocrity.

Restaurants and bars in Tampa generally lean away from the hole in the wall and tend toward a vibe of business casual lunches and dinners. While there is nothing wrong with going out and not having to put up with that drunk guy in the corner cursing like a well traveled sailor, I generally prefer not feeling like I’m underdressed when dining in a t-shirt and jeans. Tampa certainly had a blue collar grounding with its early 20^th century cigar production (see: Cigar City), but that same hard working populace did not seem to have the same impact that Michigan autoworkers had on their area. I don’t know whether that’s due to the drastic differences in the locale or some other influences (differences: where Lansing is bathed in snow for a quarter of the year and shares lists with the likes of Seattle and Buffalo for being some of the most overcast cities in the US, whereas Tampa is continuously drenched in sunshine and heat and you’re never far from a beach). Honey’s did not disappoint regarding appropriate dress and vibe, we felt at home in our t-shirts and jeans.

I had heard from my neighbor Lindsay for months that Honey’s has the best wings in Tampa. While she has yet to steer us wrong in this respect, I can be stubborn in quick acceptance as I generally like to find things out on my own (like my father before me, you can tell me the stove is hot, but I don’t believe it until my hand is burnt). I usually grab lunch with my friends/coworkers and we generally like to try new things for lunch, but unfortunately Honey’s is just far enough from the office that it managed to stay off our list of restaurants to try. Due to the distance, you’re pretty much bound to take a lunch that is longer than an hour. While an occasional long lunch isn’t a problem at work, you don’t want to waste a long lunch on a crappy or mediocre restaurant. Due to the blue corn Moon aligning with the stars and other mystical forces and shit, we wound up taking a shot at Honey’s today.

While Honey’s has a large and delicious sounding menu, I had eyes only for chicken wings today. On the advice of my coworkers who had gone to Honey’s the week prior, I ordered 16 of the Spicy Garlic Parmesan wings with a side of Hot Sauce and I was not disappointed. I would prefer that they sold their wings in 5’s or 10’s as I think 10 chicken wings are generally the filling point when ordering wings. Despite this, I managed to house 14 of these bad boys (the other guys at the table polished off the other two) and crush some fries. I washed it all down with unsweetened iced tea. I ordered a large order of the homemade fries to share with the table; the fries come in half pound and pound orders. Honey’s doesn’t mess around.

I don’t think my words will do Honey’s wings the justice they deserve. The wings themselves were high quality, with the perfect ratio of sauce to meat and lacking the superfluous amount of skin and fat that some wings have. The wings were cooked exactly how I like them, where the skin winds up a bit crispy but not overcooked and dried out or inundated with oil. The sauce itself was fantastic, a bit of heat with a bold garlic flavor and dusted with the right amount of parmesan. I enjoy some spice with my food and their hot sauce was the perfect compliment to the wings’ base sauce. Dan ordered the Spicy Honey Garlic wings, and anyone with a bit of a sweet-tooth would appreciate this flavor.  They were sweet, yet not cloyingly so. The fries appeared to be house cut, lightly salted, and fried to order. If you want to eat chicken wings, and eat the best chicken wings in Tampa then you need to go to Honey’s.

My friend Phil ordered the Beef and Cheddar Sandwich which looked delicious, and Jacob ordered the Chicken Sandwich (which in turn looked delicious):

Overall Honey’s earned a Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars stars. That elusive 5 is reserved for those meals that are so good you can’t put a finger on it, and typically involves the company with you. The spectre of returning to work may have been that -.5, but either way Honey’s deserves a visit.

Cheers,
-Matt in Tampa

Dan and I made our very first trip to the monolith of Swedish consumerism called IKEA.  We were both looking for new beds.  Dan was recently in the market for a bed because you can’t really fit a queen sized bed into a Suzuki Esteem; especially when the car is already laden with instruments and clothing.  I was looking for a bed that would keep me from waking up with a sore back every morning.  We had both looked around in traditional furniture stores and found a lot of mediocre crap for exorbitant prices.

Yeah, you’re not getting a queen sized bed into that bad boy.

As part of our virginal IKEA experience, we decided that we should go all out and eat whatever ‘Swedish’ food they were serving there.  A former coworker used to wax poetic on the quality of IKEA’s Swedish meatballs. I was a bit reluctant to believe this line of thought as said coworker’s tastes were heavily in question.  Either way, we were ravenous from wandering around a warehouse filled with boyfriends/husbands being led in tow by their signifigant others searching for things that would soon need to be assembled with Pictionary-esque instructions.

Yes, we sat down to eat mediocre food in Logan’s Run.  I don’t know that these chairs are particularly flattering for that Lady’s ass.

This blood-orange, plastic chair just cries Preschool aesthetics for adults. Clearly, I chose to sit at this table.

Unfortunately, I didn’t take a picture of the cafeteria line where you pick up the IKEA mass-produced food.  There were some fairly ambitious fish dishes on the menu, but I decided to go for something I thought would be fairly difficult to screw the pooch on.  Dan and I both ordered a Buffalo Chicken Wrap. We also ordered the Meatballs to get the full IKEA effect.  The wrap was inundated with cheddar cheese, and the ‘Buffalo’ sauce was mainly just orange food coloring without any kick. Either way, for around $3 it wasn’t too bad.  We also hedged our beverage bets by getting a water and a Pear drink. The water tasted like water, amazing right?  The Pear drink tasted like it was slightly fermented.  It had an odd edge to it that left me unsure of whether I liked the drink or hated it.  IKEA Pear-drink was interesting either way.

Lingonberries? More like Dingleberries. ZING!

Ahh, and now onto the IKEA meatball goop.  The meatballs were passable Swedish-style meatballs; nothing to phone home about. As you can see, they weren’t exactly the most impressive looking meatball specimens. The potatoes were a bit of a let down as they tasted like out of the box Potato-Buds.  Despite the stellar performance of the meatballs and the potatoes, the real standout of the dish were the overly sweet, jelly-like Lingonberries.  Really, the Lingonberries are like some kind of awful tie-in to a desert. They reminded me of those pathetic attempts at desert that you find in Microwaveable meals (oh yeah, give me some of that ‘peach cobbler’… who doesn’t want a desert that tastes like rotten bananas?).  Why include it?  Is there some unspoken rule that desert needs to be represented, however poorly, in a meal? Is IKEA like a public school, where they’ll lose Federal funding if all food groups aren’t properly represnted? In all cases, I would rather have another piece of meat or some more potatoes.

Either way, IKEA’s food gets a rating of Rating: 2 out of 5 stars for their passable Buffalo Chicken Wrap and their low prices.

On the plus side, Dan and I both found beds which didn’t break the bank.

Cheers,

-Matt

I’ll leave you with this confused shot of an IKEA light:

Visiting the Brickhouse was basically an accident.  My coworker Mike had a doctor’s appointment in the area prior to lunch and happened to drive past this joint.  There were girls out front with signs stating that “We’re Open”, or something to that effect, and surprise surprise pretty girls caught his eye.  When the  matter of lunch was brought up he mentioned this place, and after a quick jaunt to Google we saw on their online menu that they had Chili Cheese Tater Tots. With thoughts of greasy, cheese-laden, potato bits dancing in our heads we loaded up the car and headed over to the Brickhouse.

We showed up not knowing what to expect.  From looking at their website, we thought that maybe they’d have an emphasis on scantily clad servers or broads in general (with a desert entitled “Double D Cupcakes”, and references to “Man Food”), but the website was fairly oblique. After walking in, our suspicions were confirmed.  The place looked like Tim Allen and Christian Audigier popped a couple boners and went around getting all “Home Improvement” meets “Ed Hardy”-style zealous on this place.  There is a large and very unnecessary fireplace, open air ceilings, gothic script announcing the restrooms, and lame “inspirational” phrases on the walls.  The only inspiration I derived from that was wanting to take a blow my nose on their decorations.

To our surpise (and chagrin) the Brickhouse had just opened up today (June 22nd).  All of the servers were new, and likewise their cooks were all brand new to the Brickhouse way of doing things. They weren’t doing their full menu when we showed up, but instead a pared down version of their menu.  Oh, did I mention that all of the food (and non alcholic beverages) are all FREE?  Oh, I didn’t?  Well they were, and are until Friday June 25th 2010.  As much as I don’t like the thought of TimAl-Stianidigier’s renob all up in my face, it’s hard to thumb my nose at free food.  We ordered the Buffalo Wings for our free appetizer.  I would’ve taken a picture but I forgot to due to being endlessly interrupted by a never ending stream of servers asking fairly inane questions.  I can appreciate pretty girls as much as the next guy, but when you keep hearing “What are you drinking?”, “Have you heard of Brickhouse before?”, “How is everything?”, again and again and again and again my eyes start to glaze over.   In writing it doesn’t sound nearly as annoying as it was in person.  We literally had a girl come up asking, “How is everything, how are you guys?” and literally as she was stepping away from our table another girl came and asked the exact same thing.  As I’m writing this, I feel like I sound like a complete asshole because I’m basically saying, “Oh man, it was so annoying how these girls were being very attentive and basically waiting on us hand and foot.”  The thing is, when I go to a restaurant I don’t want to feel pressured into talking, shooting the shit, or doing anything aside from ordering my food and eating said food.  As peculiar as it sounds, I think a good server is nearly prescient or just very observant.  They keep an eye on your drink getting low and then offer you a refill, or they see that you’re just sitting around picking-at/not-eating your food and offer to take your plate.  If someplace is very busy I of course scale back my expectations, but when the reverse happens it’s fairly startling and somewhat unsettling.

After all of my bitching we’re onto a highlight.  The food.  They served up very large portions, and the prices on the menu were very reasonable for what we received ($7-$10 for most entrees).  All 3 of my coworkers ordered the Prime Rib Sandwich.  As you can see it appeared to be topped with shoe-string onion fries/straws.  They were given a side of au jus sauce, and from some appreciative murmurs I gathered that the samiches were alright.  They do come with a horseradish sauce, so those with a tempermental palette may want to ask for the samich sans the horsey sauce.   I ordered the Chicken Parm samich, and it was huge.  The fork and knife were apparently crafted for Paul Bunyun so you can’t really appreciate the size of the samich I received.  Within the samich were 2 filets of fried chicken, and I was unable to finish the beast. The marinara on the samich was tasty, it had hints of oregano and other ‘Italian’ spices; the flavors were very balanced.  They also heaped an order of fries on the plate. While the food wasn’t breathtaking, I would certainly eat at the Brickhouse again.

We came on opening day on a whim, despite not knowing it was opening day. The servers applied a little too much pressure as most of us felt inundated with repeated pleasantries, but I suspect as the Brickhouse breaks into the full swing of normal operations the servers will calm down and the atmosphere will be more pleasant.

If you do want a free meal and to see what this joint is all about you might as well stop by before this Friday rolls around and cop a free meal (speaking of coppers, there were quite a few officers of the law coming around to gawk and grab a free bite, apparently those radio waves aren’t just used to communicate crimes).

Food: Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Service: Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars (this would be a little higher without the over-attention)

Atmosphere: Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars (I’m a hole-in-the-wall bar guy, so this kind of presentation is a bit over the top for me)

Overall: Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars (I think this has a chance to go up with a second visit when they’re under normal operation)

-Matt in Tampa