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

Some life updates that may not have been reflected on HalfTon:
1. My twin brother Dan got hired by my company and he moved to Tampa.
2. I was able to get one of my best friends Jake hired at our company.
3. Another one of my best friends, Phil, moved down to Tampa to check something new out for a while.

The four of us share a house north of downtown Tampa, about 5 minutes from Ybor. Our proximity to Ybor usually defaults us to visiting there (read: The Bricks) on the weekends. The past couple of weeks we have developed an informal ‘morning after Ybor’-ritual which usually involves going out with Phil so he can buy smokes and we all grab some RockStar Recovery Drinks and then we head out to Guitar Center. Through my ineptitude last weekend I had purchased the wrong heads for drums, so this weekend we repeated our little ritual.

As you can see, I wised up and just took the old heads off so that I can accurately match up what I needed to purchase. We purchased our musical necessities, but man can only be sustained on liquid energy drank for so long. Dan was interested in eating at a new joint so he commandeered Phil’s phone to use Yelp to plot our next steps. He found a 4 and a half star restaurant, which is fairly amazing on Yelp so off we went. Side note, we tried to get our roommate Jake to join us, but due to his inability to EVER answer his phone he missed out on the best meal we’ve had in Tampa.

I may have laid this out before, but it’s fairly difficult to write about excellent food. Eating at La Pequena was one of those times. The service we received was fast, friendly and very helpful without smothering us. At no point were we waiting on the wait staff to fulfill our requests. After having had a very poor service experience the past evening at another Tampa restaurant, La Pequena stood out for its competency and extremely high level of service.

On the recommendation of the Yelp information, Dan ended up ordering the Bandeja Montañera, aka ‘The Country Platter’, which comes with Grilled Steak (or ground beef), Pork Skin, Sausage, Red Beans, Rice, Eggs, Sweet Plantains, Corn Cake and a Salad. Clearly this is a meal that you have be packing an appetite to order.  Phil and I opted to order the Bistec A Caballo which comes with Stewed Beef, Rice, Red Beans, Potato, Cassava, and Egg.

The red beans and rice showed up first, and frankly there was enough right there to make a meal. Phil and I started digging in as we had all been brewing a mean hunger. Shortly thereafter our main dishes came out.

The portions provided would make a lumberjack hesitate.  There is enough food per meal to leave you full for the remainder of the day. The stewed beef was fantastic, the acidity of the tomato base and the starchiness of the potato and cassava complimented each other very well. The eggs on top of the platter were like the cherry on top of a sundae… unnecessary but totally delicious. My meal was outstanding but I think the real items that shone were on Dan’s plate.  The thin-cut, hand tenderized steak was just that, tender. The steak was perfectly seasoned with salt and pepper, and the grill flavor on it was impeccable. The sausage was the other item that blew me away. From what I could tell it had a natural casing and was filled with high quality meat and filling. I have no idea what was in there, but I do know it was the best sausage I’ve ever had. The one surprise on the table was the pork skin.  I didn’t know what to expect, but in hindsight I should’ve expected good things as everything we had today was the best we’d had of its kind. If you dig on swine, you should definitely give it a shot.

One thing we had noticed upon entering was the bakery. Well, that and some of the pretty patrons and pretty girls who were working there.  They offer fresh baked breads, sweets, and pastries.  As Jake wasn’t able to join us we purchased a loaf of 3 cheese bread that had literally just come out of the oven and an apple turnover.  The bread was so good that as soon as it got home it was demolished.

This was one of those rare experiences where you try something new out of the blue and you are absolutely blown away. If you haven’t had the pleasure of being completely surprised with the excellence of something, you’re missing out. I don’t know that there is a way to cultivate having these experiences other than trying something new and avoid coming into that experience with a preconception of how your experience will be.  The only thing I can relate to this was seeing The Matrix for the first time.  Dan and I were in 9th grade, and we went with our parents to see it on opening day. There wasn’t a lot of advertising surrounding it. We knew of the movie but frankly had no idea of what it would be about other than it would have a base in science fiction. The graphics, the plot, the music, the acting (this was the perfect role for Keanu Reeves. Whoever his agent is, is brilliant) and each aspect of the movie hit on all cylinders. We walked in with virtually no expectations, and left raving. Minus the science fiction, we walked into La Pequena and left with that same Matrix-esque experience.

La Pequena deserved and received a Rating: 5 out of 5 stars. I recommend this to anyone with an appetite. It’s just too bad Jake (and any of you who read this) didn’t get to experience this with us.

-Matt in Tampa

Our friends Jacob and Phil have recently moved down to Tampa, so lately we’ve been going to the same places for lunch and dinner, or cooking at home.  Falling into a habit of going to the same joints to grab a bite is easy, especially when life gets a little hectic (figuring out the new dynamics in our household isn’t stressful but it does require you to reassess how you spend your free time).  So, when Chris, of our very own site’s fame, sent me a link (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/27/dining/27united.html?ref=dining) about the brief history of the devil crab croquette and Tampa’s abiding affinity for it, I was compelled to go find a joint to try this out.  I wound up settling on Brocato’s from the title picture of the article. After loading up the Blue-Bomber on this sweltering Tampa afternoon, we trundled east on I4 to meet our fate.

The first thing I noticed was that Brocato’s was busy.  Not just slightly busy, but the kind of busy where folks are ‘waiting to get a spot in the large parking lot’-busy. A busy restaurant is always a good indicator of a restaurants worth (this is not always true, see: Chili’s, Appleby’s, etc.  I think people just like going to those places for beer specials… that’s the only logical conclusion; who is willing to pay $13 for a paltry amount of crappy nachos?).  As we entered the restaurant I saw a steady stream of people coming in to place an order and sitting down or just grabbing their food and taking off.  This rate of turnover is pretty amazing considering we got to Brocato’s shortly after 1pm.  

Brocato’s offers a fairly large menu: sandwiches, soups, desserts, and of course crab croquettes. You may be asking, “What is a crab croquette?” Sauteed green onion, jalapenos (or green peppers), with Crab meat, next you cover it in a breading and deep fry; it’s like a Tampa empanada. They have a Pick 1, 2, or 3 lunch offer where you can choose from 6 or 7 different items and a drink.  We mistakenly chose 2x ‘Pick-2′s and 1x ‘Pick-3′.  Why were we mistaken?  Well, we had misled ourselves on how much food we would receive.  In the future, with 3 people, we would order the Pick 3 and get a couple additional drinks as the additional items we ordered were only sampled and not consumed en masse.  If you order the Pick 3, you need to bring a bear’s appetite and the ability to hibernate (after consuming that much food). I had brought eyes that were much larger than my stomach and ordered the Pick 3; I chose to get the 6 inch Cuban sandwich, Devil Crab Croquette, and Fries.  All washed down with an unsweet ice-tea.

What the picture fails to bely is the actual size of the crab croquette, which measured in at about the size of Shane Carwin’s fists (which are in fact the size of lunchboxes).  The pictures also fail to convey the weight of the 6-inch Cubans. While they fail to weigh in at a metric ton, they are indeed loaded with enough meat to burden anyone stuck with carrying a bag of Cubans back to their lazy coworkers.  Portions aside, the food itself was fantastic.  A word of warning, if you don’t like crab you probably shouldn’t order a crab croquette.  If you DO like crab meat, you will find that they must’ve used roughly 50 actual crab claws to make each croquette and will be pleased to find it’s not the fake, reconstituted fish parts (that get labelled as “crab meat” but in fact look like creamsicle colored crinkle-cut fries). From what I could tell the croquettes were made of crab meat, jalapenos, green onions, salt, pepper, butter, and maybe lemon.  I thought this was fantastic lunch fare and would gladly bring out-of-towners here. I didn’t house my Cuban sandwich as I was loaded down from the crab croquette alone but the bit I did sample was fantastic, made like a traditional Cuban that has been stuffed to the gills with meat. The crinkle-cut fries were fairly standard ‘fry’ fair, but unremarkable only in that they were good fries and not excellent in some respect (they were cooked properly, not undercooked, not soggy).

Brocato’s has a very laid back atmosphere.  While I was there they were serving everyone from suits to the working man.  It appears if you like food you’ll wind up at Brocato’s regardless of your station in life.

I had a fantastic time and really enjoyed my food.  Brocato’s earned a Rating: 4 out of 5 stars.  My one minor complaint is that it took a while to get my food, but considering the volume of customers Brocato’s handles it’s very understandable.

-Matt in Tampa

After several fruitless years of searching in vain for a good deli in Tampa, a beacon of delicious light was shined upon me today after going out for a bite on my coworker Rob’s whim; Wright’s Gourmet House.  Eating at Wright’s left me feeling all Biblical and shit, wanting to quote scripture (of course I needed to look it up using Google with the keyword ‘good’) to describe my state of being, “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life.”

My my my, doesn’t that look mouth wateringly good?  On the left is Wright’s ‘New Yorker’, a plus-sized samich served with Corned Beef, Pastrami, Genoa salami, Provolone, and red onions on Rye with mustard. Each bite was like a little taste of heaven in this deli scarce land, as the explosion of perfectly brined and cooked meats married perfectly with spot-on Rye and Provolone. Every bite brought all of us a little closer to Nirvana, that or the sun was starting to addle my brain.  On the right is Wright’s ‘California Reuben’ served with Corned Beef (instead of Turkey), cole slaw, Jarlsberg cheese, 1000 Island dressing on Rye. Dan went ‘halvsies’ with me so that we could bask in multiple deliciousnesses.

Don’t mistake me for a heat-stroked fan-boy, the Star Delicatessen in Southfield, MI forever holds my heart with the best corned beef I have ever eaten. Despite Wright’s corned beef not quite attaining the Star Deli’s stature in my taste buds they did bring me one step closer to home with their Zingerman’s-esque sandwiches.

Rob ordered their Cuban, which is a local-award winner, with a ‘shot’ of Texas Caviar (a salad primarily composed of Black Eyed Peas) and an Iced Tea.  He spoke highly of each item he ate.

Despite my constant gushing in this review, I do have one complaint: the Dill Potato Salad. I think this was due to me ordering it despite not knowing the constituents of the ‘salad.’ In my esteemed opinion fresh dill, potatoes, sour cream and mayonnaise do not a good potato salad make.  I tried several bites to see if I could overcome my palate and find the goodness in this dish.  Each bite would start off tasting alright, and remind me of a mediocre potato salad. However, as each bite worked its way through my taste buds I would be left with a flavor that was reminiscent of a Dentist’s office, or as Dan put it, “It tasted like how Band-aids smell.” (*Editor’s Note: I really felt that it tasted like garbage. Hands down the worst potato salad I’ve ever had. -Native)

(the culprit)

All bitching aside, they had delectable cookies and a great selection of soda pop you won’t find many other places (I need to make a bitching caveat, they didn’t have any Dr. Brown Black Cherry Soda, arguably one of the best sodas known to man and yet they had Dr. Brown Cream Soda. What? Who does that?).

Normally I start off with pictures of the restaurant before the food.  I do this because you experience the restaurant well before you see and eat your food.  In this case, the food called out to be shown first. The food merited a great review and earned Rating: 4 out of 5 stars . Had I ordered a traditional potato salad or probably any other salad that rating would likely be higher.  I’m definitely going back for another visit.

-Matt in Tampa