Lilli had this sizable credit to use at participating
restaurants, so we found ourselves at Tampa's Cafe by
Mise en Place, where we had to show our credential
beforehand to get the deal. I wondered if this would
make us second-class citizenry, but it didn't turn
out to be that way. We got a decent table and a
pretty good waitress, who though knowing from the
outset of our offer, which would severely compromise
her tip if we went by normal rules, was attentive
and prompt. There wasn't anything I really wanted
but fried green tomatoes, but Lilli said I should
live dangerously and spend 3 or 4 more bucks on the
fried green tomato salad with jmbo lump crabmeat,
which turned out to be a good suggestion. The
tomatoes were thick cut and not done as much on the
inside as I would like, but they were tart and
tasty. The slices surrounded an impossible mound of
mixed spicy greens with a few bits of crabmeat
strewn over. I checked my disappointment and started
eating mizuna and arugula (kind of tasty, actually,
with the odd cherry tomato (pretty sweet) thrown in,
and then at the bottom of the bowl, two ounces or
more of lump crabmeat as advertised, free of shell,
from a can but a pretty good can.

Lilli had a short rib burger with "zippy dippy sauce"
and smoked Grafton Cheddar on a brioche bun. All the
elements, even the sauce (I didn't get much of it, but
it seemed to be sort of like a hotter Big Mac goo),
were pretty good, the burger done just a little over
as usual and a little underfatted, though well handled
and moderately tasty. It's supposed to be from Pat
Lafrieda; I considered that odd, as that company's
facility is in Bergen, NJ, but then I reflected that
there are 8 nonstops daily between Newark and Tampa.

=
The Rusty Pelican on Rocky Point is well regarded and
only half a mile from our hotel, so we went there for
an early supper one night.

I made an Open Table reservation, which was honored
about 15 late, despite the room not being too full.
Apparently they were shorthanded. The help were nice,
but I figured we should have been offered a drink
(even a paid one), which we were not.

We ended up at a four-top not right on the water, but
the two seats we took actually had a nice view of the
bay, and anyway I've seen water before.

Our waitress was genial and cute but none too efficient.

It took maybe twenty minutes for our drinks to come out,
and not a difficult order at that - a glass of Gascon
Malbec (reliably mediocre) for her, a draft Yuengling
(reliably mediocre) for me.

I started with an assortment of oysters and cherrystones,
which were truly excellent, of good size, full-flavored,
sweet, and briny. The clams were better, as they cost
less than half as much. It took a really long time for
them to come out, true also of the bread basket, which
offered two kinds - brown tasteless and white tasteless.

Then the famous Tampa Bay chowder - a few likely foreign
shrimp and at least two varieties of firm flaky possibly
local fish in a gumbolike tomato broth with onions,
celery, and green peppers - quite tasty but pretty salty.

Lilli had a a very ordinary salad, which was big, so she
encouraged me to have a couple mouthfuls of greens. Moo.

In the middle of all this, our dinners came out, two
early bird sirloin strips, hers with whipped potato, mine
with asparagus and hollandaise on the side. The meat was
maybe 10 oz, a thin steak but actually done rare, a
couple of those ounces being fat. Unfortunately, they had
hit it with onion salt, so I had to scrape the surface to
get anything I could eat. Also, the meat had a sticky
texture, as if to say, you should have ordered it medium,
dolt. I suspect chemical tenderization. The asparagus
were exceedingly fat, almost an inch in diameter, not
overdone, quite tasty, and its sauce though likely from a
Knorr packet was at least from a very good Knorr packet.
Astonishing - the potatoes, prepared with butter, sour
cream, and MSG, were among the best I have ever tasted.

Why a steak while surrounded on three sides by orime
fishing territory? For Lilli it was a no-brainer; I would
have gotten the catch of the day, but that was farm-raised
salmon, of all things. There was a third choice, a roast
half chicken, but who wants that. I noted that the day
after our meal, they'd changed that out for a roast Cornish
game hen, which I might have ordered.

With her meal, Lilli had another glass of the Malbec, and I
switched to Jim Beam, which went better with the fatty meat.
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