Tuesday, September 16, 2014

The Avenue – St. Petersburg, FL


Tonight we planned to eat at a new restaurant called Bucket’s Grill & Comfort Food.  It’s nothing fancy, but it’s gotten pretty good reviews.  However, I got home from work and noticed crowds of people, police cars, and closed streets around Dale Mabry.  It turns out that our dinner time coincided with the President of the United States landing at MacDill Air Force Base, which meant that getting to Buckets would be almost impossible. 

So instead we decided to avoid the traffic and head to St. Pete.  We heard that The Avenue (the first restaurant featured on my blog) had an updated menu, and the Burger of the Month for September is called “the DUDE”. 
Lance is a big fan of the The Big Lebowski – he even named our (female) cat Dude after the main character from the movie.  And our spare bedroom has Lebowski art mixed in with the Steelers décor. 
This video outlining the making of the burger is really what convinced us to head there: 
Click here to see the video.

We aren’t really sure how the ingredients are inspired from the movie, but regardless it sounded amazing!  It consists of an 8 ounce Angus beef patty, house-made duck pastrami, Swiss cheese, and house-made mustard on rye swirl bread served with bleu cheese balsamic drizzled kettle chips. 
We both ended up getting the same meal and we weren’t disappointed.  The burger itself was unlike any I’ve ever had – I loved the duck pastrami and the homemade mustard complimented the flavor very well.  The bread was nice and crispy, and the kettle chips were generously covered in large chunks of bleu cheese. We enjoyed the burgers with Yuengling beer (although if we were really trying to go with the Lebowski-themed night, we would have ordered White Russians…)
The atmosphere of The Avenue was completely different at night than during the day.  Last time when we dined there for lunch, there were only a few other restaurant patrons and it was very relaxed.  Tonight it was packed with a trivia night crowd on the patio and people watching the Ray’s game inside.   
If you have the chance to make it there by the end of the month, I’d strongly recommend this burger.  Hopefully they’ll put it on the regular menu!

The Avenue is located at 330 1st Ave South, Saint Petersburg, FL 33701 and open 11:30am - 3:00am Monday through Sunday. 

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