The Ice Plant & Sea Oats Caffé – St. Augustine, FL

 

Last weekend was my friend Maddie’s bachelorette party in St. Augustine.  Her maid of honor Tessly’s family has a cute beach place up there, so we spent the weekend relaxing at the beach (and unfortunately getting very sunburned!) We enjoyed some pretty great food while we were there!

Tessly had the place all prepared with cute buckets of goodies for all of us and some incredible cupcakes from a local bakery (I need to find out which one…)

The forecast said it was going to pour all weekend, but we lucked out and got some nice perfect beach weather. 

Saturday night, we headed for an early dinner at The Ice Plant – a new local bar and restaurant.  Since they don’t take reservations and it’s such a popular spot, we decided we’d rather just eat early than chance waiting a few hours for a table.

The design reminds me of a blend of Ciro’s Speakeasy and the Oxford Exchange.  The building was adapted from an old ice plant (which is how it gets its name…)  Back in the 1920’s, the large crane that sits over the bar used to pick up enormous blocks of ice to be broken into small pieces and sold to shrimp boats.  They have managed to retain the vintage factory feel, but upgrading it to today’s popular industrial modern design. 

In keeping with the “ice plant” tradition, they hand carve their ice each day from large blocks of slow frozen filtered water into specific shapes depending on the drink you order.  The cocktails are a bit pricey, but impressive.  I would much rather spend $12 on a really fantastic drink than $6 on a rum and coke I could make myself.  You can tell that they take price in crafting their drinks just right – and the presentations were very pretty too. 

The waiters dress like they belong in the 1920’s – our waitress had a vintage looking apron with cats printed all over it.  She must have really liked cats because I got a cute kitty drawn on my receipt later. 

My Briar Rose cocktail was fantastic – with sherry, bonal, lemon, peach & blackberry jam, and mint.  I know most everyone enjoyed their drinks too, but the Kokomo cocktail was way too strong, even after the bartender watered it down with some club soda. 

For appetizers, we started with some soft pretzel bread, served with beer cheese fondue and dijonnaise dipping sauces.  The bread was actually a bit sweet and denser than a normal pretzel, coated with coarse salt. 

We also ordered a side of their hand-cut truffle fries for the table, served with a house ketchup and malt vinegar aioli.  They were topped with freshly grated parmesan and were delicious!  

For my meal, I had the valbreso feta gnocci – served with confit tomatoes, summer squash caponata, pine nuts, and wild oregano.  The most popular entrée that night was their half pound grass-fed Georgia beef burger with bacon-chive aioli, lettuce, tomato, onions, and their house curried pickle. 

My gnocci was really great – but I probably shouldn’t have eaten the whole plate.  It was a pretty generous serving. 

We made a stop afterwards down the street at Scarlett O’Hara’s bar – which I thought was a bit of a disappointment after having such incredible drinks at the Ice Plant.  We ended up heading back to the beach place since the long day in the sun had worn most of us out. 

The next day, a few of the girls had to head out early, but the rest of us went to brunch at a little hole-in-the-wall breakfast place called Sea Oats Caffé.  It was in a shopping plaza, and we lucked out that a table was just leaving as we walked in, because there weren’t a lot of seats. 

They had dozens of pancake flavors (some sounded really interesting like the chili chocolate lime and the jalapeño bacon cream cheese).  I ended up getting one of the specials, French Toast made with slices of angel food cake and topped with berries.  It was definitely more like dessert than breakfast, but it was really amazing. 

Our server was very friendly and the restaurant had a calm beachy atmosphere – it felt like we were down in the Keys.  Every time someone opened the front door, a pick strummed the guitar hanging above.  It was the perfect laid-back way to end our beach weekend.

The Ice Plant is located at 110 Riberia St, St. Augustine, FL 32084.  They are open 11:30am – 2pm Tuesday – Saturday and 11:30am – 12am on Sunday – Monday. 

Sea Oats Caffé is located at 1075 A1A Beach Blvd, St. Augustine, FL 32080.  They are open 7:30am – 2pm every day. 

Trader Joe’s Coconut Pancakes

It’s no secret that I love Trader Joe’s.  One of my most recent obsessions of theirs is the Toasted Coconut Pancake Mix.  It’s like a gourmet version of Bisquick without all the chemicals.  Plus, all you need to do is add water, so you don’t have to worry about having milk or eggs in the fridge to enjoy pancakes. 

 

If you don’t like coconut, you won’t like this mix.  It’s full of flavor.  You can easily enjoy them without anything added but the water, or you can choose any nut or fruit as a mixer.  Since I love coconut so much, I toasted up some extra and added almonds and pomegranates to mine.  It was the perfect tropical breakfast.  Maybe next time I’ll try adding a bit of pineapple for piña colada pancakes! 

Bucket’s Grill – Tampa, FL

 

We tried to go to Bucket’s Grill about a week ago, but since it’s right down the street from MacDill Air Force Base and the President was in town, it was impossible to drive the couple blocks to get to it.  Tonight it took us barely 2 minutes to get there. 

They opened in July, and all the reviews I’ve read have given them praise.  They only have 2 Yelp reviews so far (both 5’s), but their facebook page has 50 reviews, 43 of them rating it 5 stars, and the rest giving the restaurant 4 stars.  Plus, I read a review on the blog SOG City Oracle (SOG meaning South of Gandy), which called it a “South Tampa Bucket of Goodness”. 

Bucket’s specializes in comfort food and the prices are incredibly reasonable.  Tonight was pretty quiet, with maybe half a dozen other people in the restaurant (it was a rainy weeknight though). 

While there are some healthier options on the menu like grilled fish, a black bean burger, and salads, there is also a "Cardiac Burger" which includes 2 Angus burger patties, bacon, fried egg, and onion rings topped with lots of cheese (with an appropriate price of $9.11 – which may be the phone number called after the heart attack caused by the burger...)

We went for some of the less-healthy options, including Kai’s Mac and Cheese Bites, Q.T.W. Sweet Potato Waffle Fries, and the Jack-N-Jack (flapjacks with Jack Daniel’s whiskey maple syrup served with shredded Cuban pork).  

The Mac and Cheese bites were made with pepper jack so they had a little kick of spice.  The sweet potato fries were some of the best I’ve had – Lance said they reminded him of food at the State Fair.  The brown sugar coating almost made them taste like churros. 

The pancakes were an interesting combination – like a twist on the popular chicken & waffles.  They were very generous with the pork – it was both on top and in between all the flapjack layers.  Although I’ve never had pork with pancakes before, it was a perfect sweet & salty mix once topped with the boozy syrup. 

Our meal including 2 beers only came to $22 after tax.  Nothing fancy, but a very enjoyable meal.  I’m sure we’ll go back again, especially now that we know that they have $0.49 Wing Mondays and $1 Taco Tuesdays. 

Bucket’s Grill is located at 6231 S Dale Mabry Hwy, Tampa, FL 33611 and is open 11am – 11pm every day.    

Village Inn - Tampa, FL

This morning we had a late breakfast at the Village Inn.  It’s been here in Tampa since 1961 and I’ve eaten there plenty of times.  Until today I actually didn’t realize they had locations outside of Florida.  It turns out that the first Village Inn opened in 1958 in Denver, Colorado. 

It has the traditional diner atmosphere with plenty of booth seating.  They have old photos of Tampa hanging on the walls – and even have one of their 1960’s menus framed showing $0.50 buttermilk pancakes and $0.90 waffles.  The prices are still very reasonable, but our breakfasts were $7.59 each.  We both picked from the “Inn-credible V.I.B.” breakfast, which lets you pick any 4 breakfast items from a list of 30. 

I ordered the Cinnamon Toast pancakes, country potatoes, grits, and sausage links.  And Lance had the Buttermilk pancakes, Cinnamon Sugar Donut Poppers, Sausage Links, and Bacon. 

I realized it was one of the least colorful meals we’ve had in a long time…all in various shades of beige.  But it was pretty tasty.  We really enjoyed both the cinnamon pancakes and donuts.  The grits were kind of mediocre, but I guess I shouldn’t expect anything too fancy (I really should have gotten fruit to add something healthy to my plate instead). 

Today was “Pie Rush Wednesday” which means with every meal, you get a free slice of pie!  Of course we were way too full after our meal, so we took the pies home and they’re still in our fridge. We got slices of Strawberry Rhubard and Triple Berry.  They are both topped with large granules of sugar with a crispy crust. 

So for about $15 we got 2 large breakfasts and 2 slices of pie!  Even without the pies, our meals were so filling that we skipped lunch entirely. 

Village Inn is located at 215 N Dale Mabry Hwy, Tampa, FL 33609 and is open 6am – 2am Sunday through Thursday, and 24 hours on Friday & Saturdays.