Lance’s Birthday at Datz

 

Lance has decided that his favorite Tampa restaurant is Datz.  So after an afternoon at Cigar City Brewing and walk around Cypress Point Park, we finished his birthday celebration with dinner (it’s been an extended week of festivities since we both worked on his actual birthday). 

 

On weekdays, Datz has a Happy Hour 3 – 6pm with half price apps and drink deals.  Plus, you beat the crowd and don’t have to wait for a table if you can get there that early.  

 

 

They have $4 local Florida beers on tap – but unfortunately they didn’t seem to have many local beers besides Cigar City (and we had just come from their brewery).  Lance did have a beer and I had the Barbados cocktail – with Velvet Falernum, Krakken dark rum, and fresh lime juice.  My drink was actually so strong that I ended up watering it down a bit. 

Since we got there towards the end of the Happy Hour, we went ahead and ordered the Mac Bites and Datchos to make sure we got them half off. 

The Mac Bites are made with Benton’s Tennessee hickory smoked bacon and jalapeño mac n’ cheese fried in crispy balls of deliciousness.  They come with a spicy Sriracha aioli dipping sauce. 

The Datchos are made with Datz’s famous chips, topped with chili, cheese, jalapeños, sour cream, blue cheese drizzle, and scallions.  You can get it topped with pulled pork, chicken, or short ribs, but we held off on those for now.  We really should have stopped there and just had that for our meal. 

For my main meal, I ordered the Piggly Figgly flatbread – with caramelized onions, black mission figs, applewood smoked bacon, roasted apples, arugula, goat cheese, toasted almonds, and balsamic glaze.  I actually only ate a few bites before wrapping it up for leftovers for the next day. 

Lance had the Hungry Man 2.0 – which was a seriously huge plateful of food.  It had two southern fried pork chops topped with sausage gravy, bacon onion marmalade over a mound of garlic mascarpone mashed potatoes.  He also took most of his meal home for leftovers the next day. 

Our waitress was really sweet and gave us a free birthday cupcake – chocolate with salted caramel (which we also took home for later). 

Datz is located at 2616 S MacDill Ave, Tampa, FL 33629 and is open Monday – Thursday 7am – 10pm, Friday 7am – 11pm, Saturday 8:30am – 11pm, and Sunday 8:30am – 3pm.

Broccoli Slaw Salad

 

This Asian-inspired salad is one of my mom’s recipes.  It’s really easy to throw together and since the base of the salad is shredded broccoli instead of lettuce, it stays fresh for days.  I don’t really have exact measurements for the ingredients – you pretty much just do whatever proportions taste best to you. 

Broccoli Slaw Salad

Ingredients:

• 1 bag broccoli slaw (shredded broccoli, carrots, and red cabbage)
• 1 cup more matchstick carrots
• 2 bunches scallions, chopped
• 1 apple, chopped
• ½ cup dried cranberries
• ½ cup sliced almonds
• 1 bag of dry ramen noodles, broken into pieces
• Balsamic glaze (I use Gia Russa brand)
• Extra virgin olive oil

Directions:

1. Toast almonds – keep an eye on them so they don’t burn.

2. Toss the slaw, carrots, scallions, and apples together.  Drizzle with the balsamic and oil. 

 

3. Right before serving, toss in the ramen and almonds (to keep them crunchy).  Enjoy!

Cigar City Brewery – Tampa, FL

 

Lance and I both worked on his birthday last Sunday, so I told him we could do whatever he wanted to celebrate on our next day off together on Tuesday.  So of course, part of that celebration had to include drinking some beer. 

We’ve been making our way around all the Tampa Bay area breweries, but surprisingly we hadn’t made it to Cigar City yet.  We’ve been to the Brewpub (which has fantastic food), but the brewery tasting room was a fun experience. 

 

 

When you first walk in, there’s a separate growler-filling station with about a dozen beer choices.  Next you walk past a merchandise booth with Cigar City shirts, mugs, and even beer-scented soaps. 

The main tasting room had 18 of their own beers on tap along with 6 from guest breweries.  We ordered flights (you can’t get the guest beers for flights, but I wanted to try the Cigar City ones while there anyways…) 

 

I liked the Cherry Berliner Weisse – although it’s only 2.7% ABV, so it’s nothing strong.  On the other hand, the Mercielago was REALLY strong.  It’s an ale aged in tequila barrels with cumin and lime peel.  The tequila was a bit overpowering for me, but Lance liked it. 

I was really excited to fill up a growler of their Cubano Espresso brown ale.  I had a sip of my brother’s a few weeks ago and it was amazing!  It’s brewed with espresso beans, vanilla, and cacao nibs.  He had it in a frosty mug and it almost tasted like a frappuccino.  It’s been brewed in previous years with beans from Mazzaro’s Italian Market, but this year I’ve read that it’s being brewed with Buddy Brew’s Cubano Espresso coffee.

Unfortunately, everyone else seems to like that beer as well – they were completely out by the time we went to fill up our growlers!  We filled up with some Jai Alai instead. 

Cigar City Brewing is located at 3924 West Spruce Street, Tampa, FL 33607 and is open 11am – 11pm Sunday – Thursday and 11am – 1am Friday – Saturday.   

Free Birthday Pizza – Grimaldi’s

 

Both Lance and I have January birthdays, so we went to Grimaldi’s twice this past month for free pizza! 

 

If you sign up for their eClub, you’ll get an email giving you a free large 1- topping during your birthday week.  And some email lists bombard you with daily junk mail, but I actually haven’t gotten any emails with them besides the birthday coupon. 

For mine, I chose the white pesto pizza with sausage and ricotta.  For Lance’s, he picked the regular tomato sauce pizza with pesto and pepperoni. 

 

 

 

 

We actually splurged the last time and enjoyed the dessert trio as well.  You can choose any desserts from their menu – we picked the tiramisu, cannoli, and butterscotch toffee cheesecake (with an Oreo crust and Heath bar chunks). 

 

The servers there are always super friendly, and the atmosphere is great.  We’ve never had a bad experience. 

Grimaldi’s has several locations around the country.  The Tampa one is located at 253 Westshore Plaza B1B, Tampa, FL 33609 and is open 11am – 10pm Sunday through Thursday and 11am – 11pm Friday & Saturday.  .