How food awareness and local pride brought the community together.
by Arielle StevensonThe wise and all-knowing Alan Watts once advised, in his perfectly gritty timbre, “The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.”
From my humble vantage point, that’s exactly what people in Tampa Bay did in 2013. When the going got tough, our bawdy brethren really got going, and boy, did it taste good. Dozens of locally owned businesses opened or blossomed or both. Suddenly, people really give a damn about what’s going on in our town.
Inspiring is too cheesy a word; the people who chased their edible business dreams in 2013 are straight-up ballsy, from creamy scoops at Revolution Ice Cream Co., in Brandon, to supple beignets at Lakeland’s Poor Porker and Cuban and Spanish fare at Latin Bodega in St. Petersburg. We are thankful for your blood, sweat, tears and food. And big kudos to the already established businesses who survived the recession-era odds years before (Cigar City Brewing, Rollin’ Oats, Duckweed Urban Market), and were still able to expand in 2013.
Food consciousness reached a new level, with hundreds marching in Tampa and St. Pete, protesting the crowned king of food corporations, Monsanto. Their beef with big food biz? No labeling laws for GMOs. A relatively large following has built up across Florida, demanding that genetically modified organisms should be at least labeled before being sold to the public. And the Coalition of Immokalee workers continued its battle to secure fair wages for migrant tomato pickers, this time trying to get Publix to pay a penny more per pound of tomatoes. But Publix maintains that’s not its responsibility. (Maybe they should change the motto to, “Where shopping is a pleasure and fair farmworker wages aren’t our problem”).
Sip-worthy fare grew with coffee, cold-press juice, craft cocktail and craft brewery openings. Kahwa Coffee and Buddy Brew both opened several new locations. Locals went from 0-60 upon discovering St. Pete’s Squeeze Juice Works’ live-enzyme juice fix. Craft cocktails got a little more bona fide with the United States Bartenders Guild officially recognizing the Tampa Bay chapter, formerly known as the Left Coast Bartenders Guild. As for breweries, well, that might just be the phenomenon of the year — see Tom Scherberger’s column on p. 20. We are loving every single pour.
With yin comes yang, and 2013 wasn’t without some intense growing pains. Our October story on Trader Joe’s buying out the 2700 block of Fourth St. in St. Petersburg engaged conversations on the direction of the rapidly growing city. But, in the spirit of Alan Watts, the longtime businesses relocated, plunged in and found silver linings in new locations downtown (Ringside Café at Club Detroit) and in the Grand Central District (Casita Taqueria moving to 26th and Central). To the precious few big-time investors in town, listen to the people and not your assumptions. (A word to the wise: St. Pete doesn’t want to become South Tampa.)
And finally, Tampa Bay is getting the attention and respect it deserves for its culinary scene. From New York Magazine to the New York Times, Southern Living, Food & Wine, GQ and more, Tampa Bay shined on the national stage (despite more “Florida’s the worst place ever” stories). And even locals began to embrace what’s going on in a big way, as with Gasparilla Music Festival’s stellar lineup of the best in local food in lieu of repetitive festival fare. Community gardens are no longer just a buzzword, with Bartlett Park and the Edible Peace Patch continuing to thrive. Yes, we can grow things, good things, and right here at home.
For me, as a native and and a food writer, the best part of 2013 was seeing my neighbors captivated, some for the first time, by what’s good in our own hood.