Two hundred items. That's two with two zeros. How many of those have to be great, or even edible, to make an Asian buffet a SUPER buffet? Teppanyaki Grill & Supreme Buffet opened in May in the former Social Security office in St. Petersburg: 18,000 square feet, 15 buffet lines, more than 200 items.

ST. PETERSBURG
There in the dining room is a man with a cowboy hat and the silky tresses. It's Beverly Hills celebrity stylist José Eber with a table of HSN folks. Glance out the front door to the line for the elevator to the Canopy Rooftop Lounge. Looks like maybe 70 people waiting, most of the women in …

ST. PETERSBURG — Towan Rush navigates his wheelchair through the narrow kitchen effortlessly and focuses on shrimp sizzling in a pan. Don't ask him what he seasons the plump, tasty shellfish with because he'll just smile, revealing his braces, and tell you it's a secret.

For Tampa Bay area movers and shakers, a familiar mug can be a liability. There are those nights — after a long workday, when your sweat pants seem like two legs of heaven — when you just want a comforting meal, no hoopla, nothing fancy. You don't want to run into anyone you know, be forced to wear makeup or …

OLDSMAR
In both cases, they are so new, and so popular already, that their websites say "coming soon," as if the virtual world can't quite keep pace with what's going on in brick-and-mortar Oldsmar right now. In a city that has had several waves of new restaurants in recent years, something big is going on. On a …

TAMPA — Davis Islands resident and plastic surgeon Jamie Perez has purchased Estela's restaurant, renamed it Margarita Mexican Restaurant and scheduled a major facelift.
It's a simple cause and effect that works both ways.

TAMPA
"It's not that we're angry; we're just very disappointed." This was the most withering sentence of my childhood. Like my parents could stare into my soul and figure out the best they could expect of me and discern exactly how far from that my performance had strayed. In a way, this job is like that. Figure …

By Laura Reiley
Times Food Critic
SAFETY HARBOR
When Stann Cherniack left San Diego on his motorcycle in the summer of 1969 it was him and a couple of other guys. And by the time he got to Woodstock he was 400 strong (apologies to Joni Mitchell on the lyric tweak). Cherniack, by his own …

At the end of April McDonald's launched its first new breakfast sandwich in a decade. The last one, the McGriddle, played to our weaker impulses, a sweet, salty, fatty early-morning train wreck that weighed in at more than 500 calories with as many as 31 fat grams. This newcomer is a little less self-indulgent: The Egg …

By Laura Reiley
Times Food Critic
Hootie & the Blowfish started in 1986 at the University of South Carolina. Over the band's career, they recorded five studio albums, the best known of which was 1994's Cracked Rear View. Dean Felber still gets together with Darius Rucker and fellow …

SEMINOLE
They go by a lot of names: fugu, pufferfish, globefish and blowfish. By any of its names, blowfish has drama. The toxins in some parts of the fish's flesh can cause tingling in the lips, rapid heart rate and a host of other more serious symptoms. For this reason, consumption of blowfish is outlawed or …

The thought of cockroaches in a restaurant's kitchen might make you queasy, but they may not be what should worry you most.

SARASOTA — This year has already been very generous to Sarasota diners. From a raucous blues club with Low Country fare launched in January, to another sultry Southern newcomer in March, to a chic New American brasserie debuted at the beginning of April, there are loads of reasons to head over the Sunshine Skyway …

All this talk about online and mobile shopping might make you think traditional malls are becoming obsolete.