MADEIRA BEACH
Cake mixes were a convenience food launched after World War II, better living through science where all you had to add was water. Only, home cooks didn't like them. They thought it was cheating to claim authorship of such a cake. So Duncan Hines et al retooled and offered cake mixes to which you had to add eggs, milk and maybe oil. Victory: Home cooks loved them and claimed them proudly as homemade. • It's a slippery slope, what constitutes prepared food and what is homemade. Unbeknownst to many diners, this is doubly the case in restaurants these days. A food distributor like Florida's Cheney Brothers or the national Sysco offer ever more sophisticated heat-and-serve dishes, many of which come with ready-to-plate sauces, garnishes and sides. I know this because I eat out a couple hundred times a year and I keep eating the same food. Really, the exact same food.
Café Alma, which was one of downtown St. Petersburg's anchor restaurants for 12 years, closed this summer and opened almost immediately as the briefer "Alma" at John's Pass in Madeira Beach. Brothers Scott and Thorn Vogel built a name for themselves in the old location on a Sunday brunch with an epic Bloody Mary bar and a budget-minded Tapas Tuesday where all sharables were half price. They've replicated this formula in this more tourist-oriented setting, with a casual bar side and more formal restaurant side set on the second floor of the waterside dining-shopping complex.
Most recently and fleetingly housing Naked Tchopstix, the first Florida outpost of a midsize Indiana chain, it's a tricky location. The second-floor setting makes it a bit out the way, and its large, 300-seat size renders it a little cavernous unless it's full. And the food, an expansion of the menu offered at the old Café Alma location, seemed familiar. As in, I've eaten this exact food before. A number of sauces tasted bottled, breaded seafood tasted prefab and overall very little tasted vibrantly fresh.
The Tapas Tuesday is indeed a deal, especially since bottled wine is also offered at half price (the gratuity is added automatically based on the full prices), but flavors seldom sing. Sometimes they're even a little weird: Crispy Shrimp Alma ($8) with Asian slaw reads like their version of Bonefish's Bang Bang Shrimp, but why would the Thai-chili-sauce-meets-mayo and Asian slaw be brought to bear on Spanish Papas Alma ($6)? The fried potatoes' crispiness gets lost in sludge and the Asian flavors don't make sense. That Asian slaw crops up again with a fan of seared ahi slices ($12), the fish itself nearly flavorless, its wasabi drizzle the only emphatic element in the dish.
Coconut shrimp ($10) brought a quartet of egregiously overcooked crustaceans, their breading overthick, the accompanying sauce cloying and the bed of quickly wilting greens inedible. In short, a forgettable dish. At lunch and dinner, the menu is absolutely vast, and I'd suggest that a narrower focus might allow for keener plate presentations and better marriages of flavors. The simpler entrees seem the most successful, and the ability to add a side or additional element to any dish (from Smoked Gouda Mac and Cheese, $2.50, to a petit sirloin, $6) lends incredible flexibility to ordering.
Alma's wine list showcases familiar offerings at fair-minded prices; the beer list rounds up notable crafts and some old scoundrels like PBR. John's Pass Village has a built-in customer base of beach-bound tourists renting Jet Skis and licking drippy sugar cones, but if this new Alma wants to entice locals, it needs to focus considerable effort on what's on the plate. For now, much of it is ho-hum, leaving me to wonder how much — like those Duncan Hines cakes — can legitimately be called housemade.
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Explore all your optionsContact Laura Reiley at lreiley@tampabay.com or (727) 892-2293. Follow @lreiley. She dines anonymously and unannounced; the Times pays all expenses.