Week's Activities

This week went by pretty fast. Tuesday night Lindsey and I had a few glasses of wine at our neighbor Kent's place before heading over to Zelda's Cafe for the inaugural meeting of the Friends of Channelside group. The group was started by the developer of our building, Ken Stoltenberg. There was a decent turnout of residents from various Channelside buildings, a few local business owners, and City Council woman Linda Saul-Sena. Basically, each person had a chance to introduce themselves and address any issues on their mind for the area. Hot topics included improving the infrastructure of the neighborhood (widening sidewalks, better lighting, etc.); the possibility of the City purchasing available lots to turn into green space; and last but not least, brainstorming about getting retail into the area faster. All in all, I think it was a great start for the group and a lot of bright minds throwing around some good ideas that will hopefully benefit all of us in the future.

Wednesday night Lindsey and I went to one of our favorite places in Tampa, an Irish pub called Four Green Fields. They have great fish and chips, which we both had, along with a few Guinness's and some smoked salmon spread. A pretty solid meal in my book.

Thursday night we met up with my cousin Briana and two of her friends. They were in town from Charlotte for a wedding. We ended up taking them out to eat at The Lime in SoHo. This place is part of the Ciccio and Tony's family and is pretty decent. They've been open probably a little over a year and have recently opened a second location in Tampa Palms. The food is nothing out of this world, but the tapas format allows you to order a bunch of dishes and it's no big deal if one of them isn't good. They also have a wide selection of drinks. I had a mojito and a Negro Modelo, Lindsey tried a glass of Sangria (which she didn't like) and raspberry margarita (which she did like), and the other girls had some vodka drinks. We ordered a lot of different food including grilled skirt steak, chicken skewers, deep fried jalapeno bottlecaps, queso dip, calamari, and seared ahi tuna. My favorite dishes were the jalepeno bottlecaps and the seared ahi tuna. Good meal and hopefully my cousin and her friends had a good time. After dropping them back off at their hotel, I took Lindsey to Malio's Prime Steakhouse for a nightcap. We have been there a few times, and this place is never busy. The competition for steakhouses in this town in harsh (Bern's, Ruth's Chris, Capital Grille, Charley's, Gallagher's, Council Oaks, Timpano, on and on. The good thing about them never being busy is that you can sit outside on their patio overlooking the river and the minuets of the Henry B. Plant Museum (which was the old Tampa Bay Hotel) on the campus of the University of Tampa. We had a bottle of Louis M. Martini Cabernet and enjoyed the nice weather and nighttime breezes coming off of the water before heading home.