Harry's Seafood Bar and Grille, Lakeland, Florida

As many of you know we have a vacation home aside of our primary residence.  One thing we love doing when at our vacation home is eating out.  It's a great way of finding inspiration for home cooking in trying to duplicate the dishes we enjoyed at home.  One of our priorities when eating out there has been finding family friendly restaurants.  Our kids and grandkids will certainly be visiting our vacation home so we developing a list of good restaurants we can go out to when they visit.  I should note that our grandkids while still quite young have very discriminating food tastes.  They definitely are not the plain hot dog on a bun type of kids.  Part of that is due to the fact that they are surrounded by lots of great food all the time and they are exposed to foods that many adults would turn their nose up at.  So Grandma and Papa are making a list for when they visit.

Harry's Seafood Bar & Grille is located in the heart of downtown Lakeland, Florida at 101 N Kentucky Avenue.  They also have locations in Gainesville, Ocala, St. Augustine and Tallahassee.  The atmosphere is warm, welcoming and extremely friendly.  This restaurants is a New Orleans style restaurant.  They are family friendly with a children's menu for those under 12 years of age.

We arrived on a Thursday evening during the very busy holiday season.  The restaurant was quite busy and it was during happy hour yet we were seated promptly.  The wait staff here are some of the very best you will ever come across!  Not only were they fast, courteous and beyond friendly to the patrons they treated each other the same way.    I got the distinct impression they really enjoyed their jobs as much as we enjoyed their company.  So major kudos to Harry's for fostering this type of work environment!

My husband ordered the bacon wrapped scallop Chef's special as an appetizer.  This was a special that wasn't on the menu.  You just can't go wrong with scallops although I can recall a time I did not care for scallops at all.  Now I find they have a rather delightful sweet flavour.  We make bacon wrapped scallops at home some I'm always interested in how restaurants present this wonderful appetizer. 

The scallops were wrapped in bacon then placed on a bed of grits,  topped with a light citrus glaze and garnished with a baby lettuce mix.  It was a delighful presentation that tasted every bit as good as it looked!

My husband ordered She Crab soup.  She Crab soup is a cross between a bisque and a chowder made with blue crab meat and crab roe.  The soup is accredited to the Scottish settlers who arrived in the Carolinas in the 1700's.  One bite of this soup and it was instant delight.  The soup is actually sweet due to the crab meat.

My husband just raved about the soup!  It was that good.  I found an authentic she crab soup recipe that I will be trying at home.  It is a fairly straight forward recipe with ingredients I shouldn't have much difficulty finding at home.  I'll report back on my results.

My husband had the baked stuffed shrimp entrée.  The shrimp was stuffed with lump crab meat finished with Louisianna beurre blanc and garnished with parsley.  The stuffed shrimp was served in the cast iron pan it was baked in.  Seasonal sides completed the dish.

Louisianna beurre blanc is also known as lemon butter sauce.  I have not made this sauce at home yet but found this beurre blanc recipe to try at home.  This recipe is straigh forward made with ingredients found in most kitchens.  I think it will be quite a lovely addition to the many broiled and pan fried dishes we enjoy at home. 

Tilapia is a mild white fish.  Harry's offered it seared, fried or blackened.  I ordered the blackened tilapia that came with a choice of one side and lemon sauce.    The lemon sauce was rather interesting as it was rich and creamy, accenting the fish nicely.  The creamy mashed potatoes were accented with red onion, potato pieces and garnished with parsley.

The guys enjoyed a Big Easy which is an impressive looking tropical drink made with Captain Morgan's Original Spiced Rum, Southern Comfort, Amaretto, Banana liqeur, midori, pineapple and sour.  This cocktail can easily be duplicated at home.  Our meal with beverages (alcoholic/non-alcoholic), and dessert for the little one came in at $85 for 3 adults and an 8 yr old.  We enjoyed this restaurant so much that we bought a $100 gift certificate taking advantage of a bonus $30 gift certificate with the purchase.  Harry's has made it onto our must visit when in the area restaurant list!

Kitchen Quick Tips - Measuring Boiling Water

Some recipes call for a specific amount of boiling water to be added.  Boil the water first then measure out the amount needed.  If you measure the water before boiling it can lose as much as an ounce when coming up to a boil through evapouration.

Jimmy's Fish House and Iguana Bar, Clearwater Beach, Florida

There are very, very few times that I will ever bad mouth a restaurant.  The reason being is normally if we do not like something about a restaurant, we simply don't go back.  Oh sure we may say something to friends or family but other than that, we just don't go back.  If there is a minor problem in one area of the restaurant, I will mention it here.  In this case though, this is a restaurant to avoid at all costs!

My husband went online and found Jimmy's Fish House and Iguana Bar to stop at after spending a full day at Busch Gardens.  Jimmy's is located at 521 S Gulfview Blvd. in Clearwater, Florida.  It is a restaurant within the Holiday Inn there.  Signage is rather limited and since the restaurant is located towards the back of the motel it is rather easy to miss. 

We visited on a Friday late afternoon with one of our friends and his 8 yr old daughter.  We had tickets to another event starting at 7:30 PM so had made sure we had enough time to stop and dine while still getting to the other event in plenty of time. 

The restaurant consists of a cosy, indoor sitting area with bar.  The outdoor patio is two tiered on the Gulf coast.  With such a beautiful setting we had high hopes of a gorgeous dining experience.  Wrong!

It was quite apparent from the start that the waitress was more intent on gabbing with her co-workers than attending patrons.  We sat a good 20 minutes with absolutely no attention from the waitress when finally our friend went up and asked for drinks.  The waitress finally showed up about 10 minutes later.  At least we were able to enjoy the view. 

We ordered the all you can eat grouper that came without cutlery of which we had to wait another 10 minutes to get.  There were no condiments on the table so I finally went in and asked for salt, pepper and malt vinegar.  By the time all this was said and done our food was beyond cold!  The guys ordered a second helping of fish only and believe it or not, the extra fish took 34 minutes to appear.  The food itself might have been good had we been able to try it while still hot.

This restaurant seriously gets a two thumbs down in terms of service!  I honestly could not believe how horrible the service was at this restaurant.    There honestly is not one good thing I can say about this restaurant other than to avoid it like the plague!  It took us almost a half hour just to pay the bill.  To add insult to injury, due to the dining delays we ended up not being able to attend the other event of which we had already bought tickets to entertain our friends so we were out not only the price of the food but also the event that cost $40. 

Ribeye Steaks with Take-out Baked Beans

We buy beef on the hoof to stock our freezers at our primary residence so by far that is the beef we eat.  The exceptions to this if I find an excellent sale on meat or if I need a specialty cut from the butcher shop.  It is not feasible for us to bring beef from our primary residence to our vacation home due to the travel time and customs restrictions.  I'm sure we could figure out a way to bring a small cooler full with dry ice but honestly it is easier to buy our meat fresh when at our vacation home.  So far we have not found an actual butcher shop but one of the grocery stores has a meat counter where they will custom cut meat.

We certainly love our beef regardless where we are.  My husband is rather picky about how he likes the meat cut for steaks.  More specifically he likes the steak cut 1 - inch thick.  This gives a nice steak that can be grilled to perfection every time to rare or medium rare without the risk of over cooking.

Steaks should be removed from the refrigerator and allowed to come to room temperature for grilling.  This allows the internal temperature of the steak to increase enough that the steak can be grilled nicely without burning.  My husband seldom uses a marinade or rub as he prefers the flavour of the meat itself to shine.

I served the ribeye steaks with our favourite zucchini melody and the take-out baked beans we brought home from Mike's Smokehouse BBQ and Grill.  The baked beans with the added bits of BBQ pork are some of the best I've ever tasted.  I will certainly be working on a clone recipe for them!

The store bought tomatoes at our vacation home are very much like the store bought tomatoes we are forced to buy at home during the off season.  They are hard and quite lacking in flavour.  We came down in September right in the midst of the tomato harvest at home so I had been canning tomatoes and picking tomatoes from my garden.  I was so disappointed in the tomato quality at our vacation home!  If we come next September I am going to ask at at US Customs if we are allowed to bring tomatoes into the US.