Tampa Area Butcher?

Not sure where to post this but my wife and I are renting a beach house on Clearwater Beach Christmas week and having her family over for Christmas dinner.

I've been told I am making a standing rib-roast for 10 to 14 ppl.

Anyone know of a good butcher/meat market in the area?

Costco They'll surely have bone-in usda prime rib roasts for you, at a good price. They have the last few years.

Costco is probably right. In Tampa proper there are a handful of old and interesting Italian/Spanish meat markets -- Cacciatore, Castellano & Pizzo (since 1892), Granada's, but they are something more like Caputo's or Graziano's or LaUnica -- great resources for Italian sausage, palomilla steaks, boliche and braciole, Cuban sandwiches and bakery pizza, but I'm not sure the standing rib roast will be any better than what you might get at a big store. Can't remember/imagine anything great in Clearwater in terms of butchers. Definitely look at the Tampa Bay strings. At the beach, grouper at Frenchy's is the easy call and Lenny's in Clearwater away from the beach is a tremendous breakfast/lunch diner run by Phillies fans where Philly/NJ (scrapple, Taylor ham) meets Jewish deli (good bagel and smoked fish) meets southern (great grits and biscuits). Very cool GNR worthy place. Worth the short drive.

Sad to report that Castellanos was sold and the place is a ghostly shadow of what it used to be. Pedestrian meats and cheeses, less variety in the canned items, sad looking produce. And the prepared foods looked awful. Definitely a loss.

JeffB wrote:Costco is probably right. In Tampa proper there are a handful of old and interesting Italian/Spanish meat markets -- Cacciatore, Castellano & Pizzo (since 1892), Granada's, but they are something more like Caputo's or Graziano's or LaUnica -- great resources for Italian sausage, palomilla steaks, boliche and braciole, Cuban sandwiches and bakery pizza, but I'm not sure the standing rib roast will be any better than what you might get at a big store. Can't remember/imagine anything great in Clearwater in terms of butchers. Definitely look at the Tampa Bay strings. At the beach, grouper at Frenchy's is the easy call and Lenny's in Clearwater away from the beach is a tremendous breakfast/lunch diner run by Phillies fans where Philly/NJ (scrapple, Taylor ham) meets Jewish deli (good bagel and smoked fish) meets southern (great grits and biscuits). Very cool GNR worthy place. Worth the short drive.

Thanks for the Costco recs. I didn’t think of that. I might also call the Whole Foods near the airport and order one from them. Gotta go there anyway for other provisions. Plus, there's a liquor store nearby.
Frenchy’s, we are familiar with. Last time we did this we stayed at the Sandpearl and Frenchy’s is right next-door.

Lenny’s sounds like it would be worth a drive one morning. Thanks for that! I was born in Philly and haven’t had scrapple in many years!

DMChicago wrote:
Lenny’s sounds like it would be worth a drive one morning. Thanks for that! I was born in Philly and haven’t had scrapple in many years!

Another place to go for scrapple is Skyway Jack's in St. Pete, which I believe JeffB also originally recommended.

Skyway Jacks
2600 34th St S
St. Petersburg, FL
727-866-3217

Yep. Similar places, though Skyway Jack's leans Cracker (not a pejorative in FL) and Lenny's leans Northeast/urban. Mentioned Lenny's because it is nearer Clearwater beach, direcly off the road from the airport to beach.

PS, definitely make sure you go to the beachside Frenchy's, literally in the sand. Like Pasadita, Frenchy's for some reason has something like 4 restaurants in a 4 block stretch, only one on the beach. In Florida especially, though it's a universal truth too, the combination of good food, good value, plus on the beach (as opposed to near it or on the intracoastal side) is exceedingly rare.

Something on Lenny's from the St. Pete Times (best paper in FL, which might be damnation by faint praise) below. The article elsewhere echoes my best obeservation about the place: where else can you get good grits and scrapple on the same plate? The free danish basket, coffee, and Jewish deli items are all pretty great too. Those who lament the passing of similar places in South Florida and anyone who loves atmospheric 50's diners and breakfast should try it. On the way from TIA to the beach. Sorry not to have mentioned this one before.

"Lenny's true achievement is the ecumenical nature of the menu: one part country diner, one part Jewish deli, and a schmear of Philadelphia delicacies that would make Sylvester Stallone weak in the knees. In the late innings of spring training, the Philadelphia accent is heavy. Philly fans crowd the place before games a few hundred yards away. Might be worth walking to Bright House Networks Field. Even Bobby Abreu would have to play a doubleheader to work off a full Lenny's breakfast."

http://www.sptimes.com/2006/03/23/Weeke ... with.shtml

Be careful with Whole Foods and make sure you specify the grade you want. They've started selling a lot of USDA Select beef, at least in the Chicago area. At one location I saw about an 80%/20% select/choice mix, with no prime available. It's pretty depressing.