Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

Restaurant review

Latin cooking with style and substance

The Black Palm has planted itself in St. Pete Beach, with clean lines, tropical colors and promising flavors.

By CHRIS SHERMAN
Published July 14, 2005

[Times photos: Lara Cerri]

Ceviche de la Costa is one of several appetizers on the menu. The dish includes snapper, scallops, shrimp, mango and cilantro.

	Flan de caramelo is among the desserts at the Black Palm, in the former home of the Lighted Tree in St. Pete Beach.

The new wave of contemporary Latin American cooking that started in Miami 20 years ago now laps at the Pinellas shores. It has arrived with a staff in black guayaberas and plates bright with mango and cilantro, tucked on a side street on Pass-a-Grille in the spot long known as the Lighted Tree.

The Black Palm has been revamped with clean lines and tropical colors inside and out (although alfresco diners still stare into a deep sea mural). The kitchen is under the marquee of chefs Mark Lemon, Martin Tintos and Lui Arango, who owns the place with Tony Infante. The menu stretches from Catille to Argentina.

On my visit, however, the soul of the place came from Columbia in the person of Arango's mother and cook, Elvia Arango, and a bowl of her sancocho. This Colombiano soup defines hearty, a tomato broth thick with chicken broth and real chicken, potatoes, peas and chunks of corn on the cob. Not nuevo at all, this is a viejo standby that has mothered a nation for decades.

The kitchen also makes arepas (corn cakes) just like home, or at least better than most I've had at retail here. It's hard for me to say no to a cornmeal cake, but I usually find Venezuela's yellow arepas preferable to the harder white meal cakes of Colombia. But not here, where the arepas were soft and moist with corn kernels inside and cooked to order.

They can also be had dolled up with smoked salmon, sour cream, chopped egg and a touch of caviar. That fusion blini is unlike anything on the streets of Bogota, but it's in keeping with the uptown ambitions of the Black Palm.

Similarly, ceviche comes either in a traditional Peruvian marinade of lemons, garlic and pepper or as a fruitier tropical martini of mango and orange. The latter turned out surprisingly crisp and crunchy because it used unripe green mango for texture as well as sweet mango pulp.

Chimichurri, that tart punch of vinegar and parsley that is my favorite steak sauce, gets fired up with fresh peppers here. It added a good kick to the beef pinwheels, and it's available on steaks and other meats that have been long marinated and tenderized.

I hope the Black Palm takes root on the beach. I think its owners have the best chance of all those who have tried to bring this old tree back to life on Eighth Avenue.

What I've tasted so far are promising appetizers, not wildly innovative but strong on rich Latin flavors. Some get dressed up with chipotle cream, plantain crusts and wasabi; some are old familiar salmon and paella.

Me, I'll be back to check on the Black Palm - and for more rustic bites of corn cakes, sancocho and red meat with chimichurri.

- Chris Sherman dines anonymously and unannounced. The St. Petersburg Times pays for all expenses. A restaurant's advertising has nothing to do with selection for a review or the assessment of its quality. Sherman can be reached at 727 893-8585 or sherman@sptimes.com

109 Eighth Ave.

St. Pete Beach

(727) 360-5000

Hours: Opens at 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday

Reservations: Accepted

Details: Credit cards accepted; full bar; restrooms accessible; outdoor seating; live music on weekends

Prices: Appetizers and soups, $3-$10; entrees, $17-$28

[Last modified February 1, 2006, 12:06:24]