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Dining & Spirits
New College Try: Dining in Gainesville, Tallahassee
A look at some tasty restaurants near UF and FSU.
 Owner Bert Gill meets guests at Ti Amo in Gainesville. [Photo: Cary Jobe / Southern Living, Inc.] |
Watermelon is the best reason for summer. And a salad of cold watermelon with feta cheese refreshes best of all. Melon and cheese is an old Greek favorite, but the bright chunks of yellow watermelon in the $13 salad at Gainesville’s Ti Amo are pure Alachua County, grown at Possum Hollow and selected by a smart modern chef.
Bert Gill knows town and country here well, having cooked up the New Deal Cafe and Mildred’s Big City Diner in Gainesville’s new century. His latest setting is downtown in the rustic building that was the seat of the Sovereign that ruled big-shot dining for decades.
When students, parents and alumni come back for SEC or ACC action, they should sample the changed game here and in Tallahassee, where the hot new spot is boldly named Urbane and serves elk chops or shrimp cakes with fried green tomatoes.
Gumby’s pizza and Guthrie’s chicken fingers are still in both cities, but college-town dining has moved up to sushi, tapas and new culinary frontiers where ingredients are local, flavors global, the baking rustic and styling city slick.
The revolution in American food started 25 years ago in campus zones from Berkeley to Cambridge, where good food became a passion of the well-educated, not just the well-heeled. Chez Panisse in Hogtown? Not yet, but north Florida cooking is fresher and more local.
At the former Sovereign, veal Oscar and Chateaubriand are replaced by grilled pork with lentils braised with bacon and seared scallops with fennel salad and candied lemons. And that watermelon salad.
The old Victorian stable is still tucked down a brick alley, but it’s relit with sleek George Nelson lamps and inspired with a Mediterranean soundtrack — Piaf, fado and no Sinatra. Fast forward from musty Continental to a 2008 fusion of old Southern cooking and sunny cuisine plucked from Spain, Italy, Morocco and Greece, in dishes big and small.
Oxtail on pumpkin puree is a treat, and crisp sardines are refreshing, but in starters of eggplant and artichoke, too much flavor is frittered away in frying. The menu tops out at $30 for lobster tail and pasta in truffle oil and Manchego cheese.
