Arts Club Restaurant Takeover Rooster & The Till + Cute LOTD

I am still working on the outfiy photos and I will have them up soon.

Tonight we had a visit to the latest restaurant takeover in Tampa which is the Arts Club X Rooster & the Till. Now, I have been to this restaurant many many times, in fact the last time I was there (last year) I had a horrible experience and said I was not going to return. 

Well, I am going to admit "restaurant takeovers" have piqued my interest in the last six months and I wanted to see what this restaurant was bringing to the proverbial table in the upscale Water Street area downtown.

Located in Seminole Heights Tampa is Rooster and the Till. While the restaurant is extremely popular and has a really loyal customer base they in my opinion haven't been able to break all the way through hitting some goals which I know most Chef's and restaurantuers want to achieve.

In my opinion, I think the food is great, but it's extremely over priced for the portion sizes most time and the food and atmosphere comes off as extremely pretentious; which tends to run people off when they visit. The restaurant is located in a historical area of Tampa in which has a long history which is not good, but it's been under gentrification the last twenty years. With that being said, it still is located where it is located and so I think for the location a lot of people are put off by the prices and practices.

So,  what about Water Street? It's gentrification personified and if you ask a lot of people who were here before that, Tampa also was in the same amount of Urban Decay. But now, due to a lot of people moving down to Tampa and specifically this area, yes, this is an area where this restaurant takeover makes sense because it's in their wheelhouse. 

Okay, so a little information on the Arts Club. It's located in Tampa's only 5 star hotel, The Tampa Edition. The Arts Club is really a mixed use space, if you search this key term on my blog you will see I have gone to several comedy shows here in the past. The Arts club is chic it's expensive ( 19 to 24$ a drink) and it's draped in red velvet, sequins and lights.

What I like about the Arts Club and their restaurant takeovers is that they do not have a set menu, it isn't a prefixe menu. It's going to small, like 5 to 6 menu items and so far they have done a great job of making about half of it gluten-free and also having 2 vegetarian or vegan options. You can order how many of each item you want and it is really no pressure. 

Spoiler...you may leave hungry depending what is on the menu and your dietary restrictions. 

So, tonight we are at the Arts Club X  Rooster and the Till restaurant takeover. Here is what the Head Chef brought to us out here on this side of town.

About half of the items contained gluten so we didn't order much by the way. The board looked good, but it was 70$ and it had a lot of items I didn't want on it so we kept things simple.

So, we started with the chicken and this dish have had at the main restaurant many times, but I feel like maybe it was different tonight. It didn't agree with me. To me... it was awful, all I could taste was vinegar.

My husband on the other hand liked it and picked up on all the Savory Thai notes and spices (less vinegar in his), but he was convinced his chicken was undercooked (slightly raw) and it was really hard to determine because the Arts Club has nothing but red lights so all you see is red everywhere you look.

I passed my chicken on to him and went to my next order.

The Cobia Collar is a fan favorite at the main restaurant [Rooster and the Till]. I have never in 10 or 11 years been able to taste this Cobia Collar at their restaurant because they do not have a dedicated gluten-free fryer. The Arts Club apparently does; I checked three times with our waiter before I ate the fried fish. I think the chicken was a miss, but the Cobia Collar was exactly the item they needed to have to expose new customers to their menu. I liked the Cobia Collar a lot and it only had like three bones in it so even under the harsh lighting it was easy to eat and navigate.

COCKTAIL:

●CITRICO-LA

santa teresa 1796, montenegro, ango. bitters, vanilla, palm sugar, white cloves, allspice , nutmeg, ginger, lemons, limes.

MENU

●BURNT CABBAGE

thai cury, malted peanut dukkah, green papaya.

●GRILLED ROMANO BEANS GF

prosciutto XO, kosho, fried shallots.

●COBIA COLLAR GF

nuoc cham, thai chili, cilantro.

●CRISPY CHICKEN THIGH GF

tom kha vinaigrette, fermented radish.

ROOSTER

●IBERICO PORK SSAM BOARD GF

saamjang, cucumber kimchi, daikon kimchi.

●BLACK SESAME ICE CREAM

pineapple coconut jam, milk crumble, thai tea caramel.

Dessert...so this item was not gluten-free, but my husband ordered it because he loves black sesame ice cream. This one was more than that and it had a lot of extra things to it in layers and it was flavorful to him. He said it was a must try.

So, that is how dinner went. I however was sick for about two weeks after eating there. I don't know if it was the chicken or if maybe the fryer really wasn't dedicated gluten-free or maybe there was trace amounts of gluten beyond 20 ppm,  but I was sick. My husband was fine and he ate both my chicken and his, so I am guessing it was probably gluten cross contamination sadly.