Jeff Houck

The Tampa Tribune’s food writer since 2005, Jeff Houck covers the way people live through their food. He also hosts the Table Conversations food podcast and believes that everything crunchy is good.

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A Dining Room To Match The Food [An Insider Gives SideBern’s A Makeover]

Posted Jun 23, 2009 by Jeff Houck

Updated Jun 23, 2009 at 05:56 PM

Restaurants change. It’s the one constant in the business. Even at a restaurant like SideBern’s in Tampa.

The hippest restaurant along one of the hippest stretches of south Tampa has been going through a metamorphasis since late 2007, when founding chef and former co-owner Jeannie Pierola parted ways with partner David Laxer, owner of the flagship Bern’s Steak House.

For the past 18 months, executive chef Chad Johnson and chef de cuisine Courtney Orwig have been putting their stamp on the menu, adding a stronger Mediterranean feel with more seasonal cooking and use of local ingredients and exotic proteins where possible and applicable.

That cuisine is quite a different approach from Pierola’s, which was served more contemporary fusion during her tenure. It wouldn’t be uncommon to see Asian mixed with Latin or any other international flavor combination on one plate.

The evolution to something more purely of Johnson’s vision has been gradual. Now that the change is complete, Laxer and the SideBern’s management have decided that the restaurant needs to update its dining room to match.

In keeping with SideBern’s unconventional tradition, server Ginger Shaw [pictured above] has been tapped to give the dining room and an adjacent meeting room an updated decor.

Shaw, who has worked at SideBern’s for almost six years, graduated with a Bachelors of Fine arts in Interior Design from the International Academy of Design and Technology in Tampa.

The project started with an idea for renovating what employees call “The Brick Room” so that it could be used for more large-group dining. That soon morphed into an idea to repaint the entire restaurant from its current seafoam green/robin’s egg blue. The project also will add flat-screen TVs to the brick roo, include new glassware and china and improve some air conditioning duct work.

“Now that we have Chad, [pictured at right] we need more Mediterranean, more natural earth-and-fire colors in the restaurant,” Shaw says. “We want to warm it up.”

The color scheme is still being worked out, bbut there likely will be darker blue accent color with an off-white or cream colors for the ceiling with darkened beams.

“I want to lessen the contrast of the colors to make it more fresh, and maybe add some more artwork,” she says.

To give a visual cue to the seasonality of the menu, “cubbies” next to what used to be the original entrance of the restaurant will be redecorated every few months.

Offering guidance will be Tommy Lamb, owner of Thomas Everett Lamb Design and Development in Tampa. Lamb is known for his Mediterranean-style homes in south Tampa for such celebrities as former Tampa Bay Buccaneers player Brad Culpepper and New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner.

“He’s been willing to let me tag along with him,” Shaw says.

Other plans for the brick room include changing to more acoustically pleasing folding doors and incorporating draperies to block the light in the room. Two plasma screens on either end could then be used for presentations.

“One of my projects, eventually will be to figure out how to cover those TVs so we don’t have those showing in the dining room,” Shaw says. “Whatever we do, we want to create a base without messing with [architect] Richard Zingale’s genius design. I would definitely not want to insult him.”

The restaurant plans to close for the redecoration project from June 29 to July 6, with reopening scheduled for July 7.