Home Builder Developer - Interior Renovation and Design

TAMPA Restaurateur Michelle Baker's cellphone is blowing up with Facebook messages. A great-grandmother of a pioneering Florida Cracker cattle family has a hand-me-down recipe for squirrel stew to share, as well as stories about foodways that disappear with every generation.

Baker and her chef husband, Greg, became amateur culinary historians after they decided the menu for their upcoming restaurant in Seminole Heights, Fodder & Shine, would draw inspiration from the ingredients and cooking style of Florida's pioneers, from pre-Civil War to the Depression. Much of that cooking heritage was maintained by Florida Cracker cattle families who had to make the most of limited ingredients in a rugged land.

It's a largely undocumented time, Michelle Baker said. We've been reaching out to people who have old lineage in Florida. Oral histories. Family cookbooks.

Construction on Fodder began this week at the site of a former body shop and dry cleaner at 5910 N. Florida Ave., about a half-mile north of Hillsborough Avenue. The 8,400-square-foot, 116-seat restaurant and bar is expected to open in November.

It's the second restaurant for the Bakers, who in 2010 opened The Refinery in Seminole Heights. The restaurant, which features an eclectic blend of culinary styles with an emphasis on seasonal and local ingredients, earned national acclaim and has garnered Baker several James Beard award semifinal nominations as chef.

Baker originally considered following up The Refinery with an Asian street food restaurant but reconsidered after a conversation with celebrity chef Mario Batali, who visited their restaurant two years ago.

He said it was a solid idea, but there was a tone in his voice, Greg Baker said. Soon after that, stoner Asian food took off everywhere around the country. I thought, 'Why do I want to be making fried rice tacos?'

Florida heritage and history has been a passion for the couple, especially considering that Michelle Baker's family roots trace to the early 1900s in Plant City, and to the 1700s in the southern United States. The couple bought the Florida Avenue property for Fodder 16 months ago with the plan to celebrate the state's largely uncelebrated foodways.

We're tired of people looking at Florida and not taking it seriously, Greg Baker said. It has changed tremendously throughout the years. There is some killer old-school Florida food.

Cracker family cuisine was forged during a rugged time in the state's early history, following great upheaval after colonization by the Spanish and English and the three Seminole Wars.

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Eatery will channel true Old Florida

Ramiro and Lupe Vazquez bought Guadalajara Restaurant six years ago because they liked the homemade Mexican food.

With no previous restaurant experience, they could not have dreamed that in June they would open an expansion to their successful downtown Muscatine restaurant with a third dining room and brand new commercial kitchen.

The Vazquezes, who own all three buildings on E. Second Street that now house Guadalajara on the ground floor, first considered an expansion when they found out that Snackers 2, a former breakfast and lunch shop run by Goodwill of the Heartland, would be moving out of the third building.

"Once the main person contacted us and said they were moving, then we really looked into it," Lupe Vazquez said. "I always wanted a new kitchen ... different layout, and back here [in the old kitchen it] was a little harder to do because ... it would have meant closing for a little while. So we thought, 'what if we moved the kitchen to that area and then expand there?'"

North Construction in Muscatine also owned by the Vazquezes, who live in Muscatine did all of the construction work on the new building, which took eight months to complete. The expansion, which opened in June, includes the commercial kitchen with a walk-in cooler, and 13 new tables in the dining area, some of which are larger booths that seat eight. The new area also boasts high ceilings, four flat screen TVs, and a large window for patrons to see into the kitchen.

Juan Periaez of Muscatine, a cook at Guadalajara, said the kitchen staff is happy in their new cooking quarters.

"We can get organized better and easier," he said. "There's more coordination so we can do things a lot faster."

Maribel Ruiz of Muscatine is one of the restaurant's managers and said customers have made positive comments on the new section.

"There is more seating area, so people don't really have to wait that long," she said. "Sometimes it gets really busy."

When the Vazquezes first bought Guadalajara, they employed two waitresses and one cook at the former location on the other side of 2nd Street. Today, they have four cooks, a 24-person wait staff and can serve up to 232 customers at full capacity.

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Guadalajara Restaurant opens new dining area, kitchen

The Roofing and Remodeling Company is part of the No Roof Left Behind program.
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Remodeling general Contractors in Houston | Affordable kitchen and bath remodeling contractors
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More concerns tonight about door to door salesmen in the area. Two men have been issued citations for selling door to door without a permit. The men claimed to be selling pest control services.

It's one of those quiet streets in the University area where people tend to know and look out for each other. So when Loraine Suarez received a knock at the door from someone selling pest control services she was concerned for herself and her neighbors...

"When I opened the door this young man kind of got in my face to show me. He introduced himself. He had on a white shirt with a company logo on it and showed me pictures of bugs and asked if I had seen any of these bugs in my neighborhood. And I said, 'No because I have a guy that comes and sprays,' said Suarez.

Suarez wasted no time calling city hall and found out the sales people did not have permits to go door to door.

"That's when I called our neighborhood watch contact person and that started the ball rolling on trying to track them down."

Within a couple of days Lake Charles Police were able track down the two men who were posing as Terminex employees. No one at the local Terminex was available to verify whether the sellers were representing the company. Officials at Lake Charles City Hall say they did fax registration papers to someone claiming to be with Terminex.

Carmen Million with the Southwest Louisiana Better Business Bureau has signs provided by the Ward 3 Marshal's Office that, if posted, prohibit sellers from knocking on your door.

"If a consumer sticks one of these no soliciting signs on their door, a door to door sales person cannot knock on that person's door. In fact, if you have a no soliciting sign, if you have one of these signs on your door and they do knock on your door to solicit business, the best thing to do is just call local law enforcement," said Million.

Suarez doesn't expect the sellers, whose car had canadian license plates, to come back after the way residents reacted. The two I was most concerned about flat put him in his place.

"They told them they had the same service technician that I have and they told them nobody else was coming in their house," said Suarez.

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LC Police ticket door-to-door sales people

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