DeMilli’s Family Restaurant

It’s a beautiful day in the Tampa Bay Area. If you’re reading this from San Francisco, Stuttgart, or perhaps even Vancouver, I’m willing to bet your day isn’t as nice as ours.

Today we visited DeMilli’s Family Restaurant at 6501 Park Boulevard. It’s Halloween, 31 October 2010, and everyone was dressed like hippies. We were wearing our favorite costumes, the disguise of Tampa’s famous breakfast reviewers! The DeMill’s sign has a couple of “N” characters dressing up as “Z”. That’s pretty groovy.

Inside is warm and cozy. And apparently hippies wore a lot of bandannas. I, personally, can attest to the number of bandannas at metal festivals, but I really can’t account for the authenticity of these costumes. Surely, though, they were all really cute.

We went for the coffee right away. It’s a long drive to DeMilli’s and we needed the boost. Good java here. Got us going like a jumpstart on a cold battery! You may have noticed, dear TBB fan, that we seem to “cheers” a lot. I want to assure you that no animals are harmed in the filming of these events. And also, this is pretty much Marek’s idea to cheers all the time.

Today is a super-special breakfast. Cousin Donnie sent Marek and Ivo presents. As everyone knows, Cousin Donnie is the guy who recently jumped on his bike with a t-shirt and gas money and rode from upstate New York to Tampa and back in a weekend. He’s hard-core. We’re excited about the presents!

I pulled my trusty spider knife to open them up.

I don’t want to ruin the surprise, but I think it’s a car, Marek.

Lousy picture of a great car! Thanks, cousin Donnie! Marek proceeded to tell me, and I am not making this up, how “Cousin Donnie is my friend.” What Marek doesn’t realize is that Donnie is actually his first cousin once removed. That’s the kind of scientific precision we bring to every Tampa Bay Breakfast.

Marek also helped Ivo open his. That was pretty useful, as Ivo doesn’t have the fine motor skills to do much more than poop.

We made sure Ivo got to hold his, but Marek wasted no time in suggesting that maybe it might be a good idea if he help Ivo out by playing with Ivo’s car, too.

He says to Ivo, “Hey little brother, can I play with your car? Just don’t say anything if it’s OK.” Ivo didn’t say anything, so it must have been OK. We all say Thank you, Cousin Donnie!

We did a quick clearing of the race track to make room for some really nice chow. Notice the bacon heist in progress. There was a “yoink!” sound.

Every few months Marek gets on a pepper kick. Syrup and pepper on his pancakes. Is it my fatherly duty to correct this deviant behavior? Or, as dad, should I just let him do it and laugh when it tastes icky? Which do you think I do?

Lookit the size of these hotcakes!

We both liked them and dug right in. Ivo didn’t have any for some reason.

The bill came and we weren’t disappointed at all. Heck, this one’s coming out of Ivo’s allowance!

Marek says, “Dad, can I have Ivo’s allowance so I can pay the bill?” I wonder how he knew I was going to write that!

While Marek was off performing high-stakes financial transactions, Ivo and I hung tight and made sure that my hand got chewed on enough.

Marek and this nice lady talked for a little bit. Best as I could get out of it, she was explaining “the 60s” to him.

This is Marek’s lucky red hat. He doesn’t realize it’s lucky.

Marek thought this was pretty funny. From the hippie-giggles in the room, I gather so did everyone else.

After all this, we also got a little bit crazy. Marek insists that Ernest Hemmingway did this all the time while he was writing Farewell to Arms.

We walked out of DeMilli’s for not much money but with really full bellies from really good chow and we were served by really nice hippies. Really. Please note that when you go there probably won’t be hippies, but if the chow’s the same for you as for us you won’t be disappointed. We’re pleased to give DeMilli’s Family Restaurant a Tampa Bay Breakfasts
four and a half pancake rating.

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