We revisited Datz Deli at 2616 South MacDill Avenue Tampa on 19 August 2011. Last time was 12 February 2011 and it was collllldddd out. Not today. It’s sweltering here in Florida. For this visit to Datz, we brought Favorite Guest Reviewer Mom.

Me and Ivo, we’re checking out the menu. It’s a classy touch, these custom newspapers-as-menus.

Look at this great pancake run on the right. Even have something called a red velvet pancake. That sounds delish. Downright yummy, even. Shame of it is, they only serve pancakes on the weekends. ONLY SERVE PANCAKES ON THE WEEKENDS. That’s going to cost you a half a pancake-point, Datz.

Little Ivo. He looks just like Marek. It doesn’t help that he’s wearing all of Marek’s clothes still.

Marek in the same shirt, two years ago.

Favorite Guest Reviewer Mom got her Favorite Thing Ever, an enormous hot chocolate. This is like, wow, way-choco, baby.

With a delectable morsel like that, you ought have a private security firm standing by. There’s snatchy boys around waiting to help themselves.

Ivo’s going to have baby goop as a starter. Baby goop and coffee.

Let’s see how Ivo likes THIS little flavor.

“I did NOT just see you do that, dad. Did I?”

This has nothing to do with breakfast. It’s just a little police car I was playing with.

I’m not making any excuses, so you don’t make any judgements, ‘k?

After the Tabasco-infused gruel, Ivo was ready for some bacon. I don’t know why Favorite Guest Reviewer Mom gives him a plate, as that just gives him something to grip as he’s winging it through the room.

Same would hold true of Mom, were she the plate-winging type. But she didn’t, she just buckled down on this lovely plate of French toast. Lovely! Lots of “mmm-mmmmm” sounds coming from over there.

Marek, my breakfast partner in crime, he had what has become his new old standard, scrambled eggs and bacon. This bacon was a wall, a slab of lovely flavor.

I had the Datz Hash, which is the first time I’ve ever had corned beef hash that didn’t start its life in a can. This was a plate of awesome. Awesome.

Marek, he’s the kind of kid that will throw a slab of bacon over his shoulder and get to work.

The bill. Ouch. Let me spell that correctly. $Ouch. Not that it’s not delicious, but you wouldn’t bring the family here every day. Just be sure to roll your nickels when you come if you’re on a breakfast budget.

Afterwards we stopped at a place that had this Red Baron biplane for kids to play on. Celebrating the joy of childhood, or the prowess of Manfred von Richthofen and the German military during the first World War? Probably the former, with a dash of Snoopy thrown in.

Then on the way home, we found this rotted out relic. Can you guess what it is? I couldn’t.
It’s actually a really rare Deutche-Bonet Le Mans. How it got to Tampa is a pure mystery to me.

Later on that day I had to go to the market to get some more baby goop and ran into these nice girls. Tina, on the left, was our most pleasant waitress this morning, and her colleague Jay on the right. Tina, it turns out, we also know from Rick’s on the River. I had such a nice chat with Tina and Jay that I’m going to have to reinstate that half-pancake penalty from earlier.

Datz continues to impress us with the great food and fabulous service. Nothing to be said but let’s go get some. We’re pleased to re-affirm Datz as a Tampa Bay Breakfasts five pancake destination.

We’re heading to Gibsonton this morning. On the approach we saw this 30-foot mechanic wielding an enormous box wrench. It gave me the impression that he was waiting to use the wrench to pound into scrap any car that drove into the lot.

We visited Showtown at 10902 US Highway 41 South on 9 July 2011. They have a somewhat haphazard web site at http://showtownusa.com/. Note that the marquee says it’s a “Restaurant and Bar” yet the building says it’s a “Restaurant and Lounge.” And there’s a “Morning Happy Hour.”

We first went to this door, but it doesn’t really look like it’s actually a door.

We walked around the building looking for a door made of door, instead of one made of paint.

Finally, we found this one. Which, while it does appear to be a door for folks of diminutive stature, is actually a tall-folks door cleverly concealed. Just finding our way in was a lot of fun! (Turns out the first door was actually behind the almost-naked lady. Showtown starts you out with a bit of crazy.)

Showtown, for all the show so far, has a pretty basic breakfast menu. Good, relatively complete, but not with the circus-themed menu items you might expect, given the whimsy you find before you even get in the building.

The coffee, to our delight, appeared out of thin air.

Today’s a real treat! Not only are we having breakfast in a truly unique place, we also have Abbey with us!

To make things even better, we also have TBB fan Vinny. He is also Abbey’s dad.

As is more and more common these days, about now Marek suggested that perhaps he could take all the pictures. He took this nice shot of Abbey. That big red blob upper left? Marek’s finger.

And then they ran off to play foosball. I told you it was an interesting place.

Vinny, who is expert on any sport that involves a ball, gave a free lesson. To the best of my knowledge, this was the first foosball table Marek ever saw.

Marek, if you grow up to be a gold-medal Olympic foosball champion, you can look back and say that you got your start here.

While they were playing foosball and I was wondering why it was taking so very, very long for breakfast to come out, I wandered around to look at the extensive murals. Here’s the kitchen. We joked that they only had one chicken and we’d ordered two eggs, so they were in the back yelling at the hen “squeeze, Bitsy, squeeze!”

Here’s a bit of detail from the extensive mural behind our table. At first glance, you think there’s just a bunch of posters on the walls. Then you look closer and realize that this is an immense body of artwork in what otherwise is really a ramshackle dive bar with a restaurant tacked on.

Seriously, you get sucked in and lost when you start looking closer.

“Hey Vinny, how long you been waiting for breakfast this morning?”

“Four hours, it feels like!”

The kids started out playing tag.

Then they just took naps.

Seriously, the detail on this is incredible. I can’t remember the surrealist artist who painted like this with the extended shadows. Hopper did some like this, but there was that other guy. The dead one. Spanish. Cityscapes that were desolate and lonely, with intense shadows that were not possible given any realistic light source. Grrr, memory. Fails. Me.

The nice folks at Showtown brought us crayons. Funny thing about Marek: He’s not the least bit interested in coloring. Not at all.

But my boy can surely tell a joke. Here, here’s telling the one about the difference between a lawyer and a catfish (one’s a bottom feeder, and the other’s a fish!).

Aaaannnnd …. here’s breakfast!

Abbey’s pancakes were bigger than she was!

Marek had his new favorite, floppy eggs and bacon. That’s a lot of bacon, but he took care of it like a pro.

I had the pancakes, and when he was distracted I nipped some of Marek’s bacon.

Vinny had the biscuits and gravy, and the picture’s out of focus because, well, I’ve only got a lousy mobile phone camera and sometimes it just fails to live up to the moment.

I can picture Marek being a young man, out on a date with a pretty girl, and saying, hey, lookit how I can eat bacon! Because that’s what it appears he’s doing here.

The bill for all that chow, and it surely was a lot of chow, was about $30. Not the cheapest ever, but we did have four full breakfasts so that’s pretty reasonable.

If you head to the latrines you’ll encounter this tired woman. Showtown is fraught with this lovely, unnerving detail.

After we settled up and were just finishing some coffee, Marek and Abbey decided they wanted to really play foosball.

Marek volunteered to get quarters, for which he needed a grant from the National Foosball Foundation, A.K.A. me giving him a dollar.

Here, Marek and Abbey are shown negotiating the terms of exchange, one dollar for one quarter was the original request, but the counter offer of four quarters for a dollar was a better deal.

And then we all played foosball, Vinny and Abbey vs. Andy and Marek.

On the way home, Marek and I stopped to get flowers for Favorite Guest Reviewer Mom. Why? Because it’s a special occasion: We love her!

So what about the breakfast, you ask?

Here’s the Tampa Bay Breakfasts take on Showtown: The actual breakfast was really good. The pancakes were near to perfect. The bacon and eggs were just right. Toast was nice. Coffee was strong and black. People were friendly. Vinny and Abbey enjoyed the chow. The Gibsonton-appropriate circus themed murals were simply incredible and occasionally mind-bending. The down side is that breakfast took forever to arrive, and it’s clearly a bar that serves breakfast rather than a breakfast restaurant that happens to also have a bar. So there’s some really good and some sort-of-not-so-good to the equation.

As Tampa Bay’s only working Breakfast Professionals, we have to apply serious science to our reviews. Ultimately, it boils down to good chow plus good times plus price plus character, and Showtown has more character than any other place we’ve been to in the last three years. The only real significant complaint is that it took 40 minutes from order to delivery, but I just can’t get over the fact that Showtown is flawed yet awesome. Showtown, we’re going to forgive that 40 minute wait and reward the fact that this is clearly the trippiest breakfast location in Tampa Bay.

We’re pleased to award Showtown with a Tampa Bay Breakfasts Five Pancake Rating. If you go, tell them Marek and Andy sent you. And don’t sit on the south side.

We re-visited Mamas Kitchen at 9312 North Florida Avenue on Mother’s Day, 8 May 2011. As you may recall, dear TBB fan, Mamas is where we got our start over two years ago. Oh, how young we were back then.

There’s two reasons to go to Mamas. Three. Because you read it here on Tampa Bay Breakfasts is the third. The second is because they sling a pretty fine plate of chow. The first is because they have Vicky. Vicky is, in our vast Pancake Perception, the best breakfast waitress in the Tampa Bay Area. You could be flat out allergic to scrambled eggs and you’d still have a great breakfast experience thanks to her.

Marek, dear child, informed me with supreme vigor that he was Not Hungry and Did Not Want Pancakes. I told him he could just sit there while I had pancakes, because I was hungry. Remember this conversation and see how it turns out later.

Ivo, dear child, informed me with supreme vigor that he was Very Hungry and would be willing to eat Marek’s breakfast if it were coming up available in the next few minutes.

Did you ever say to yourself, “there’s two things I’ve always loved?” My wife and kids. Or maybe, the elegance of the shortest path algorithm and Dijkstra’s profound sense of humor. Or maybe, Star Wars and Mamas Kitchen coffee. I’ve always loved this coffee, and Marek got this great Tie Fighter for his birthday from Tio Patrick.

It’s hard to beat the coffee here. Even Marek, who said he Don’t Want Nothin!, enjoys a good dose of the hard stuff.

Dad, says Marek, you mentioned Dijkstra. Do you think he was more influential than, say, Knuth?

Ivo, as you can tell by his choice of bib, Loves Daddy. He’s also young, and he thinks Stroustrup beats Knuth and Dijkstra in a battle royale. Silly children. Without the invention of an algorithm, you can have neither description nor implementation. Point: Dijkstra. Although, in an actual caged death match between the three, Dijkstra’s at a disadvantage because he’s already dead. In which case, my money’s on Stoustrup also.

(If you think this conversation has gone two degrees south of geeky, just imagine having to suffer through this for the rest of your life like Marek and Ivo will be doing. Or even worse, being married to me.)

Remember last week’s surprise appearance of Marek’s butt for no good reason? Here it is again. I’m thinking of giving it it’s own name, like “Southern Marek” or “Marek Junior” or maybe “Louis.”

Anyone for a bowl of room-temperature paste? Ivo?

And here comes breakfast, in a flash. Note the Ivo DMZ. Also note how Marek “wasn’t hungry” and “didn’t want anything” and yet is giving “Ivo Hands” onto the plate.

That look on Marek’s face? That’s the same look feral children get when eating.

Like any good child being raised by wolves, this pup knows when to share! Steve, I only got this one bite, but I believe you’d like the bacon here.

While Marek and I were playing wolf-pack on the bacon, Ivo just looked on with this air of disbelief. Almost as if you can see his little mind turning over the concept that “I’m related to these nuts?”

Recorded here on Tampa Bay Breakfasts: This is Ivo’s First Ever Pancake that he’s actually been allowed to eat.

That’s one good pancake. (And they were, indeed, delicious!)

Marek said 50 times, he didn’t want any pancakes. Yet here we are. Mystery of the universe how this worked out.

You’re wondering, dear reader, why the sour look on Marek? Because he’s only allowed two cups of coffee in the mornings. He’s only four, for cryin’ out loud.

This, Marek would like me to mention, is “Subconscious” the lion. This is Alan’s lion, which we read about sometimes before bed. Marek of the future, I’ll admit to you that I did, indeed, censor a few lines of this poem when I read it to you as a child. But because of this poem, we call all lions by the name Subconscious.

Marek paid the bill ($11 bones, not bad!) and dear Vicky gave him THREE pops! One of which, obviously, didn’t make it all the way home.

Out in the parking lot we saw this wicked Miata. Now I’m not usually a fan of a Miata, but this one appeared to be gutted and modded with creativity and ingenuity. It was awesome.

We wrapped up and headed home to wish Favorite Guest Reviewer Mom a happy mothers’ day. Thanks to Tampa Bay Breakfasts, she slept until after 0900 this morning! Happy Mothers’ Day!

We’ve consistently given Mamas on North Florida four and a half pancake ratings over time. I think we’re just being stingy. Mamas is clearly a 4.5 breakfast. The food is nearly perfect, and fast, too. Pancakes are just right, eggs are the way we like them, bacon is crispy without being burnt, coffee is the way diner coffee oughtta be. Place is usually full of regulars. There’s the Greek lions mural that invokes conversations with Marek about the Beat Poets.

But what really pushes Mamas over the top is Vicky. She’s worth a half-pancake bump. We’re pleased to upgrade Mamas Kitchen on North Florida to a Tampa Bay Breakfasts five pancake rating. Just don’t tell them it smells like Staten Island in there.