Central Coffee Shoppe in St Petersburg (click on photo for larger image)
I don’t do a lot of posts about restaurants, partly because I’m not uniquely qualified to be a restaurant critic and partly because I really don’t want this blog to be all about commercial establishments. But, once in awhile, I will post about a place if it strikes just the right chord with me. And the Central Coffee Shoppe, at 530 Central Avenue in downtown St. Petersburg, is just such a place.
This is Everyman’s breakfast and lunch place. All ages, all types of people love to eat here. You’ll see Millenials, Gen Xers, Baby Boomers, and Long Retireds. Folks wearing crisp shirts and ties sitting alongside of others who are adorned with intricate tattoos. Doesn’t matter – they’re all here for the same reasons: Great food, casual, easygoing atmosphere, excellent service, friendly staff, and a sort of a feeling that you could be stopping at a friend’s place for a quick bite.
Central Coffee Shoppe is a family owned, family run restaurant. It was started in July of 1976, and was passed on to a new generation, the original owner’s daughters, a few years ago. Today, when you walk in, you’ll find sisters running the place, taking orders, delivering food, pouring coffee, and making sure everyone is happy. And this morning, when I heard our server referred to as ”Mom” by one of the sisters, I saw that it really is a family affair! And, perhaps amazingly, they all seem very happy to be working with each other!
To appreciate Central Coffee Shoppe properly, you just need to do one thing: stop by and eat! But if you want a little preview before you go, I will tell you that it’s a lot like the best of the old-time diners, complete with Marilyn Monroe posters adorning all the walls, along with a Clark Gable and a James Dean and a few other random stars thrown in for good measure. There’s a great Central Coffee Shoppe neon sign above the grill to give you the sort of atmosphere that just feels right for such a place. Not sure how long the sign’s been there, but I’m betting that the day it was first installed, everyone stood back and looked upon it in awe!
The food is just what you hope for when you walk into a diner or any other home-cooking kind of restaurant – fast, plentiful, delicious, and very reasonably priced! We’ve gone more for breakfasts than for lunches, so I’m more familiar with the breakfast menu, and I can tell you that I almost always get an omelette, because they taste exactly the way I want them to. But they have everything else that you might want, too, like pancakes and French toast and great, crisp bacon. If you’d like to see the menu, you can find it on their web site at this link.
Next time you feel like going out for a great breakfast (or lunch), head downtown and stop by and see for yourself what I’m talking about – you won’t be disappointed! You’ll feel as though you walked into St. Petersburg’s Cheers, except that it’s got food and coffee instead of cocktails and beer. Oh, and by the way, the coffee is just delicious!
Central Coffee Shoppe Sign (click on photo for larger image)
