Check Out The Hyatt Place’s Thanksgiving Buffet! 

If you don’t feel like having to cook a big meal at home for Thanksgiving, why not check out the big Thanksgiving Buffet at the beautiful Hyatt Place Hotel Tampa/ Wesley Chapel (26000 Sierra Center Blvd., just west of I-75, Lutz), on Thursday, November 28 (obviously), with three seatings — one at 10:30 a.m., one at noon and the last at 1:30 p.m. 

The buffet menu will include most of your Turkey Day entrĂŠe favorites, including a not-so-traditional (but also extremely popular) fried turkey, as well as honey-glazed ham and tender, slow-roasted prime rib served with a savory au jus. Less traditional main course options include citrus-glazed salmon fillets and beef tips sautĂŠed with portobello mushrooms in a rich, savory sauce. 

Starters include lobster & crab bisque and a butternut squash soup, Italian chopped salad, a “berry bliss” salad, as well as classic creamy potato salad and a “melody” of pasta salad. 

Side dishes include creamy garlic mashed potatoes, Southern macaroni & cheese, sweet candied yams, wild rice pilaf, sweet & savory glazed carrots and green beans sautĂŠed in lemon butter. 

Save room for dessert, as there will be (of course) sweet potato pie, traditional apple pie and rich cream carrot cake. 

The meal also will include live music at all three seatings and bottomless mimosas (for ages 21 & older), although the Hyatt Place also will offer its full premium-liquor bar (Note-All bar drinks will incur an additional charge; soft drinks are included in the per-person price, however). 

The price for this sumptuous meal with no post-meal cleanup at your house? It’s just $75 per person, $30 for children under age 12 and children under age three eat for free. The prices do not include tax or gratuity and an 18% gratuity will be included for all parties of six or more. 

Reservations are definitely suggested, as the hotel believes that all three seatings are likely to sell out. To reserve your table, call (813) 803-5600. For more information, visit Hyatt.com/WesleyChapel. — GN 

Hyatt Place Wesley Chapel Rolls Out Revamped ‘Placery’ 

The Placery’s revamped bar area. (Photos by Charmaine George)

Congratulations go out to the management of the Hyatt Place Tampa Wesley Chapel (26000 Sierra Center Blvd.), which rolled out the new menu at the hotel’s revamped “The Placery” restaurant and bar on May 1. 

The invitation-only event was attended by about 100 people, who got to not only sample some of the new food items and craft cocktails at The Placery, but also tour the 132-room hotel and some of its bookable meeting rooms, all of which also can include a variety of catering options. 

The main ballroom at the Hyatt Place’s Sierra Conference Center. 

The final stop of the tour was the hotel’s 4,000-sq.-ft. Sierra Conference Center & Ballroom, where director of sales Lorna Petchey thanked everyone for coming and introduced both Kish Kanji, the executive VP of Impact Properties (which owns the hotel), and Beau Benton, the president of LBA Hospitality, which now manages it. 

“We opened right before Covid hit,” Kanji said. “So, we felt the time was right to re-introduce the hotel to the community.” 

For the event, The Placery provided four different varieties of its crispy chicken wings and tasty parmesan French fries, as well as an impressive charcuterie board, a decadent dessert display and more. 

“We want the community to know we’re here,” Petchey said. “We’re proud of our hotel and our food.” 

For reservations & more info, visit Hyatt.com, call (813) 803-5600 or stop in and please tell them I sent you!


Kish Kanji 

The May 1 event featured four different varieties of The Placery’s crispy chicken wings, plus its tasty parmesan fries. and more

Beau Benton 

Lorna Petchey 

Nibbles and Bytes

FHWC Opens Wound Care Center
Florida Hospital Wesley Chapel (FHWC), which will be changing its name to AdventHealth Wesley Chapel in January 2019 (see Business Notes on page 13), continues to be at the forefront of health care in our area. The hospital recently opened its Wound Care Center inside the FHWC Wellness Plaza, the building due north of the hospital itself.

FHWC CEO Denyse Bales-Chubb and dozens of Adventist Health dignitaries, local elected

officials/political candidates and North Tampa Bay Chamber of Commerce members were on hand for the ribbon-cutting ceremony on Aug. 27, and everyone in attendance (including yours truly) came away truly impressed with this latest addition to FHWC’s plethora of medical services for the community.

Although the Wound Care Center has plenty of state-of-the-art technology for caring for all kinds of wounds, lesions and lacerations, the coolest things we saw as we toured the facility were two hyperbaric chambers (photo far right), which traditionally have been used for people with the “bends” from scuba diving, but which (we were told) also can help with healing for those who have chronic sores and wounds that don’t heal, from diabetes or after radiation therapy for cancer.

Congrats also go out to the local catering company called C•B•K Catering & Events, which served amazing edible cones filled with a zesty chicken salad, plus delicious cheese tortellinis and perfect bruschetta at the event.

For more info about FHWC and the new Wound Care Center, visit FloridaHospital.com. For more info about C•B•K Catering, visit CBKTampa.com or call (813) 699-3060 and please tell Chase Mayer the New Tampa Neighborhood News sent you!

VIPs Check Out The Hyatt Place
In our last issue, I mentioned that the new Hyatt Place Hotel & Sierra Conference Center were getting ready to open, which actually happened on July 30.

On Aug. 9, representatives of the new hotel hosted a VIP event we attended, where members of the North Tampa Bay Chamber (NTBC) of Commerce Board of Directors and other local VIPs took tours of the 132-room hotel and got to sample some of the tasty food that will be served in the Hyatt Place’s Gallery restaurant.

The Hyatt Place Hotel is located at 26000 Sierra Center Blvd. For more info, stop in or call (813) 803-5600 or visit Hyatt.com, and please tell the hotel’s staff that you read about them (again) in the New Tampa Neighborhood News!

Umu To Replace OTB CafĂŠ

Although OTB (Only The Best) Delights CafĂŠ closed its original location at 2653 Bruce B. Downs (BBD) Blvd. in Wesley Chapel several weeks ago, have no fear.

Not only is OTB set to reopen sometime in September in its new location a couple of miles further north at the new Nye Commons (4873 BBD), but there already is a new restaurant getting ready to open in its old location.

The Thai owners of Umu Japanese & Thai have been transforming the old OTB space into an elegant-looking future home of great sushi, Bento boxes and other Japanese and Thai favorites and hope to be open sometime in September.

 

Nibbles & Bytes

Kate Spade Opens In TPO!

“We are now at 100-percent occupancy,” Tampa Premium Outlets (TPO) general manager Stacey Nance told me at the July 20 ribbon cutting event for the new Kate Spade store (photo) in TPO. “How many malls can say that?”

In addition to Kate Spade (see below), Nance says the remaining three slots at the outlet mall also are all now taken — True Religion Designer Jeans & Clothing, Salt Life and the Man Cave Store, which has been a hit at other Simon malls with billiards tables, Harley Davidson gear, Mr. Beer and more.

But, there’s no doubt that a lot of people — dozens were on hand during or shortly after the store’s ribbon cutting to check out the deals — are excited about the high-end handbags, wallets, clothing and accessories at Kate Spade, the store chain that the late designer Kate Brosnahan and her husband Andy Spade (the brother of actor/comedian David Spade) created as Kate Spade New York in 1993, combining her first name and his surname. The couple had sold all of their interest in the brand to Nieman Marcus by 2006, which then sold it to Liz Claiborne that same year.

Of course, Kate was found dead in her apartment on June 5 of this year, by her own hand, leaving a note for her daughter Frances.

“We signed this lease in December,” Nance, an admitted fan of the brand, said. “And we’re really excited that Kate Spade is open.”

Get Ready For The Hyatt Place!
“We know there’s not enough hotel rooms in Wesley Chapel right now,” says Karen Martin, the director of sales for the new 132-room Hyatt Place hotel on the north side of S.R. 56, next to Bahama Breeze, which had its “soft” opening on July 31. “But, it’s about to get a lot more fun out here.”

Martin says that although the six-story hotel just opened, “My phone’s been ringing off the hook for weeks, especially with people booking rooms for tournaments at the hockey rink (Florida Hospital Center Ice, located just east of I-75 on S.R. 56, while the Hyatt Place is just west of the interstate).

Although Martin says the new Hyatt Place doesn’t have full Hyatt resort amenities, it does have a Gallery restaurant and bar, a separate breakfast area, an outdoor swimming pool, nice fitness and business centers and meeting spaces with built-in audio/visual features.

The adjacent Sierra Conference Center has a really nice ballroom that Martin says can seat about 350 people with tables in a banquet setup and can be subdivided into three smaller ballrooms, which can each seat at least 250 people each in a theatre-style seating set-up. Martin says she also loves the conference center’s adjacent break-out and outdoor seating areas.

“But, to really get a feel for whether or not we should be hosting your event,” she says, “you should come out and take a tour. We’re all really excited to be open.”

She adds that the hotel hopes to host an upcoming “Final Friday” networking event for the North Tampa Bay Chamber of Commerce and is planning “a big Grand Opening event sometime in November.”

The Hyatt Place Wesley Chapel is located at 26000 Sierra Center Blvd. For more information, call (813) 803-5600 or visit HyattPlace.com.

We’ll have updates about the Hilton Garden Inn & Residence Inn hotels coming soon to S.R. 56 in our next issue.

Here & There, This & That…

• I can’t even tell you how excited my taste buds are now that Taste of New Tampa & Wesley Chapel favorite Nothing Bundt Cakes has opened across from Noble Crust in the Shops at Wiregrass mall. Whether you love red velvet or dark chocolate cake with extra creamy white icing, or the decadent white chocolate raspberry bundt cake, Nothing Bundt Cakes will have you salivating for more.

Check out a free sample when you visit and please tell the staff that you read all about them in the New Tampa Neighborhood News!

• I also was sad to hear, despite owner Ramses Garcia’s best efforts to negotiate a new lease with his landlord, that Las Palmas Spanish Café, the Latin/Cuban favorite located behind Kobe Steakhouse in the Pebble Creek Collection on Bruce B. Downs Blvd. (a mile south of County Line Rd.), had closed.
Garcia had been talking to me for several months about how hard it had been for the businesses in the plaza to stay afloat, with the Bruce B. Downs widening construction still ongoing in front of the plaza, but he was still hoping to work things out less than two weeks before he announced the closing on Facebook. Will Garcia reopen in another location? We’ll keep you posted!

• Meanwhile, congratulations go out to my friends Travis and Fiona Monday, the owners of Fit 4 Life Personal Training & Physical Therapy Studio (17419 Bridge Hill Ct. in Tampa Palms), who celebrated the studio’s 22nd year in business with another great Martini Party, catered by the nearby Stonewood Grill & Tavern, on July 20.