Here’s yet another chance to win FREE dining to the restaurant of your choice! One entry per person, per question. Below, please name just your Favorite Sushi Place in New Tampa OR Wesley Chapel! Even if you already named your favorite Pizza Place last issue, you can still enter again by clickingHERE!
We are giving you another chances to win a FREE dining prize of $100, $60 or $35!
Whether or not you already told us your favorite pizza place last issue, you’re still eligible to have a second chance to enter and win free dining by also telling us your Favorite Sushi Place in New Tampa OR Wesley Chapel.
Just fill out the entry forms online or mail your entry to us at 2023 Neighborhood News Reader Dining Survey & Contest, 2604 Cypress Ridge Blvd., Suite 102D, Wesley Chapel, FL 33544, or email your entry to us at Ads@NTNeighborhoodNews.com. Each time you answer a different Dining Survey question, you’ll receive an additional chance to win one of our FREE dining prizes — to the restaurant of your choice located anywhere in the Tampa Bay area!
All we ask is that you please check the zip codes of the restaurants you choose and remember not to name any Wesley Chapel restaurants as your favorites in New Tampa on the entry form.
We also include restaurants located in Lutz (either on Wesley Chapel Blvd., S.R. 56 and S.R. 54 (within no more than two miles from I-75) as Wesley Chapel eateries and those located in the Palms Connection Plaza on E. Bearss Ave. and the Oak Ramble Plaza on BBD Blvd. as acceptable places to eat in New Tampa.
As always, there’s no purchase necessary to enter or win a prize. All we ask is that you follow the following rules:
1. Enter by filling out the entry form in the issue or HERE.Â
2. You can mail us your filled-out entry form (send it to “2023 Neighborhood News Dining Contest,” 2604 Cypress Ridge Blvd., Suite 102D, Wesley Chapel, FL 33544) or email it to us at Ads@NTNeighborhoodNews.com. *Note-Entries filled out on our website do not need to be mailed or emailed to us.
3. Please check the addresses and zip codes of the restaurants you choose, as we will only consider votes for restaurants in zip code 33543, 33544 and 33545 (Wesley Chapel), 33647, the portion of zip code 33559 (Lutz) and in the Oak Ramble Plaza (33613) as valid votes.
4. In order to be eligible to win any of our free dining prizes to the restaurant of your choice, your entry form with a response to at least one of our questions over the next five months must include your full name, the community you live in (Hunter’s Green, Grand Hampton, etc.), a daytime phone number where you can be reached and your valid email address.
We look forward to seeing how this year’s contest shakes out. Good luck! — GN
Zukku-San Sushi Bar & Grill, located on the north side of S.R. 56, just west of I-75, has been my favorite Japanese restaurant in our area since the day it opened.
I love sushi, and Zukku-San has an incredible variety of some of the best sushi in our area, but for me, it’s always been more about everything else on Zukku-San’s delicious menu that sets it apart from its competition.
And, since they’re obviously not busy enough with just those eateries, Ferdian and Gia also have an Astro Craft Ice Cream location in Armature Works, and plan to open a second Astro location where Great Clips closed on the north side of S.R. 56. next to Mellow Mushroom. The signage is up at the new Astro Ice Cream, but Ferdian says the new location likely won’t open until June or July (more on that below).
But, this article will focus on Zukku-San, which continues to add new favorites to my list every time I try anything new.
The Best Starters!
I have been raving about the Starters at Zukku-San from Day One, including the most perfect deep-fried gyoza (pork dumplings) with house-made Ponzu sauce, crispy vegetable spring rolls served with an amazing semi-spicy orange chili sauce, skewered traditional Japanese chicken and beef tenderloin yakitori (with fresh veggies; there’s also shrimp and veggie-only varieties) served with teriyaki sauce, steamed or garlic edamame, crispy fried Karaage chicken served with spicy mayo and a wonderful tuna tataki, plus it’s the only place I know of that serves Tempura a la Carte options.
The tempura is lightly battered and fried to golden perfection and allows you to order individual portions of your favorites.
Our most recent order (left) included four pieces each of carrots, sweet potatoes and zucchini (only $2.95 per order each), as well as a whole soft shell crab ($9.95), which was cut into bite-sized pieces for us.
Other a la carte tempura options include shrimp, tofu, broccoli, while giant squid, avocado, hamachi (yellowtail snapper) collar, asparagus, onion, red and jalapeño peppers and whole lobster tail. So good!
On our most recent visit, we also ordered the chef’s special spicy bluefin tuna chu-toro crudo, which has thin slices of bluefin tuna (which is a fattier tuna they call medium-fatty, than their regular ahi tuna tataki appetizer), topped with jalapeños and scallions in an incredible sriracha/chili-based spicy sauce. It’s also served with a side of seaweed salad.
For those who only crave sushi, try Zukku-San’s Masterpiece sushi rolls like the shrimp volcano and lobster Masterpiece roll.
Zukku-San also has a wide variety of nigiri (sliced fish on rice) and sashimi (no rice), hand rolls, as well as sushi and sashimi palettes with from 24 pieces of up to four different sashimis (for $50) up to small and large sushi palettes with as many as six Masterpiece rolls or 8 classic or hand rolls for $120.
Zukku-San Sushi Bar & Grill is located at 25916 Sierra Center Blvd.) and is open seven days a week for lunch and dinner (although the lunch menu isn’t available on weekends). For more info, visit ZukkuSushi.com or call (813) 419-1351.
Astro Ice Cream Set To Open!
For those of us who love ice cream, the announcement that Zukku-San’s owners also are opening a second location of their Astro Craft Ice Cream in our area is very much welcome news.
The Armature Works location features a variety of unique flavors that, according to its website, “feature new twists of traditional flavor combinations that reflect the diversity of our Tampa Bay community & honor its rich history.”
If you somehow haven’t seen it as you crawl to or from I-75 on S.R. 56, or you haven’t seen the ads (or my previous shorter writeups) in these pages, a favorite from Tampa’s Armature Works has opened in our area.
Zukku-San Sushi Bar & Grill opened towards the end of 2020, next to Crumbl Cookie, and has brought that great Tampa vibe along with it.
Gia, who spent several years at Sushi Alive in the Westshore Business District, followed by five years at Ocean Prime outside of the International Plaza, says that Zukku-San allows him to get even more into his unique combination of knowledge and love of the freshest sushi and the ability to create more upscale works of art that he learned at Ocean Prime.
In fact, “Zukku” is a canvas commonly used by artists to create their masterpieces and “San” is a title of respect added to a name in Japanese. Amazing food is the art form and the chefs are the artists who use the finest ingredients to create these culinary masterpieces. In fact, there even are large and small sushi and sashimi palettes served on a custom artist’s palette. These folks are not playing around when it comes to food.
If you spend a few minutes with Ferdian and Chef Gia, you can tell just how excited they are about their latest venture together (they also have a Zukku Sushi location in Charlotte, NC) — and they’re not the only ones.
Although fans of Zukku-San pack the place (but please note that there are few eateries better set up for social distancing) for dinner virtually every night, Gia and Ferdian only recently unveiled a new lunch menu, so the lunch crowd is just now building.
Jannah and I haven’t always gotten a full meal when we visit Zukku-San because the starters are just so delicious.
But, every dine-in visitor to Zukku-San also receives a towel that puffs up when your server pours hot water on it. But, neither photographer Charmaine George nor I got a picture that really does this magical process justice, so you’ll just have to check it out for yourself, OK?
But, our favorite starters are probably the wide variety of Tempura a la Carte options. Jannah’s favorite is the zucchini and mine are the broccoli, carrot and amazing whole soft shell crab tempura (right). Also on the tempura menu are shrimp, sweet potato, tofu, whole giant squid, avocado, scallops, hamachi (yellowtail) collar, asparagus, onion rings, red and jalapeño pepper and even whole lobster tail tempura.
“Most Japanese restaurants give you an order of tempura that may have some vegetables you don’t like,” Ferdian says. “But, we give you four pieces of zucchini or broccoli or whatever vegetables you like, for only $2.95 per order. At Zukku-San, you pick only the tempura items you want.”
There’s even “Chef’s Features” available, like a tender bluefin tuna appetizer, topped with caviar. Ferdian says that the bluefin appetizer is likely to become a regular menu item in the future, but Gia says other “Chef’s Features” also are coming soon.
But, it’s really hard for us to ever pass up the Japanese-style fried rice, which is jasmine rice with egg, peas, carrots and onions and available with chicken, beef, shrimp or fried tofu protein options, but our favorite is the veggie fried rice, which adds red peppers, broccoli, zucchini and amazing baby bok choy. The rice has a nutty flavor that is hard to match.
Zukku-San also has a kids menu, but while the items aren’t cheap, the portions seem adult-sized to us. There’s also a variety of desserts, from triple chocolate cake to matcha green tea cheesecake, fried ice cream and more, but we’ve honestly never had room left over for dessert. There’s also a variety of hot and iced teas, as well as boba milk tea, but Jannah usually gets a wine or hot saki and I usually have either an Asahi Dry or Sapporo beer, or a whiskey.
Zukku-San Sushi Bar & Grill (25916 Sierra Center Blvd., Lutz) opens every day at 11 and is open until 9:30 on weekdays, 10 p.m. on Fri. & Sat. & 9 p.m. on Sun. For more information, visit ZukkuSushi.com, call (813) 419-1351.
The All-New Grove Theater, Bistro & Entertainment Is Opening Soon & You Definitely Need To Check It Out!
When you’ve been in the local news business as long as I have, you hear a lot of people do a lot of talking, but very few back up their words with solid action.
Considering that developer Mark Gold of Mishorim Gold Properties has only owned The Grove shopping center development for about a year, you’d think there’d be no way he could back up everything he promised to do when he spent more than $64 million to buy The Grove in late 2019.
And you’d be wrong.
Since then, during the worst pandemic of our lifetimes, Gold has turned The Grove area he calls “The Village” from a mostly vacant mess into a vibrant new destination anchored by Treble Makers Dueling Piano Bar & Restaurant and Double Branch Artisanal Ales, with much more to come.
Closer to the Outback Steak House, Gold already has begun delivering on another promise — to create a container park that will dwarf Sparkman Wharf in downtown Tampa by sometime this year.
But now, Gold has done something that certainly seemed impossible when he took over the former Cobb 16 Theater at The Grove towards the end of last summer — he’s not only ready to reopen it, he’s completely transformed it into The Grove Theater, Bistro & Entertainment — and he promises the formerly failed movie theater he and his team have totally overhauled in less than six months will be a safe, family-friendly experience that will attract visitors from far beyond the borders of Wesley Chapel.
“South Tampa will come here to see this,” Gold promises. “There’s nothing else like this in the U.S.”
I’ll admit I was excited when Mark Gold and his team took us on an exclusive tour of all of the unique entertainment options that will be available right here in Wesley Chapel when The Grove Theater, Bistro & Entertainment opens to the public sometime after this issue reaches your mailbox.
The Grove Theater will have 12 new-release movie theaters, including six VIP sections upstairs, with literally the most comfortable reclining theater seats you’ll find anywhere. But, that’s just the beginning.
In addition to a huge arcade stocked with 43 giant-sized video games near the entrance, The Grove also has one theater that will be solely for children in a safe, supervised environment.
“It’s going to be like a nanny room,” Mark says. “Parents can feel comfortable leaving their kids while they have dinner or watch their own movie.”
Another will be home to a “Spin Theater,” equipped with competition-style stationary bikes, both for top athletes to use for training and for those who want to exercise while watching a movie. There will be instructor-led classes, as well as open spin classes.
Still another theater will be available for rent for private parties and events. “For a birthday party, you can rent the theater for $300-$400, pick whatever movie you want and we’ll screen it just for you,” Mark says.
Plus, yet another theater will be offering Broadway and other professionally produced shows that Mark says will be brought in by a professional theatre company.
And finally, as we announced in our Sept. 29, 2020, issue, one theater will be the concert-style-seating home of SideSplitters Comedy Club. There’s even a SideSplitters reception area near the completely reconfigured movie concession stand. SideSplitters, of course, has a popular location on N. Dale Mabry Highway in Carrollwood, where top-level comics, as well as yours truly and members of the Rotary Club of Wesley Chapel have performed.
A True Dining Experience
But, best of all, Gold also has transformed the theater’s second-floor dining and bar area into a legitimate high-end bistro, complete with a sushi bar and Italian-trained Head Chef Wissam (“Sam”) Itani.
“It’s a chef-driven concept,” says Grove Theater manager Tom Peck. “We’ll have everything from Mediterranean items like chicken shawarma, steaks, salmon, you name it.”
Peck adds that the whole concept is to keep guests at the Grove Theater for longer than the average 2-1/2 hours spent at most theaters by the average moviegoer. “We’re not just a movie theater,,” Peck says. “We’re both a great restaurant and the greatest entertainment experience ever.”
Concerned about safety these days? Who isn’t? But, Gold and his team have that covered, too!
“I think we’re #1 in safety out of all the movie theaters in the country,” says VP of operations Matheus Gold. “We have fog machines sanitizing each theater after every movie, disinfecting UV lights, temperature and mask checks when you enter and hand sanitizing stations everywhere.”
In other words, if you live anywhere near Wesley Chapel, you should definitely check out the all-new Grove Theater, Bistro & Entertainment. There’s literally nothing else like it.
“This is a totally new concept that is the future of movie theaters in the U.S.,” Mark says. “Everyone really needs to come see this place.”
For more info about The Grove Theater, Bistro & Entertainment, visit GroveShopping.com.
