Ulele, a restaurant for the next century

TAMPA This is more than a restaurant.

Its Ulele.

In 16 days, the much-anticipated native-inspired restaurant featuring a menu with foods symbolic of the areas pre-European tribal cultures and pioneer days will reveal its charms.

From a strictly physical standpoint, its a 6,800-square-foot, red-brick warehouse with a cathedral ceiling of crisscrossed whitewashed pine beams. A polished concrete floor supports an enormous circular stainless-steel barbacoa grill where Parmesan oysters on the half shell and Berkshire pork chops glazed with guava will roast.

A wooden-stepped staircase dissects the restaurant. It leads to two elevated wooden-floor dining mezzanines that overlook an oyster-shucking station downstairs and a bar with arrowheads and shells embedded in the countertop. Dining room windows provide views of tangerine sunsets over the Hillsborough River, perfect for enjoying chilled Florida avocado soup, fish broiled in kumquat brown butter and crispy pork shank with spicy apple Craisin chutney.

On the buildings north side is a beer garden outside a brewhouse stocked with tall, shiny kettles. Along the southern face, stately palms fan out over a grassy lawn and a spring that empties cool, crystal water into a root beer-colored lagoon where a bronze statue of a mythic native girl will stand watch.

Invisible to customers will be the hopes and ambitions of those who brought the project to life.

Nothing on the menu will hint at 61-year-old restaurateur Richard Gonzmarts burning passion to create Ulele as a legacy for future generations of his family, which first opened Ybor Citys Columbia Restaurant in 1905. Born three blocks away from the water works, he and brother Casey, who together oversee the Columbia Restaurant Group, grew up playing on nearby streets and skiing on the river. The water that comes from the adjacent spring filled the water glasses and pots of their great-grandfathers restaurant and the bottles of the Ybor brewery where he worked before the Columbia came into being.

There will be no plaque commemorating Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorns steering the project toward the Gonzmarts deep pockets so the dilapidated, 112-year-old former city water works building could become a catalyst for urban renewal in Tampa Heights.

And diners wont see the more than $6 million the city spent to refurbish the largely unused Water Works Park into a riverfront playground that will act as a magnet for restaurant patrons. Or that Ulele will provide a destination for walkers, joggers and cyclists on the $4.3 million final leg of the Tampa Riverwalk. Or that the park will be a bellwether for the $7 million restoration of Perry Harvey Sr. Park on the rivers western shore south of Interstate 275.

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Ulele, a restaurant for the next century