Plans for another Monstah Lobstah restaurant - which offers New England seafood - are going ahead full steam.
By EVE LEBERSON
Published March 26, 2004
NORTHDALE - Here in North Tampa, authentic New England seafood is often hard to find.
But Allen Berube, owner of Original Carrollwood's Monstah Lobstah on N Dale Mabry Highway, hopes to change that.
In a few months, the Maine native plans to open a 4,000-square-foot, 150-seat Monstah Lobstah restaurant farther north on Dale Mabry, just south of Northdale Boulevard.
It will be the third Monstah Lobstah Berube's opened in the Tampa area in less than three years.
Diners at the new location should expect to see the same offerings as the Carrollwood take-out store and 20-seat restaurant on Bay to Bay Boulevard in South Tampa. Favorites include steamed Maine lobster dinners, fresh lobster roll sandwiches, homemade seafood "chowdah" and fried clams (with the bellies).
"No one does New England like I do it," Berube said.
As with the other two, the new restaurant next to the Don Pan bakery will also serve steamer clams, a cuisine many Southerners are not familiar with.
"Some people don't even know what steamers are," Berube said of the soft-shelled clams found on the North American East Coast. "But there's usually a person in the group that's from New England to show them" how to eat them.
It's simple, Berube explains. "Shuck it out of the shell, pull the neck back, hit it in the butter and drop it down.".
He hopes to expand the menu, adding steaks and a kids menu. "I don't want to get too extravagant because I think if you start going off of what you do (well), you really screw things up," Berube said.
Berube said his seafood house will have a fun atmosphere, with large lobster tanks, indoor lighthouse and flat-panel televisions. He's now waiting on liquor permits and hopes to have outdoor seating.
He plans to close the Carrollwood take-out store when the Northdale location opens this spring or summer.
"I never expected to go further than 500 square feet in Carrollwood ... and now we're going to 4,000 square feet," he said. "We're adding on every time. Who knows what the next step is going to be. There's a lot of these big chains that start in Tampa. Why not mine?"
