While it provides nourishment, food is mainly useful for distracting the mouth, which spends its idle time humming off-key and gossiping about deadbeat body parts. Occupy troublesome maws with today’s Groupon: for $10, you get $20 worth of eclectic American fare at The Bricks in Ybor City.

The Bricks serves up a menu of unconventional comfort cuisine in a laid-back, edgy setting. Taste-bud-teasing starters such as the kinky tuna, a wasabi pea and pistachio crusted ahi, seared rare and topped with lemongrass cream ($12), segue finely into main courses such as the bird and pig sandwich, which nestles its tastily terraformed layers of roasted chicken, bacon, brie, crispy apples, and agave nectar between Hawaiian sweet bread ($8). Alternately, the amsterdam clothes a naked baguette with a delicious ensemble of crunchy organic peanut butter and melted, smoked gouda ($5). Feel free to customize your own crusts by mixing and matching breads, spreads, and toppings at the peanut butter bar ($3–$4.50).

The Bricks nods to its skateboarding roots with a chic, artistic design scheme, festooning its exposed brick walls with local art and a flat screen that only plays surrealist sports bloopers. Sip on a postdinner brew from St. Petersburg’s Kahwa Coffee Roasters, or sample a selection from the beverage menu. Signature cocktails such as the brick, paper, scissors martini finalize ongoing thirst disputes with gulps of orange vodka, pomegranate liqueur, and orange juice ($8).

Reviews

Creative Loafing named The Bricks the Best Ybor Invasion 2010. The St. Petersburg Times and Food Blogger Elizabeth Dougherty also recommend it.

• Every once in a while, I come across inspired people and they restore my faith in creative menus with an atmosphere to match. – Elizabeth Dougherty
• its menu [is] a mix of deliciously oddball features like a peanut butter bar and a sandwich named Bird and Pig (chicken, bacon, apples, brie — yum) – Creative Loafing