Local Services in Tampa

Prepare 1,000 lunches in less than 20 hours. That was the challenge posed for The Brunchery’s catering staff. The eatery’s experts met the daunting request, quickly assembling the hefty sandwiches that The Brunchery has perfected throughout its more than 25 years in business. When President George W. Bush came to Tampa, the White House called upon The Brunchery's catering. In addition to corned beef, grilled grouper, and shaved steak piled on deli rye bread and kaiser rolls, The Brunchery plies guests with half-pound burgers seasoned by chipotle mayo and dill pickles.

But as its name implies, the restaurant doesn’t just craft food for lunch; it’s possibly best known for its morning treats. Made-from-scratch hollandaise sauce for benedicts and golden pancakes have earned The Brunchery awards including Best Place for Breakfast/Brunch from readers of the South Tampa Community News in 2010. When NBC interviewed owner Greg Elliot, the feature zeroed in on the restaurant’s signature french toast, which mingles cream-cheese sauce, bananas, strawberries, and slivered almonds.

Guests devour this lavish creation and others while dining among the dining room’s decorative dishware, Coke bottles, and shelves. Many of the objects come from Greg’s family, such as a hutch his great-great-grandfather built in the 1800s, making guests feel as at home as a rabbit in a top hat.

During World War I, Greek immigrant Louis Pappas served in the Army as a personal chef to General John Pershing. To give the hungry general some extra nutrition, Louis began adding scoops of potato salad to his traditional greek salads. When Louis returned to the United States, he opened up his own restaurant, Louis Pappas Riverside Café, where he would re-create this signature dish using fresh produce from his own ranch in Tarpon Springs.

Today, Louis Pappas's grandson continues his grandfather's old Florida family tradition at Pappas Ranch. There, he and his kitchen serve up a new menu of fresh seafood, poultry, sandwiches, street tacos, hand-cut steaks, and barbecue dishes whose "family flair" has been lauded by Metromix Tampa Bay. They continue to scoop savory housemade potato salad into their internationally renowned Louis Pappas Famous greek salad, tossing it in massive bowls that serve as many as four diners. Bartenders dole out glasses of locally brewed craft beers and wine or mix cocktails and martinis at the full center bar with flat-screen TVs.

The restaurant's decor channels that of the original Pappas family ranch. In the dining room, spacious booths are surrounded by rustic wooden walls, and outside is a covered outdoor patio.

Using a combination of whitening gel and FDA-approved blue accelerating lights, the DaVinci teeth-whitening system can leave teeth an average of up to eight shades whiter. During office visits, clients apply the signature whitening solution—an organic plant- and mineral-based gel—to chompers. A specially designed LED laser light is used with the food-grade hydrogen peroxide gel to lift lingering stains. Once the tonal transformation is complete, patients may walk away with the graffiti of tobacco, wine, coffee, and age erased from their smiles. To continue the process, Davinci also produces a take-home personal whitening kit that includes 12 gel applications, an LED accelerator light, custom-fitted trays, and remineralizing and desensitizing gel to care for enamel.

The skilled staff—a veritable dream team of medical know-how—shepherds clients toward improved health by designing and leading custom weight-loss, nutrition, and fitness programs. Spread across four locations, the practice tailors comprehensive programs. Doctors, personal trainers, nutritionists, and artists who draw kettlebells onto clients' portraits to make them appear fit pool their disciplines to blast away excess pounds with methods birthed from the mind of science itself. Vitamin and amino-acid injections, ketone strips, appetite suppressants, and supplements are part of the weight loss program. Bio-identical hormones characterize the hormone-therapy program, which seeks to restore bodily balance more effectively than replacing legs with gyroscopes.

By amassing a collection of furniture pieces from manufacturing companies such as Whitewood Industries, Archbold Furniture, and Whittier Wood, Barewood Outlet helps its clients find long-lasting, all-wood furniture that will be a staple of their families' abodes for generations. Barewood splits its inventory between finished-wood pieces, which stand at the ready to brighten rooms, and unfinished pieces, which customers can then have hand-finished to their specifications or take home as a do-it-yourself project. The outlet stocks all the tools, stains, and instructions necessary for these projects in order to help clients feel the rush of creating something themselves without experiencing the same old hassle of housing and feeding a Frankenstein monster.

The all-female staff at Milagros, who proudly believe in “long, hot baths” and high-quality ingredients, routinely handcraft half-pound bars of Sister Agnes soap from glycerin, a natural humectant that deftly draws moisture and magnets to the skin. Their selection of soaps evokes innumerable essences, from the intoxicating musk of a wine cellar to the homespun nostalgia of the linen closet. The friendly instructors happily impart their squeaky-clean art to budding soapsmiths, teaching them to create with a variety of shapes, colors, and scents during 90-minute classes.