CUAISRITNE
CREATING MEMORABLE
MOMENTS
Maestro’s Restaurant
at the Straz Center
By Aaron R. Fodiman
Chef Edward Steinhoff
NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2017 | TAMPA BAY MAGAZINE 169
At Tampa’s Straz Center, head
chef Edward Steinhoff devises
themed menus based upon the
performing arts venue’s current
Broadway productions. To accomplish
this, Chef Edward experiments with
his creativity to conceive and plan
unique menus for the center’s Maestro’s
Restaurant that will reflect various aspects
of the individual shows. Since many of
those who dine at the restaurant before
the show are season ticket subscribers
who attend every show, he believes it
is essential to keep the menus fresh and
everchanging. Therefore, he continuously
strives to make each menu interesting and
appealing. As part of his plan to please,
he includes a vegetarian or vegan dish on
each menu.
His menus engage his diners in the show
on a social level, as each entrée is given
a name that relates in some way to the
production being performed. Although
he tries to use easily recognizable names
for his dishes, at times his titles may not
connect with diners until they see the show
drinks at the Straz’s bars and the themed
coffee and tea drinks at SteamHeat Cafe,
the Straz’s coffee shop.
Dinner at Maestro’s is more than dinner.
It is an experience. 9
EDITOR’S NOTE: Maestro’s Restaurant,
the premier tableside service restaurant at the
David A. Straz Jr. Center for the Performing
Arts in downtown Tampa, is open at 5 p.m.
prior to evening Broadway performances and
other select shows. There also is a patio walk-up
restaurant (no reservations) called Maestro’s
on the River, which opens 90 minutes before
shows, and an indoor buffet called Maestro’s
Cafe, which opens at 5:30 p.m. prior to evening
Broadway performances and before other selected
shows in the Straz’s Carol Morsani Hall.
To make reservations for Maestro’s Restaurant
or Maestro’s Cafe, please call (813) 229-7827,
or reserve online at shop.strazcenter.org/
Shop/Reservations.aspx. Once online reservations
are closed, you may check seating
availability at (813) 222-1052.
and hear a line or lyric from a song from
the show. To achieve this, he does a lot of
research on each show, looking for references
to food in the dialogue or music.
While finding a name for a dish can
be difficult for some shows, others write
themselves. Chef Ed often has fun using
a play-on-words, such as he did for the
show, Cabaret, when he prepared mahi
mahi by poaching it in a Cabernet and
crawfish broth and naming it, “Life is a
Cabernet, Old Chum.” During the run of
Something Rotten!, he created a wonderful
potato-crusted lobster and leak quiche with
Gruyère cheese that he called “Omelette,”
since there was a scene in the show where
a soothsayer foresees Shakespeare’s next
great hit as Omelette, rather than Hamlet.
He also is proud of the themed signature