In the old days, the restaurant’s owner sang to his customers
BY JAIMIE LUNA
NNB Student Reporter
ST. PETERSBURG – After a diving accident left him with serious hearing damage, Phil Kinsman had to give up a promising career as a bass-baritone in the Metropolitan Opera.
So in 1952 he bought the Belmark Restaurant at 1001 First Ave. N and turned it into one of the city’s most popular eateries.
Kinsman never lost his love of song, however. Every Sunday for 15 years, he sang to Belmark customers, according to the St. Petersburg Evening Independent. And in 1967, he performed at two one-man shows, singing “opera to pop,” at the Bayfront Center, predecessor to today’s Mahaffey Theater.
Since Kinsman sold the Belmark many years ago, it has had at least three more owners and one name change. It’s now called Café-Ten-o-One, and its owner since 1999 has been Frank Edgar.
Edgar, a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, N.Y., doesn’t sing to the customers like Kinsman did. But he bakes fine pastry, according to customers, and his restaurant caters meals to a client list that ranges from visiting teams at Tropicana Field to the recent Miss Florida pageant at the Mahaffey.
City Council member Jim Kennedy, a lawyer, has been a lunch-time regular since the Belmark days. “It’s great food and it’s within walking distance of my office,” he said, and Edgar is quite the pastry chef.
Frank Edgar once owned a cake company
Edgar is modest about that. “I like to bake; I owned a cake company in my early 20s,” he said. “I learned early on you make more money catering than baking cakes. We make a lot of our own deserts, but to say I’m a pastry chef is a stretch.
“I just like doing it, and I do it well.”
Pictures of the restaurant in its Belmark days hang on the walls of Café-Ten-o-One, which serves breakfast and lunch – but not dinner – Monday through Saturday. The staff sees a lot of familiar faces.
“Fifty percent of our customer base is people that eat here all the time,” said Edgar.
When Café-Ten-o-One is closed, the catering side of the operation – called Creative Catering – is handling events around the bay area. It caters cocktail parties, weddings, housewarmings, corporate dinners and barbecues.
The menus of the café and catering operation stay fairly consistent, Edgar said.
“We’ll do some specials here and there; add to the menu what sells and take off what doesn’t,” he said. “We change our menu semiannually.”
He said he hopes to start serving dinner a couple of nights a week.