Aqua Talks heads on-location to Blu Halo, where managing partner Andy Donato walks host Larry Aldrich through the restaurant's second location — nestled between St. Pete and Tampa, right off Ulmerton near the Howard Frankland Bridge. Ten years after the original opened in Tallahassee, this spot just passed its one-year anniversary, and Andy makes the case for a place that lives in the niche between casual and fine dining: an everyday lunch or dinner, a craft-cocktail conversation at the round bar, or a special-occasion celebration with dry-aged steaks and seafood towers.

Andy talks trends (craft cocktails and smoked Old Fashioneds are king, bourbon and whiskey are surging), the food that's winning over guests (a surprise-hit smash burger, the signature bikini shrimp, chicken lollipops, and a four-layer carrot cake big enough for three), and a happy hour built around premium liquor at half price with live music Wednesday through Friday. He also shares the brand's ambitions — growing from two locations to as many as six — and the "cutting edge," always-evolving menu philosophy that keeps regulars coming back to see what's new.

In This Episode:

• 00:43 - Episode Kickoff — Deep Dive into Marketing
• 03:42 - Blue Halo — Background & Growth Plans
• 07:14 - Dinner Experience at Blue Halo
• 11:20 - Happy Hour and Social Scene at The Blue Halo
• 13:27 - Seating and Group Accommodations
• 17:43 - Why Drive to Blue Halo? Ambiance, Service, and an Evolving Menu

Key Takeaways:

• The niche between casual and fine dining. Blu Halo aims to be an everyday lunch/dinner spot, a craft-cocktail bar hangout, and a special-occasion destination all at once — with a menu spanning affordable plates to dry-aged steaks and seafood towers.
• Trends Andy is watching. Craft cocktails (smoked Old Fashioneds are the top seller) and a big rise in bourbon and whiskey; he sees craft beer as past its peak.
• Signature and surprise dishes. The signature bikini shrimp (the dish Andy fought to get on the menu), chicken lollipops the chef Frenches, pan-fried burrata, filet tips — plus a smash burger that got so popular it jumped from lunch to the dinner menu.
• Save room for dessert. A four-layer carrot cake with homemade caramel and Cracker Jacks (big enough to share), blueberry cheesecake, and beignets.
• A generous happy hour. Monday–Friday, premium liquor at half price (not "well drinks"), food specials 4–6, cocktails from 11:30–6, with live music Wed–Fri.
• Built for groups and everyone. A circular bar designed for conversation, captain's tables and private dining for parties, a kids' menu, and even a patio pup menu.
• Location and growth. In the Publix Plaza by Topgolf, near the Raymond James corporate office and a growing city-center of condos and retail — with plans to grow the brand from two locations to four, five, or six.
• An ever-evolving menu. Andy's "cutting edge" philosophy means the menu refreshes with the seasons and trends — dine again in 12–18 months and it'll have changed (like the summer $28 Maine lobster "Lobster Trap" feature).

Welcome to Aqua Talks where marketing meets bold game changing ideas.

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Welcome back to Aqua Talks where we deep dive into the world of marketing.

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We're here today.

We're at the Blue Halo.

We're with Andy Donato, the managing partner who works a lot of hours.

We'll just keep it that way.

Keep it, keep it short and sweet.

So, Andy, introduce yourself, please.

Well, welcome.

Thank you, Larry.

I appreciate being on the Aqua Talk.

Andy Donato with the Blu Halo restaurant.

Our Original location opened 10 years ago in Tallahassee and this is our second location.

We are just past our one year anniversary.

Congratulations.

Well, thank you.

Usually we start our podcast, we go into trends.

So do you have a trend that sticks out or something you want to bring up that's in the industry, the hospitality industry, the restaurant industry?

You know, I like following major cities.

I like looking at Atlanta, Miami, New York, California to see what's trending.

The big thing now is craft cocktails.

That's the huge one.

Smoky Old fashions are number one seller.

It's a big, big mover.

Craft beer I think peaked.

I think it's a little bit on the downside now, but different innovations with food.

Look at the big chefs that are out there, you know, the cutting edge people, and that's what we try to follow.

Okay, so speaking of craft drinks, I, I can go back through my stages of life where I started out drinking 40s of beer, 40 ounces.

And then you started getting into college.

Oh, maybe I shouldn't have been talking about drinking before college.

But you get into like your early 20s and now you're drinking those mixed drinks.

And now where I'm at in my life, it's mostly I'm sipping on bourbons, Old fashions, whiskeys.

So I definitely see that progression.

And 100 throughout with age.

Yeah.

And then the gamut on rise to bourbons, to whiskeys.

It's huge.

And there's new vendors popping up, new brands popping up everywhere.

Okay.

Yeah, Old fashions are my favorite Smoked Old Fashioneds.

If I get it, I won't go into my favorite brands.

We'll just leave it out there.

That smoked Old Fashioned is my favorite drink right now.

Like to sit out on the deck outside, look at the sunset with my dog and just sip on some old fashions.

Or when I go to places like the Blue Halo where I can socialize, I'm a social drinker, so I like to sit at the bar, sip on some cocktails and just have conversations with whoever's within five feet of me.

So let's just jump into our conversation.

We're at the Blue Halo.

You're.

You're nestled in the middle of St. Pete and Tampa.

A really nice location here, a beautiful restaurant.

First, tell us a little bit about Blue Halo, your location, how long you've been here, and, you know, let's start off with a little bit of your ideas of where you plan to take Blue Halo in the next couple of months to year.

Blue Halo.

I always try to say, to describe Blue Halo when they say Blue Halo.

What type of restaurant is it?

I always tell we're that niche between casual and fine dining.

Or we're not.

We like to be the, we could be the everyday location where you come and dine for lunch or dinner.

You could be the craft cocktail conversation at the bar once or twice a week.

But then we also have the ability to cater to that special occasion when it's birthday, anniversary, something to celebrate, we can do that.

Also, our menu runs from very affordable to dry aged steaks and seafood towers.

If that's where your niche is and that's what you're looking for.

Where we'd like to take Blue Halo, we'd like to grow the brand.

We're two locations now.

We like to grow it to four or five, possibly six.

We do have some other locations that we're interested in.

Obviously we need to get this one off and running and gain a lot of momentum out of this location.

Yeah, you have a beautiful bar up there at the entrance of your restaurant.

Would you consider that?

Like, is it a box bar, a square bar?

Is there a name for that?

I kind of heard that, but the, the, the windows that bring in the light.

So it's, it's a beautiful setting in front.

I, I think the, the whole gist of it, Blue Halo with the round bar, that kind of signifies it.

Okay.

The location in Tallahassee doesn't have the bright lights in it, but we do in this location.

Since it is on a busy corner there.

We wanted you to Be able to drive by and see inside the bar, see what we're a little bit.

What we're about.

Yeah, we, we're going to make sure we get some more visuals of that on our socials and, and hopefully on your socials also, because that is a beautiful entrance up there.

So some people don't realize you serve lunch.

What can guests expect?

Wow, that's a great question.

I mean, we're very popular with our salads.

We have two great sellers with our tuna bowl and salmon bowl.

And believe it or not, one of our most popular items is a smash burger, which we started three, four months ago.

And now we even put it on the dinner menu due to its popularity.

We have a variety of salads.

Chef has a signature salad called the Blue Halo salad with some unique ingredients in it.

With our homemade vinaigrette in that, you know, a truffle, Philly cheesesteak, we have some unique items on our menu.

Okay.

I know we dived a little bit into the aesthetic of the front and a little bit of the location where you're nestled in between two great cities.

Can you give the exact location?

That's a great question because Our address is St. Pete and we're right off Ulmerton.

When you go across the street in Ulmerton, you're in Clearwater.

I always tell everybody it's right off the Howard Franklin Bridge, one mile as you're heading towards the beach or heading into St. Pete.

In the Publix Plaza, we're right in front of the Topgolf, which you can see from miles and miles away.

There are four high rise, high end apartment condos with the additional of three more being built.

Three more or four more?

Not quite sure.

So it's going to in essence be a city center with retail restaurants and obviously people living.

Okay.

And speaking of lunch, let's go into the dinner experience.

And it's, it's.

I always look at it.

It's funny to me because I have a really close friend of mine where the.

The first time I ever heard the term used dinner experience was with him.

We were at a restaurant in Columbus, Ohio, but that's a different story.

And he talked about the experience at the dinner table.

So tell us a little bit about the dinner experience at the Blue Halo.

We run all over dinner experience here.

We do.

I think the majority of our makeup of our guests that come in are couples.

Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday.

A lot of it is private parties in our private dining space.

A lot of it early from 5 o' clock to 6:30 is happy hour.

So the dinner experience runs a variety of different ways.

We have an older crowd that comes in from Feather Sound that dines early in the day, and then we have the more or less the younger couples that come in later at night and have dinner.

Last night, I think the last couple tables we had in here, I would say the last six or seven tables, the average age was between 20 and 30.

Okay.

And you brought up a good point that I was going to get to a little further down.

When you brought up happy hour, I wanted to make sure we got the exact time of happy hour.

Happy hours Monday through Friday from 4 to 6.

That includes food.

Okay.

And.

And jumping back to dinner.

And I'll get back to happy hour as.

As we go a little further, I, you know, so starting off with appetizers, let's start from the top.

Is there, are there any appetizers that you would definitely recommend?

And feel free to name all your appetizers?

I mean, I like.

I like all our appetizers.

Our pan fried burrata with a golden tomato sauce with panko crust and with.

When you dip into it with a warm pita chip, it oozes with the burrata.

I think one of our unique items is our bikini shrimp.

And it's two jumbo shrimp.

They're three to five to a pound.

So you have two very large shrimp with a key lime aioli and a chipotle aioli for dipping.

I don't think anybody else does those around here.

I've also heard they're called Madagascar shrimp, if that's a reference to anybody.

We have an item that's been on our menu in Tallahassee, and it's our filet tips with an artisanal cheese and with a hot serrano pepper.

And our cipollini onions, Very, very popular served with toast points.

We have our chicken lollipop with a sweet, tangy sauce, which has become extremely popular.

And the unique thing about that is the chef Frenches it.

So when you grab the chicken, you're touching the bone and you don't have sauce all over your hand.

And that's been an extremely popular one.

And even the banquets have been requesting those.

So.

So all our appetizers I thoroughly enjoy very much.

Oh, that sounds good.

And I wanna kind of save the entrees for my conversation with the chef.

And I'll definitely be having one of those.

So I wanna go from top to bottom.

What should we save room for?

Our carrot cake is probably our signature dessert.

And it is four layers of carrot cake icing and we put our homemade caramel sauce on it and we sprinkle it with actual cracker Jacks.

It's enough for two or three people.

A lot of people get it and they can't believe how big it is.

So it's definitely a take home extra dessert.

Our blueberry cheesecake is a very unique dish with our blueberry compote on top, which is delicious.

And then a fan favorite has been the beignets.

We have beignets with powdered sugar and yes, you can blow it on your companion.

And we serve that with our homemade caramel sauce and our chocolate sauce.

Okay.

And I noticed the location.

We're in a great location.

We're surrounded by businesses, offices, apartments.

They're still doing a lot of development here in this really new, beautiful new area.

Tell us about your happy hour and how we can make, not me, but how the owners of the Blue Halo can make this a great happy hour hangout after a long day of work, maybe just come relax, have some drinks, socialize, meet some new people, have great conversations.

So tell us a little bit about your happy hour and some thoughts on how we can.

How you can.

Excuse me, I'm just going to say, me too.

I want to be a part of everything.

So how we can make happy hour at the Blue Halo a great social experience.

Our bar area offers live music Wednesday, Thursday, Friday during happy hour.

So that's a nice touch.

So that's a nice touch.

And it's background music.

We have two captain's tables, the long high top tables, they can accommodate eight to 10 each.

Or you can put a party of 20 in there and it's right next to the baby grand piano.

Our circular bar enables the bartenders to converse with people on all different angles.

Opposed to when you're at a square bar and you're all the way at one end, you can't converse.

And then around the bar.

We'd have our high top tables on our banquette, which is circular, which is, accommodates the, you know, the two to three person parties or couples that come in the, the cocktails we offer.

We.

Our happy hour is not a, well, happy hour.

We offer premium liquor at our happy hour, so we're offering high end liquor at half price during our happy hour.

And that's what we craft our cocktails with.

So it's not a normal college bar, well, liquor scenario.

So we.

And we craft our cocktails accordingly.

And we also get help from the actual liquor vendors and the actual liquor people that come in and they.

We create the cocktails, you know, and we try to.

We try to designate the time of year, whether it's a fall cocktail, summer cocktail, and so forth.

Yeah.

You mentioned the seating accommodation.

So if I'm a manager or just anyone in this local area or however far out of this local area, and I wanted to take my team out or a few friends that we work together to have a nice happy hour, this would be a great location for that.

If it's someone's birthday, 100% to take the team, this would be a great location for a very relaxed happy hour with some really good drinks.

Not well drinks, but actually top shelf drinks.

Correct.

Correct.

100%.

We can accommodate all different.

If it's a couple business people.

Weekdays, where, you know, I should have said when you asked about location, we're in the same plaza as the Raymond James corporate office.

We accommodate a lot of those folks there during their happy hour.

When we get off work and looking at your menu, you have a kid's menu.

You want to.

We don't want to leave them out.

We absolutely.

I want to make sure that everybody knows we are kid friendly.

We hand batter our own chicken fingers.

We have pizza, we have burgers, we have fish, and we accommodate all them.

We even have on our patio a pup menu.

So if you are living in the buildings or surrounding areas, we accommodate all the dogs and animals that are in the neighborhood here.

Yeah.

And.

And thinking of the menu, I know I wanted to have some conversations with the chef, but I have to bring this one up because we've had conversations.

I hear it left and right.

Tell me about lobster trap.

Lobster trap.

That's our summer we.

We do a pound and a quarter Maine lobster, and we feature that.

We featured it every night in the month of July, and we are featuring it right now, Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

So it's a pound and a quarter Maine lobster for the.

It's.

It's.

We're only charging $28 for it.

Chef gets them in from our local seafood company every day.

And it's our summer feature that we feature.

Summer feature that we feature.

Why only at night?

You know what?

I would accommodate the guests if they ordered it at lunchtime.

I would not have an issue with that.

You know, that's a great question, Larry.

Personally, I, I don't envision myself eating something that rich at lunch, but we would definitely, if somebody came in and asked for it, we would definitely accommodate them.

So for those of us, those of.

Us that sit in an office, we enjoy having a great lunch there.

Any other specials that you want to talk about?

We feature a butcher's cut on our menu and yes, you can get that at lunch.

Also.

It is usually comprises of a porter, a prime porter house.

So these are some of the options we have.

Chef has been trying to run more dry aged options right now, and that seems to be extremely popular.

So when you have a special event out, if you'd like to get a dry aged steak, those are some of the options that we, we can do on different varieties of cuts of steaks.

Okay.

And here's one just for you.

What dish did you fight for and did you lose?

Is there a certain dish that you wanted to have that you really wanted on that menu?

What would that dish be and did you lose or did you get it on the menu?

Great question.

Probably the bikini shrimp.

The bikini shrimp was the one that I really wanted to do.

I wanted to do something unique and nobody else did.

And like I said, they're three to five to a pound.

There's two very large shrimp that are on the menu.

And that, that'd be the dish that I fought and got on the menu.

Okay, good question.

That was.

Thank you for that answer.

The bikini shrimp, I've never.

I'd like to try that actually.

And you know why they're called bikini shrimp, right?

No, no, you might have to edit this.

No edits.

They're called bikini shrimp because on the shrimp, the head is on and the tail is on, the top is on and the bottom is on.

Oh, okay, picture.

When we went to, when we, we visited the seafood companies and we use.

I don't know if you.

We use a company, local company called Sammy Seafood.

And the owner, she took us around and she goes, and these are our bikini shrimp.

And I'm like, why do you call them that?

She goes, the top is on and the bottom is on.

So unique name.

And we kept the name on our menu.

That is very unique.

I like that.

So tell us about again, give us Blue Halo.

Your best pitch.

Why drive across the bay to come to Blue Halo?

The ambiance.

I think you'll come in and enjoy the ambiance.

I think we have excellent, beyond excellent service.

You'll enjoy the attentiveness of everywhere from the management to the bartenders to the servers to the gentleman in the kitchen.

It's a great location.

Obviously we continue to evolve the menu.

We like looking, we talked earlier about trends.

I love the word cutting edge.

I like being on cutting edge with the new developing menu trends and menu ideas, whether it's a food, dessert or a cocktail.

So we're going to evolve with the time.

Our menu will not be the same menu that you will have our mainstays on the menu.

But if you dined with this 12, 18 months ago, the menu will have evolved with the trends that are taking place.

And we're going to look to refresh the menu whether it's the time of the year or a trend that is, you know, is, is out there in the market.

It's a, it's a beautiful space.

It really is.

Well, thank you, thank you for working with us and we continue to work with you and, and we enjoy what we've been doing.

We enjoy working, having our conversations with you and this conversation in particular and going forward.

Thank you very much.

Thank you for having us.

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