Longboat's Profile
Sarasota/LBK trip report
Great review. I agree on the steak, btw, I almost never order steak in a “non-steak” restaurant because it is rarely top prime. Somehow, Maison Blanch manages to get it and serves exceptional steak.
Bistro at the Concession Bradenton / Sarasota
Wow – great review.
To answer OspreyCove, I still think this is run by Sean Murphy as it has many of the Beach Bistro’s dishes: tomato soup with a sprinkle of Maytag blue cheese and Floribbean Grouper come directly from the BB’s menu. Aside from the service, the distance is a real problem as you virtually need to hire a driver or take a taxi (or have someone hold-back) if you have cocktails or drink a bottle of wine -- or two. (For this reason, I’ve never gone to the Polo Grill at Lakewood Ranch). Murphy used to offer a small “bus” to take groups of 4 or more (I think it was 4) to the Beach Bistro from Lakewood Ranch and other locations. I wonder if he does the same in reverse for the Concession? That would make it interesting.
Sarasota/LBK Help!
On sports jackets: no place in Sarasota requires one. I tend to wear a sports jacket to Vernona, which is sort of elegant, but that’s the only place I wear one and it’s sort of just to get into the “feel” of the place. . Summer in Sarasota gets very casual at the restaurants but at Beach Bistro and Maison Blanche you’re still going to want to wear collared shirts. At Patti’s you’ll want a collared shirt but can wear nice shorts with it instead of slacks. I’ve seen shorts at Beach Bistro but I wouldn’t wear shorts there nor would I wear shorts to Maison Blanche. And if you really do like to put on sports jackets, a lot of men will be wearing them at Beach Bistro and some men will be wearing them at Maison Blanche and so go for it.
Like you, I get cold from air conditioning and so I usually bring along a light jacket or sweater that I don’t put on if not needed. Pomona is always chilly but you’re not going there. Pattigeorge’s is not usually cold, nor is Maison Blanche but Beach Bistro sometimes is.
Sarasota/LBK Help!
Mother’s Day (and Valentine’s Day) are probably the two worst restaurant days of the year. Virtually all restaurants are jammed, there’s usually a limited menu, the kitchen is stressed – which means the servers are stressed. Reservations are at a premium and you’ll probably end up waiting even with reservations, particularly if they don’t know you. I don’t normally like buffets but the Ritz Carlton (Vernona) often has buffets on holidays and that’s one way to go. Vernona is usually good about tables being ready at the time reserved and because it’s a buffet (or at least I think it may be on Mother’s Day) a lot of the server and kitchen problems disappear. Tommy Bahamas is usually good about reservations too. They can always be counted on to be open for holidays and Sundays when other restaurants are often closed. Wherever you pick, make a reservation right away.
Sarasota/LBK Help!
Maison Blanche was a one star Michelin restaurant in Paris (I lived in Paris but didn’t know the restaurant then) – which is a very high rating indeed. People throw around “star” ratings here but Michelin only goes to three stars and any stars at all is huge. The owners (husband chef, wife hostess) moved here and didn’t miss a beat. No booze at Maison Blanche, just wine and beer. No worries about wine by the glass, they have a good ones, both colors, including a very good champagne. You might just stick with that. That’s a serious comment, by the way. Champagne goes with both fish and meat dishes -- and spicy dishes too. Pretty much anything. Oftentimes Champagne is also the relative best buy on a wine list and when it is I just order a bottle and drink it with dinner all the way through.
Sarasota/LBK Help!
kengk: Flattered you asked, here’s my list per your category and number of restaurants requested. There are others I would put into the upscale casual list if you asked for more. As always your mileage may vary.
Fine dining:
Maison Blanche (closed for part of July, open most of August)
Beach Bistro
Michael’s or Vernona (depending on the atmosphere you prefer – there’s a huge difference between the two).
Upscale Casual:
Pattigeorge’s
Pomona
The Table or Tommy Bahamas
Fried Seafood Joints
Can’t help here, don’t eat fried beachy-type food. Lazy Lobster is a step up from a fried seafood joint and is as close as I get. ;-)
Who has best oyster sandwich in Sarasota/LBK?
Truthfully, not sure anymore since we stopped going too.
Who has best oyster sandwich in Sarasota/LBK?
..when the fish and seafood isn't sold out....
Mozaic in Sarasota
Mozaic is excellent. The cuisine is essentially sophisticated Moroccan-French and whenever I go – the last time was about a week ago -- I study the menu online before arriving so that I can look up a few of the Moroccan dishes that I’m not familiar with. No worries if you don’t do that as the servers know the menu intimately. Wine only but has a very good “Wine Spectator” endorsed wine list. As a “cocktail” we ordered a sparkling (Champagne-style) wine from New Mexico that we didn’t know at all and it was surprisingly good. Nice atmosphere, nice welcome, you feel good being there. Be sure to specify that you want a table downstairs as that’s where you want to be. http://www.mozaicsarasota.com/
SARASOTA "STATE STREET EATING HOUSE"
Last night, against our better judgment, we dined at State Street Eating House. I say this because we have a policy of never frequenting restaurants that don’t take reservations. Still, there was a pull in that a number of friends recommended it and also because their publicity indicated that their bar was something special. I love authentic Manhattan cocktails – ones that are made with 100% rye – and they’re hard to get. In Sarasota, I’ve found rye only at Pattigeorge’s, The Table and Salute. I figured I’d get it at State Street too.
So, at 6:45 PM we phoned ahead to get on their call-ahead list for 7:30 PM and headed out from Longboat. We arrived a few minutes early, checked in with a friendly hostess and waited till about 7:45 to get seated. We met friends who had just finished and whispered on their way out not to order the steak but that the pot roast was good. Well, OK.
We were pleased to note a couple of things as we reviewed the materials on the table. First, they had about seven featured drinks and two contained rye – Manhattans and whiskey sours. Further, the Manhattan recipe was listed and it was perfect. Second, the menu was very nicely priced, as was the wine by the glass. Appetizers average about $8, main courses about $18 and wines about $8. Bring it on.
We ordered a chardonnay for the wife and a Manhattan for me. The drinks were slow in coming as the bar was overwhelmed and clearly not properly staffed for the volume they were seeing. After a while the Chard arrived – it was a label I wasn’t familiar with but decent enough. I was advised, though, that they were out of rye. I was stunned – this was a big-league bar? After I recovered, I ordered a Plymouth gin martini, in and out with the vermouth.
And then we broke another cardinal dining rule: never order food until the drinks arrive. But I figured, what the heck, the wife already had her wine and how long could my drink take? Well, it took until we were finished with our appetizers. We both had arugula salad with a light vinaigrette dressing that was quite good. Still without our drinks, we signaled our waitress that we didn’t want to see our main courses until we had our drinks and she understood.
My martini finally arrived and I felt, after lifting the two large olives out of the glass, it was a pretty chintzy pour. I might add the chardonnay was a pretty chintzy pour too, and we had to order a double to follow the first as it was gone after a couple of sips. $8 wine by the glass isn’t priced so attractively if it’s a small glass.
About 10 seconds after the drinks arrived so did our main course. We both ordered the same thing (we’ve been married a long time): the beef short rib pot roast – that our friends had recommended. The portions that arrived were small plate sized. Again, $18 for a main course is a good price but not such a good price for a small plate. That said, the meat was excellent. It had a small portion of vegetables that also came with it: excellent carrots, good potatoes and some sort of long, stringy green vegetable that we both sort of quasi-choked on as it didn’t really want to go down our throats. The waitress – who was excellent, by the way – had pointed out that the vegetable portions were small and perhaps we wanted some side dishes but we had declined.
Having consumed our main course, we couldn’t wait to get out of the restaurant and went for dessert and after dinner drinks elsewhere. From the time we sat down to the time we left was just 45 minutes. Know that this is a loud, uncomfortable (to us), turnover place where you won’t be dining leisurely, enjoying your food and drink. While this may change out of season or on weeknights, the restaurant has a lot of kinks still to work out. As we left, the wife commented that in many ways in our six years in Sarasota this was our least enjoyable dining experience. As always, your mileage may vary.
More Sarasota restaurants
www.bistrotfl.com
Sorry, I meant to include the website.
It's inexpensive, you can see from the menu.
I was there during the week last week and it wasn't full. Probably would be on weekends. The have free parking just west of their entrance in the gap between two buildings.
Herald-Tribune Review of Cafe L'Europe -- Sarasota
Local restaurant reviewers usually over-exaggerate the qualities of area restaurants . Not in the case of this lukewarm review of Café L’Europe, where the Herald-Tribune critic is basically saying that the restaurant has been coasting for years and is, essentially, mediocre and expensive. He’s right. http://www.ticketsarasota.com/2012-02-22/section/dining/restaurant-review-cafe-leurope/
SARASOTA/ BRADENTON 3 day visit.....
Correction: 11 miles long (10.8). http://www.longboatkeychamber.com/community.php?id_cat=28
SARASOTA/ BRADENTON 3 day visit.....
Longboat Key is 11 miles long and the speed limit is 45 mph for most of the Key and 35 mph for the rest (a small portion). The speed limits are ruthlessly enforced. Also, there is heavy traffic now in-season. Arithmetic tells you this isn't a 5 - 6 minute drive.
Indigenous in Sarasota?
As usual, I’m a contrarian on this site. I don’t bother you much anymore with my views and principally read the site simply to find out information about new restaurants. That said, the genuflecting toward Indigenous is a little hard to take, particularly the virtual advertisement from ThreeKitcheneers. I liked Indigenous OK enough when it was the Canvas Café and it’s OK also now, but when someone on the board tries to figure out whether to dine at Indigenous or Michaels based on the quality of food – well, that’s going too far in Indigenous admiration.
We made reservations some months back on a Saturday night and was told that the only inside table available for our group of 5 was in the bar room and I remembered that from the Canvas days and said OK. What we weren’t told was that the bar would be crowded on Saturday night and that people would be falling all over our table and we couldn’t hear conversations. So, with no other table available, we left. We then returned for a two top on a weeknight. We don’t like dining outside, get bit up, and so we again reserved inside. We were in that little room on the right just after you enter the restaurant. It was tight and what others might call cozy, I call cramped. We each ordered appetizers and a main course. One dish was very good and the other three all had an off-taste about them. It wasn’t a question of quality but rather an issue of pairing ingredients that don’t pair well just to be different. You see this a lot in restaurants today as chefs try to be unique. The food network doesn’t help. The only restaurant in town that pulls this off well is Derek’s, which is excellent. Needless to say, we didn’t “spontaneously burst into tears” over Chef Steve’s cuisine. Nor is “elegant” I word I would use to describe the place. And by the way, if a chef has worked all over town – there may be a message there that ain’t necessarily good.
That said, I like Chef Steve and am happy for his current success. Indigenous is good for Sarasota. The place is crowded and if you want to dine outdoors it really is an excellent choice. It's OK to like a restaurant for a lot of reasons (ambiance, outdoor dining -- to name a couple) without putting its food into a category above where it belongs.
Nancy's Bar-B-Q in Sarasota
I guess I'm not sure how this could be "Fairly priced" if, as you say, the "brisket was inedible," "dry as a bone" and the pulled pork "had little to no wood flavor"? I don't eat BBQ so I have no direct interest here one way or the other, but it seems to me that a meal such as you've described is unfairly priced at any price. Just saying....
Anniversary dinner in Key West recs
Louie’s Backyard. I agree completely with Zagat’s review:
Food 25 Décor 27 Service 23 Cost $57
“It doesn’t get any better” than “the sea, the sun, the food” at this “classy, romantic” “longtime winner” in Key West, voted Most Popular in the Keys for its “magnificent” ocean view, “superb” Caribbean-American cuisine and “informed” service; dinner can be a “wallet-bust” and a few cite “snooty” treatment, but to its legion of champions there’s just “no other place like it”; P.S. “make reservations well in advance.”
World's 50 Best Restaurants...
FWIW, San Pellegrino each year publishes a list of what they see as the world's 50 best restaurants.
http://www.theworlds50best.com/awards/1-50-winners
Six of the fifty are in America, the top U.S. one is in Chicago and the rest are NYC.
None are in Florida. ;-)
Sarasota for dinner: anyone been to Owens Fish Camp
Taste is certainly subjective but we shouldn’t carry this concept too far, since the same can be said about literature, art and music. Yet somehow most people would distinguish material differences between Mark Twain and some dime store paperback; between Renoir and some random graffiti artist; and between Beethoven and a subway composer/guitarist. Knowing what you (me or anyone) likes doesn’t by definition mean all of our tastes are equally good. In food and dining there are objective standards and they include (among other things) freshness, careful preparation, and quality of ingredients – all served graciously (if it’s in a restaurant setting). It doesn’t necessarily mean fancy. But it surely doesn’t mean that if someone likes a meal it’s therefore “good” food. Otherwise, McDonald’s is the greatest restaurant in the world. ;-)
Sarasota for dinner: anyone been to Owens Fish Camp
Hi Osprey: I get it, the Caragiulo’s have identified and tapped into an under-served dining segment in the Sarasota market. The popularity of Owen’s is undeniable. I’m a capitalist and I applaud their business acumen. Really. But this is a food and restaurant forum and for us to simply move from recognizing that a restaurant is popular to accepting that therefore the > food< must be good – well, then we should probably discuss the merits of McDonald’s Happy Meals. ;-)
Not trying to be confrontational, but just saying….
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Caragiulo's
69 S Palm Ave, Sarasota, FL 34236
Sarasota for dinner: anyone been to Owens Fish Camp
The beauty of this board is that anyone can write anything and readers have to decide what they agree with. I’ve been to the French Laundry and Per Se too. In fact, I ate at Per Se in late May. I live half the year in the NYC area and dine at places like Per Se more than often. I also lived for years in Paris. But dining at good places, per se (no pun intended), doesn't give anyone good taste -- you or me. It just means we can afford it. My personal problem with Owens is that the food is mostly (not all, but mostly) fried, what you get at crap beach restaurants all over America. And they have a crap wine list. And you have to wait in line for that. I’ve not been in their kitchen but I would bet the farm that a lot of their food is out of the Sysco can. If that’s >your< sense of place, you’re entitled. Anyway, the thrust of what I said was that Owen’s doesn’t take reservations (or didn’t) and if you have a large group you might want to check on whether they’ll give you a reservation or what your wait time will be. I thought that was a practical point we both might agree on.
Sarasota - Vernona or Cafe L'Europe?
Osprey, I love the Beach Bistro too -- although it's becoming more corporate than it appears. Sean has the other restaurant at some golf place out east and now he's also got 2 Eat Here restaurants. For Gary N69, the Bistro is a long way from the Ritz. If it were me, I'd just take the elevator downstairs to Vernona, have a martini before dinner (or some Champagne -- they have a wonderful Laurent-Perrier Cuvee Rose, it's his anniversary, after all!), some good wine with dinner and a cognac/armagnac/calvados afterwards. Than all he has to do next is stagger back onto the elevator. ;-)
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Beach Bistro
6600 Gulf Dr, Holmes Beach, FL 34217
Cuvee
188 E Granada Blvd, Ormond Beach, FL 32176
Sarasota - Vernona or Cafe L'Europe?
Vernona is excellent and elegant. Although it’s not necessary (and you don't have to), it’s the only restaurant in the Sarasota area where I always wear a sports jacket. It just feels right. Some people on this board like Café L’Europe but I’m not one of them. To use a French expression in regard to a French restaurant, you have to look at the “le rapport entre la qualité et le prix”. Simply stated, there should be a relationship between quality and price. Café L’Europe, to my mind, is over-priced and under-qualitied. I’m told it once was excellent. Now, its principal value is sitting on its terrace or on its sidewalk and people watching. The other two restaurants that come to mind for a special anniversary dinner are Maison Blanche (on Longboat Key) and the Beach Bistro (on Holmes Beach).
Oh, and for what it’s worth, Zagat rates Vernona 26 for food, 28 for décor and 28 for service; Café L’Europe 22 for food, 22 for décor and 22 for service; Maison Blanche 27 for food, 23 for décor and 26 for service; and Beach Bistro 28 for food, 24 for décor and 27 for service. In fairness, Cafe L'Europe is the least expensive of this group (but still expensive).
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Beach Bistro
6600 Gulf Dr, Holmes Beach, FL 34217
Maison Blanche
2605 Gulf of Mexico Dr, Longboat Key, FL 34228
Sarasota for dinner: anyone been to Owens Fish Camp
Wish I were there. Maybe we'll join you sometime!
Sarasota for dinner: anyone been to Owens Fish Camp
I've not been there but friends went about one week after it opened in the their new location and didn't care for the food and they also said the service was atrocious. They had been fans of Patrick's, have lived in town for 30 years. This is surprising since it was just a move down the street with the same staff.
Sarasota for dinner: anyone been to Owens Fish Camp
If you're determined to go to Owen's -- I went once, would never go back (at least not without Maalox) -- and depending on the size of your group, you might want to check on their reservations policy. The one time I was there they didn't take them. Perhaps it doesn't matter out of season, but if they're busy these days and your group is large, you may have a sizable wait.
"EAT HERE", THE NEWEST SEAN MURPHY OF BEACH BISTRO, PLACE.....
You lost me at "no reservations accepted". ;-)
