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02/01/2006 Archived Entry: "My Trip to Sarasota"

You haven’t heard from me in a few weeks because I was on vacation in Florida, then, for a week, last week, I was catching up with all kinds of things that went on while I was away and/or needed my immediate attention. For one thing, I have finally gotten my upcoming appearance schedule in order. You can see what I am up to by clicking on the “Food Maven Appearances” section on the navigation bar at left. Among other things – such as the Italian class I am doing in Madison, Connecticut on Feb. 9 -- you can read about the glamorous Mediterranean cruise I am hosting this May.

For vacation, I went to Sarasota to visit my former young assistant Sean Brady and his parents, Sue and Dan, of whom I am very fond. Sue and Dan took a very early retirement last year and Sean, after his adventure with living in Salerno, Italy, for a bit, has returned to the nest. The nest is a lovely condo in a beautifully landscaped community just south of the city hub. What I love about Sarasota is that, unlike other Florida retirement capitals, it actually has a city hub, a downtown where people live and work, walk the streets, look in store windows, eat at a sidewalk café, go to the theater, a concert, a restaurant, an antique store, walk the beautiful park and marina skirting the Gulf shore. There is even an indie movie house, and you never have to step foot in a mall.

I did love Walmart, however. I confess. It was my first Walmart. I looked for my friend Zarela’s line of Latina-styled household textiles – table runners, placemats, tablecloths, chair pads, shower curtains, towels, and soon … pots and pans. I knew they were only in select Latino-oriented Walmarts, and this, Dan and Sue explained, was a yuppie Walmart, not an Hispanic Walmart. But I looked anyway and found other very attractive design lines instead – beautiful cotton scatter rugs for only $10, cotton tablecloths for $12. Anyway, I was impressed with Walmart.

It is hard to find good restaurants in Sarasota. Everyone complains. Inedible Chinese. Barely passable Italian. Every fast food chain and family chain you can think of. The first night I was down, we went to a terrible French restaurant. Dan and Sue had never been. Sean and I were curious. You know what curiosity did to the cat.

The next night, downtown on Ringling Boulevard (Sarasota was home base for the Ringling Circus and the Italianate Ringling home, private art museum, and Circus museum are major attractions), we caught Epicure, an Italian café, on what the Bradys said (and I trust them) was an off night: Leaden lasagna made with rubbery mozzarella instead of creamy béchamel as promised; dry carbonara. Need I go on?

Things got better at, of all places, the Chick Fil-A, a Georgia-based fast-food chain owned by Truett Cathy, a devout Christian who closes his stores on Sunday so his staff has its day of rest. Good for him. He does good works, too. Good, too, is his fried chicken filet on a soft bun. A squeeze of mayo, as Sean pointed out, makes it perfect. The chicken is really juicy, lightly breaded and cleanly fried chicken. The bun is nothing more than something soft and puffy to hold it with. Divine in its fast-food way. The waffle fries are no worse than other fast-food fries, but then again, no worse. I didn’t try anything but the original Chick-Fil-A sandwich, but there are other chicken choices.

From the ridiculous to the sublime, Sean hosted me at the Ritz Carlton Vernona, the five-star hotel’s top restaurant. And it was, indeed, sublime. I ordered two of the signature dishes – the macaroni and cheese with lobster to start, the braised short ribs as a main course. The mac and cheese is way too elegant in its white ramekin to actually call it mac and cheese. The sauce on the ancini di pepe, the tiny dots of macaroni, did have Port Salut in it, but mainly you taste the heady lobster base and the sweet chunks of lobster imbedded in the pasta and garnishing the top. The succulent, boned ribs came in a huge portion that, to my regret, I could not finish, but, truth be told, an in between course of sautéed fresh foie gras with a little “napoleon” of walnut flecked pastry filled with tktktktkt had put a slight damper on my appetite.

Sean is working as the bartender at the Ritz Carlton’s BayView Restaurant, the hotel’s outdoor bar and café overlooking Sarasota Harbor and the marina Sarasotans call The Quay. The terrace and gardens are in the style of a grand Italian palazzo – very Villa D’Este -- and from his bar Sean looks over the whole glorious view of water, gardens, fountains, columns, vaulted ceilings, etc. He is his element. Some nights, he also works the behind-the-scenes bar at the Vernona, and he did what we both thought was an interesting job over the weekend. The Ritz-Carlton had grand opening parties for its new golf course, and Sean drove a golf cart fitted with a full bar, stopped at each hole, and mixed drinks. “Are you ready for your gin and tonic, Mr. So-and-so,” Sean rehearsed the night before.

Between the sublime and the ridiculous, we tried the new Vietnamese restaurant on Sarasota’s adorable, low-rise Main St.. Pho Cali is, as the word pho means, a noodle soup restaurant. There are also dry noodles (and rice) with stir-fried toppings. Everything was delicious, and cheap -- $6.50 to just a little more for a big bowl or plate.

On an antique outing to Arcadia, Florida, 47 miles from Sarasota, we ate another good meal – real smoked barbecue. Slim’s, as this immaculate and well-run joint is called, is outside the “historic district” of Arcadia, which has become one antique and collectibles store after another. The town burned down in 1905, and as it was at that time a well-to-do cattle town – there are still cattle ranges ringing the town – it was totally rebuilt in 1906 in heavily decorated architecture ranging from Venetian gothic to Florida fanciful, pink being a dominant color. With covered sidewalks, as in cowboy movies, it’s a colorful place. The stores carry mostly kitschy Americana, but I found what to buy: I always find what to buy. For instance, I collect storage jars and bottles with ground glass stoppers, and there were more in this town than I have ever seen in one place. I could have bought a dozen jars, but I settled on three – a pair of matching dark brown glass jars, and an amber faceted one that brings to seven my collection of matching amber faceted ones in different sizes.

At Slim’s, I recommend the ribs, as opposed to the less interesting thinly sliced smoked beef or smoked pork. The smoky beans are great, although the potato salad is quite good, too, and better than the pedestrian French fries. For dessert, they had a kumquat pie that was delicious, kumquats being a local crop and in season. It was a sort of semi-freddo, the Italian word for a frozen cream dessert. I am going to try and get the recipe.

We ate home several times, which was, of course, the best. Okay, I don’t cook the complicated haute cuisine that they do at the Ritz-Carlton Vernona, but my butterflied roasted chicken is awfully good. This is the way I have been lately cooking chicken, inspired by my cousin Erica Marcus’ research and piece on roasted chicken in Newsday a couple of weeks ago. All you do is butterfly the chicken by cutting it in half along the backbone. Take the backbone out – you can, and I do, roast it alongside the chicken. It is fabulous to nibble on, all crusty and crunchy.

Once butterflied, the chicken can be splayed out on a baking sheet – legs knock-kneed – so that all the skin is facing up and will eventually get very crisp. Season the chicken heavily with salt and pepper on both sides. Brush the skin side very lightly with vegetable or olive oil. That’s all you need to do, although one night I tucked lots of rosemary under the skin before salting and peppering, and that was a nice change, and extra delicious. Fresh sage would flavor the chicken beautifully, too.

To cook, place the baking sheet in the upper third of a well-preheated 500-degree oven for 40 minutes. That’s it. After it comes out of the oven, you should wait five minutes before cutting it up and serving it. I have also cooked chicken thighs alone at 500 degrees, and it’s a great method for them, too. And legs. Apart from the whole chicken, the dark meat parts require only 35 minutes in the oven. Chicken breasts, on the other hand, cook even more quickly when separated from the whole chicken, and their skin will not crisp as well in the 30 minutes they require. (By the way, cooking chicken at 500 degrees is not an original idea. Barbara Kafka touted high temperature cooking a number of years ago in her book “Roasting.” She recommended cooking whole turkeys at that temperature, which, because of the extended cook time, will smoke up the kitchen. Cooking a chicken for 40 minutes, however, causes no such problem – unless your oven is dirty to start.)

I love going where the locals go, so one day for lunch we drove down to Osprey and a waterside joint called Spanish Pointe, a bar and seafood shack at a marina. Sean says the meatball hero is famous, but he didn’t tell me that before we went and he didn’t go with us. So I ended up ordering the fish and chips, which were just passable. But who cares? The sun reflected off the water, the boats bobbed up and down, the local people scene was amusing, the beer was cold. I did very much like the cole slaw.

Dessert that day was actually one of the food highlights of the week: We went to an orange grove in Nokomis, a town just south of Sarasota. The name of the town refers to the Wordsworth poem Hiawatha. As in:

By the shores of Gitche Gumee,
By the shining Big-Sea-Water,
Stood the wigwam of Nokomis,
Daughter of the Moon, Nokomis

I regret that I didn’t get the orange and vanilla swirled together to taste like a Creamsicle. I got straight orange to enjoy the full orange experience. But I did take a lick of Sue’s swirled combo, and besides good friends, it gives me another reason to return to Sarasota.