An Out-of-Town Food Critic’s Five Go-To Restaurants in Sarasota and Manatee
Tampa Bay Times food critic Laura Reiley shares her favorite local spots.
By Laura Reiley 11/30/2018 at 11:38am Published in the December 2018 issue of Sarasota Magazine
I dine out for a living in the Tampa Bay area. But I head south to Sarasota-Manatee largely for funsies, to hang out with friends and family. Over the years I’ve developed a short list of places that reliably feed me well and nurture me with expertise, the kinds of places that seem to breed convivial conversation and maybe gratuitous lingering over one last glass of wine. They aren’t all the same, and their price points are all over the map, but here are some of my go-tos.
Shore
There’s a little bit of a precedent for this. Tommy Bahama came to St. Armands Circle with a lifestyle-store-slash-restaurant (and they still do a darn fine job, especially with salads and froufrou cocktails—it might have been on this list had not Shore muscled it off). Shore is a newer addition to the St. Armands lineup, a “resort lifestyle brand” with a clothing shop downstairs and a glammy restaurant up above with great patio seating for maximum people watching. The retail component is not my jam, running to fancy surf garb and a lot of expensive candles and coasters, but the restaurant hits so many things just right. They do a nice happy hour from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. daily (a lineup of cocktails for $7.50, lots of bar snacks like kung pao calamari and a lobster/crab roll) and offer a swoon-worthy classic Sunday brunch.
Shore's roasted red and golden beet salad.
But dinner, on a cool evening, with the sun settling against the horizon and the space heaters keeping things cozy on the patio, is my favorite. It’s a biggish restaurant, about 150 seats, with a lively bar at the front and good flow between dining areas. On a recent evening it hosted a huge sweet 16 party (sophisticated taste, kids!) but otherwise seemed equally date-night appropriate and family friendly. The truffle fries, those calamari and the fried chicken seem to get high marks from regulars, and there are stunning Jenga-stacked pork ribs shellacked with a sweet-spicy Mongolian barbecue sauce that are easy to make short work of. But because of the name I’m inclined to suggest fish (a pan-seared snapper came with a swirl of sautéed spinach, a crisp-edged risotto cake and a tumble of sweet-tangy eggplant caponata). This I had just after working my way through a very photogenic roasted red and golden beet salad, classically rendered with fluffs of Laura Chenel goat cheese and toasted walnuts.
At a moment when meticulous service is as rare as hen’s teeth, Shore has high standards, its servers equipped with good menu knowledge and expert pacing. It’s relaxing to be tended to with this competent ebb and flow—not precisely like a day at the shore, but a lot less sandy.