It’s August. It’s hot. It’s also a fantastic time to get out and enjoy some of the best that our local dining scene has to offer. It's starting to slow down a little bit around town. That means it's a touch easier to get into your favorite Sarasota restaurant.
Kids are back in school and family summer vacations are pretty much over. Business has been great this past season for our area restaurants. Some places have been overflowing for months on end. I'm sure that some of our local operators and staff could use a little breather to recharge. It's a well deserved break for them.
We’ve added a few new places into the dS database since we last updated our Top 25 List last month.
L&L Hawai’i, Dix Coney Café, and Vino Bistro were all added this past month. If you haven’t been to any of these, we strongly encourage you to go check them out. If you’d like to let folks know what these places are like, leave a comment on our FB page or at the bottom of this newsletter.
Let’s get to the action. You’ve been searching and surfing the dineSarasota.com website. Let’s take a look at what you’ve been finding.
Paul Mattison’s newly remodeled Mattison’s Forty-One grabs the top spot this month. I always forget that they have some nice brick oven pizzas on their menu. When I think pizza, I don’t automatically think Mattison’s 41. Maybe I should start…
St. Armands mainstay, Café L’Europe comes in at number two. They feature music in the piano room on Friday and Saturday nights. That’s a nice little change of pace. You can enjoy your tableside Chateaubriand while listening to someone tickle the ivories to enhance your dining experience.
Clocking in at number three is Lakewood Ranch Main Street’s GROVE Restaurant. A really nice place to dine outdoors once the sun has set and things cool off just a touch.
New in the Top Ten this month The Lily Café, Drunken Poet, and The Casey Key Fish House. A lot of culinary diversity in our top spots this month. Here’s a link to the complete Top 25 for the month of August.
Now, again, a blast from the Sarasota restaurant past. Let’s have a peek at what things looked like back in August 2009.
Boy, I just love digging through the dineSarasota.com archives. It is just amazing what stuff you can find after almost twenty years! The good news, these archives don’t take up any room in my already overfilled storage area! More than half of the restaurants from the August 2009 list are still in business 12 years later. A nice accomplishment in a very, very tough business.
2009 seems like a while ago. That’s because it was. It was also the year that the beloved Maurice Sendak children’s book, Where the Wild Things Are was made into a movie. Some people had a tough time getting over the fact that they made that beloved book into a film. If you missed it, here’s a look back at the trailer.
That’s it for this month. Keep searching and keep eating!
