Food & Wine

Café on the Bayside, which has moved from its old home in the Bay Isles section of the Longboat Key Club to the Centre Shops, further north on Gulf of Mexico Drive, is a thoroughly traditional restaurant with a menu as familiar as the pages of your favorite nightstand reader. And much like that faithful volume, it delivers just what it promises: comfort and satisfaction.

That the restaurant does traditional so well will come as no surprise to those who value the same constancy in its sister restaurant, Café L’Europe on St. Armands Circle. Both are overseen by executive chef Keith Daum, a stickler for quality ingredients and careful cooking. In the dining room and bar, the black-clad wait staff takes the same care with service.

The space Café on the Bayside now occupies once sheltered Maureen’s Palm Grille, a favorite of ours until it closed a couple of years ago. The interior has been transformed from the spare modernism of Maureen’s to a room with a tastefully nautical, mildly nostalgic feel, right down to the soothing saltwater aquarium, the model sailboats and the mural of a Sarasota Bay scene on the back wall.

The patio, with its well-spaced umbrella tables and big trees, is as inviting as ever, absolutely perfect for Sunday brunch.

At dinner on the patio one delightfully cool evening not long ago, as we dipped warm foccacia squares in a zingy red chile marmalade, Colette and I considered the merits of a straight-ahead shrimp cocktail vs. an appetizer intriguingly called open-face escargot ravioli. We opted instead to share a blue crab and artichoke casserole ($11), a dippable hot starter accompanied by thin slices of toasted foccacia. It proved to be both a perfect portion for two and nicely balanced, with the artichoke hearts in greater abundance than the crab, which saved it from being too rich for an overture.

We sipped a crisp and clean Sonoma Vineyards unoaked chardonnay ($9 by the glass) with the starter and decided we’d stick with it for the main course. The entrée portion of the menu is about evenly divided between seafood and land-based fare. We sampled one dish from each section, basing our selections on the wine we had discovered to be so agreeable.

Colette chose an old favorite from a list of landside standards that includes steak au poivre, sautéed pork tenderloin medallions in a sage-scented Marsala sauce and penne a la vodka with prosciutto. All good possibilities, but given the wine in our glasses she chose the chicken Française ($19) and was happy with her choice. Because this is a simple dish, it relies for its success on the choicest, tenderest chicken
breast and impeccable execution, which is exactly the treatment it gets here. The lean white meat Colette ate was floured with a light hand, dipped in egg batter and gently sautéed in sherry, lemon and butter. Just right.

From the seafood portion of the list, which offers the contemporary standard wasabi-crusted yellowfin tuna as well as good old grilled salmon perked up with a tomato mushroom cream sauce and a by-the-book scampi, I chose a dish that surprised me. Behind the blandly labeled potato-crusted grouper ($31) hid a fresh approach to Florida fish. Given the menu description, I had expected a nice piece of fish lightly cloaked in a moderately crispy riced potato jacket. What I got was one of the best potato pancakes I’ve ever tasted with a bonus inside: a nice piece of fresh, perfectly cooked fish! It was a welcome twist on a standby and one I’ll order again. Both main dishes came with spears of al dente asparagus, and the chicken was kept company, too, by an excellent dab of au gratin potato.

For dessert, the kitchen graciously divided one portion of fresh berries Romanoff ($7), with whipped cream on top and cool zabaglione underneath, into two little stemmed glasses. A nice touch and a fitting close to a pitch-perfect evening of traditional dining under the stars.

Café on the Bayside

5350 Gulf of Mexico Drive, Longboat Key
Reservations: (941) 383-0440
Hours: dinner from 5-9 p.m. Monday-Saturday; brunch 10 a.m.-2 p.m. Sunday
Cards: AmEx, V, MC
Handicapped accessible: yes
Parking: ample in Centre Shops lot

An easy flow at Currents

It once was called Scalini’s and before that Pompano Cay. Now the restaurant at the Hyatt Regency Sarasota is called Currents, but much more than the name has changed. Both the restaurant’s decor and the menu have been thoughtfully up-dated and streamlined.