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Sarasota Night Life Redux

Skip — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 14:41:07 +0000

It’s hard to believe we’ve been doing this for more than a year, but as we continue to review and rebuild Sarasota Soundings, we’ve been reminded of another timely subject: the night-blooming cereus, reina de la noche in Spanish.

If you’re among those who bemoan the fact that Sarasota zips up the sidewalks at dusk, put down the remote and take a walk in your neighborhood. These spectacular flowers—each nearly the size of your hand—are on view for one night only in a neighborhood near you. Since plants only bloom for the purpose of procreation, it must be a heckuva night.

But carpe noctem…the season lasts for only a week or two, and the time is now.

You’ll find more night-blooming cereus photos here.

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Living on $42.00 Per Week Redux

Skip — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 16:56:48 +0000

Vendor at the Red Barn, Bradenton

You may have noticed that we haven’t been posting for a couple of weeks. What began as a glitch with one of our Websites escalated to become a calamity for all of them, causing us to leave our former hosting service and sign on with a new one (thanks to a very practical referral from our new friend, Skip Dyrda). But we’ve put all the pieces back together, so now we’re back in business.

As we’ve made this transition, we’ve been reviewing the archived content of our sites. We’re surprised to find that it’s been nearly a year since we chronicled our experiment, Living on $42.00 per Week, shopping and dining within the Food Stamp budget. Having reviewed our experience, we thought it would be a good idea to reflect on where we’ve been and where we’re headed in the year to come.

The stark answer is that we don’t know. The changes we’ve made in our lives since last year have more to do with energy conservation than diet.

Given what has happened to the cost of fuel, and how that has affected virtually every other service and product we use, our thoughts have gone far beyond the inadequacies of the Food Stamp program.

One of our friends, who runs a deli in Sarasota, says the Italian-American bakery delivering his fresh bread has raised the price three times since February. But the Publix 5-pound bag of unbleached flour had been the same price for a year—until a few weeks ago. That tells us that there weren’t too many other home bakers depleting existing shelf stock. However, a product requiring less time and manipulation than flour—dried pasta—has doubled in price.

The retail prices of virtually all foods have risen over the course of the past year—most dramatically in the last four months. Eggs and milk have been climbing steadily and grain products have bolted. Crude oil gets a lot of press, but the increased volatility of food commodities make trading in rice, wheat, and corn qualify as an extreme sport.

Canned goods have gone up, too, and we see far fewer specials. There doesn’t seem to be a 14 oz. tin of anything on offer for less than half a dollar. Where have those once-frequent two-for-one sales gone?

Up at Bradenton’s Red Barn, our former haunt for produce, a week’s worth of fresh vegetables herbs, and fruit for two cooks like us now costs $14 – $16 per week. Last year, we usually spent $10 – $11.

So we are shopping closer to home, buying more things from the Saturday morning market downtown—whether our purchases are the pricey organic items or “conventional” produce from the wholesale market in Tampa. If we factor in gas at $4 a gallon, we save the 25 mile round-trip to Bradenton and at least a gallon of gas by staying here in town. And we give up two things we really care about: the broader selection of Latin produce and the pleasure of eavesdropping on fellow shoppers chatting in Spanish, Portuguese, Arabic, and a host of Asian and Slavic languages.

Gas, of course, is the big topic of conversation for everyone today—up a third from the price this time last year. We, the cheerful, resourceful foodies. have to admit: it casts a cloud over our daily lives.

The Farm Bill—which contains amendments to the Food Stamp program—remains in limbo. Anticipated are: Congressional approval, Presidential veto, and ultimate override of the veto. How much the weekly Food Stamp allotment stood to increase—if at all—was never clear.

But we stand firm on one thing: Food Stamps won’t alleviate American hunger and malnutrition unless education is a major component of the program. Rampant obesity among our poorest citizens demonstrates that knowing how to choose and prepare nutritionally and economically sensible meals is not an innate skill.

Even for people as savvy as we consider ourselves to be, the grocery store can be a hornet’s nest of nutritional traps. Last week we bought a loaf of multi-grain whole wheat bread only to discover later, on tasting, that it was heavily sweetened. Why? High fructose corn syrup prolongs shelf life for all those centrally baked loaves trucked around the country. It’s not only wheat prices that are making your daily bread more costly. Oil runs farm equipment, the power plants that keep bread ovens baking, and the trucks that deliver the bread.

We’re all caught in the same down-draft but we’d like to think we can help you cope as we and others rethink, adapt, and innovate.

For starters, we’re using our pressure cooker a lot more now. We’ve written about how easy—and energy-efficient—it is to cook beans. Of late, we’ve expanded our repertoire to include potatoes, yams, and beets. We’ve found them to be perfectly whole and cooked through with just five minutes under pressure. After that, we turn off the heat, not opening the cooker until at least an hour later (when the pot has cooled). And if you don’t open the lid and break the seal, the veggies can wait for more than a day, unrefrigerated, until you need them.

As we’ve said, nutritional/culinary education is vital. A can of tuna, beyond serving as the base for the all-American tuna salad, can become Salad Niçoise, Provençal tuna salad; Condiglione, Italian tuna salad; Pain Bagnat, tuna grinder from the South of France; or Pasta with Tuna Sauce. This information is readily available on the Internet—from library computers if necessary—and in cookbooks from library shelves. And none of these dishes requires a can of cream of mushroom soup.

Think about foods that can be multi-purpose. As we wrote last year, a take-out rotisserie chicken—although not eligible on the Food Stamp allotment—can be two, and possibly three, meals for two people.

If you must snack, make it carrot sticks. Those zany “home economists” from a couple of generations ago certainly didn’t know half of what we know today about basic nutrition, but they had the right idea. While high fructose corn syrup may not be the nutritional demon it’s been made out to be, it remains insidious, unnecessary, and best avoided when possible.

If we could impart only one piece of advice, it would be: Share your meals. Turn off the TV; don’t answer the phone.Whatever you bring to the table, sit down with the people you love. Make the time.

Links to the rest of the posts in our series:

Living on $42.00 Per Week—the Challenge
Living on $42.00 Per Week—Day 1
Living on $42.00 Per Week—Day 2
Living on $42.00 Per Week—Day 3
Living on $42.00 Per Week—Day 4
Living on $42.00 Per Week—Day 5
Living on $42.00 Per Week—Day 6
Living on $42.00 Per Week—Day 7
Living on $42.00 Per Week—Summary

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Oil Slick

Skip — Fri, 09 May 2008 14:50:55 +0000

Usually, when I write about oil, it’s Extra Virgin. But today I mean the stuff that comes out of the ground. I have a close friend, a travel consultant, who arranges high-end gastronomic tours in the Mediterranean. She has a client who has asked her to investigate the possibility of flying to Turkey by private jet. Having been a private pilot for a few years, I’ve had some exposure to this rarefied level of travel. So I was only too happy help her with a little “aviation consultation,” Googling to see what was available.

Travel by private jet has always been expensive. It used to be that the airfare for the type of jet that could get you from Minneapolis to Istanbul with minimal impact on your Circadian rhythms would set you back an amount about equal to the price of a semester at an elite private college in New England. Today, the airfare has risen enough to see a student through Freshman, Sophomore, and most of Junior year.

“Well, oil is $124.00 per barrel. What do you expect?” say the folks who ordinarily travel coach on tickets they got online with 21-day advance purchases. But it got me thinking about why oil—and thus, gas—has become so expensive.

In an election year, it’s easy to place blame on “foreigners.” When it’s a question of discretionary travel, we know some zany Saudi sheiks who leave their Gulfstream Vs in the hangar in favor of their personal Boeing 747s. Or, we could keep our criticisms focused on the über consumers who bought Hummers and SUVs, just to be sure their little nippers had enough room to stretch out to watch DVDs in the back seat on the way to soccer practice. Meanwhile, the green and lean among us maintain we’re driving too much anyway.

But consider the following news item from Thomson Financial News Service: speaking at a conference in Vienna yesterday, the Secretary General of OPEC said, “…commercial oil stocks remained above the five-year average. Meanwhile, U.S. crude inventories rose about 6 million barrels last week, which showed that the oil market was well-supplied.” He went on to say that in tracking recent oil shipments, member countries couldn’t even find buyers for OPEC’s additional oil supply.

As for SUVs, Americans finally seem to have gotten the memo. Ford has recently made dire predictions about expected earnings shortfalls because of a 28% drop in sales of their SUV line. And are we driving too much? Maybe, but we’re certainly driving less. Unless you drive for a living, you’re very likely motoring as little as possible because of how much more it costs to “fill ‘er up.”

So what IS moving the price of oil? Would you believe me if I said, “an orthodontist in Dayton, Ohio? A school principal in Idaho? A retired CPA in Hilton Head?”

Well, for those of you who remember when we actually had to sit across a desk, face-to-face with our stockbrokers, think back. In the 50’s, we loved Xerox and IBM. In the mid-60’s, we had turned our affection to ‘plastics.’ By the late 70’s and early 80’s, we were agog with Apple. By then, investment bankers were whistling the tune of leveraged buyouts while the kid next door learned to trade stocks online. The guys who used to guffaw over pin-ups at the local Texaco station were now bragging about when they’d bought Intel. Anyone could belong to the investment club and lots of people joined when there was no longer anyone to tell them they couldn’t—or shouldn’t.

We rolled into—and out of—junk bonds and sexy high-tech companies with spectacular “burn” rates, but no tangible products or earnings. We danced in and out of real estate bubbles, and over the past nine months, we’ve skidded along with the mortgage meltdown.

Now, allow me to introduce the ETF, or Exchange Traded Fund. Yes, the ink is barely dry on the bailout deal with Bear Stearns and J.P. Morgan, and here comes another “derivative investment vehicle.” (Actually, the ETF has been around since 1989. But with the Dow fluctuating like a seismograph near the top of an active volcano, and common stocks having lost their luster, and mutual funds about as exciting as watching mime, the ETF has been rejuvenated as a glamour investment tool that gives the average Joe the illusion of running with the big dogs.)

Our orthodontist in Dayton, and a lot of his golfing buddies are now directing their investment cash into crude oil ETFs. They are speculating on the rising prices and this means that they, too, have a piece of the action when commodity traders are shouting in the pits at the New York Mercantile Exchange. Of course, our boys could buy ETFs for green coffee, pork bellies, or frozen orange juice concentrate, but none of those provides the high testosterone rush of OIL. Right now, oil is a straight shot—upward. Viagra for your beleaguered portfolio. Oil will get you that new Mercedes, pay for the Lasik surgery vacation in Cabo San Lucas, or simply make you feel like a Master of the Universe. If the creators and buyers of ETFs know how precarious the market is, they don’t seem ready to bail out. But if they don’t, they could drown in the very commodity that is currently keeping their Chris Craft afloat.

Just as a great many real estate investors got mortgages on houses they never intended to inhabit, many oil investors are buying ETFs for quantities of oil that will never go into the family furnace or mini-van.

Producers—and that includes American oil producers in Texas, California, and Louisiana—couldn’t be happier. In an ideal world, a futures contract is a tool enabling a producer or grower of a commodity to plan ahead by locking in a future market price. Oil producers have locked in prices that are making them very happy indeed. So happy, in fact, that they can begin to slow their production. And when they do, the demand—even normal demand—will cause prices to rise further, because there will be lower reserves. And the cycle will repeat itself until we reach some kind of tipping point. Then, investors like our orthodontist will begin to go the other way—cashing in or bailing out—as they sell their futures contracts. That is, they’ll begin betting that the price of crude oil will go down at some time in the future, as it surely will. And when it does, guess what? Gas will still be expensive, because producers and refiners will have scaled back; supplies will be low.

Everyone from the NYMEX trading pits to Peoria and Pasadena was listening when the suits at Goldman Sachs recently predicted the price of crude will reach $200 per barrel. But even if prices don’t reach that level, we should recognize that we’re in yet another bubble. And when it bursts, I foresee a protracted mop-up. In any event, I offer the following, infallible advice to the economists planning our future: “if you’re going to predict, do it often.”

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Signs of the Times

Skip — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 14:34:56 +0000

Not quite a year ago, Sarasota began buzzing with the news that Fred’s Restaurant in Southside had closed its doors “for renovations.” Of course, we learned later that those renovations referred more to paper restructuring and property divestiture than to sheet-rock and two-by-fours.

After that, the palm trees wrapped in twinkle lights went dark; Fred’s sat fallow for nearly seven months.

This morning, barely six months after Fred’s splashy reopening in December of 2007, Southside residents will be chewing on the news that Fred’s has closed—again. This time around, the message is unambiguous: a simple sign on an 8.5 x 11 sheet of paper proclaims “Fred’s Restaurant has gone out of business. Thank you.”

Talk about eye-openers. This cocktail has more ingredients than a fusion martini: chutzpah, anticipation, high-rolling risk, and glitz. And now, the chasers: at least one part schadenfreud and more than a dash of bitters.

A lot of hard-working and optimistic people are out on the street, where there are fewer and fewer places they can fill out a job application. And those places don’t hold nearly the promise that Fred’s II once did.

All of this is especially sobering for us. Late in 2007, we had been part of the cheering section for the “the new Fred’s.”

But this obit is even more stunning because it hits with the news that Petrella Bros. on the South Trail locked its doors just before this past weekend. Sadly, these closures speak volumes about the current vulnerability of many of the more ambitious restaurants in Sarasota.

Those sub-prime mortgages built a super-sized house of cards. As the collapse of our local economy claims an ever-growing list of casualties, we hope that the restaurant professionals with talent and experience have the reserves and optimism to tough it out. If they do, they’ll be the first to benefit when the financial chaos subsides.

In the meantime, the lawyers, bankers, locksmiths, and auctioneers are too busy to cook. The out-of-town investors don’t know where to get the best meals… now their choices have narrowed by two. And who will feed the vultures?

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A Table In Heaven

Skip — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 17:06:40 +0000

Sirio Maccione

Featured in this year’s Sarasota Film Festival, A Table In Heaven presents an arrestingly candid look at the family dynamics behind one of New York’s most glittering restaurants, Le Cirque.

Granted remarkable access, filmmaker Andrew Rossi, spent four years chronicling the family of Sirio Maccione at work and at home. A Tuscan immigrant, Signor Maccione started as a handsome young waiter who rose to power as maitre d’ and restaurateur, all the while feeding and flattering a celebrity clientele that included Onassis and Henry Kissinger. The unscripted drama of reinventing the restaurant with his American-born sons plays out with passion and humor.

Though Le Cirque’s original menus were French haute cuisine, Sirio, as he was known to all, came to personify the idea of Italian culinary elegance, as exemplified by his 1978 invention of Pasta Primavera. Today, Le Cirque serves haute cuisine with a global twist, but the courtly Italian, now in his 70’s, still holds sway over the operation.

Although red sauce is barely in sight, for those interested in the evolution of restaurants in America and the forces that drive an Italian-American family business, the film is utterly compelling.

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Lazy Sunday Morning at Home

Skip — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 16:10:58 +0000

Contemporary film and literature are loaded with romantic, frequently funny images of couples sharing The New York Times over the breakfast table. Perhaps they linger well into a lazy Sunday morning as they enjoy a second cup of coffee, each waiting for the other to finish with the Magazine Section or the Book Review. But we’ve just noticed a telling phenomenon right here at home. Instead of exchanging sections of the Times, we send each other Tiny URLs, across the breakfast table via E-Mail. Our laptop computers are no more than eighteen inches from each other. (*In case you and your significant other haven’t encountered this nifty cyber-trick, a Tiny URL creator is an application that instantly abbreviates those unwieldy 137-character links to Web pages.)

It could be worse. We could share our hot picks and reading matter via Instant Messages with Blackberrys. But, so far at least, sending a text message that says something like, drlng, u shud c ths seems too disembodied. Still, it’s a sign of the times that a couple who spend their professional time writing and reading online, should share the ritual of the Sunday paper digitally as well.

So far this morning, the links we’ve emailed back and forth have included—the latest Op-Ed from MoDo (Maureen Dowd), Carl Hiaasen’s Top Ten reasons why any “do-over” of the Florida Primary would be a disaster, a feature on Wal*Mart’s new, Muslim-friendly policy to stock hijabs and instant felafel mix at one of their suburban Detroit stores, and a lament that the Gators will get a miss in this year’s NCAA basketball tournament.

Sure, we’re old enough to be nostalgic for the notoriously smudgy ink of the real paper of record and wouldn’t mind being in the Tri-State delivery area. We wish our coffee were from Zabar’s, the bagels from lower Delancy Street, and that the whole ritual were taking place at an outdoor cafe on Central Park West. But lazy Sunday mornings retain their power regardless of location. Besides, we still haven’t gotten to the latest on Eliot Spitzer’s adventures in interstate commerce, Barack and Hillary’s campaign spats, or what canyons the dollar may test next week.

Even without ink on our hands, we know that Sundays are for catching up on the news.

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Reputation Problems

Skip — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 20:46:45 +0000

I confess to some ambivalence about the reputation I’ve developed among my neighbors. I’m now known as “that guy who walks down the street with a can of beer in his hand—at ten o’clock in the morning.”

It’s remarkable how often I fit their description. With more than a bit of glee, I also admit that it’s a great conversation starter. Just today, as the couple who live across the street were backing out of their driveway, I was able to give them a cheerful salute with a sixteen-ounce can of Miller Lite. They winked at me.

Moments later, I toasted another neighbor who commented that I was “getting an early start.” I gave him my heartiest “Go Gators!” cheer.

There’s just one hitch: I haven’t had the pleasure of having actually drunk the beer. The can I was carrying today, like those every other morning, was one I’ve picked up from someone’s lawn—very likely the property of someone trying to sell his house.

I don’t go out looking for litter; if I did, it would keep me pretty busy. But occasionally, when the weather is making me feel particularly smug about having moved here from Connecticut, and if I happen to see a can on someone’s lawn, I’ll bring it home and add it to my recyclable bin. The fellows who come by to pick up our recyclable trash have yet to say anything about the volume of our aluminum contribution, but I think it’s only a matter of time…

I did the same thing back up north. But—small-town Yankees being who they are—people seemed blind to my altruism but wide-eyed at the prospect that I was a more-than-social drinker.

Here in my Sarasota neighborhood, I seem to be most productive on the streets near the hospital, between Osprey and Orange. Perhaps it’s a measure of the relative quiet here, that those bent on littering find these unpoliced streets with plenty of nice homes for sale a convenient place to toss their empties.

I confess that I too, enjoy tossing the odd bit of litter out the window of a moving car. However, I try to confine myself to organic matter like apple cores and banana peels. It’s sort of fun…I think of it as compost in motion.

Probably it would be best if no one threw anything out of any vehicle. But if someone felt the overwhelming urge, well then, if it were, say, a bottle of Belgian lambic rather than a 16oz. tallboy, I might be more tolerant. And who knows, maybe one day, someone will toss out a full one. When that day comes, I promise, I’ll dispose of it properly.

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How Do Things Get This Far?

Skip — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 19:32:33 +0000

When I got the e-mail reminder about an International Day of Action on Global Climate Change, I thought it was interesting. When I read, “Hundreds of people are needed, some to form the shape of an hourglass and the rest to move from the top of the hourglass, one by one, to the bottom of the hourglass,” on Siesta Key Beach, I thought it might be kind of fun–in an aging hippie sort of way. Probably not as much fun as the drum circle, but my Saturdays are mostly flexible anyway.

But when I read that “A helicopter will be overhead with a camera team to record the movement symbolizing that time is running out to stop global warming” I thought, “Are they serious?”

How do things go to such extremes? A well-intentioned someone has managed to charter a helicopter for at least an hour to hover above Siesta Key Beach in support of a “green” cause? Did this person not consider that aircraft are prodigious burners of fossil fuel? More specifically, a “TV-news” type helicopter, say, a Bell Longranger, or Jet Ranger, consumes approximately 40 gallons of fuel per hour. That’s nearly three tankfulls of gas for my car.

And if, indeed, hundreds of people show up to be part of the human hourglass—or the human sand—it doesn’t seem likely that many of them will get to Siesta Key Beach by public transportation. Even with a downturn in real estate values, the people who turn out for events like this probably don’t live within walking distance. So, even if they come by twos, the choreography of the hourglass will demand fifty or more cars that might otherwise have sat in the driveway on a Saturday.

But getting back to the issue of energy consumption, I wouldn’t expect the organizers of this event to know a lot about aviation fuel. But it’s not the unleaded stuff that Mom puts in the Camry at RaceTrac. Aircraft fuel, “avgas,” contains lead. While, on the surface this whole beach “happening” seems noble, I don’t think any cabbage-palm hugger wants to stand around on a public beach while a helicopter burning leaded aviation fuel hovers approximately 500 feet overhead.

Whoever is underwriting this event must have some deep pockets—or maybe a donor with a helicopter. I’ve just checked, and it costs approximately $1,300 per hour to charter a helicopter. I’m not even sure if that includes gas, but these days, if you want to fill up at Dolphin Aviation, it will run around $6.00 per gallon.

Now a day at the beach is always fun. But it seems more reasonable to me that with that kind of budget, it would be a no-brainer to hire a Computer Animation major at Ringling College of Art to do a stylized presentation of sand falling through an hourglass. There would certainly be enough money left to hire the local news anchor, or perhaps one of the understudy baritones from the Sarasota Opera Company to read the voice-over litany with the appropriate amount of gravitas. Furthermore, I feel confident that at least one of our local television stations would be only too happy to broadcast the piece as a public service, if they had not already covered the stunt as a news event. And, of course, someone could post it on YouTube.

I know Al Gore spends a fair amount of time traveling by aircraft. Nonetheless, I think he’d agree that while the time to avert the catastrophe of global warming is running out, we are already in the midst of a full-blown crisis of common sense.

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New Life for Fred’s

Skip — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 15:46:10 +0000

We’re taking bets: Will the Porsche convertibles be parking curbside before or after Fred’s signature sidewalk tables reappear?

Denizens of Sarasota’s Southside neighborhood have been counting the days until Fred’s on Osprey reopens. The restaurant went dark in May of this year when the Epicurean Life Group put its holdings—Fred’s, Anabelle’s and Morton’s—up for sale.

Morton’s Market, repurchased by the original Morton family, recently held an open house and holiday tasting…the daily temperature is no longer above 90 F…lights on the cross-walk palm trees are illuminated…and now, there’s the very welcome sound of power tools and the smell of sawdust emanating from Fred’s.

The new management includes Sarasotan Jordan Leschert, himself a former manager at Fred’s, who has had considerable experience in front-of-the-house operations. (His uncle, Titus Leschert owns Café L’Europe on St. Armand’s and Café on the Bay on Longboat Key.) Patrick and Michelle Murphy, owners of seven restaurants in the Toronto area, are the other principals.

The new Fred’s will focus on steaks and seafood. According to Mr. Leschert, negotiations are ongoing with vendors who can deliver fresh, locally caught seafood, with the emphasis on local.

The executive chef will be Scott Kuhling, most recently of Fred’s Lakewood Ranch, and formerly sous-chef at Fred’s Southside.

Dale Mattern, who also returns to Sarasota from Fred’s Lakewood Ranch, will manage the day-to-day operations. He’s been in the restaurant business for more than twenty years and enthusiastically tells us that he’s assembled a top-flight, fun team to offer superb service.

With the change of cuisine, comes a change of goals for the restaurant. Mr. Mattern would like Fred’s to become a place where people feel as comfortable with an impromptu meal on a Tuesday night as they would for a special night-out on a Saturday. The team hopes that a little less fuss and more casual appointments will allow Fred’s to offer a menu of top-quality food at prices that make a weekday dinner an affordable treat.

Candles will light heavy wooden tabletops and booth seating areas. (One of the changes will be the elimination of white linens.) Mr. Mattern goes on to say that Fred’s will accept reservations, but that two-thirds of each night’s seating will be available to walk-ins, who (on crowded nights) will be given beepers. Patrons will be welcome to have a drink in the redesigned bar and lounge space, which will feature leather couches and chairs as well as stand-up ‘pub space,’ with newly-installed bracket shelves large enough to hold a pair of pints or martini glasses, and even an appetizer plate.

The bar will feature four imported beers on draft and a selection of martinis. A less rarefied wine list for both bar and restaurant will be offered. Appetizers will also be available at the bar, which will open at 3:00 p.m. daily. For patrons who like late lunches, Fred’s can still be an afternoon venue in which to see and be seen.

The new owners will reopen as ‘Fred’s Restaurant and Bar.’ The restaurant will retain the name ‘Fred’s,’ in part because of its iconic status in the community, and partly, as Mr. Mattern tells us, because the letter ‘F’ is set in mosiac tile in so many places throughout the building!

Though opening hours will be later, the new management will actually expand hours of operation. At this writing, plans are that the kitchen will be open until 10:00 p.m. Sunday through Thursday and until 11:00 p.m. on Friday and Saturday. The bar will be open until midnight Sunday through Thursday and until 1:00 a.m. on Friday and Saturday nights.

So, for those who toil at nearby Sarasota Memorial Hospital, there is the welcome prospect of a late-night draught and upscale bite at the end of the day. Mr. Mattern assures us that surgical scrubs and clogs will be welcome at Fred’s.

Management is aiming to open to the general public on December 10, 2007.

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An Indian-Fusion Thanksgiving

Skip — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 21:55:37 +0000

Having recently published a review of American Masala by Suvir Saran, we were pleased to learn that Mr. Saran would be featured in the Celebrity Chef program at Apron’s Cooking School here in Sarasota. Lately, we’ve been writing about fusion food, and his Indian-fusion dishes in particular, but what really got our attention is that he’s doing some exciting things in American public schools.

So we thought we’d have a chance to chat with him between his book signing and demonstration dinner here at Apron’s. However, we arrived to find him and two Publix sous-chefs already well into food prep, patter, and pouring of wine because copies of his new book had not yet arrived from the publisher.

So, sometime after Thanksgiving, Chef Saran says he’ll be happy to have a long phone chat with us about his school programs. We look forward to that, because both in print and in person, we find Chef Saran a charismatic spokesperson for the civilizing effects of good food shared with family and friends. Like Alice Waters, whose Green Schoolyard program has addressed the spiritual and nutritional benefits of educating children about food, Mr. Saran is stepping into a realm where the rewards are not another Michelin star or effusive food magazine accolade. We’ll plan a future post about his activities.

Interview postponed, last evening, we stayed to share the demonstration meal with his audience—a slightly Indian-influenced Thanksgiving dinner: Sweet Pepper, Onion, and Chevre Bruschetta, Tamarind-Glazed Turkey with Corn Bread-Jalapeno Stuffing, Sweet Potato Chaat, Brussels Sprouts with Apples and Almonds, Sweet-Tart Cranberry Chutney, and Fig Flan. (All the recipes and the stories behind them appear in American Masala).

Mr. Saran fielded questions, discussed his background, suggested applications of Indian cooking techniques to non-Indian dishes, and voiced strong passions about food (and his fellow food celebrities). The two dozen class participants appeared to be thoroughly engaged and as nourished by Chef Saran’s own masala of personal history, gossip, and nutritional and political opinion as they were by his delightful meal.

For further information about Indian food and Chef Suvir Saran, see his Web site.

For information on Publix culinary programs, see the Apron’s Web site

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