{"id":10699,"date":"2025-03-29T11:37:48","date_gmt":"2025-03-29T15:37:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/?p=10699"},"modified":"2025-03-29T11:37:48","modified_gmt":"2025-03-29T15:37:48","slug":"florida-eats-2025-edition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/2025\/03\/29\/florida-eats-2025-edition\/","title":{"rendered":"Florida eats, 2025 edition."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Atmosphere Pizzeria<\/a> is located in a strip mall in Sarasota and looks like absolutely nothing from the outside \u2013 I wasn\u2019t sure I was even in the right place \u2013 but this is real Neapolitan pizza. They ferment their dough over three days, and the oven is right there in the front of the bare-bones restaurant. The menu has a variety of red and white pizzas; I went with the red one with mozzarella di bufala, mushrooms, basil, and prosciutto di Parma. The dough and the prosciutto were the stars here; there\u2019s a ton of air in the dough and the texture is almost exactly what you\u2019d find in Italy, while the prosciutto is sliced to order and is almost translucently thin. The pizza itself actually needed a little salt, and I think it was because the mushrooms weren\u2019t seasoned \u2013 they were clearly cooked before they went on the pizza, as they have to be, since the 90 seconds or so that it takes to cook a Neapolitan pizza isn\u2019t enough to extract the water from a sliced mushroom, let alone cook it. Whenever I go back, I might just go for the margherita and let the dough carry the day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sage Biscuit Caf\u00e9 seemed to be the best-regarded breakfast spot in Bradenton, and, I mean, it has \u201cbiscuit\u201d in the name \u2026 but I can make a better biscuit than that. This was more like a scone, really, crumbly and dry. I give them credit for cooking the eggs somewhere close to over medium and erring more on the easy side than the overdone side.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Orange Blossom Caf\u00e9 looks like a disaster for coffee, since you walk in and it seems to be about everything but<\/em> coffee. They use beans from Banyan Roasters, however, which is probably the best local roaster in this part of Florida, and have two varieties available in airports, a medium roast and a dark one. Banyan has a shop here but it was well out of my way, the opposite of the way I needed to go on my way to IMG.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Indigenous<\/a> comes up on any list of the best restaurants in the Sarasota area, and they\u2019re particularly known for their fresh fish dishes, which change daily based on what comes into the kitchen; their parmiggiano beignets; and their mushroom soup. I ordered the beignets, and then chose the lentil-mushroom Bolognese with pappardelle after asking the server whether she\u2019d go with that or the red snapper. The beignets were excellent, if a touch greasy, but the Bolognese was disappointing on two levels. The obvious one is that the pasta was overcooked. The pappardelle itself was rolled too thinly, but it was well beyond al dente, to the point that the ribbons were coming apart as I picked them up with my fork. The less obvious one is that, at least in my opinion, pappardelle isn\u2019t ideal for a chunky, heart sauce like Bolognese \u2013 real, which would contain pork and veal, or imitation like this one. Thick ribbons can stand up to the thickness of the sauce, but the ribbons aren\u2019t really capable of picking up all of the bits in the sauce, whether they\u2019re lentils and finely diced vegetables or ground meats. I haven\u2019t made the dish in ages, but I\u2019d opt for something like rigatoni or conchiglie, something that can trap the sauce so you can easily get both pasta and sauce in each bite. That\u2019s not a universal opinion \u2013 pappardelle with Bolognese is a common combination \u2013 and maybe I wouldn\u2019t have minded if this was thicker and not overcooked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ofKors<\/a> is a Ukrainian-owned bakery in downtown Sarasota that serves filled crepes, bagels, and a massive assortment pastries along with espresso drinks. The bagels looked promising \u2013 obviously looks can deceive, even in food, but you can usually spot a round-bread imitation with a little experience \u2013 and this was about as good a bagel as you\u2019re going to find outside of greater New York. They cook the eggs to order on the crepe maker, which was kind of mesmerizing to watch (I was sure it was all going to run off the sides, but I shouldn\u2019t have doubted the woman working the station, she\u2019s a professional). I don\u2019t know where they get the smoked salmon, but I\u2019m guessing it\u2019s a local vendor \u2013 it was excellent, with a soft texture and pronounced smoke flavor. I didn\u2019t get coffee there because I wanted to go back to Perq<\/a>, where I hadn\u2019t been since before the pandemic; they were clearly understaffed that day, so it wasn\u2019t quite up to my memories of the place, but the coffee itself is still excellent. I\u2019m usually a macchiato fan, but I wanted to stick to the listed options because they were so harried (I wonder if someone called in sick), so I ordered a Gibraltar, which is basically a cortado but British.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pangea Alchemy Lab<\/a> is a tiny cocktail bar accessible from an alley just south of Main Street in Sarasota, and it\u2019s fantastic, exactly what I want in a cocktail bar \u2013 it\u2019s small, intimate, with a small menu of custom cocktails and riffs on classics, with a well-stocked bar of liquors and liqueurs. The custom cocktail list changes seasonally; when I visited, there were two rum drinks on the menu, and I tried both, naturally. The first had Brugal 1888, a double-aged rum (meaning it\u2019s aged in two types of casks) from the Dominican Republic, with Licor 43 and cocoa bitters. The second was their riff on a Maitai, but much less sweet, thank goodness \u2013 I don\u2019t think I could drink an actual Maitai any more unless I was on a tropical beach somewhere. It also had Brugal 1888, along with yuzu liqueur, demerara syrup, and orange juice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Moving on to Fort Myers\u2026 Shift Coffee<\/a> is a tiny spot in an apartment building in the northern part of town, and it\u2019s legit, with beans from two small roasters, one from Florida and one from New York, available as drip coffee or espresso. The blend they were using the day I was there was better as espresso, at least. The space is small, with three two-tops and a couch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

McGregor\u2019s is a perfectly fine breakfast spot that cooked the eggs I ordered perfectly to over medium, but everything else was kind of meh. The server \u2013 who saw me doing the Spelling Bee and couldn\u2019t wait to tell me about how she does Strands and Wordle but the Connections puzzle is too hard \u2013 recommended their biscuits, which they make from scratch every morning, but that was a hard miss. It was drier than a scone, and I do not understand how so many places fuck up a simple southern biscuit. Alton Brown\u2019s got a great recipe<\/a>. So does my employer\u2019s Cooking site<\/a>, although I think biscuits are best with a shortening\/butter mix. Just don\u2019t overcook them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Backyard Social<\/a> is a great concept for a space \u2013 there are eight food trucks ringing the building, which is open on all sides, with a huge bar in the middle and some games for families to play, although the crowd definitely leaned a little older given all the alcohol involved. I got a blackened grouper sandwich at Atlas Dock Company; the fish was fantastic but for some reason they sliced the fish instead of serving the whole fillet, which meant it was constantly falling out of the sandwich. I don\u2019t know if it just fell apart on the grill and they were trying to salvage it; it tasted great but I must have looked like a lunatic while trying to eat it. (I\u2019d read that Dixie\u2019s was the best fish spot in Fort Myers, but when I called before driving down that way they said the wait was an hour and a half.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cubans Be Like<\/a> is hidden in an outdoor mall, tucked back off the main walkway, and there are enough empty storefronts there that I\u2019m impressed they get any business at all. I saw they had lechon asado (Cuban roast pork) on the menu and I hadn\u2019t had that in years, so I figured I\u2019d give it a shot, and the plate easy had two servings\u2019 worth of pork on it. I am not a large man and I don\u2019t eat a ton of red meat any more, so maybe my scale is different, but that was a ridiculously generous portion. It was well cooked, but oddly a little underpowered; the pork is marinated in a garlic-citrus base and tends to be sharp, tangy, and salty, but this lechon was the mildest thing on the plate \u2013 I got the black beans & rice and sweet plantains as sides, and those were both much more flavorful. I’ve had much better.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Atmosphere Pizzeria is located in a strip mall in Sarasota and looks like absolutely nothing from the outside \u2013 I wasn\u2019t sure I was even in the right place \u2013 but this is real Neapolitan pizza. They ferment their dough over three days, and the oven is right there in the front of the bare-bones […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[65,735,84,340,128,1455,240,367,271],"class_list":["post-10699","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-breakfast","tag-cocktails","tag-coffee","tag-cuban-cuisine","tag-florida","tag-fort-myers","tag-pizza","tag-sarasota","tag-seafood","entry"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10699","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10699"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10699\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10700,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10699\/revisions\/10700"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10699"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10699"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10699"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}