RESTAURANTS. I’m passionate about food and love dining at casual places, fancy restaurants, and even at home. Here are my takes on several local restaurants, two new ones, one repeat.
DINING FIND
Element in downtown Sarasota is part of Duval’s group of restaurants and is their upscale dining spot. We went for dinner on a Saturday night and it was moderately full when we arrived. The space is elegant and contemporary in the way that Louie’s Modern is, and the menu, like Louie’s, pushes the Sarasota envelope beyond the traditional. There are lots of good restaurants in our region, but most of them skew toward standard fare; therefore, it’s refreshing that Element offers creative cuisine in the form of small plates and sharing plates as well as full size entrees. And if you are a serious carnivore, there are a number of sizes of filets, strip steaks and pork chops, as well as the option to pre-order a whole suckling pig. Talk about sharing!
Robert, our waiter, was pleasant and knowledgeable and provided good service. Another staff member, the new assistant manager from DC, stopped by the table see how we were enjoying our food—a plus for service. Overall the food was very good! The bread was warm and came with two flavored butters, and the charred radicchio was excellent as was the caprese salad with homemade burrata and lovely wedges of heirloom tomatoes. We followed these dishes with the swordfish, crab meat, and potato cake which was very tasty and the pork agnolotti. The pasta was chewy (it shouldn’t have been), but the tomato sauce was nicely thick with chunks of pork.
The Chief Penguin liked the look of his Old Fashioned as soon as he saw the single large ice cube, and I enjoyed my glass of Chardonnay, a generous pour fitting the price. On the house, we sampled the apple cake which was lovely. We were shown to a table in a side area all by ourselves, but overall, we enjoyed a very nice meal and will return.
NEW ITALIAN ON CORTEZ ROAD 
We dined with friends at Eat Organico in one of the little strip malls in Bradenton (the one with Thai Palace) and thought the food was very good. Several of us sampled their veal preparations—with mushrooms, the piccata, and saltimbocca. This is real veal—paper thin and tasty! The house salad had a slightly tangy Thousand Island-like dressing, and there was also a Caesar salad. Others in our group enjoyed penne with salmon and zucchini and penne Bolognese. Most entrees came with a choice of penne or spaghetti with tomato sauce. The sauce was good, but not stellar. Portions are modest size, but fine for us.
It was a Friday night and other tables were occupied, but not all. Service was slow and a bit ragged as it took a very long time to get our salads, let alone the glasses of wine we’d ordered. I’ll chalk this up to it being a new place that hasn’t yet worked out all the kinks. Will definitely give them a second go!
RETURN VISIT
It’s been awhile since we last ate at The Coolinary in Sarasota and decided it was time to go back. The Chief Penguin had praise for their Old Fashioned and I tried a Chardonnay I hadn’t had before. The signature dishes here are Hungarian. The C.P. sampled the slightly spicy sausage which was excellent, and I had their chicken in paprika sauce with homemade spaetzle— lovely comfort food. We began with an order of the cauliflower fritters with blue cheese dipping sauce and a tray of toasted nuts and blistered shishito peppers, the peppers a favorite of ours. The owner stopped by the table several times, and we were treated to a taste of sweet wine with the Dobos torte we’d ordered. We remembered why we like this restaurant and vowed that even though it’s on the second floor, we should frequent it more often.
READING: LATE IN LIFE ROMANCE?
Author George Eliot, in real life, Marian Evans, was George Lewes’ common-law wife for twenty-five years. After Lewes’ death, at the age of 60, she married Johnnie Cross, a young man of 40. In order to avoid calling attention to themselves, they left London to honeymoon in Venice. 
The Honeymoon, a novel by Dinitia Smith, is a recounting of that fateful honeymoon, but even more Marian’s reflecting on her life from childhood to young womanhood to old age. The novel is thoroughly researched, and the reader learns about all the prominent men Marian was acquainted with (philosopher Herbert Spencer and publisher John Chapman, just two examples), as well as those with whom she was intimate—either by choice or seduction. It’s an engrossing portrait of a woman who, not beautiful, but very accomplished and literate, craved love and attention.
SAXY TIME 
One of the pluses of the Sarasota-Bradenton area is the number of concerts presented at local churches. Many of them have regular music series. This week we were at a concert by the Washington Saxophone Quartet at First United Methodist Church. I didn’t know there was this kind of group, but I like the sax and thought it would be fun. WSaxQ is celebrating its 41st year and, if people know it, but don’t know they do, it’s because the quartet provides the theme and interlude music for NPR’s All Things Considered. They play music from all eras and deliberately work not to sound like saxophones!
The members of the quartet have each played in one of the US military bands for part of their career. Among them was a soprano sax, straight with no bell and shaped more like a clarinet; an alto sax of a beautiful copper color; a tenor sax with a prominent bell; and lastly, a seriously big baritone sax. The concert included music by Bach, Gabrieli, Ravel, Leonard Bernstein, and Duke Ellington among others. Tenor sax player Rich Kleinfeldt provided chatty and informative commentary about the pieces and the group. It was a most enjoyable afternoon.
Note: Eat Organico photo from TripAdvisor.com; Evans and tenor sax images from Wikipedia.
