Summertime and the living is easy...and hotter. Shorts are dress-up wear - and maybe the only appropriate wear - in Florida in Summer. So I thought it would be nice to try some on....shorts that is…from the Beach Bistro's 32 years.   Annette has been with the Bistro family since its inception. Years ago a patron enquired of Annette...”What is the difference between the Scampis and the Scallops...?” Annette replied… “A buck.”   JP was presiding over the Dining room and had just served a beautifully prepared and presented Rack of Domestic Lamb....the best lamb in the world. The gentleman patron leaned back in his chair...spread his hands as if in sacramental pose and proclaimed... "I wonder what the poor people are doing tonight...?” JP quipped... "We are waiting on you sir."   Steve Carini was the wait staff’s senior player. He was very caring and attentive to two elderly lady patrons. They became sufficiently enamoured of him to ask …"You are such a good waiter young man. Is it your ambition to own your own restaurant some day?” Steve smiled and replied... "No M'am. It is my ambition to stop working in this one." On Steve’s last night, while…

  Canada's two greatest exports have a shared heritage. I am talking Poutine and Hockey. They both came from rinks. I was born in Canada and lived there a good chunk of my life. That means that I can say outrageous things about Canada and get away with it. It is like being Donald Trump. I can't be held accountable for what I say. Poutine is basically French fries and gravy. The curd part is a variation from rural Quebec where they did not know how to get rid of curds. Fries-n-gravy was a Canadian staple. It was hot and cheap and could be prepared anywhere there was an old stove. It was cold a lot so we didn't need much in the way of refrigeration. We all know Canucks are crazy for hockey. As kids growing up we spent hours every day in hockey rinks. When we weren't playing on the ice we were playing in the corners with pop cans and tennis balls. We lived in rinks. We smelled like rinks. Grownups called us “rink rats”. These rinks were nothing like the Lightning palaces that Americans attend to watch NHL games. These rinks were just big frozen tin…

by Sean Murphy   Bartenders are listeners. You sit at the bar. You drink. The Bartender listens. The topics can be tricky. The patron’s ex-wife. This one is real tricky.  The bartender has to try to kill this conversation because the person to the left is somebody’s ex-wife and the guy to the right is going out with an ex-wife.  The patron talking about his ex-wife is not a happy guy.  He gets a couple of drinks in he will get morose and then the bar will get morose and morose people tip poorly. Politics. Not good right now. Republicans are morose. Religion. Fire and damnation. Morose.   The Floridian’s Favorite Warm Coat. This is one of my favorites. Every Floridian has one warm coat he wears during those coupla weeks in December when the Canadians slip us a couple of those too-dam-cold “Canadian Cold Fronts.” This week that one warm coat is heading to hibernation in the back of the closet but next October it will be back again. By October we will be sick of the heat and overjoyed to welcome that first, refreshing cool front. People will laugh and drink and dance naked in the streets. By…

People ask me if my mom taught me how to cook. Truth is my mom was a lovely person but she could not cook worth a dam. Mom was Irish Catholic. She clung to the Irish cookbook like she clung to her rosary. The Irish Cookbook is the world’s smallest book. “Take everything that walks, swims or flies across the face of the earth and boil the livingbejeezus out of it.” Mom was a disciple of the Irish Cookbook “one pot” school. Put all the stuff in one pot. Put the lid on. Boil until the grey scummy foam comes out under the lid. Plate it up. We had a lot of gray-white dinners. Potatoes, cod and cauliflower boiled together. Haddock, onions and potatoes boiled together. Chicken, onions and potatoes boiled together. The plates looked religious in and of themselves, “Sorrowful Mysteries”. My little brother was a schemer. Boiled cod tasted pretty pad, but if you wanted to watch TV you had to eat it. He would hide his fish in his milk. Drink half his milk, break up the fish and slide it right in there. I couldn’t bring myself to turn him in. I was afraid of him.…

Mom called.  She wants brunch.  Eat Here Anna Maria Kitchen will be serving Mother's Day Brunch on Sunday, May 14th from 11:00 to 3:00.   Please call for reservations 941.778.0411.   Bottomless Bubbles with fresh fruit juice options ... $10 per person!! As always, we love families and proudly offer menu items for children. Here's the menu for Mom...   classic caesar with an itty bitty kale garnish  | 10.5 fine chopped kale salad with currants and roasted almonds, diced little, less chewing | 10 brioche french toast with real maple syrup and fresh whipped cream | 13 fruit, granola and yogurt fresh seasonal fruit, greek yogurt and granola, drizzled with honey | 11 house cured salmon plate with cream cheese, onions, capers and a toasted bagel | 16 eggs benedict choice of: applewood smoked bacon, cured salmon or sliced tomato, served with a side of fruit | 16 gulf coast seafood stew fresh market fish, shrimp, clams, mussels, andouille sausage and fingerlings in zuppa broth | 21 not mama’s pot roast port braised, roasted shallots, carrots and roasted fingerlings | 17 eat here burger two beef patties, roasted roma tomatoes, grilled onions, choice of cheese, arugula, bacon, bacon-onion jam,…

  Beat the crowds of Black Friday with Bistro gift certificates and treat yourself to a visit to Sean's new bar, The Doctors Office. Sit at the bar’s beautiful reclaimed California redwood bar top, sip a superbly crafted single barrel bourbon Manhattan and congratulate yourself for being smart enough to stay away from the mall. You can also receive Eat Here gift certificates as a bonus Bistro gift for buying Beach Bistro gift certificates and take the family out for some "Florida’s Best New Restaurant" tacos, pizza and pot roast. A mirrored opportunity is in place for Eat Here gift certificate shopping. Buy the relatives an Eat Here gift certificate and reward yourself with a celebratory evening out with dinner at the Bistro or a crafted cocktail evening at The Doctors Office. Your Beach Bistro and Eat Here "smarter-than-the-mall" shopped gift certificate purchases will be rewarded with a 15% value on your pick of Beach Bistro, Eat Here or The Doctors Office bonus gift certificates. Treat yourself and treat your friends and relatives to the bonuses of Beach Bistro smarter shopping. Gift certificates can be purchased online, in person or on the phone... Click here for Eat Here gift certificates…

Mom called.  She wants brunch. Eat Here Anna Maria Kitchen will be serving Mother's Day Brunch this Sunday, May 8th from 11:00 to 3:00.   Please call for reservations 941.778.0411.   Bottomless Bubbles with fresh fruit juice options ... $10 per person!! Menu highlights include: Egg Frittata French Toast Smoked Salmon on a Bagel Spiral Cut Honey Glazed Ham Artisanal Cheeses and Fresh Fruit Oven Roasted Pork Tenderloin with Apple Chutney Pressed Cuban Not Mama's Pot Roast  

Siesta's Chef Bryce has always loved Asian cuisine and draws much inspiration from it.  Bryce has been expressing his passion for Asian food through the medium of Pho and Ramen for years now. Pho (pronounced phuh...kind of) differs from Ramen primarily with the spices used. Bryce's creations are delicious and have been a hit with the locals on Siesta as well as his Bistro and Eat Here Chef partners at our weekly chef meetings. His wandering-eastward preparations reflect the new Eat Here policy of unchaining the Eat Here Siesta and Anna Maria Kitchens.   Bryce's Pho Recipe 2 onions, yellow 1 large piece of ginger 2 cinnamon sticks 2 anise pods 2 teaspoon coriander seed 3 cloves 6 cups homemade stock (beef, chicken or seafood) 1 tablespoon soy sauce 1 tablespoon fish sauce Noodles (traditional rice glass or buckwheat (soba)   METHOD Quarter onions (leave root on).  Split ginger lengthwise.  Char onions and ginger.  Toast the spices.  Rinse onions and ginger to remove excess char. Combine all ingredients. Pour stock in, bring to a simmer for an hour (or until everything comes together).  Taste it! Strain it all off. Sear, grill or roast protein (shrimp, poultry or beef).    …

Give the gift of culinary joy this Christmas....without leaving your chair. Eat Here Siesta and Anna Maria Kitchen Gift Certificates can be purchased online or on the phone. (Click here to purchase Eat Here gift cards.) Our Christmas giving lets you give more joy this year. If you buy three $50 certificates, we will treat you to another one to enjoy yourself or gift to another loved one. If Santa gave Eat Here certificates then he could buy three for Donner and Blitzen and Comet and have a free one for Cupid and then buy three for ....you get the idea.  For that very special gift, Beach Bistro certificates are also available online (click here) or over the phone at 941-778-6444. The astute shopper gets a $20 gift certificate to the Bistro Bar for each $150 gift certificate purchased for that special gift. Do your shopping at home and then ease from that comfy chair at home to a Bistro Bar stool to celebrate your shopping genius.

A unique feature of Eat Here’s Siesta Bar will be the opportunity to steal cheese.  Classic bar scenes in Old Nova Scotia taverns featured a round of sharp cheddar on butcher block and a bowl of ginger snaps.  The ginger snaps were a perfect foil (a touch spicy and sweet) for the “Rat Trap” cheddar (sharp and intensely flavored).  The cheese was bait.  Men were drawn by the cheese and then spent their money on the beer.  Every evening our new bar lounge area will feature complimentary extra sharp cheddar with snaps.  Come steal our cheese.   

We have carved out "the church" for private dining for your special parties and events. The Church is so-named for the vintage gothic windows separating the space from the bar and main dining room. It is a perfect private dining area for larger parties up to 40. It is yours any time for special group meetings or celebrations. Menus can be customized from Siesta Kitchen menu selections or even Beach Bistro style menus. Give the restaurant a call and ask for Dominic. 941.346.7800.      

Eat Here Siesta...The Bar Originally we created Eat Here on Siesta Key....now Siesta Kitchen...with about 160 seats. Then Sean figured out that if you make your own bread and soups and prepare everything from scratch with integrity and authenticity, then you probably shouldn't attempt full service to more than about 80 seats. So we carved out an 80 seat main service dining room. Service is faster and tighter and the food is better and brighter and hotter because of the change. So what do we do with the other spaces....?   We decided a more defined bar lounge area would be cool. With some comfortable "loungeable" seating...and a special bar menu suited to casual later evenings with service ‘til midnight...and a refined creative cocktail list ...and a piano for a more relaxing musical evening. So we have created the new Eat Here Bar at Siesta. For a drink before dinner, a cocktail any time, or a cocktail with a casual snack a little later in the evening, try our new Eat Here Siesta bar service every night including Tuesday night ...again.  

It is becoming increasingly apparent that the meaning of terms like "farm-to-table" and "artisanal" are being treated like card tricks. Too much of it is smoke and mirrors.  Farm-to-table promises on menus in Florida in summer are laughingly disingenuous.The only thing that grows outside in Florida in August is barnacles. Last week even my rosemary died. Encyclopedias describe an artisan as “one who makes things by hand …and may by experience and aptitude reach the expressive levels of an artist.” McDonalds now offers an “artisanal” chicken sandwich. Really. At Eat Here we make our own bread, we make our own desserts and soups and sauces.Our chefs are proud of the food products we source and the dishes we prepare.The “expressive levels of an artist”…?...some days.

Thanksgiving is a very special day for me and my family. My wife and I became American citizens in 2001. It was one of the greatest days of my life.  America is the greatest country on earth and finally her people are the most generous and caring. Thanksgiving for us is about remembering that greatness, how fortunate we are to be Americans, and how much we can do to help others.  Happy Thanksgiving! Talking Turkey There is more advice on cooking turkey than there is on taking care of nuclear weapons. This week food writers everywhere are writing novelettes on the perfect turkey. Sausage stuffing, oyster stuffing, chestnut stuffing, basting, brining, cook it in a bag....  It’s just a big chicken. If the Indians and Pilgrims could have had steak, things would be different. It is a very big chicken  - and the regular tools you have at hand - tongs, big spoons - are not enough. Find some clean white cotton napkins or aprons to pick it up and move it around - in and out of the roaster pan, onto the plate and off the floor.I’ll keep my “turkey tips” to a minimum: Everything you really need to…

Eat here at Siesta Key invites all waiters and chefs in Siesta Key/Sarasota to join the eat here crew free pizza, food bites, beer and wine. “Last Thursday we decided to throw an industry block party for other food business on Madeira Aveue…We offered free food, chef selections, free beer, wine and some fun. It’s September, and nobody makes money in September. We needed to relax and have some fun,” said Tracey Fried, a maitre ‘d at the siesta key restaurant.  During the block party, restaurant owner Sean Murphy made mention of the event resembling a “staff meal”. “We sent out invitation cards to a few surrounding businesses and expected maybe a dozen people to show. As it turns out, close to eighty people came and we had a great time," said Sean.   He went on to tell a story in old restaurant history when a staff meal was offered to all employees as a way to try new things the chefs were working on. It was a communal meal where the staff could relate personally without being “in the trenches." It always happened after shift…to celebrate and wind down.  “It was good to see both the front and back of the house relaxing…

Author Sean Murphy is the owner of the Beach Bistro and Eat Here restaurants. He writes on matters culinary from time to time to aggravate his neighbors.  Some of his writings can be found on the Beach Bistro web-site at beachbistro.com  Derision and questions can be directed to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. ##### The selling of "American" seafood has become a scandal. The seafood Americans eat has stopped being American. Ninety one per cent of the seafood consumed by Americans now comes from Asia. At best only two per cent of it is being inspected. Of that two per cent, some ninety per cent is condemned because of contamination.  The scandalous part is that much of that Asian seafood is being repackaged and sold in markets and restaurants as something else. Two of the greatest menu lies are "Gulf Shrimp" and "Fresh Gulf Grouper" “Gulf Shrimp” It is possible to get Real American Gulf Shrimp - but you have to work a little harder to find it and you have to pay more for it.  Almost all of what restaurants are calling "Gulf Shrimp" is coming from shrimp farms much closer to the Gulf of Thailand than the Gulf of Mexico. Asian shrimp is farm-raised in pools…

If Pope Gregory lived in Florida when he was working on the calendar there would only have been eleven months, he would have skipped September. Florida is hot in the summer. By the time September rolls around it has been too hot for too long. Everybody wants to talk about the heat. And everyone is saying that this summer is the hottest summer ever. It's not. The hottest September ever is always the first one. My first September was perplexing. I had obviously made some tragic error that had brought me to this unbearably hot place. I did not know what had gone wrong. Spending the winter in Florida was such a great idea.  The AC in our apartment was so weak that we used to drag the mattress off our bed and lay it under the puny little window unit in the kitchen. We would then prostrate ourselves on the mattress in an attitude of prayer and beg the whining little beast to please try harder. But that was thirty-five Septembers ago. I am older and wiser than that now. I own tons of air conditioning. I have also developed a few life and culinary tools to cope with…

On my recent trip back home to Nova Scotia I stepped into a scene from my lost youth. Fishermen were yelling across the cove... "What was Frenchie catchin...?"  (Every cove has a "Frenchie" and a "Slim".)  The answer came back..."Haddock it was, he caught." Nova Scotians from the rocky inlets of Nova Scotia's South Shore talk like Jedi Master Yoda in "Star Wars". They split the sentence in the middle and then put the last part first. As in..."Dumb as a boot, he is."...or ..."Drank like a fish, he did."  That moment of 'Novey speak' awakened in me a craving for my favorite fish...Haddock...and a determination to source fresh Haddock in Florida. Haddock is a smaller fish like a sole with a white flesh that is sweet and delicate. The good news is that the Haddock fishery seems to be growing stronger and that we have been able to find a reliable source for fresh Haddock for Eat Here. Fresh Haddock rarely gets south of Boston. Almost all of what Floridians are told is "fresh" Haddock is any white fish that is caught off Norway or South Africa, then frozen in blocks, shipped across the Atlantic in the bottoms of slow ships…

“Farm to table” is a headline appearing repeatedly in the food writer scene, and more people are asking serious questions about where their food comes from.  Sean Murphy, owner of the Beach Bistro and Eat Here family of restaurants, believes that “Farm to Table” is being "outrageously abused by restaurant marketers" who are not always being honest about the source of their ingredients.  Last week, Sean published an article on the Beach Bistro website detailing which local Florida offerings are appropriate for the Summer months and which items are best grown in specialty farms at their appropriate locations.  Visit the Bistro's blog for more on Farms and Tables (and a bonus recipe!).   

Every July the French Quarter Hosts the World Bartenders Convention. “Tales of the Cocktail” welcomes bartenders and service industry personnel from all over the world. In its twelfth year, over 20,000 people will be in attendance this year. Tales of the Cocktail is a meeting of the minds. Days and nights are filled with educational seminars and tasting rooms. Bartenders get to learn, meet and collaborate with some of the top bartenders and brand ambassadors on the planet Again this year the Beach Bistro and Eat Here will be sending our resident bar chef, Marjorie Kammelohr to the Big Easy to participate in the “tales” celebration. Last year after being immersed in the food, history, culture, music - and of course, the cocktails - of New Orleans and “tales”, Marjorie came back inspired to create a new cocktail list with prohibition era classics like the Sazerac, the Opera and a Blueberry Basil Collins. She also discovered a love of vermouths and a passion for vermouth experimentation with variations on different types of killer Manhattans and Martinis. Who knew so many different varieties of sweet and dry vermouth existed and could change the flavor of a drink so dramatically?Of course, it’s not…