Knitting in the Shadows: In Which The Blog Yields to Food

So Friday night... there was a lovely dinner right here in the hotel.

While there were a few drawbacks -- the A/C was more vigorous than it needed to be (by a lot), until the pleasant waiter snagged the Food & Beverage boss, who calmed it down for me -- on the whole it was a pleasant experience. (I would have liked to have told them that waiters should never, ever, shout across the out-door dining area about anything short of a fire, but I refrained).

We enjoyed....

a lovely Caprese Salad, that looks a little brighter and whiter than in should, but it's what my camera could do.

We also enjoyed a delicious Tuscan Onion Soup

Tuscan onion soup has provolone mixed in with the gruyere. A different, but delicious approach.

I then committed sacrilege, and had steak. Yep, less than 100 yards from the ocean, I had steak.

but it did come with scallops and shrimp... (and let me tell you, those scallops were yummy).

Then, I dithered about dessert... so Joe

(the Food & Beverage Wizard who was at our table a lot despite not being our waiter)

brought me a taste of one of the desserts.

This was so yummy that I caved and ordered the whole dessert... which (sadly) wasn't as good. This one needs to be sliced thin like this to be at it's best. But my companion had simple ice cream...

And then yesterday, we spent another day of doing whatever.

I love doing whatever.

Whatever included a bit of driving through Sarasota again, and taking note of interesting buildings...

And boats ...

and fun statues. (note... the detail is true right down to the seams on the stockings)

and some shopping (The GolfPro did ask for a long sleeved T-shirt...). I found an excellent present for BookWorm. I will not photograph it. She reads this blog.

and a gorgeous sunset.

okay, okay, you can have one more sunset picture, but I took dozens, so you can't have them all.

And then ... well... another lovely dinner.

We went to Patti George's, where they have what I find to be the best bar ever!

See, the chairs are all normal chairs... none of thost too tall for people under 5'7" bar stools... chairs. The bartender, however, is down in something so that for him... it's till bar-counter height. Brilliant! Why don't more people think of this?

When we were seated, this fellow was right outside the window. Well... I guess you can't see the picture, because TypePad has taken away the toolbar that lets you upload pictures into your blog. Since I can't find the place where pictures get stashed, I can't find a work around to show you.

He is a Black Crowned Night Heron. He distracted us from the menu for quite a while.

The service here at PattiGeorge is amazing. For example, noting that my companion was wearing black pants, when he cleared the extra settings from the table, he removed the white napkin that had been intended for her, and brought her a black one -- so that the white lint would not get on her pants. Nice touch.

Though the bar had little to do with the decision (since I didn't catch the coolness until after dinner), my dinner started with a Watermelon-tini. I'd thought I'd ordered a Melon-tini, and was rather surprised that it was red... but it was quite tasty, so I did nothing to fix it. Who knew it was going to come with monkeys!

And not just monkeys....

Mermaids too.

Tee hee.

Our appetizers were wonderful. First, there was the Pork and Shrimp Dim Sum

And then... Five Spice Calimari. What? we had Calamari for lunch yesterday?? what's your point? This was different. As it turns out, it was VASTLY different, and very tasty! But it looked just like every other plate of calamari you've seen, so I'm not going to waste bandwidth on it's picture.

We shared a lovely Caesar Salad that varied from others by including orange and grapefruit slices. Very nice addition -- but again the picture is not that impressive. You don't get to see the salad. Sorry.

I had a lovely plate of red snapper with coconut infused jasmine rice and grilled asparagus. This time, it was my lovely companion who committed the sacrilege and had a burger. But it came with these exquisite parmesan fries.

And then, when we'd photographed dinner to a fairtheewell, and eaten more food than we should have, our charming waiter offered us dessert. Somethine unthinkable happenend. Even though, right there on the menu were Molten Chocolate Lava Cake, Vanilla infused Creme Brulee, and Fresh Berries with whipped cream.... all of which are inordinately tempting...I did not want dessert.

Neither did my companion.

We were in a bit of shock. And our waiter, for reasons unknown to me, decided that he'd just give us a chocolate martini on the house...