Special Events

This week, Eat Here restaurants will be entertaining new summer hours and an exciting new bar 3-4-5 Happy Hour pricing program.

All the Eat Here restaurants - Sarasota, Siesta Key and Anna Maria Island – will begin service from 5:30 p.m. every evening beginning this week – the week after Mothers’ Day. Eat Here Sarasota will be open from Tuesday through Saturday. Siesta Key and Anna Maria will continue opening for dinner service seven evenings a week.

Bar service in Siesta Key and Sarasota will celebrate a new 3-4-5 Happy Hour every evening. The Eat Here happy hour will feature $3 drafts, $4 well cocktails and $5 small plates all summer long. The 3-4-5 Happy Hour small plate menu will feature the famous Heart Attack Hot Dog (bacon wrapped and finessed with truffle butter and béarnaise), woodstone pizzas, fish dip, poutine and garlic chips. The Eat Here bars in Sarasota and on Siesta Key will also offer chef inspired plates and special cocktail offerings every Happy Hour evening.

This summer, begin those lazy summer evenings with an Eat Here Happy Hour visit.

Eat Here was selected by Florida Trend as one of Florida’s “Best New” restaurants. Their sister restaurant, Beach Bistro, has repeatedly been selected by ZAGAT as one of “America’s Top Restaurants”.

Mom drinks for free at all “Eat Here” locations on Mother’s Day, and any gift certificates purchased for moms get 25% off.

Eat Here’s policy of treating all moms to libations on Mother’s Day is a tribute to Sean Murphy’s grandmother, “Nana” Martin.

In the Nova Scotia vernacular “Nana” is an endearment for “grandmother.” A “sip” with dinner was part of Nana’s dinner ritual.

Sean has a great reverence for his grandmother.

“My grandmother was a saint. Almost literally. As a kindergartner I was convinced Nana was a real saint and I got into trouble with the two good sisters teaching kindergarten. I was punished for arrogance. They were teaching ‘Lives of the Saints’ and I was adamant that the book was wrong because my Nana wasn’t in there.

“My grandmother had ten children and my grandfather was something of a partier. One day my two uncles, both monsignors, brought the bishop by for tea and the subject of my grandfather came up while Nana was out of the room. They all put down their cups, shook their heads, rolled their eyes to heaven, and said ‘ah…that poor woman is a saint’. I thought that settled the matter. Nana was a saint. I had a winning hand … two monsignors and a bishop … against two sisters.

“Nana lived to be ninety-five. Conscious of her tribulations, her doctor had told her to have a wee sip of port before every meal. It would calm her nerves and improve her appetite. Nana was a woman of strong character, a great lady, but she was very delicate and frail in stature.

“She set a meticulous table for dinner every evening. Just as we were about to be seated she would remove her lace apron, open the cupboard under the huge sink, pull out a bottle of port, pop the cork and knock back a quick swig. She would then recork the bottle, put it back under the sick, sit at the table and say grace.

“That quick little sip of the port was incongruous with everything else she did – but it worked wonders. The aggravations of the day slipped away. Nana’s dinners were always joyous occasions.”

The Eat Here restaurants are offering free libations for your Moms on Mothers’ Day as a tribute to Sean’s grandmother. For our non-sipping moms we will be offering a complimentary chocolate budino dessert because – as Kate Hepburn said – “every women should have chocolate ever day”.

All restaurants will also be offering gift certificates for mom at a 25% reduction.

Eat Here restaurants and Beach Bistro are currently accepting reservations for Mother’s Day.

It has been said that port has been the only good thing to come out of war. Had the British not boycotted French wines in the 17^th century in favor of wines from Portugal, “port” – as we know it – may have never existed. Among the pioneers in the world of port, Warre’s has a legacy spanning nearly four centuries. It was established as the first British Port House in 1670.

Eat Here is featuring Warre’s ports as an accompaniment to regular menu offerings or as finish to your evening. We will also offer a refreshing “beachy” white-port-with-tonic as bookend options for your visit – either before or after dining. Ask your server to recommend the best accompaniment, and you’ll soon learn why port is worth fighting for.

Apparently the Beach Bistro’s Eat Here offspring do not fall far from the award-winning tree. When checking that the Beach Bistro was still enthroned in Florida Trend’s “Golden Spoon Hall of Fame” Sean Murphy was thrilled to discover that his two Eat Here restaurants on Anna Maria Island and in Sarasota were both winners of the “Best New Restaurants in Florida” award.

Sean was profoundly moved by the award. “It was an amazing thrill. It took me back to the Bistro’s first Golden Spoon Award. To be recognized by Florida Trend is particularly gratifying when there are so many online selection processes that are subject to bias and abuse. Florida Trend still has a great deal of authority and culinary integrity. Chris Sherman is one of the few truly passionate and qualified restaurant critics that is still writing.”

The Golden Spoon recognition for Eat Here follows on the recent announcement by ZAGAT that the Beach Bistro was awarded “Best Food” status for the Gulf Coast. The Bistro has consistently garnered some of the highest scores for food and service in Florida and was selected by ZAGAT for inclusion in its small guide to the “Top Restaurants in America”.

Murphy was asked to explain the difference between his Bistro and Eat Here operations: “At the Bistro we are trying to honor your special occasion by giving you one of the best dining experiences that you have ever had. The Eat Here concept is meant to be less sacrosanct and more frolicsome than the Beach Bistro’s. The two Eat Here restaurants on Anna Maria and in Sarasota had won ‘Best New’ kudos by local newspapers and magazines in their neighborhoods, but the statewide Florida Trend recognition was a particular endorsement of all the creative work that the Eat Here service and chef staffs have accomplished over the past year. The ZAGAT and Florida Trend recognition helped bring Christmas early for us.”

A new Eat Here will be opening in Siesta Village on Siesta Key later this month.

The Eat Here restaurants serve more casual and lighter versions of Beach Bistro culinary creations. The Chef staffs are trained by Bistro Chefs. They focus Bistro methods on more accessible products to create dishes at pricing for more casual, every day dining. The Eat Here bars offer classic and creative cocktails  and family crafted beers and wines.

Eat Here AMI is located at 5315 Gulf Dr., Holmes Beach. Ph: 941-778-0411. www.EatHereAnnaMaria.com

Eat Here SRQ is located at 1888 Main St., Sarasota. Ph: 941-365-8700. www.EatHereSarasota.com

Still looking for gift ideas? Eat Here gift certificates available: on-site or online.

BY SEAN MURPHY | (SPECIAL TO THE ANNA MARIA ISLAND SUN)

One Hundred Sixty-Seven W. 12^th St., New York City is a non-descript brownstone in Greenwich Village across from the old St Vincent Hospital. It is also James Beard’s House – the temple of American culinary art.

James Beard and Julia Child were responsible for making chefs cool. He encouraged young men to go to Europe to develop chef skills, wrote books on food and promoted restaurants and food events.

The House is operated by the James Beard Foundation, the foundation that awards the culinary Oscars: Best Chef of the Southeast, Best New Chef in the West, Best Food Writer, etc…treasured awards that are the bright pennies of chef’s dreams.

Invitations to perform a Beard dinner are generally extended after a secret visit from a couple of members of the Beard Foundation Board. They check you out, you become the topic of conversation over coffee in New York, and then you are asked to come to the city for an interview.

The interview was not as easy as I had hoped. My inquisitor was Mildred – the tough little lady who then ran the Beard House.

We had just won a Golden Spoon from Florida Trend Magazine. I thought it would be cool to wear my Golden Spoon lapel pin to my James Beard interview.

Mildred looked over my resumé, looked at me and said, “What the hell is a golden spoon except something to stick on your jacket?” (I still have nightmares about Mildred.)

We got our invitation and performed our first dinner there five years ago. We returned again this past week to perform another.

The logistics of a Beard dinner are daunting. Each dinner consists of four passed appetizers and then a full six- course presentation. Each item has as many as 10 ingredients. Thus there about 100 items that have to be sourced, delivered, prepped and transported into a kitchen that is not much bigger than yours. Coolers packed onto airplanes, suppliers shipping from all over the country, guys speeding around New York in taxi cabs in search of edible flowers, fresh micro-greens and grits.

The pressure of travel and preparation builds in intensity over three days. Finally the clock ticks down to the guests’ arrival.

All guests enter James Beard’s house the same way. Stone steps lead below street level and through a small hall and anteroom into a tiny kitchen stuffed with blazing hot equipment. Guests creep single file through the kitchen past a team of chefs who are working diligently. Photographers are popping pictures. Writers are asking questions. The crowd then stands elbow to elbow for an hour in a tiny patio for a champagne reception before climbing a set of stairs to the dining room, a room that regularly hosts 80 of the toughest food gangsters in the country – diners that demand you show all your best skills and serve the best food product in the world.

Once the guests are seated, the chef team is left to check food temps, fret over sauces and focus on the thousand things they have to do in the next two hours to launch the best dinner of their lives.

The logistics have been maddening. The expectations are massive. The pressure is almost suffocating.

It’s great.