As I mentioned in a recap about my 2025 snowbird stay in Florida, this year I spent my first winter in Sarasota. When I travel I’m always on the hunt for tasty establishments. If I’m going to spend the $$$, I want the culinary experience to be great.
In this blog post I’m sharing some of my culinary adventures from the past season. While my BF E and I ate at a few new spots, not all of them met my standards. These seven places are those I’m adding to my Sarasota favorites list.
Here are seven great places to eat in Sarasota
Sarasota has a growing culinary scene including homemade ice creams, seafood specialties and French pastries
The best croissants in Sarasota
Let’s start with breakfast. If you’re looking for the best croissants, French breads and artisan pastries, I reccommend the French bakery Rendezvous. There are two bakeries, one on Clark Rd and one closer to Siesta Key Beach. I’ve been to both and the service and pastries are so good, so good, so good.
As its website says: Rendezvous is run by “the Garcia family who hails from Sete, a charming town in south of France. Owners Joel and Sophie, spent over 20 years baking in France before fulfilling their dream of opening a bakery in Sarasota in 2015 to share French tradition and authentic flavors.” Their son Julien and daughter Mylaine and their spouses also work at the bakery.
You can take out or eat in at each location. Note that the Siesta Key bakery is closed on Sundays.
Rendezvous bakery serves the best croissants and French pastries in Sarasota
An artsy place for lunch in the Rosemary District
Moving on to lunch, I suggest Arts & Central in the Rosemary District. The artsy Rosemary District is an area that continues to be gentrified and gain more culinary attention. I enjoyed a casual lunch at this year-old restaurant more than my meal at dinner. The food was better, the atmosphere more relaxed and sitting outside was much quieter than the hustle and bustle during evening hours.
The menu is contemporary American as is the very nice interior and exterior design. I ordered an open-faced Smoked Chicken Pita with fries for lunch which was much more tasty and reasonably priced than my Harvest Bowl with Salmon at dinner.
A lovely Arts & Central lunch of smoked chicken pita and fries
A wonderful cheese shop in Sarasota
Being a cheese-lover, I often stop by Artisan Cheese Company when I’m in the Rosemary District. The shop has an amazing selection of cheeses. Their homemade sourdough and other breads are also worth the carb calories. I’ve bought many a frozen bread and warmed it up at home.
Maybe next year I’ll sign up for one of the shop’s wine and cheese tastings or other hosted events. Per their history: “Louise, the owner, is originally from England and Scotland, and she’s always loved cheese, and had always wanted to open up a proper cheese shop.” Louise welcomes shoppers to browse the books, the condiments, or stop for a coffee and a cheese plate.
Artisan Cheese Company is a cut-to-order artisal and farmstead cheese shop
An award-winning Italian restaurant in Sarasota
Moving on to dinner, there is no shortage of Italian restaurants in Sarasota, or anywhere in Florida for that matter. We tried an excellent ones this year — La Dolce Vita — located in an unassuming strip mall.
Read about the couple’s backgrounds and you’ll understand why La Dolce Vita was recently recognized as a best Italian restaurant by Gambero Rosso — an authoritative food guide.
You can tell the Italian-born owners chef Mauro and his wife Tina are passionate about bringing genuine Italian cuisine to their Florida patrons. Mauro learned everything about southern Italian food from his experience in Naples since he was a child. Then he moved to Milan to take on northern Italian cooking. As for Tina, who was born in a little Sicilian town near Enna, her schooling in Sicilian desserts is a credit to her grandmother and mother, from “Millefoglie” to “Cannoli cake.”
The Scialatielli, gamberi e asparagi pasta I had was delizioso! It featured signature pasta made with semolina flour, eggs, milk, parmigiana cheese, herbs, cooked with asparagus, shrimp and olive oil.
Scialatielli gamberi e asparagi pasta
Early birds flock to this Belgian bistro in Sarasota
Moving on to another dining spot in another Sarasota strip mall is Antoine’s. This Belgian restaurant is known for its PEI mussels prepared 10 different ways and popular frites. They offer other Belgian seafood and meat specialties as well. Everything is made in house. Come for early bird dinner and you get an appetizer and entree for a set price.
Be sure to save room for Antoine’s decadent dessert trio. E and I shared blood orange sorbet, sea salt caramel ice cream with Belgian chocolate sauce and crème brulée. It was so good, so good, so good.
I opted for Antoine’s special entree of scallops with tomato risotto
Where to find the best delicatessen in Sarasota
Note: While the Lakewood Ranch store is open, the full-service Downtown Sarasota restaurant permanently closed as of July 2026.
When our house guests were craving a good deli sandwich, E and I took them to The Original Wolfie’s Delicatessen in the Rosemary District right around the corner from the Artisan Cheese Company. The famous celeb deli hails from Miami Beach and has other outposts in Miami and California (with different name).
I think Wolfie’s is the best delicatessen in Sarasota. Their New York Style sandwiches are stacked high. I packed half my roasted turkey sandwich to take home. My bowl of delicious homemade matzoh ball soup was so large there was enough to fill a full takeout container after the meal. The matzoh balls were light and fluffy and the soup had noodles and lots of chicken. It was so good, so good, so good.
E and I stopped by other times when we were in the District for takeout sweets including black and white cookies and hamantash (a Jewish pastry eaten on Purim) — both were yummy treats.
On a cool January night in Sarasota there’s nothing as good as a big bowl of Wolfie’s matzo ball soup
A downtown Sarasota ice cream cafe for delectable desserts
For ice cream my go to is Main Street Creamery in downtown Sarasota. It’s hard to resist this old-fashioned ice cream parlor’s smell of waffle cones being made when passing by.
The ice cream is locally made, nationally recognized from Yoder’s Southern Creamery. That’s because the Amish have a large presence in parts of Sarasota. Note: We went to other creameries in different parts of the city that serve Yoder’s but the ice cream at Main Street for some reason always tastes better.
The Creamery offers 30 flavors of ice cream along with root beer floats and old-fashioned milkshakes. Whatever flavor you choose it’s going to be so good, so good, so good.
Main Street Creamery white chocolate raspberry ice cream makes me smile
That’s a wrap on great places to eat in Sarasota. For sure you won’t go hungry when you visit!
Judi
P.S. – Next time I’m going to tell you about the three great places I dined at during my snowbird mini-vacay to Naples, Florida. More to come.
P.S. S. – OMG I just read about BLVD Cafe that opened in the Rosemary District in Sarasota. It says that their bagel dough is shipped from Brooklyn and their pain au chocolates are shipped in from Paris and then both are baked in local ovens. Adding BLVD Cafe to my foodie adventures for 2026.
Reader J said: “You look so happy in that photo with the ice cream. Makes me smile to look at it!”
Reader A said: “You look terrific. We’ve been freezing cold this winter. Next winter SarasotaVisit sounds like the ticket!”
Thank you for sharing, I have multiple new places to try next time I am in Sarasota!
J, there are more new restaurants to share in 2026. Stay tuned.