The Push to Be Different

Tom eyed me with skepticism. He seemed to want to say something, perhaps about other wives who greet their menfolk with home-baked pies and bedroom eyes. "Relax," I said. "I promise you’ll eat well." I was bluffing. In fact, I had no idea what we would find at the Sandy Butler, Keystone’s Gourmet Market & Restaurant in Fort Myers Beach. Yet I knew we had a hit on our hands before we even entered the establishment. I’d barely put the car in park when Tom leapt out and raced towards the market’s outdoor vegetable stand.

"The entrance to the restaurant is over here, honey," I called over to him.

"You won’t believe these tomatoes!" he called back. I wandered over for a look and saw the deep reds and flawless skins of photo- shoot-perfect veggies.

If the thought of dining at a grocery store makes your nose crinkle, then you haven’t experienced the Sandy Butler. Opened in November 2006, the restaurant is a surprisingly chic affair with dark walls, black marble tabletops, exposed industrial pipes and matching lighting, and white square plates. It maintains clear lines of demarcation—including a separate chef and kitchen area—from the store. Yet a five-minute tour of the immaculate, deluxe market will make you agree that such vigilance is unnecessary.

A pretty server named Yvonne Webb took excellent care of us from the moment we arrived. She came to Southwest Florida from Cleveland seven years ago. We queried her about the market as she seated us.

"Look over there," she said. "Can you see those grapes?" We squinted past all of the tables and the be-trellised bar, through a window on the market.

"The green ones?" we asked.

"Mmm," she replied. "Go look at them after dinner. They’re so perfect, I swear I think about them all day long."

We sat back and gazed at the menu, a streamlined, manageable list of two soups, three salads, seven appetizers and eight entrées. Words like ginger, champagne, saffron and vanilla popped out at us and kicked our salivary glands into gear.

"I can’t remember when I’ve read a menu this quickly," Tom remarked.

Yvonne brought us a basket of three kinds of freshly baked bread with a citrus-parsley butter to enjoy with three glasses of wine, a tart Morgan Monterrey chardonnay and spicy Italian Illuminati Trebbiano (both $12 glass/$48 bottle), and my favorite, the Australian Archetype cabernet-shiraz blend ($9 glass/$34 bottle). As luck would have it, Tom and I had just been listening to a song devoted to the number three from a nostalgic CD of Schoolhouse Rock songs played by various rock bands. The wine and bread in triplicate launched us on a spontaneous concert tour.

"Three is a magic number,"
Tom sang.

"Oh, yes it is," I sang back. Luckily, we were seated at a corner table and it was a weeknight. The Sandy Butler offers live jazz during its five-course, prix-fixe Sunday brunch ($22).

"Have you been here from the start?" I asked him.

"Oh, no," he said. "I came in December. They had problems in the beginning …" Apparently, chef Philippe saved the day. Born in French Algeria, he came to the United States 10 years ago by way of Montreal. "Sometimes I use couscous, which they have in Algeria," he said, "and I’ve worked with lots of Italians, so risotto … And of course, French. I like fusion. Mexican, Chinese …" Many of chef Philippe’s sentences trail off elliptically, but we could see that they pointed to ecstasy.

The chef explained that the restaurant and the market share suppliers, and that in a pinch, he’ll raid the market’s shelves directly. They also share the same aspirations: to be different.

"Look at the white tuna carpaccio," he urged us. "Everybody has beef, so I make different …" The shaved tuna appetizer was almost too pretty to eat, with its fresh guacamole, red caviar, and olive oil drizzle, and fuchsia orchid garnish ($13.95).

resh, edible orchids serve
as vivid signature garnishes on most dishes, the chef explained, to add a burst of color to the black-and-white motif.

"You color coordinate the food?" Tom asked.

"Of course!" he answered. "We also place every dish within a dish at an angle, to offset the squareness."

"We’ve never seen a hot shrimp cocktail before," I confided.

"Exactly!" he said. "Different." As soon as we bit into the warm and well-spiced flesh of the grilled shrimp, especially dipped in its red pepper coulis, we saw that the tyranny of the chilled shrimp and cocktail sauce must end ($13.95). Different was fast becoming our motto, too.

Not everything at the Sandy Butler was different. The French onion soup was very good but eminently traditional, with its baked Gruyère topping, etc. ($4.95). "I’m going to do something different with that soon …" Chef Philippe said, casting a restless eye at the bowl.

Chef Philippe wanted us to try his ginger caramel sauce, and we were only too happy to oblige him. We hadn’t ordered the appetizer that features the sauce, the blackened sea scallops ($14.95), so he whipped up a small glass of it and brought it to the table. Tiny flecks of ginger added the most incredible texture and flavor to the caramel. "What kind of caramel is this?" I asked.

"My own," he said. "A little sugar, a little cream …" Luckily, Tom took just a small taste and allowed me to drain the glass. If there is a better way than chef Philippe’s ginger caramel sauce to ruin a diet, I haven’t discovered it.

When the entrées arrived, we had been successfully launched by the food, people and general atmosphere into a full sense of well-being, and greeted each dish like a long-lost relative. Tom enjoyed the filet mignon served with a light champagne peppercorn sauce ($28.95), while I was slightly less enthusiastic about it and downright cool about the supreme of capon in a sweet saffron sauce ($22.95). I found the sauces of both dishes disappointing, especially after the ginger caramel.

I also may have been overly excited about the prospect of the capon, not a menu regular in Southwest Florida. Happily, we both enjoyed the roasted vegetable accompaniments, including marvelous sunbursts and rutabagas. We further agreed on the supremacy of the shrimp and scallop brochette with black linguini and vanilla bean sauce ($27.95), equally pleasing to the eye and palate.

As Yvonne brought out accoutrements for our cups of tea forte, I noticed that she replenished our silverware from a small leather box.

"She’s been bringing a fresh box with each course," Tom said. It was a nice touch, one that contributed to our sense of well-being.

Tom swooned over the honey marshmallow brûlée ($7.95), but I could not be swayed from my top choice: the freshly baked Butler’s cake ($8.95), an item that rotates based on the in-house bakery’s offerings. We enjoyed a cannoli cake. I’m not always fond of fancy, multitiered, complicated cakes, but the Butler’s cake was light, not too sweet or rich, and altogether winning.

"Can we go back to the grocery store for dinner again soon?" Tom asked on the way home.

"Anything for my man," I said with bedroom eyes.

"The Esplanade is the Fifth Avenue of Marco Island," explained Gligor Tuparov, the Macedonian general manager of Bayview, as our Serbian server and assistant manager Dragomir Sundic hovered close by. "Bayview is connected by Rimaco Corp. to Vergina on Fifth Avenue, Vergina at the Esplanade, Bayview and our magnificent StarBar."

Several millennia of stress and strife in the Balkans might come to an abrupt and permanent halt if the Macedonians, Serbians, Albanians, and every other ethnic group could all spend an evening at the Esplanade on Marco Island. We would recommend that the Balkan nations and all others prepare for a bit of a wait on a weekend evening, because the joint is jumping. Dragomir brought us three wines to whet our appetites: a Mark West pinot noir ($9.50 glass/ $36 bottle), a Blackstone merlot ($6.50/$26), and the Crane Lakes chardonnay ($6.50/$26). It worked, to the point that we wolfed down our New England clam chowder ($4.95 cup/$6.95 bowl) and an assortment of crispy coconut shrimp ($11.95), crispy calamari ($9.95), and Bayview scallops in vanilla champagne sauce with fried plantains ($13.95), when at last they arrived.

Tom ordered the ahi tuna, blackened and finished with a port wine sauce and served with mashed potatoes and steamed vegetables ($23.95). While he enjoyed the tuna, he was especially fond of the mashed potatoes. We found the seafood linguini ($19.95) good but a bit bland. The big winner of the evening was a savory dish Dragomir insisted that we order: the veal osso bucco, a generous portion of tender veal served with crisp vegetables in a nice stew-like broth ($23.95).

We topped the meal off with two very good desserts, a slice of caramel apple pie ($6.95) because I am going through a caramel revival, and the sweet fantasy truffle cake ($7.50). Then we strolled the Esplanade, taking in the pretty boats and the last few pink-orange streaks of the night sky. We know it well, that melody.