The original Fred’s, its nameplate now retooled to read Fred’s Restaurant & Bar, has returned to Sarasota’s Southside Village. It’s not the same old Fred’s we knew and loved for years, but its return under new ownership and management still is cause for celebration. The adjacent Tasting Room, with which Fred’s paired so harmoniously, is [...]

Everyone knows that sex and romance are only for the young. Once we hit 50, the party’s over, right? Wrong. Come closer and we’ll whisper a naughty little secret: Older people still do it—in cars, boats, beds, and wherever else they can. Seriously. That adorable white-haired couple browsing the Metamucil aisle at the drugstore? According [...]

On Exhibit Lodovico David is the 17th-century Swiss painter behind this masterpiece at the Ringling Museum of Art. The patron who commissioned it (probably Italian, since David worked in Rome and Venice) would have known Greek mythology and the story of the “Judgment of Paris” depicted. Here, David presented himself with a compositional challenge in [...]

When it comes to impeccably crafted designer furniture, Sarasota may be the new Milan. That’s the goal of industrial designer Jan Gross and marine accessories manufacturer G.G. Schmitt, who are beginning to create a stir in the international design community with their curvy new collection of seating called the Orion Group. We previewed the line [...]

When Ronda and Don Gallehue purchased their two-bedroom condo in the new Rivo at Ringling in downtown Sarasota, they knew their decorator, Alison Levin Bishop, would be tackling more than a few challenges. “It’s a cool building, but the floor plan was an interesting dilemma,” Ronda Gallehue says. “There is nothing square about those rooms.” [...]

Picture this: a house epitomizing California contemporary style that is perfectly at home on a canal overlooking Sarasota Bay. Though the new, 4,000-square-foot home stands unique among its neighbors, it’s surprisingly in synch with the Gulf Coast landscape. An architectural nod to the homeowners’ West Coast roots, it is also slightly Polynesian in influence: low-slung, [...]

For Nancy Oliver, who won an Oscar nomination this year for her debut screenplay, Lars and the Real Girl, Sarasota was a long stop on the journey to Hollywood fame. In fact, Oliver lived and worked in Sarasota for nearly 20 years in the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s, performing a wide variety of jobs, from [...]

Imagine having Thanksgiving dinner every day of the year—hearty, nourishing food that assures you that life is safe, nurturing and rooted in generations of family memories. Right in the heart of stylish Sarasota, such a culinary tradition has been flourishing for nearly a century. Amish and Mennonite visitors from Pennsylvania, Indiana, Ohio and other Midwestern [...]

Pizza is unpretentious. In its simplest form, a doughy crust is layered with seasoned tomato sauce and mozzarella cheese and baked in an oven at a high temperature. It is perfectly comfortable on a paper plate and can be washed down with anything from water to wine. But when you dress it up with fancy [...]