Sun Garden Café
Sticky Bun
Grilled Orange Cranberry Muffin
Sweet Potato Pancakes with Real Maple Syrup (+2)
The Elvis – Fried Chicken, Biscuit, Two Eggs, Country Gravy
Favored by Siesta Key locals and tourists for the laid back ambiance, outdoor seating and “Hippie” flare, Sun Garden Café was selected for breakfast during a half-day in Sarasota largely due to an out-of-date online menu promising “Grateful Bread Pudding” and “Nutella Stuffed Toast,” neither option available but instead replaced by several run-of-the-mill options plus service that was inefficient and overstretched.
Certainly a popular spot, the average age of diners in excess of sixty with most apparently retired and happy to linger in the sun , it was at an indoor four-top that a party of two was seated, the menus in hand within seconds but a waitress nowhere to be found for at least ten minutes.
Genuinely confused by the bait-n’-switch, but deciding to make-do for lack of desire to go anywhere else nearby to eat, it was finally after a middle-aged woman arrived with a “y’all decided yet?” that an order was constructed, two baked items from a nearby glass case ordered as Starters but both taking nearly twenty minutes to be delivered, no reason for the delay offered until inquiry to which the waitress snapped “they had to be warmed.”
Finally tucking in to some food, the restaurant at perhaps 1/3 capacity in the off-season early hours, it was with good fortune that the buttered and grilled muffin was picture perfect with soft citrus surrounding craisins because although the Sticky Bun looked great the dough was a little too tough to be enjoyable as the sticky-sweet topping melted quickly before sliding off.
Going half sweet and half savory for entrees, each arriving hot on the heels of the aforementioned starters, a stack of three Sweet Potato Pancakes was a bit more dense than some would prefer with the $2 Maple Syrup sidecar barely enough to top one of them while “The Elvis” was an expectedly heavy plate of food with a good biscuit and country gravy, the “poached” eggs more like hard-boiled while chicken was neither well-seasoned nor particularly crispy.
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