I love good restaurants, and judging from my waistline, I might eat out a little more often than I should. But when I say “good restaurants,” I don\u2019t necessarily mean the most expensive places in town. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of my favorite spots for a bite didn\u2019t even have a name, just \u201cErrol,\u201d a Jamaican man with an old-fashioned barbecue pit next to the bait shop at the Osprey Harbor Marina. I keep my boat there. Few meals are better than Errol\u2019s Jamaican jerk chicken and a cold beer after a day on Sarasota Bay. Sometimes, we\u2019d sit at the picnic table by the bait shop and that\u2019s pretty close to my version of an ideal last meal. That\u2019s where jerk chicken should be enjoyed after all \u2013 outside on a picnic table. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
But when the meal is more complex, the dining experience needs to align. Restauranteurs, the good ones, are like alchemists: they take a myriad of ingredients, sprinkle in some magic dust, and shake it all up to produce an authentic dining experience. That \u201cshaking up\u201d process includes a ton of details and a lot of hard work. <\/p>\n\n\n\n