Key Culinary Tours has grown to 14 guides and 11 tours that include downtown Sarasota, the downtown Sarasota Farmers Market and Venice.

So many restaurants, so little time.

There’s no shortage of places to eat in Sarasota, way too many to try if you are here for only a few days.

Being on the Gulf Coast naturally gives Southwest Florida a reputation for seafood. But its transplant population has brought with it a broad mix of ethnic food not necessarily seen in similarly sized communities.

Catching that full flavor takes time and knowledge, and Susan Robinson has devoted the past two years to becoming an expert.

She founded Key Culinary Tours in 2015 with three guides and two tours on St. Armands and has grown the business to 14 guides and 11 tours that include downtown Sarasota, the downtown Sarasota Farmers Market and Venice. She’s also got a Lakewood Ranch model in the works.

Her career on the key started about 15 years ago when she founded Key Concierge. The company provides a variety of services including home watch, relocation and luxury rentals. As she worked with visitors and clients, she frequently was asked about historical and culinary tours. For a while, she fulfilled those requests by patching tours together from among the minimal options. Two years ago she turned them into a business.

“I began to see that there was a lot more people coming into town and looking for things to do,” Robinson said. “When you have a day at the beach, and when you’ve played golf, and when you’ve taken the kids to play miniature golf, and you want something additional to do — this seemed like it would fill a good niche.”

The bulk of Robinson’s tours are about three hours long and cost $65 per person. That typically includes 25 minutes and a sampling of food at four restaurants, a stop at two specialty shops and a walking history lesson from a trained guide. Robinson has forged partnerships with a variety of restaurants so her guests can try a strong mix of food in modest enough portions that they’re not overwhelmed after just one or two stops.

By the time they’ve finished the tour, she said, they’ve eaten a full meal’s worth of food and they’ve gotten a better understanding of the neighborhood they’ve just walked through.

Ambassadors

“We feel like we’re ambassadors,” Robinson said. “We have these people who may never have been to Sarasota before, and we want them to know our city, and we want them to leave with a good impression.”

She and Maggie Deitsch, who was a certified guide in St. Augustine and now works as her tour manager, pick their guides for their personalities. They can train their employees on the history and the food, but they can’t teach that.

Robinson's guides have to keep a group of 10 people who may not necessarily know each other engaged for three hours. Attracting the kind of talent that makes that possible is what has allowed the business to thrive, Deitsch said.

“You’ve got to have enough stories to balance that so that they’re interested,” she said. “We don’t have scripts. We have narratives.”

That kind of flexibility is important because no two tours are the same, Deitsch said. The business has booked corporate travelers and wedding parties. They’ve welcomed guests from as far away as Norway and Ireland, but about 50 percent of their tours are for local people, Robinson said.

That affects the tour, too. An international traveler might be fascinated by John Ringling’s story, whereas a local participant might be tired of it.

Stories behind the menus

The restaurant managers and chefs also play an important part in keeping the tour flowing, Robinson said. Her guests are not just eating the food. They're hearing first-hand from the people who developed the recipes and designed the menus.

For Andor Budai, who owns The Coolinary in downtown Sarasota, it’s an opportunity for him to share a little more about the local food suppliers he uses and his made-from-scratch methods.

He’s got an eclectic menu that’s a cross between American and Hungarian fare. The Coolinary is in a funky, not easily noticed second-floor spot on Main Street just north of South Palm Avenue. The tours help bring in customers who might not have otherwise found the year-old restaurant and gotten to try a little Hungarian goulash, some cauliflower fritters and a bit of goat cheese.

“People seem to really enjoy it,” Budai said. “They get little bites from a couple of our signature dishes. One of the benefits is, of course, that people are coming up with the tour who have never been here before. That’s a big part of it. We’re trying to show everyone that we are here.”

Compressed experiences

Paul LeBlanc had only been in Southwest Florida a few weeks when he signed up for one of the downtown Sarasota tours. He's a first-year snowbird from Nova Scotia who said he likes to eat. Taking the tour was a good way to introduce himself to his new second home and sample a few things he might not normally order.

He described his taste as relatively simple, and the stops at Nancy's BBQ and Salute for barbecue and pasta, respectively, matched what he might normally eat. The trip to The Coolinary was a little more eclectic than what he would typically choose, but that wasn't a bad thing. The Coolinary's almond-crusted goat cheese salad ended up being one of the highlights of the trip for him.

The variety, too, was a big plus. It would have taken him quite a bit more effort and a couple hundred dollars to visit all four stops and sample everything he tried if he'd done it in separate meals out.

"You’d have to got into each one individually for a full meal," Leblanc said. "It would have taken me at least a couple weeks to squeeze in that much information." 

For Spyros Skellas, the head chef and manager of Blu Kouzina on St. Armands, it’s a chance for him to educate the tour guests on Mediterranean cuisine. When they come into his restaurant, he serves a sampling of five or six dishes and speaks about the culture behind them. The Greek way of cooking, he said, is as hospitable as if he was welcoming them into his own home, and that approach blends well with the tour.

The attention from the visits has helped bring some Southwest Florida traffic to the 2-year-old restaurant. Local residents don’t always venture out to St. Armands Circle, and because Sarasota is such a seasonal place, year-round residents are an important side of the market to capture.

Most of the time, Robinson said, even guests who live in this area are introduced to at least one if not more new restaurants on the tours.

“It’s an excellent partnership,” Skellas said. “They introduce the people to us, and we introduce them to the way our food is.”