It was the most caffeinated I’ve ever been, and I hadn’t even tried the latte, yet.
My face was legitimately floating in coffee.
I was already wide-eyed over the Danishes, macarons, croissants and cakes lining the cases at ofKors Bakery in downtown Sarasota. I’d gotten cozy on a sofa and just taken a couple bites of a protein bomb packed with Greek yogurt, chia seeds, pureed fruit and fresh blueberries.
The owner, Marie Korsykov, had promised me a surprise when I walked in the door, and I thought she meant one of the treats in the bakery case.
Oh, I was so delightfully wrong.
We were a few minutes into our conversation about how she had made the move from Ukraine to Florida when her husband, Alex Korsykov, brought me the latte I'd ordered.
I picked it up and found myself staring back at me.
I’d seen baristas craft leaves and hearts from foam before, but never my own picture.
When I asked her through a fit of laughter how she did it, she smiled and said “magic.”
And while the coffee printer they have behind the counter is more technology than magic, there is certainly a spark to downtown Sarasota’s newest bakery.
Now there’s a bold but warming smell that drifts outside the old Bookstore1 onto Main Street that wasn’t there just a few weeks ago.
The Korsykovs are Slavic but they consider their bakery European. That won’t keep them from serving desserts, like honey cake, that come from their homeland, but they’re strong lineup of macarons, cakes, eclairs and croissants hail from other parts of the Continent. If you’re a little more adventurous, they can make a pastry topped with savory chicken or a traditional Swedish sandwich cake with cream cheese frosting and salmon.
Alex Korsykov comes from a bakery family, and his brothers and sisters still run a chain of about 30 of them in Ukraine. The Korsykovs moved here four years ago with plans to open a bakery and travel back and forth between here and their country, but with the conflict in Ukraine they decided it was better for their young daughters if they stayed put in Florida.
First they opened K&K Bakery at 13661 Tamiami Trail in North Port, and then turned their attention to Sarasota. OfKors Bakery marks their second location, and a third, known as ofKors Donuts, is in the works at The Landings Shopping Center.
They use predominantly organic ingredients, and they bake from scratch in small batches. He’s in the kitchen at 4 each morning, mixing and rolling for when the doors open at 8 a.m. but the work doesn’t stop then. OfKors has an open-view kitchen, and customers can see exactly where that bold but warm smell comes from.
That’s important, Marie Korsykov told me. They want their customers to see what makes their product special, and they want them to feel special when they eat it.
It’s why they have a machine that prints with coffee extract on top of latte foam, and it's why she puts so much energy into picking her ingredients.
“Of course,” I said, as I drank the last bit of that latte and packed my things up to head back to the newsroom.
And she smiled again and gestured to the sign on the wall as we said goodbye.
“Yes, ofKors.”
Maggie Menderski, the Herald-Tribune's retail and tourism reporter, can be reached at 941-361-4951 or maggie.menderski@heraldtribune.com. Follow her on Twitter and Instagram @MaggieMenderski.