Restaurant news: Downtown Sarasota s Bijou Cafe sold to Sage owner
The restaurant group says it plans to continue normal operations at Bijou Cafe.
After 35 years, one of downtown Sarasota s longest-running dining establishments has been sold to a restaurant group that owns another popular downtown spot.
The Bijou Café has been sold to the Realm Restaurant Group represented by Sharon Carole, which also owns and operates Sage, according to a statement. Bijou Café had operated since 1986 under chef Jean-Pierre J.P. Knaggs and his wife Shay, who plan to retire with the transfer of ownership completed.
“I was so happy to sell to Sharon because I know she will continue it,” Knaggs said in the statement. “It’s like having a wonderful antique car and someone buys it who loves it. You know it will be well taken care of.”
Mary Jane Whitaker
Among the first of these was Mary Jane Whitaker, wife of William Whitaker, Sarasota’s first pioneer settler.
As gutsy as she was small she stood in at 5 feet tall the diminutive Mary Jane was fearless. Besides contending with the hardships inherent in surviving life on the frontier, she faced danger from marauding Seminole Indians who burned her Yellow Bluffs home down in a raid.
Later, she went toe-to-toe with Union soldiers during the Civil War who threatened to burn her second home down. Legend has it that Mary Jane handed the officer in charge a match, saying, “I want to look in the eyes of a man who can stoop so low as to burn the house of a helpless woman and her children.” He and his men rode off leaving the Whitaker home standing.
Before it was formed with dredge, the adjacent area to the north was known as Cedar Point and then called the more attractive sounding Sunset Point, a popular spot for locals and sweethearts to watch the multi-hued skies as the sun went down.
According to Sarasota historian Karl Grismer, early on a short-lived business was started there by Eli Veruki and Andrew X. Alexaky who exported dried fish roe to European markets under the name Gotzago.
There was the Roberts and Stanton boat house with an engine repair shop, and a sawmill was built at Cedar Point which provided lumber for the growth of the newly incorporated small town.
In Sarasota, “Money talks, history walks.” I remember when there was a push to save Sarasota High School, long before Dr. Larry Thompson raised the funds to engineer a fantastic makeover of the Collegiate Gothic school which served generations of locals, myself included.
A group of former students devised a bumper sticker that read, “History Cannot Be Bought.” I still have one. On the sticker attached to my car I crossed the “not” part. Indeed, Sarasota history CAN be bought. And has been often, and for quite some time.
But concurrent with the losses, there have been important saves. In Part 1, I mentioned the Sarasota Opera House, opened in 1926 as the Edwards Theatre, the Sarasota Terrace Hotel, built by Charles Ringling and opened the same year, the Orange Blossom Condominiums, built in 1925. All assets to the community also serving as reminders of our storied past.
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REAL HISTORY: Sarasota s first two luxury hotels Part I: Mira Mar
Andrew McAnsh s Mira Mar Apartments, hotel and casino offered the essential ingredient for Sarasota to be a go-to city.
Jeff LaHurd
This is the first of a 2-part series
No matter how beautiful a Florida community happened to be, visitors would do no more than pass thru without proper lodging to prompt them to stay. In Sarasota, which offered all the essential ingredients to be a go-to city, the lack of first-class accommodations was a glaring deficit.
Enter Andrew McAnsh, a Scot by way of Chicago who came for a visit in the early 1920s, just before that eras real estate boom was about to skyrocket.