St. Augustine: Abounding with excellence suiting every taste

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Full moon is the time I’m going back to St. Augustine, even though any time seems the right choice for this romantic Florida city of many moods.

Take your lover or your children. Or both. Go with your in-laws or girlfriends as a getaway.

St. Augustine excellence is so diverse, so abundant and so embracing I think I could take the neighbors with confidence everyone would be contented.

Here’s one reason why. Chocolate. Ask Alice Sutherland for a walkabout, stopping often for chocolate, sometimes paired with port, sometimes with red wine.

Glorious way to explore city restaurants and their lively streets, sublime way to indulge yourself.

Chocolate sea salt brownie with homemade caramel for me at The Tasting Room on Cuna Street where 70 wines are Spanish, from 15 different regions, and the wine cellar houses 350 labels.

Cuisine at this husband-wife owned sensual place is contemporary Spanish, “delicate yet innovative,” Chef-owner Michael Lugo says.

White chocolate smothered my enormous blackberry at the Gourmet Hut and a South African Malbec balanced my tender chocolate caramel bar while Sutherland taught me “Pope Pius V declared chocolate not a food in 1569 so it could be consumed during fasts.”

Find her at St. Augustine City Walks and budget $42 for this five, maybe seven, stops Tour de Chocolate. 2:00 p.m. Thursday – Sunday.

I lingered over my glass of espresso chocolate wine called Cocoa de Vine on the verandah of the Casablanca Inn, gazing at Matanzas Bay, the intracoastal waterway winding from Miami to Maine.

Returned there to spend a few nights. Independent air chambers in the bed pillow mattress, controller to adjust each side.

Hypoallergenic feather bed duvet, 400 thread count sheets, isotonic pillows and mattress cover are all standard, say owner-innkeepers Nancy Cloud and Michael Miles.

They have another inn at the northern end of this intracoastal waterway called Balance Rock in Bar Harbor, Maine. Four Diamond rating there for the last 14 years.

Three choices for your stay in St. Augustine’s Casablanca inn: elegant original 1914 Main House with 10 suites and two rooms is the obvious.

Circle around back and find eight rooms in the Coach House facing brick-paved Charlotte Street.

Or cross Charlotte to stay within the lush, tropical Secret Garden in one of three suites with kitchenettes.

Stroll Charlotte Street to discover the Art Association where galleries are welcoming and abundant, multi media with high standards.

How do you like these early 2013 themes? Figures and Portraits in January, Big Red—abstract and realism in the color red for February, Global Latitudes: places and cultures lost and found on planet Earth in March.

Need another “Here’s why St. Augustine” fact? March 2012 Forbes Magazine declared the city one of the “Top 10 Prettiest Cities” based on natural beauty and a unique identity.

The reason I want to return some full moon is to see that natural beauty from the top of the lighthouse lighted by the moon.

Full moon is when it stays open after sunset and I’m ready to climb the 219 steps with 39 other people for views and hors d’oeuvres.

The identity part will be more evident than usual the next three years as anniversary celebrations abound.

This year is the quincentennial of Florida’s April 1513 discovery by Juan Ponce de Leon. That’s 500 years.

His logbook shows coming ashore near 30 degrees eight minutes between what we know today as St. Augustine and Ponte Vedra.

Becoming is the intriguing notion to me. “Our 500th anniversary is about the discovery by Europeans of what was to become the United States,” says Richard Goldman, executive director of the Visitors & Convention Bureau.

Considering my dinners at Bistro de Leon and at Meehan’s Irish Pub, I’d say St. Augustine has become a culinary destination.

Goldman also sees the city as “authentic, very European too, with the plaza, cathedral and government house including an upper balcony from which proclamations can be read.”

Spring this year is the target for the opening of the Colonial Quarter: living history that’s interactive and immersive too.

Anticipate 16th, 17th and 18th century experiences in at least 50 exhibits and stations including a tavern and a pub.

2015 festivities will celebrate 450 years, recognizing the Sept. 8, 1565 founding of the city as the oldest continuously occupied European settlement in the nation.

All that history interpreted for visitors appears fact-based because Goldman says, “You can’t swing a short-tailed cat and not hit an historian. We are a town of historians.”

Claim some Irish history and choose a meal at Meehan’s Irish Pub & Seafood House.

Fifty Irish whiskies served here and John Meehan seems knowledgeable about every one. Guinness too, served “fresh, extra cold and poured precisely,” Meehan says.

“Irish pubs are all about hospitality,” he says, inviting people to dine on the balcony overlooking Matanzas Bay, in several dining rooms and at the bar surrounded with all those whiskies.

Expect fresh food in this 1914 building; no freezer here. Expect comfort too because the chef describes his dishes as “taking rustic to another level.”

Fits the way I felt about my Beggar’s Purse, a fine variation on what I previously knew as Shepherd’s Pie.

“East African with an Irish twist” is another way owner John Meehan looks at the adaptation of classical French culinary training.

Smoked salmon scallops assured me this Pub is also a seafood house and Meehan says, “Our mahi-mahi is caught offshore, flounder in the local bays and as you can see, shrimp boats are right out front.”

Should brisket be your order, know it will have been braised 14 hours in Guinness. Oh, and your caramelized Bailey’s bread pudding includes fine Jameson’s whiskey that was aged in charcoal barrels, Meehan says.

I was rather happy to be staying next door the night I dined at Meehan’s, a neighbor to the Casablanca Inn.

Walk the other direction another evening on Avenida Menendez paralleling the Bay to experience flavors created by Chef Jean Stephane Poinard, the fifth generation in a family of French chefs.

Bistro de Leon on Cathedral Place transported me to France, presenting the ambience of a neighborhood bistro in Chef’s native town of Lyon.

That means cozy tables where diners become neighbors, often sharing conversation.

That means carefully chosen wines served in carafes on the table. Also means Chef visiting your table, and your neighbor’s, caring how you find the food and sharing his delight in that day’s fresh farmer’s market discoveries.

For me his creations included flounder stuffed with shrimp and spinach, topped with lobster bisque and a brioche covered with an egg poached in red wine.

My fresh salmon carpaccio was marinated in hazelnut oil, Key limes and anise seeds.

Seekers of outstanding cuisine in St. Augustine aren’t the only ones noticing this chef.

The James Beard House Foundation in New York City invited him to prepare a seven-course dinner for 80 guests, and internationally acclaimed Chef Paul Bocuse holding three Michelin stars for 40 consecutive years specifically chose Bistro de Leon for lunch while visiting St. Augustine.

I’d choose Bistro de Leon again too should I be so fortunate to return to St. Augustine.

And I’ll anticipate a sunny day for an eco tour with Zach Kenna who considers the waters here “the most productive on the planet.

“Come to St. Augustine to eat well,” he too believes. “Even the fish feed well in the food chain because of the marshes.”

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