Thank you mangoes, CrossFit, Eat Sarap

For gratitude season, I'm reprising an old JLB tradition.

Thankful season is upon us.

When I wrote restaurant reviews as “Jean Le Boeuf,” I would do a column this time each year about the Southwest Florida restaurants I was thankful for. I tried not to pick the big guys. I tried to highlight the local places doing unique things, things that strengthened the community in palate and spirit.

It’s been almost a year since I accepted a buyout and parted ways with The News-Press and Naples Daily News. It’s been more than two years since I shed the “Jean Le Boeuf” pseudonym. And wow, so much has happened since then. In honor of that time, and of thankful season, and of traditions, I’m dedicating this newsletter to gratitude.

These, in no particular order, are the things I am thankful for in the year of our lord 2023. Please share yours in the comments.

Mangoes

Thank you for being delicious. Thank you for being the fruit that, for so many immigrants, conjures sweet memories of home. And thank you for looking beautiful on a book cover. Keep up the hard work. We’ve got things to do in 2024.

Photo by Phoenix Han on Unsplash

Restaurants

Thank you for existing. Thank you for teaching me how to prep onions and set up a mis and fire chicken fajitas so they reach the table sizzling. Thanks for pushing me to do more. Thanks for letting me love you and criticize you (seriously, you still have so much work to do re: fair wages and tipping, but we can talk about that later). More than anything, thank you for helping me find my voice.

CrossFit 239

I try, perhaps a bit too hard, NOT to be the person who only talks about CrossFit. So please permit me these few sentences. Thank you CF239 for 11 years (!!) of clearing my brain four to six mornings a week with grueling workouts that force me to stop thinking for a handful of brutal, sweaty, blissful minutes. Thanks for helping me fit into my pants most days while still eating like a (former) professional restaurant critic. I see people at other gyms post about their 200th or 500th session. We’re at … what? … 2,288ish? Give or take a vacation or two. I don’t think I’ve done anything else this painful 2,288 times. Thank you?

Writers & editors & readers

Thank you for creating hope. And books. And hope for books like mine. Hope for authors like me.

Family

Thank you. Thanks to the family who gave me life. And thanks to those, related or not, who nurture this life. Thanks for letting me write about you, and for sticking with me knowing that whatever we’re doing now may be fodder for some future essay/memoir/book. That’s love.

—

Restaurant of the Week

I never officially reviewed Eat Sarap in Bonita Springs during my time at The News-Press. I wrote about its opening in 2018, about owner Tess Herbst and the family-style Filipino cooking that’s earned the flea market-based restaurant legions of fans from Miami to Sarasota.

But I never got to gush about it.

Sinigang from Eat Sarap in Bonita Springs

I never had the chance to lavish praise on Mrs. Herbst’s sinigang, which tastes so eerily close to my mother’s, it sends me back in time to the worn, oak breakfast nook where almost all of my childhood meals took place. Back then, I adulterated my mom’s sinigang with soy sauce to mask the sour, hot sauce to cover the bitter, and gobs and gobs of rice — because rice.

Now, at Eat Sarap, I can’t get enough. Perhaps because my mother no longer makes sinigang. Perhaps because Eat Sarap’s is so wonderfully good.

This is true of all the restaurant’s menu. Of the lumpia and laing. The calderata, the adobo, the sisig with its gooey fried egg and even gooier swirls of mayonnaise.

If I could eat that much sugar (that’s a story for another newsletter), the halo halo would be the end of me. Since I can’t, at least not copiously, I’ll settle for the delicate chew of Eat Sarap’s puto. The jiggly, caramelized wobble of its kutsinta.

Did I mention this is all available at stall 9 of the Flamingo Island Flea Market? Down the hall from a teeth-whitening booth; around the corner from a stand selling evil eye windchimes. It is. And if I could be here every Friday, Saturday and Sunday (the only days Eat Sarap and Flamingo Island are open each week), I would be.