Sweet Sage Cafe
 St. Pete Beach, Florida     Date of Visit  12/24/13         http://www.sweetsagecafe.com/

We are in FLA for supremely and wonderfully laid back Christmas festivities and while we ate in a good bit, we did get out to a few places during our stay. We snuck out for breakfast and found a little place in North Redington Beach. A bright green place just off the end of the beachfront hotels was doing a pretty brisk business, mostly of the two leg variety. There were some four legged patrons on the patio which ordered from the special “Doggie Menu”.
 

Our server was nice but a bit scattered and over bearing…I probably know way more about him than I needed to but he seemed genuinely excited about the place and its patrons.

There is a small shop attached to the restaurant with all sorts of knick-knacks, which are also strewn throughout the dining area. There was a sign out front which touted their freshly squeezed tangerine juice. I ordered a glass and expected one of those little plastic cups you get in old hotels. Instead they delivered a large mug of tart n sweet juice freshly pressed. It was scrumptious. We ordered a couple of breakfast dishes.

Steph ordered crepes. Stuffed with an orange zest scented blend of ricotta and cream cheeses the thin cakes were just sweet. You could add some of the whipped cream or the cinnamon sugar on top to boost the sweetness to your liking. She ordered a combo of banana, strawberry and pecan topping. The strawberries are much better in Florida than they are in Ohio this time of year.
 

The menu also has a number of eggs benedict variations. There was a special listed in the front of the menu the Sweet Sage Benedict with their special ingredient creamy scrambled eggs and ham loaded into potato skins. The whole mess is then covered with hollandaise. It wasn’t bad but the ham didn’t have the saltiness and the hollandaise was mostly butter with very little lemon or cayenne, the eggs were creamy but needed seasoning…it was a great basis for a dish but it fell flat overall. The breakfast potatoes were a nice side with fluffy interior and crusty skin. Much improved seasoning made them stand out against the rest of the plate. Finally, I don’t much care for grits up north, I’ve only enjoyed them twice, once from one of my culinary instructors and once from one of my line cooks in Arizona. Sweet Sage’s Grits were about as bland and uninteresting as the Benedict…juice and taters were definitely the way to go. Fun kitschy place, could use a little refinement and seasoning, overall, not bad. If we had brought the dogs they might have raised the scores.