Rudolph's - Sarasota

I don’t think I have ever experienced a restaurant with such fantastic food but with such poor service. Wait staff was very polite but I’m referring to the time that it took for each course of food to come out. The restaurant was far from busy and other patrons were visibly complaining as well as to the length of time it took to get appetizers or main courses. Having said that the food was beautifully presented and tasted great

The Artichoke shareable was the best thing we ate followed by our desert, the Chocolate tort with salted caramel ice cream. The rest of the food was lack luster and felt overpriced for what it was. This included the charred red shrimp in some sort of pea puree and the cauliflower. The place was empty on a Saturday night, hard to know what to make of that. Service was good.

Unfortunately, this restaurant booked two of us for dinner at the same time it was having a special event. The noise level was deafening. The special events group took over the entire restaurant. We managed to find a quieter spot out on the patio. My companion ordered ceviche from the Shareables section of the menu, which came mushed together in a glass--hardly shareable. I ordered a beet and salmon salad, which was really an appetizer portion, not a salad, and therefore overpriced. There is also no parking except for valet. There is text messaging to order the car, by number, but it did not work for either of us. Too bad, but we won 't be going back.

Two hits and a miss For starters I had Grilled Octopus with blanched cherry tomatos, hummus, and harissa...it was one of the best presentations of Octopus I've ever had; moist, tender and perfectly balanced with the acid from teh tomato and the spice and texture from teh hummus and harissa; my wife had teh mushroom risotto with was similarly delicious, rich, flavorful ; however we were disappointed in the numeric crusted Tiel fish special; it was very balls. Tender, ffeh but rather tasteless.

We had a fabulous lunch at Rudolphs. We were never there before. The owner/manager come and talked with us and welcomed us. The food was delicious. The menu had a variety of choices. We appreciated the healthy choices and that the choices did not include sugary foods and desserts, (except for the cinnamon doughnut). We will be back again and again. This is one of our new favorite places.