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ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT APRIL 7, 2022
YOUROBSERVER.COM
Spencer Fordin
Kaytlin and John Dangaran are giving Bistro a family feel.
Boss Bistro of the
Chef Kaytlin Dangaran learned her craft in trendy Italian kitchens in New York and San Francisco. Now she excels at running Bistro at the Sarasota Art Museum. SPENCER FORDIN A+E EDITOR
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aytlin Dangaran didn’t just build a restaurant from the ground up over the last two years. She’s also raising one of the world’s tiniest sous chefs. Dangaran, the executive chef and general manager of Bistro, has found balance in her life here in Sarasota, where her day includes time not just managing the course of a thriving eatery but also without fail getting in the kitchen and making sure she cooks for her family. It’s a gesture of love for Dangaran, who learned to cook at the side of her mother from an early age. It’s no surprise that her son James, not even 3 years old, insists on his own knives and cutting board in their home kitchen. “My 2-year-old is obsessed with cooking,” says Dangaran. “I had to buy him plastic knives. Like little kid knives. In the mornings, he runs into my room, ‘Mama, crack egg.’ He loves to cut. He asked for steak and eggs this morning. I was like, ‘You are 2 and a half!’”
Bistro, housed in the Sarasota Art Museum, is the project that brought Dangaran to town, completing her cooking odyssey that has taken her across a continent and back. The 36-year-old is a Tampa native and studied foreign affairs and cultural anthropology at Florida State University. She enrolled at the French Culinary Institute in New York after completing her schooling. That was only the beginning of her culinary journey. Dangaran helped open a suite of Italian restaurants in Manhattan — Dell’anima, L’Artusi and L’Apicio — and also spent a couple years learning her craft at trendy hot spot Cotogna in San Francisco. That stop in San Francisco, brief though it was, is notable because it’s where Dangaran met her husband, John, who runs front of house at Bistro. The couple also worked together at a cafe at the Perez Art Museum Miami prior to relocating here, but running Bistro has become a family affair. “We met working together, so it works,” says Kaytlin of their working dynamic. “We found a good medium to make it work, but I don’t think that can work for everyone. The good thing with John is that when it comes to service and running the restaurant, I defer to him. He worked at Quince, which is Michelin starred. He knows what he’s talking SEE BISTRO BOSS, PAGE 2