Chefs prepare elegant food at Sands Pointe

Executive Chef Edward Geyfman walks out from behind the kitchen’s swinging doors and surveys the empty dining room of Sands Pointe, the restaurant inside the hotel at the Longboat Key Club. It is in-between the lunch and dinner services Wednesday, Aug. 10.

Geyfman walks back into the kitchen and checks in with the staff working the frontline and the pantry. With a quick turn to the left and to the right, he winds up in the back kitchen where Chef de Cuisine Aaron Chavaria is chopping up fresh produce: avocados, heirloom tomatoes and Swiss chard. A few other cooks effortlessly work near Chavaria as though the entire preparation of the food is a well-known dance.

Geyfman has been working at the Longboat Key Club for nine-and-a-half years. His job is to make sure that all the restaurants on the property are running smoothly and that the food is up to par. Chavaria has been working at the Key Club for seven months and works exclusively at Sands Pointe.

As the chef de cuisine, Chavaria is in charge of not only his staff, but he is the one who comes up with a new special of the day. The challenge is using only what is in season and available. The Key Club sources produce from 17 local farms throughout the year.

On that day, the special of the day was seared hog snapper with citrus tomato confit, accompanied by baby eggplant and bok choy.

While Chavaria prepares the special of the day, the other cooks on the frontline prepare different sauces, soups and pastas that go along with the daily items on the menu. Blake Halversen, one of the cooks at Sands Pointe, creates an amuse-bouche. The amuse-bouche, a one-bite appetizer, that evening was a pineapple cube marinated in lemon and vanilla simple syrup and topped with a mint chiffonade.

At 5:15 p.m., the kitchen and wait staff make their way to a table in the back of the restaurant to view the special of the day and the amuse-bouche. Halversen and Chavaria take turns telling the wait staff what they will be serving to the customers that evening. After the presentation, the servers and cooks head back into the kitchen to taste the special themselves.

Soon, customers show up for dinner and enjoy the amuse-bouche while they look over the menu and listen to the special of the day.

By the numbers
The following are food facts for the Longboat Key Club each week during season.

150 — Number of customers per night at Sands Pointe
12 — Number of varieties of fish served property-wide
8 — Number of restaurants at the Key Club
700 — Pounds of produce used per week property-wide
100 — Pounds of fresh tomatoes used for pizza
300 — Pounds of shrimp
30 — Pounds of watercress
100 — Pounds of mozzarella balls
200 — Pounds of pizza dough
50 — Pounds of fingerling potatoes