In October 2025, local restaurateur Edward Zaki sat in the back corner of Adeline, the heralded small-plate, fine-dining restaurant he co-owned, and thought about what was missing. The restaurant had closed its doors on October 4—there were no customers joining Zaki, who also owns 1592 Wood Fired Kitchen & Cocktails and Lucky 8. Instead, he was flanked by his partners at 1592—including his wife, Mila Aguiar—and business partners Bethany Melendez and Anthony Double. “Adeline felt to me, not necessarily to everyone, but felt to me like a place that was missing warmth,” admits Zaki. “It was missing the little lamp on the table—you didn’t feel like you were here to have an experience other than just enjoying the food. It was purely a culinary experience, where I think a restaurant needs to engage all five senses. If it does not do that, then it’s not a success.” So Zaki and his team got to work. A little over a month—and a lot of elbow grease—later, the team had completely renovated the space, transforming Adeline into Mimi Brasserie and Speakeasy. The 1920s, Prohibition-styled brasserie—a type of casual French restaurant—is Sarasota’s newest social destination, featuring a full restaurant and bar in addition to a “hidden” speakeasy, replete with its own menu of Prohibition-themed cocktails and spirits.

There is a warmth one feels when walking through the doors, but an unexpected one at that. Moody, ambient lighting, ornate wooden furniture, glittering chandeliers and velvet curtains make Mimi feel stuck in time, the type of place where Ernest Hemingway or F. Scott Fitzgerald might stop in for a drink. “We want Mimi to feel like a place where people meet on a regular basis, almost as if it were a social club,” says Zaki. “The cuisine will be new European, with our executive chef Anthony’s flair on it. A lot of it will be French and Portuguese-based, but with our own twist on it.”

“We want it to be a place where you want to be every week,” echoes Melendez, the general manager of Mimi. “Because of the atmosphere and the ambiance, because of the quality of the food and access to the different wine and spirits that we get, we want Mimi to be a comforting place, but also feel like a new experience every time you come in.”

Zaki, Melendez, Double and the rest of the team didn’t hire a contractor or painter to assist with renovations. Just as with the interior, the menu Double has curated includes influences of the owner’s tastes, travels and respective cuisines in every dish. Double and Melendez—who are married—both hail from Texas. Zaki is Greek, but his business partners all hail from Montreal and Aguiar, his wife is Portuguese. “We wanted to pay homage to all of these cities that we love to visit and maybe dining here will pique your interest in traveling there yourself,” says Double. “You always want to have a dining experience where you’re learning as you eat—perhaps you’ll want to go to Lisbon or Montreal after learning what those cities taste like.”  The Portuguese influence comes to life with the cod croquettes, one of the many tasty starters to get the meal on track. Puffy, golden-fried pillows of potato, salted cod, herbs and macerated lemons give what appears to be a simple snack a surprisingly layer of depth. The Lisboa tartar sauce, using dijon mustard and garlic as its base, incorporates the brininess of crushed capers to elevate the entire dish. “Salt cod was traditionally used to preserve the fish back in the old days. It comes in a wooden box, fully salted—if you try to eat it in that form, it’s not great,” says Chef. “You rinse it overnight to get that salt out, mince it up with some potatoes, bind it with an egg and fry it in sunflower oil and it’s delicious.”

The chicken liver mousse, is a silky, elegant affair served atop homemade sourdough, is a labor of love that is well worth it. Made with VSOP cognac, the mouse is earthy, certainly buttery, but with a deceptive sweetness due to the flambe cognac.

Rounding out the entry-level faire are the pomme frites, an experience in and of itself. As any fry aficionado worth their salt can attest, the crispness and constitution of said fries can make or break them. At Mimi, Chef Double achieves a near-perfect level of crunch by first blanching the fries at 300 degrees before freezing them, allowing the fry to reconstitute and then tossing back into the oil bath. The golden-brown slivers are anointed with a dusting of Grana Padano cheese and a touch of beef fat, giving them a rich mouthfeel reminiscent of a steak dinner. Complimenting the pomme frites is a serving of charred onion gravy, adding a scorched, barbeque-esque flavor to the fries. 

Double and Melendez’s Texas roots show up in the fried quail, with potato-mole and honey-thyme butter. The potato mole sauce adds a touch of heat to the delicately battered, sweet meat of the quail. “You can always get a basket of fried chicken and fries and you know that it’s going to be good. Before you even bite into it, you know what’s going to happen,” says Chef Double. “With the quail, you’re biting it in different ways, the legs are leaner, the thighs are a bit juicier. Then you start to dip it into the mole and you get the honey and thyme of the butter and every bit can change.”

The Mimi burger, with two succulent patties parceled together from steak trimmings, is nestled between a homemade brioche bun. A wonderful beefiness exudes from the seared patties, creamy aged gouda and bright, acidic pickles balance out the palate, but the star of the show is the onion mostarda spread across the bottom bun. “Think of it almost as an onion jam, but the base is made with mustard and balsamic vinegar. We’re not going the traditional jam route which just puts the sugars in and uses the pectic, the natural sugar of the onion,” says Chef. “The base of balsamic vinegar reduces and caramelizes into a glaze which we mix with mustard and charred onion jus.”

A brasserie wouldn’t be complete without steak frites and Mimi’s doesn’t disappoint. Juicy ribeye steak is seared to perfection, basted in a bath of garlic and butter, before being smothered in a rich au poivre vert. The “vert” is a nod to the sauce’s use of green peppercorns, which lend a tangier, more aromatic flavor to the sauce. The dish is also a testament to time—the sauce, reduced from beef fat trimmings, stock and tomato paste—takes about seven hours to come together before becoming the creamy pan sauce diners love. 

Round out the meal with the delectable Pecan Maple tart. Topped with a perfectly sweet banana cream, the buttery crust—pate sucree—is filled with gooey, rich maple syrup filling. “Our influences were the maple syrup from Montreal and being from Texas, we wanted to give it some of that Southern charm, so we thought to incorporate banana cream pie, which is one of our favorite desserts,” says Double. “Bananas and maple make for seamless harmony. We heat the maple syrup until it’s about boiling—it’s called cracking the syrup—which keeps it runny, before adding cinnamon and cardamom to it.”