French Connection
The quiet wisdom of Sage Cafe
by Pamela Robin Brandt
as featured in Spring 2007 issue
of Dining Out Magazine

What motivates a French food fanatic? Is it those Michelin stars, the traipsing from one celebrated restaurant to the next? Or is it something more humble? Is it the chance to stumble across that
quiet neighborhood bistro, a little gem tucked away from the spotlight?

Sage French-American Café lives in a nondescript  mall along US 1. It’s the kind of stealth restaurant you discover through word of mouth. In fact, the majority of Sage’s customers seem to be regulars, a testament to the café’s attention to things that really count—food, service and consistency. “I’ve been coming at least once a week for the past two years,” says Stephen Picardi, a local computer entrepreneur. “Before some friends of friends told me, I’d never heard of it. It’s this town’s best kept secret.”

Behind every quaint bistro, there’s a charming and hands-on proprietor. Meet Laurent Tasic, chef and owner at Sage, a man whose kitchen experience began early. Born in Croatia, Tasic spent his first eight years on his grandmother’s farm near Trieste, after his parents were forced to flee from then-communist Yugoslavia to France. “I remember the wood fire where my grandmother made bread, rubbing the whole crust with honey,” says Tasic. “We made white wine from our own vineyards—apple cider, slivovitz [plum brandy], everything.”

Once Tasic was smuggled out of Slovenia, he put
in more kitchen time at his mother’s small bed and breakfast in Grenoble. Even then, he had no plans to become a chef. After graduating with a
degree in industrial architecture, he spent only “about six months ... maybe three” on the job before he began moonlighting at a local café.

For the next half-dozen years, the restless prodigy
grew to accept his calling, with increasingly prestigious posts at restaurants like the Hôtel Negresco in Nice. Despite a certificate from Lesdiguières, L’École Hôtelière and a short stint at Cordon Bleu, the chef describes himself as mostly self-trained. His lack of formal culinary schooling appears to have been little obstacle.

At age 24, Tasic’s work as chef at Pavilion des Princes, the terrace restaurant in Paris’s Bois de Boulogne, got him noticed. Paris Match listed him as a future Bocuse, along with such notables as Alain Passard, Guy Savoie, and Bernard Loiseau. These famed purveyors of trendy nouvelle cuisines all went on to earn three Michelin stars.

But Tasic does things a bit differently. He put in a year or two running the restaurant of a rural equestrian retreat in Coulommier, outside of Paris, where he eschewed the nouvelle for classic country French cuisine. Over a wood fire reminiscent of his grandmother’s, he recalls, “I would cook a whole suckling pig on a spit. I did traditional dishes like daube de boeuf. I made my own pâtés and terrines.”

Tasic also spent a winter defrosting frozen pipes, and growing terminally dismayed with France’s fickle weather. Instead of Michelin stars, Tasic opted for Martinique, where his next restaurant was a super-swank hotspot frequented by regulars like Jackie Onassis. “There were no prices on the menu,” he laughs. “These customers would pay whatever I said.”

Between those glam days and 1998, when he took over Sage, Tasic ran numerous restaurant ventures worldwide, ranging from the popular Studio One in Ft. Lauderdale to The Texan, a Tex-Mex hangout in Monte Carlo frequented by, among other glitterati, members of Monaco’s royal family. But these days, Tasic has largely left behind wandering and the star-studded life, including its sky’s-the-limit prices. The vast majority of the entrées at Sage are priced under $20.

What remains constant throughout this storied history is Tasic’s consistent repertoire of French country specialties. He still makes his own pâtés. He still does a complex, wine-rich, orange zest-spiked daube. (For pot roast lovers, this is the ultimate beef/mushroom casserole.) For fish fans, there’s bourride, Normandy’s sinfully creamy seafood stew, lightened and brightened with white wine and lemon. And there’s his current crowd favorite—duck, served as either a medium-rare grilled magret, or roasted crisp with raspberry-honey sauce. Last year, according to Tasic’s books, he sold more than 11,000 of the succulent birds.

“As a serious amateur cook, I love that his dishes are nothing I could make myself. But nothing is pretentious, either,” says Mary Hardy, an Oakland Park resident who counts herself and husband Tom as Sage regulars. “He makes bouillabaisse, he makes American meatloaf. I have friends who drive up from Miami when he barbecues ribs.”The hyphen in Sage French-American Café isn’t just lip service.

“I think it also means a lot to people that he and his wife are always there,” adds Picardi. “He’ll always say hi and have a glass of wine with you. It’s not just regulars who get treated like regulars—everyone does.” In fact, Tasic is so far from the Michelin-star mentality these days that when the James Beard House honored him several years ago with an invitation to cook, he said no. “There are two ways you can succeed as a chef,” says Tasic. “Youcan be a star, fly all over the place to be on TV, have an empire of restaurants. Or you can have one business and be there all the time, so people know who’s cooking.”

Tasic’s hands-on approach is comprehensive. He maintains a well-priced, thoughtful wine list, and he receives the daily—sometimes twice daily— deliveries of fresh fish. His touch even extends to Sage’s décor. Drawing on that old design school background, the chef transformed the former Sage from shag-carpeted suburbia to an inviting, tasteful, rustic bistro, all by himself. And though he still caters meals for Team McLaren during Monaco’s Grand Prix, Tasic says he plans to stick around US 1. “I don’t want a jet. What I want is to make people come back.”