Our Tiramisu Story
  The short version is we won First place for best dessert at the Florida Restaurant Association's 2001 Taste of the Taste, the food competition held before the Taste of Sarasota event.

Now for the longer version
If you know me, you know that besides being a chef, I enjoy food research. I get to a final recipe through research. I have over a thousand cookbooks and, of course, I use the net.
I lock onto a recipe and read dozens and dozens of opinions.
I refine, add, subtract and finally come up with a recipe to try.
I rework that and finally I have my recipe for the item.
Some restaurants use hype about grandmother's recipe for this or that. I have my doubts. In my case granny couldn't cook a lick.
Tiramisu is one of the many things that I've worked on and I think mine is as good as it gets. By the way, so did the judges at the competition.
I cut no corners and use first class ingredients to achieve first class results. I really believe this to be the best.
So, with that in mind, I decided to enter it in the competition.
The judging is based on presentation, creativity and, of course, taste.
I felt pretty good about my Tiramisu, that is until I saw the other desserts being offered to the judges.
They were, to say the least, elaborate. The fellow from the Ritz-Carlton with Pastry Chef printed on his jacket and two assistants in tow added to my building depression.
An oriental restaurant was submitting something that defied gravity. Another looked as if micro surgeons had a hand in its creation.
I looked at my presentation piece and seven plates for the judges and thought next year I have to get fancy. This is pathetic.
So for presentation I got zip and for creatively another zip. How did I beat 31 restaurants and their creations?
Taste, it all came down to pretty is no match for taste.

So, Five years later on July 19, 2006 an article in the Sarasota Herald Tribune headlines "Save room for Marie's Tiramisu"
That didn't take long.
The article said some nice things about other menu items, but here's the tiramisu part.
It does exist.
There is a great tiramisu at a Florida restaurant. After first tasting the Italian dessert in New York City's Little Italy a decade ago, I've been on a quest to find a decent version closer to home.
The task was accomplished on a recent weekday night, when I placed a takeout order from Marie's Italian Kitchen.
I didn't expect it to be good. Too many dinners in the past few years have ended with a mass-produced, dry yellow cake topped with coffee-laced cream that is often filled with nondairy whipped topping rather then the delicate mascarpone cheese that the dish calls for.
But when I took a peek inside it's foam container while unpacking my bags, I knew this tiramisu would be different. Thin, coffee-laced spongy layers, alternated with pale creamy cheese, topped with a dusting of coca. It certainly looked right.
And it was. One bite took me back to that freezing March night in New York City, when I took refuge in an empty restaurant for the heat and some espresso and wound up trying the dessert the proprietor recommended.
It was the best thing I had ever tasted, and so is Marie's. The cakey layers (often created by softening ladyfingers in espresso) were incredibly moist and balanced by the oh-so-creamy texture of the mascarpone cheese. The espresso flavor enhances but does not overpower the mild flavor of the mascarpone.    Leigh Caldwell, SHT