A Taste of Germany opens on south Siesta

When Tanja Hofmann opened A Taste of Germany in Siesta Key Village in the offseason four years ago, she was concerned the business wouldn’t survive.

This week, the bakery and deli opened in a new location on the south end of Siesta to meet the demand of her ravenous customers.

Hofmann has leased roughly 1,600 square feet of space in the strip center south of the intersection of Midnight Pass Road and Stickney Point Road, where she can accommodate up to 46 patrons. The bakery had seating for 16 in about 900 square feet at its previous spot in the Village.

“We didn’t have enough room for the customers — it was way too small,” Hofmann said. “And then we found this location and we found out a lot of our customers actually come from this side of Siesta Key.”

The bakery serves authentic German pastries, soups, sandwiches and bratwursts. To ensure that everything is as authentic as possible, Hofmann imports all her ingredients from Germany. A lot of her sweets are baked with quark, a kind of fresh cheese used in many German desserts, as opposed to cream cheese, or other heavier American ingredients. 

A Taste of Germany moved in to the former site of a real estate office, while its former space in the Village remains vacant after Hofmann closed the bakery at the end of April.

Though the new location may have less visibility, Hofmann said with ample parking her customers won't have to deal with the headaches of trying to find a vacant space in the Village.

Along with the new space on south Siesta, A Taste of Germany will also debut at the Sarasota Farmers Market Saturday, which moves Hofmann closer to her customers from Lido Key and Longboat Key, if only for one day a week.

Hofmann hasn't scheduled a true grand opening for the Midnight Pass location.

"We had so many customers asking us to open, that we had to hurry to do a soft opening," Hofmann said.