The Saboscrivner

West Tampa Sandwich Shop (Tampa)

West Tampa Sandwich Shop (https://www.westtampasandwichshoprestaurant.com/) is a casual and humble Cuban restaurant on Armenia Avenue in Tampa, not too far from historic Ybor City. I was passing through Tampa a few months back, so I decided to stop there for a late lunch instead of going to my old favorite Alessi Bakery. Unfortunately, I arrived at 2:40 PM and didn’t realize the restaurant closes at 3:00. I never want to be “that guy” who shows up right before a place closes and demands to still be served, but they told me it would be okay. As a result, I wolfed down my meal and didn’t enjoy it as much as I would have if I was unrushed, but that’s my fault for bad timing, not theirs.

The first thing they brought out to me was an order of sweet, sticky, lightly caramelized maduros (ripe plantains), which are one of my lifelong favorite foods. It was a sweltering day, and I had soaked through my clothes just driving around, so I treated myself to a rare and refreshing Jupiña pineapple soda, created in Cuba in 1905 and available at most Cuban restaurants I’ve been to throughout Florida (and also at Publix and Key Foods/Bravo supermarkets).

I am always excited to find Cuban frita burgers on any menu. These are a standard in Miami, and the gold standard is available at Little Havana’s iconic Cuban diner El Rey De Las Fritas. (Cuban pizzeria Polo Norte makes one too.) Here in Orlando, I only know one place that serves a frita burger, Black Bean Deli, and they have an almost “elevated,” gourmet take on it. (I love their version!) I couldn’t resist trying the frita burger at West Tampa Sandwich shop, and it was interesting to notice the little differences.

Most frita burger patties are a blend of ground beef and chorizo sausage, and sometimes ground pork is included as well. West Tampa Sandwich Shop uses a blend of all three. They are topped with freshly fried, julienned potato sticks, which are so crispy and salty. Unlike the other places I’ve had fritas, this place used the pre-made kind that usually come in a yellow cylindrical can (think of a Pringles can). The other fritas I’ve had were topped with cheese, onions, and a red sauce that looks like ketchup, smells like ketchup, but brother, it ain’t ketchup. Instead of those toppings, West Tampa went with mayonnaise, shredded lettuce, and sliced tomatoes. I liked these additions but missed the melty cheese, onions, and red sauce. I would have even welcomed ketchup, but like I said, I was rushing through this meal like I was trying to win a prize for finishing fast. Note that the regular white hamburger bun was pressed flat on the plancha, until it was crispy, like how they serve Cuban sandwiches. El Rey De Las Fritas in Miami and Black Bean Deli in Orlando don’t serve their fritas this way either, but I am always fascinated by regional differences, especially with Cuban food in Tampa versus Miami.

I also ordered a Cuban sandwich to take a few bites while it was still hot, then asked for a bag to wrap it up to go, so these patient people could get on with their afternoons. This Cubano included standard thin-sliced sweet ham, roast pork, Swiss cheese, yellow mustard, pickles, and the Tampa-specific addition of Genoa salami (from when Cubans and Italians worked together in the cigar factories of Ybor City). They also added mayo, shredded lettuce, and tomatoes, which I don’t think those are Tampa-specific ingredients like the salami, since I’ve had more traditional Cubanos without lettuce and tomato at Alessi Bakery, La Segunda Centra Bakery, and the legendary Columbia Restaurant, all Ybor City icons. Oh yeah, one more thing — this was actually their honey Cuban, so I think they squirted honey onto the outside surface of the Cuban bread when it was pressed, giving it a very slightly sticky feel. This “honey Cuban” was served to President Obama when he visited West Tampa Sandwich Shop, and I figured if it was good enough for him, I might as well try it that way too. The honey didn’t add a lot of sweetness, but it was definitely sticky to hold. Maybe the sweet honey flavor got lost in the mix, since this version of a Cubano already had a lot going on.

I still give the edge for superior Cuban sandwiches to Sanguich in Miami and South Florida mainstay Vicky Bakery here in Orlando, but I am always delighted to get Genoa salami in my Tampa Cubanos (and you will never get that in South Florida or Orlando).

West Tampa Sandwich shop is decidedly unflashy, inside and out. The food I tried was delicious, and I know it is well-loved and respected by Cuban food aficionados. I don’t know when or if I’ll ever make it back, but if I do, I would make it a point to arrive earlier and take in a more leisurely meal. They even serve breakfast, and they have a full menu of Cuban entrees, not just sandwiches. It was too hot for a heavy dish of meat, rice, and beans, plus, like I said, I was forced to eat and run due to terrible Tampa traffic and my own poor timing. I definitely won’t do that again!

Sideward Brewing

Sideward Brewing (https://sidewardbrewing.com/) is a brewery-restaurant on the corner of Bumby Avenue and Robinson Street in Orlando’s Milk District. It shares a building with Stasio’s Italian Deli and Market, one of my favorite places to eat in the entire city, and the two casual eateries share an insanely tight and crowded parking lot as well.

My dozens of readers may remember that my wife and I don’t drink, but I’ve been wanting to try the food at Sideward Brewing for years. Everything is scratch-made in house, and I have cool, trusted friends who are regulars who rave about it. They also brew and can their own house-made root beer, and that was the final nudge we needed to make it over there on a recent Sunday in the late afternoon, before it closed at 6 PM. Sunday is the optimal day to go there, since Stasio’s is closed, and the parking lot won’t be as hectic and dangerous as it usually is. Seriously, I’d rather brave the Trader Joe’s/Shake Shack parking lot in Winter Park than the Stasio’s/Sideward parking lot on a Saturday.

Sideward has indoor and outdoor tables, and they all have wooden chairs. The outdoor area is covered, and the tables are four-tops, nicely spaced out. The indoor tables are long, with eight seats at each. We sat indoors, the only two people at our long table. It is a family-friendly place, and plenty of people brought little kids and dogs that were all quiet and well-behaved. You order your food and beer at the counter, and they have a cooler full of canned beers to go. They even have a house merlot, for anyone who prefers wine to beer.

We each started with a house-made Riff & Milo root beer, which is named after two dogs who I’m sure are the best boys. The cans are $5 each, but they are 16 ounces, the equivalent of a pint. I didn’t think twice about paying that price for getting to try a pint of a whole new root beer, to say nothing of supporting a local establishment. The ingredients included cane sugar, brown sugar, honey, vanilla, and natural and artificial flavors. We both thought there was a strong wintergreen taste to this root beer, so I wouldn’t be surprised if wintergreen extract is one of those flavors.

I’m sure their beers are tasty and the highest quality as well.

My wife loves boiled peanuts (which I call “bald peanuts” to fit in in the South), and I can’t think of any other restaurants in Orlando that serve them. She got a nice-sized serving of steaming hot “traditional” bald peanuts, but you can also request them with Korean BBQ, buffalo, sweet heat, Nashville spice, or spicy jalapeno seasoning. She hates anything spicy, so traditional was the safest way to go.

I appreciated that they included two cups — one for the bald peanuts and one for discarded shells.

We both love a good soft pretzel, so we shared an order of two soft pretzels, which were fluffy with lightly crispy, crackly exteriors and a light dusting of crunchy salt crystals, and so, so buttery. They were like the Auntie Anne’s pretzels I love, that I only treat myself to when I’m at an airport and my flight is delayed, but better. In fact, I would argue that this is the best pretzel in the Orlando area. Yes, even better than the big one at Hollerbach’s German Restaurant in Sanford. I said what I said! Take my word for it: there are definitely two in there. The second one is underneath the top one.

The pretzels were served with a grainy sweet mustard called Punks mustard (I’m assuming it was made with Sideward’s Punks in the Waiting Room lager), warm and gooey beer cheese (excellent), and wonderful pimento cheese topped with some thin-sliced pickled peppers. I loved both cheese dips, but these pretzels are so good that they don’t even need any accoutrements.

A muffuletta is one of my favorite sandwiches, and I was excited to try Sideward’s version. A muffuletta is a classic New Orleans Italian sandwich that originated at the Central Grocery on Decatur Street in the French Quarter. I’ve been lucky enough to have the real deal there a few times, but I haven’t been back to New Orleans since 2001. Sideward’s muff isn’t served on the same huge, round loaf of French bread topped with sesame seeds, but the salami, mortadella, capicola, provolone cheese, and olive tapenade came on fluffy focaccia bread. While some places serve a hot muff, I prefer mine chilled, as Central Grocery does theirs. Luckily, Sideward’s muff is tangy, salty, and cool. By the way, the olive salad is usually a combination of olives (green, black, sometimes kalamata), pickled giardiniera vegetables, onions, carrots, celery, and hot peppers chopped up and mixed with herbs and olive oil. You can buy the Central Grocery’s own olive salad expensively, but it is easy to make your own, especially if you start out with a jar of giardiniera. I love it on multiple kinds of sandwiches.

My wife ordered a caprese sandwich that she was kind enough to share with me. It was delicious! As good as the muff, if not better. It included house-made pesto, fresh mozzarella, roasted grape tomatoes, roasted red peppers, and balsamic-dressed arugula on a ciabatta roll that looked and tasted very fresh, with a crackly exterior crust. Usually I’m disappointed in ciabatta compared to focaccia, a nice crusty semolina roll, or even a soft hoagie roll. Many of them are difficult to tear with your teeth due to a hard and chewy outer crust, but this might have been the nicest ciabatta I’ve ever had. My wife absolutely does not share my sandwich obsession, but she appreciates a good caprese salad or sandwich (especially when I pick out the tomatoes for her, as I did here). She was really gung-ho about this one, and I was so glad she was in a sharing mood. It was perfect in every way!

I got cool, creamy, refreshing Gram’s potato-egg salad as a side, and it did not disappoint. I am convinced that hard-boiled eggs make any potato salad better.

Sideward serves a beautiful-looking breakfast burrito on Sundays from the time it opens at 11 AM, but we were too late for that. It didn’t matter, since we had plenty to choose from and enjoyed everything.

I’ve been wanting to return to Sideward Brewing for another meal, but haven’t had a chance, and I really wanted to get this review out there. I keep thinking about those pretzels and how comforting they would be in this unseasonably chilly weather, especially with all those accoutrements. I highly recommend them, along with the root beer and both sandwiches we tried. Yes, even sharing a wall and a (stressful) parking lot with Stasio’s, home of my favorite sandwich in all of Orlando (the namesake Stasio Italian sub), I would still consider Sideward’s muffuletta and caprese to be destination-worthy sandwiches. And if you like beer, I always hear it is one of the best breweries in Orlando. Check it out! And if you’ve already checked it out, what is your regular food order, and what beers do you recommend?

Cafe De Wan

Cafe De Wan (https://www.instagram.com/cafedewan_/) is a brand-new Turkish restaurant that just opened a few weeks ago in Casselberry. My wife and I love Turkish food, and we are still sad about Beyti Mediterranean Grill closing during the pandemic, only a year or so after it opened in our neighborhood. We really like Sourdough Bread House, another Turkish cafe in Casselberry, but Cafe De Wan is even closer, with more savory dishes on its menu. But like Sourdough Bread House, just five minutes north on Semoran Boulevard, Cafe De Wan serves an awe-inspiring Turkish breakfast feast.

We started with a spinach and onion borek (left), a flaky pastry filled with seasoned, sauteed (what else?) spinach and onions. On the right is a “Turkish pastry” that was very dense and barely sweet. These arrived at our table sliced up. They were sold separately (not part of the Turkish breakfast), but we were happy to have them, due to so many spreads and dips that were about to arrive.

The Turkish breakfast “plate” (which actually includes many plates) comes with a pot of steaming hot black tea. I am not a big tea drinker, but this was delicious, especially after adding a few sugar cubes and waiting for it to cool. I surprised myself by how much I enjoyed this tea.

Well, here we go! We first received a wooden platter with walnuts, almonds, golden raisins, grapes, orange slices, very nice green and black olives (both kinds had pits), English cucumbers, grape tomatoes, and mixed greens topped with three different kinds of cheese. The top dishes were fig jam, creamy tahini with pekmez, or grape molasses, swirled into it (not date syrup, as I originally thought), and what I thought was ajvar, a thick dip of roasted red peppers blended with garlic and olive oil, topped with a walnut. (Ajvar wasn’t listed elsewhere on the menu, but I’ve had it in jars a few times, and this was more like ajvar than any version of ezme, a spicy Turkish salsa, that I’ve ever tried.) I devoured the fig jam and ajvar, and my wife was crazy for the tahini with pekmez. A reader informed me that the combination is like Turkish peanut butter and jelly, which makes all the sense in the world. Thank you, Ipek! At the bottom, there was Nutella, that chocolatey hazelnut spread that is beloved around the world, and thick honey with decadent clotted cream in it.

The Turkish breakfast plate came with two pieces of this fantastic Turkish bread, which we both liked more than the Turkish pastry above. It was so fluffy!

This plate was menemen, a dish of scrambled eggs mixed with sauteed peppers and tomatoes and topped with a bit of cheese. I devoured the menemen since my wife didn’t want anything to do with it, so that worked out.

The Turkish breakfast plate came with yet another plate with a plain egg, fried over easy with a runny yolk. She ate that egg, and I did not get a picture of it, but I’m sure you are envisioning it in your head right now. This was so much food for $25, but we weren’t even done!

Just like I have go-to dishes that I will order anywhere (Italian subs, onion rings, chili, macaroni salad), my wife is like that with baba ghanoush, the Middle Eastern dip of roasted eggplant blended with tahini, olive oil, and garlic. We were disappointed by another new restaurant’s baba ghanoush recently, one that tasted like straight-up tahini, lacking that smoky flavor that comes from roasting the eggplants, so we were hoping for the best with Cafe De Wan’s version. It was stupendous, and the smoky flavor came through first and foremost. That’s another cured black olive on top.

The baba ghanoush came with yet another type of bread for dipping, this time pretty standard (store-bought?) soft pita bread wedges. I left most of the baba ghanoush for my wife, the true aficionado, but I used the pita for dipping in everything else on the table.

This was the lahmacun combo, one of my favorite dishes at any Turkish restaurant, which I order everywhere and have even made from scratch at home. It looks like a pizza without cheese, but it is a flatbread topped with seasoned ground lamb, onions, tomatoes, peppers, herbs, and spices, baked until crispy. Instead of cutting it into slices, you essentially put a salad on top of it (usually sliced tomatoes, onions, and flat-leaf parsley — not cilantro!), squeeze on some lemon juice, and roll it up to eat like a wrap. It is so good, and this was one of the better lahmacuns I’ve tried anywhere. It was definitely the crispiest and thinnest!

This was the “dip sauce” that came with the lahmacun combo. It was kind of like toum, a creamy, garlicky dip with the consistency of hummus. It was great, especially with so many things to dip into it!

In addition to the pot of tea that came with the Turkish breakfast plate(s), my wife ordered a drink called the Crimson Bloom, a combination of hibiscus, cranberry, and clove. She always likes jamaica (hibiscus) aguas frescas at Mexican restaurants, so this was a big hit with her. It also sounds like a superhero, or possibly a villain. The white drink is homemade ayran, a yogurt drink similar to Indian lassi, but this was tangy and sour, rather than sweet like lassi. I would not have ordered it, but it came with the lahmacun combo, which was a pleasant surprise. I wasn’t really into it, but my wife enjoyed it, so that worked out well. Next time (and there absolutely will be a next time), I’ll try Cafe De Wan’s mint lemonade. It is the same price as the ayran ($3.99), so I wonder if they would consider substituting it in the future. I would definitely get that lahmacun combo again!

It is my pleasure to welcome Cafe De Wan to our neighborhood. It doesn’t offer all the savory Turkish entrees you would find on the menu at Istanbul Grill or Bosphorous, but it has more of a cafe atmosphere, for lighter meals. That luxurious Turkish breakfast plate (which deserves to be called a feast or a smorgasbord, considering how many individual plates are involved) is a perfect thing for two people on a date to share, and they offer it all day, not just during breakfast hours. Yes, I asked. I am familiar with the concept of “girl dinner” — eating little bits of this and that, and that’s how I eat many of my meals at home, usually standing up in my kitchen so I’m not away from work for too long. If you like “girl dinner,” you’ll go gaga for the Turkish breakfast plate. My only concern (and it is a small one) is that they didn’t have any of the small plastic ramekin-style containers with lids to take home small amounts of different things, but that’s okay. They had larger containers, and we made do.

Believe me, my wife and I got at least four full meals out of everything we ordered, and you may have already noticed that I eat a lot. (I’m going to try to eat less and eat healthier in 2026, though, so wish me luck! I’m gonna need it.) Please give Cafe De Wan a try, because it deserves our support. Unique restaurants like this don’t always thrive or even survive in Casselberry, and I really enjoyed it, so please help them become a dining destination!

Lazy Moon Pizza

Lazy Moon Pizza (https://www.lazymoonpizza.com/) was one of the first pizzerias and “cool” restaurants I discovered when I moved to Orlando in late 2004. The original location opened around that same time, in a small shopping center on University Boulevard and Alafaya Trail, across the street from the massive University of Central Florida in east Orlando. Almost all the businesses in there were locally owned and operated, including Lazy Moon and Mama Millie’s Jamaican Kitchen, which was my first Jamaican restaurant in Orlando.

That original Lazy Moon reminded me of the divey college town establishments I loved back in Gainesville. It wasn’t the least bit corporate-feeling, bright, or shiny. There was a wall covered with stickers, they served pizza by the gigantic slice, and they had a $5 special called “Boxcar Willie,” a slice and a Pabst Blue Ribbon. (It is $7 now, which isn’t too bad compared to how inflation has hit so many other things.) Sadly, that shopping center was demolished several years ago to make way for a high-rise apartment building for college students. The ground floor is full of restaurants, but mostly chains (maybe all chains by the time of this writing).

Luckily, Lazy Moon reopened a few blocks west on University Boulevard, then opened a second location East Colonial Drive in the Mills 50 District (Orlando’s best neighborhood for dining) in late 2016. Most recently, a third location opened in Maitland, closest to me. I recently paid two separate visits to that Maitland location, and they were my first tastes of Lazy Moon’s pizza in close to a decade, back when the Mills 50 location had just opened. I was thrilled to say that the huge slices were as huge and tasty as always, ever since my earliest visits to that dingy dive near UCF 20 years ago.

This was a plain cheese slice I used for a “control”: the basis upon which to evaluate Lazy Moon’s crust, cheese, sauce, and their delicate balance. If a pizzeria can’t produce a good plain cheese slice, all the premium toppings in the world won’t make it a good pizza. Luckily, this was as good a pizza as I remember. Not super-gourmet, which is fine, and similar to a New York-style slice, just a lot larger. It is so thin and crispy, and it doesn’t flop when you pick it up or fold it. And if you’re going to pick it up, you almost have to fold it. My only complaint about Lazy Moon is the thickness of the crust, when they could probably cover more surface area with sauce and cheese. You can see how large it is compared to a normal-sized plate, fork, and knife. That’s the normal slice size!

This was a combination of caramelized onions and roasted red peppers, two of my favorite ingredients in anything: sandwiches, salads, pasta, and definitely pizza.

I noticed Lazy Moon served chili, but maybe they always had, and I was too single-minded to notice. This time, I tried a bowl. I love chili and always have to try it whenever it is on a menu somewhere, since every bowl is different and has its own merits. This was a pretty good, standard red chili with ground beef, kidney beans, tomatoes, and pretty typical chili spices (cumin, paprika, etc.), garnished with shredded cheddar cheese. It was really tasty and savory, but not spicy by any standard. I liked it and recommend it, especially now that we finally have some chilly (chili) weather. In fact, it inspired me to cook a pot of my own chili not that long after. Fear not, vegetarians and vegans, because Lazy Moon also serves a hearty vegetable chili with zucchini, squash, and beans simmered in “mild chili spices.” I haven’t tried it, but you may want to. You can even order giant slices of pizza with either the regular beef chili or the vegetarian chili on them!

On a second visit, I decided to try Lazy Moon’s alternative sauces for their pizza, even though I am usually a tomato sauce purist. This was a plain cheese slice with their tomatoey, smokey, slightly sweet barbecue sauce, just for the heck of it:

And this right here was the main reason I returned, to try their limited-time French onion slice, with broth-simmered caramelized onions, gruyère, asiago, and mozzarella cheese, and finely diced chives over their mustard base sauce. It sounded delicious on this chilly day, and it did not disappoint. It wasn’t drippy or soggy, but held up well and had a nice crisp crunch like all their other slices. I love French onion soup, and I love mustard, but it had never occurred to me to try their mustard-based sauce before. The mustard flavor was extremely subtle, probably more like a Dijon than a bright, overpowering mustard.

Lazy Moon makes much of their Cuban sandwich-inspired pizza, with ham, mojo criollo-marinated pork, dill pickles, and mozzarella over that mustard sauce, but I’ve never tried that one. I like Cuban sandwiches and I like pizza, but it always seemed like kind of a lot. Even though I really do consider myself a pizza purist, and I greatly prefer tomato-based sauces, this French onion slice was a real winner. But I’m publishing this review now because it is only available through “early January” (as per their Facebook post on December 22nd, 2025). So if you are intrigued, get out there ASAP to try it! By the way, the Mills 50 location did not have the French onion slice today (Tuesday, December 30th), but Maitland did, so maybe call your closest Lazy Moon first, before schlepping out to it.

In addition to the tomato, barbecue, and mustard sauces, they also offer pesto and whipped ricotta sauces for their pizza, which both sound good.

While I don’t think Lazy Moon Pizza will win over the most stereotypically loud and proud New Yawk transplants (because those people can’t lower their standards enough to enjoy any local pizza, probably because of dah watah), it is a fine place to get a huge, crispy slice with some interesting toppings and maybe enjoy a beer or cocktail with friends. All three current locations are casual and laid-back, with more modern, welcoming ambience than the ’90s college town dive bar vibes of the original, which I do miss terribly. But I like the new places too, especially the Maitland location. Regardless, don’t let that French onion slice pass you by, since the clock is ticking on it! That and a bowl of chili would be such perfect comfort food on a week like this, here at the end of 2025.

The Saboscrivner’s Top Ten TV Shows of 2025

This year, there were five or six TV shows I absolutely loved, and then a handful more I enjoyed, but didn’t have as strong feelings about. So even though this is (ostensibly) a food blog, I’ve been ranking my favorite shows of the year since 2018, and I’m not about to stop now! Let’s do this.

10. Bosch: Legacy, season 3 (Amazon Prime Video) – This was the final season of an excellent, low-key neo-noir detective show that ran for ten seasons: seven as Bosch, and three as Bosch: Legacy (after title character Harry Bosch quits the LAPD and works as a private detective). While the newer show felt like a way to trim back the cast and cut the budget, I still always enjoyed it, especially since it was filmed on location in Los Angeles and I have started recognizing locations on my L.A. trips. Bosch and Bosch: Legacy never felt like blatant copaganda like so many other “dad shows,” and it helped that Titus Welliver played Bosch with world-weary gravitas and a reassuring hyper-competence and commitment to justice. He always felt like an uncorruptible force for good in a corrupt city, even when faced with corrupt cops. 2025 also brought us a spinoff of a spinoff, Ballard, starring underrated actress Maggie Q as a different kind of LAPD detective specializing in cold cases, with Bosch and some of his supporting characters making guest appearances. Ballard got off to a strong start as well, and I’m glad we haven’t seen the last of the Boschverse.

9. Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, season 3 (Paramount+) – This season didn’t dazzle me as much as the previous two, but it remains my favorite Star Trek series of all time, with my favorite fictional boss of all time, Anson Mount as Captain Christopher Pike. As always, this show excels at fun stand-alone gimmick episodes, and Patton Oswalt playing the most literal Vulcan ever was one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen, but this season also delved into some straight-up cosmic horror. I’m so glad we are getting two more seasons of this delightful cast.

8. The Bear, season 4 (Hulu/FX) – I really didn’t care for season 3 of The Bear, and it did not make my Top Ten list last year. It felt like it was wearing out its welcome, treading water with its plot, and relying too heavily on big name guest stars and wacky side characters. Luckily, the producers course-corrected, and this season reminded me why I liked it so much in the first place. I’ve never worked in a restaurant, but I love them with all my heart, and I have nothing but respect for the hard-working, stressed-out people making my food. The Bear captures that love and that stress like nothing else, and it was full of cathartic, feel-good moments that balanced out all the intensity and chaos. If you feel the same way about restaurants and you’ve never seen this show before, what are you waiting for?

7. Plur1bus, season 1 (Apple TV+) – This was a new series from Vince Gilligan, creator of Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, starring one of the best actresses I’ve ever seen, Rhea Seehorn from Better Call Saul. Plur1bus delivered science-fiction, horror, drama, and very dark comedy. It’s about an alien invasion, the end of the world (as we know it), and what one disagreeable woman does to cope, survive, and push back against the inevitable. It’s also about grief, loneliness, and possibly an allegory for humanity’s overreliance on artificial intelligence (but not me, I hate that shit). The story is told slowly and methodically, to the point where entire episodes pass and feel like not much is happening, but every episode leaves you with moral quandaries and thoughts about how you would react in such a situation. It wasn’t always fun or pleasurable to watch, but it was engaging. Gilligan sure knows how to tell a story, and Seehorn is one of our finest actors who deserves praise for this performance. Season 2 is probably years away, and I have no idea where they are planning to go after that finale.

6. Daredevil: Born Again, season 1 (Disney+) – People might be surprised this wasn’t my #1 show, since I am probably the biggest Daredevil fan there is. I was so happy that Marvel Studios revived this show as a continuation of the Netflix series that aired from 2015 to 2017. Despite the Born Again title coming from a mid-’80s Daredevil story by Frank Miller and David Mazzuchelli, this new season was heavily inspired by more recent DD comics written by Charles Soule and Chip Zdarsky. That said, this season moved slowly and seemed disjointed, possibly due to behind-the-scenes drama. Despite the shocking status quo shift of the premiere episode, it felt like pieces were being moved into place to really slug it out in season 2. But I am thrilled that Charlie Cox is back as Matt Murdock and Vincent D’Onofrio is back as Wilson Fisk, now mayor of New York City with his own brutal police force answering only to him, giving the show a real feeling of art imitating life. The two leads even got a memorable “Pacino and DeNiro in Heat” scene in a diner. (And if you don’t realize that there was a movie called Heat with both actors in it, that must have been a really odd sentence to read.) I’m looking forward to the next season of Daredevil: Born Again going harder, to even darker places.

5. Death by Lightning (Netflix) – Maybe the most pleasant surprise of the year for me, a four-episode historical miniseries about the abbreviated presidency of ahead-of-his-time progressive James Garfield (the always-great Michael Shannon), his unscrupulous and unprofessional vice president Chester A. Arthur (the always-great Nick Offerman), and Garfield’s assassin Charles Guiteau (the always-great Matthew MacFadyen, the perfect person to play ambitious strivers and losers). This is a fascinating period of U.S. history that even my high-level history classes mostly skipped over, so I learned new things, and it was much more entertaining and funnier than one might think.

4. Long Story Short, season 1 (Netflix) – Another pleasant surprise, an animated series about a Jewish family that bounced around between multiple decades and points of view, singling out specific moments and showing how people changed over time, for better and for worse. It had so much heart, humanity, and humor, but there was also a strong sense of poignancy and wistfulness to all of it. I related so much, even though my family was never observant. This show introduced me to its creator, Raphael Bob-Waksberg, which led my wife and I to discover his previous animated series, Undone and the awe-inspiring BoJack Horseman, which was one of the funniest and saddest shows I’ve ever seen. Few things have made me laugh harder, but it was also so insightful and spot-on about depression. Long Story Short was great, and I recommend it, but I am so grateful that it led me to belatedly binge BoJack.

3. The Lowdown, season 1 (Hulu/FX) – This felt like one of those rare shows that was made just for me, a neo-noir about a tenacious Tulsa “truthstorian” (not professional enough to consider himself a journalist) investigating the conspiracy behind a wealthy, eccentric, reclusive man’s suicide (or was it?). The mystery aspect of this show was terrific, and there was plenty of humor and local flavor to keep it fun. It is my favorite thing I’ve ever seen Ethan Hawke in, Keith David was great as always, and Kyle MacLachlan continued his streak of playing chilling villains. Best of all, The Lowdown introduced me to its creator, Sterlin Harjo, which led us to belatedly binge his previous show Reservation Dogs, a slice-of-life series about four indigenous teenagers and the other colorful characters on an Oklahoma reservation. I highly recommend both shows. If it helps sell Reservation Dogs, the closest thing I can compare it to is Atlanta, which should come as high praise. Skoden!

2. Andor, season 2 (Disney+) – Probably the most important show of the year, and maybe the best thing to ever come out of the Star Wars universe. Definitely the most mature and sophisticated. I liked the first season of Andor when it aired in 2022, but season 2 improved on it in every way possible. More than ever before, it felt like a product of our time and a necessary panacea for the dread, unease, and lack of hope so many of us have been feeling lately. It was an epic saga about how people can fight fascism, both separately and even more effectively together, and it was full of rousing speeches, daring escapes, and heroic actions. It leads directly into the events of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, and many of my readers already know that movie leads directly into Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, so the events of Andor are pretty important. But I swear, Andor is the perfect show for people who don’t like Star Wars, and you can watch it alone without seeing all the other movies. That’s my solemn promise to the skeptics and haters! It isn’t wacky space hijinks for kids. It’s a story about life and death, authoritarianism and rebellion, media manipulation and how truth can be subverted and perverted, the struggles and sacrifices that freedom requires. It’s about doing what we can when we can, making hard choices, and how small actions of courage and defiance can end up doing exponential amounts of good.

1. The Pitt, season 1 (HBO Max) – This was far and away my favorite show of the year, a medical show about one intense, traumatic 15-hour shift in a busy Pittsburgh hospital emergency room. Despite the stress, danger, blood, and gore, it was a soothing show to watch because it was “competence porn,” focusing on brilliant, skilled, compassionate professionals working as a team to heal patients and save lives, despite being understaffed, underpaid, and underappreciated. While it strains credulity that so many crazy events could happen in one hospital shift, it made for compelling drama, and each new crisis led to more moments of character development where we got to know and care about the doctors and nurses. It was amazingly well done, but it makes sense, because it came from John Wells, the showrunner of ER and The West Wing, and starred ER mainstay Noah Wyle, who spent 15 seasons on ER going from hapless medical student to seasoned attending physician. He plays a completely different character in The Pitt, where he is even more of an experienced, world-weary doctor who has seen it all, but is hampered by PTSD. You might end up with some PTSD of your own after binge-watching season 1 of The Pitt, but it is so worth it, especially with season 2 dropping in January 2026. You won’t regret it. (Also, one of my friends, an actress, showed up as a patient! Congratulations, Julia!) By the way, we loved this show so much that we binge-watched all 15 seasons of ER too. No regrets there either!

Here are all my past lists, because I’m sure all of you care so much what I think about things:

Top Ten TV Shows of 2024
Top Thirteen TV Shows of 2023
Top Fifteen TV Shows of 2022
Top Twenty TV Shows of the Decade (2011-2021)
Top Ten TV Shows of 2021
Top Twenty TV Shows of 2020
Top Twenty TV Shows of 2019
Top Ten Movies of 2019
Top Ten TV Shows of 2018
Top Ten Movies of 2018

Colorado Fondue Company

I live right near the Colorado Fondue Company in Casselberry (https://www.coloradofondue.com/), but I had not been there in close to 15 years, not since I was dating my wife. I do love dipping foods in other foods, so it surprises me that I haven’t come here more to get my dip on. The menu features a variety of cheese and chocolate fondues, meant for sharing and dipping, as well as meats that you cook yourself on heated stones on the table.

It is a beautiful restaurant space, designed to resemble a cozy ski chalet in the Rocky Mountains, so it has an upscale-yet-festive atmosphere that would be perfect for a date or a special occasion dinner. It is even nicer around the holidays, since they put a lot of effort into decorating the place like crazy for Christmas. I get depressed around the holidays like clockwork, and I don’t do any decorating or much celebrating myself, but even I was struck by how nice it was on my most recent visit with two former co-workers, now friends. That’s why I didn’t want to wait any longer to run this review, here on Christmas Eve. If I can inspire even one couple, family, or friend group to dine there together while the Christmas decorations are still up, I will have done my job (that I don’t make a dime for), and those people will have a grand time.

In addition to a la carte options, Colorado Fondue Company offers four separate dinner options, which they call “trails,” keeping the mountain ski lodge theme. You really have to get along well with the people in your party, because each of the trails requires two people per order. I guess one ravenous person could go to town, though.

The Beginner trail is the cheapest, and each person gets to choose their own soup or salad, but they have to agree on the cheese fondue and chocolate fondue for dessert. The Intermediate trail includes the choice of soup or salad, a cheese fondue, and a selection of meats, but no dessert. My party of three went with the Expert trail, so we each got a salad, we agreed on the cheese fondue, we got the meats, and we got a dessert fondue. There is an even pricier Extreme trail with more premium meats, but we were content with the Expert options.

This was the seasonal Holiday Harvest salad that one of my colleagues ordered, with chopped iceberg lettuce, roasted pumpkin seeds, Craisins, crumbled gorgonzola cheese, and sliced apples. The website mentions a bacon balsamic vinaigrette dressing, but this looks more like a ranch dressing.

Another colleague got the Mountain Mix salad, with a blend of “harvest greens” and iceberg lettuce (although that looks like all iceberg to me), a “sesame-nut trail mix blend,” and shredded sharp cheddar cheese with honey Dijon ranch dressing. I do love those crunchy, salty sesame sticks.

For my salad, I chose the Southwest Caesar, with romaine lettuce, toasted croutons, and parmesan Caesar dressing, also anointed with a sweet red pepper coulis. I had to look up coulis on my phone (a thin, pureed sauce made from fruits or vegetables), but they had me at “sweet red pepper.” I stirred it into the salad, and it was a perfectly cromulent Caesar.

We shared more than one basket of these garlic-herb rolls, with crackly exteriors and pillowy soft interiors. They were great for dipping in the cheese fondue and various condiments yet to come.

On my first visit to Colorado Fondue Company with my now-wife, we shared the original cheddar fondue, with sharp aged cheddar and Swiss Emmenthaler cheeses, a beer and bouillon base, garlic, and herbs. This time, with my two colleagues, we shared the bruschetta Jack fondue, with fontina, asiago, and Monterey Jack cheeses, roasted garlic, sun-dried tomatoes, basil pesto, and seasoned toast crumbles on top. It was great.

They brought us a basket of various breads and generic tortilla chips to dip in the fondue. The round slices of pretzel bread were my favorites. They were very similar to the frozen Bavarian pretzels I sometimes buy at Aldi, from the Deutsche Kuche brand (which I pronounce “Douche Cooch”).

The cheese fondue also came with broccoli, sliced carrots, apples, and grapes.

Slainte! L’chayim!

Next, we got two burning hot flat stones and this long platter of raw meat and seafood to cook ourselves. It included (from top to bottom): Pacific white “fusion” shrimp marinated in basil and garlic roasted pesto, coconut milk, and salt and pepper seasoning, Pacific Northwest chicken in a citrus soy marinade with mixed herbs, Colorado lodge sirloin in a teriyaki and soy-infused ginger marinade, filet mignon in roasted garlic pesto, soy sauce, lager beer, and crusted peppercorns, and at the bottom, Jamaican jerk-marinated pork tenderloin.
I don’t have any pictures of the cooked meat, but you know what meat looks like while it’s cooking and when it is cooked. If not, take a peek at similar photos of cooking and cooked meats from my trip to GG Korean BBQ earlier this year. I can tell you that all the meats were very tender except the sirloin, which was chewy. I never order filets, but I was impressed by how tender it was, especially since I like my steak bloody rare.

We also got a fondue pot of boiling hot broth to put the ravioli and potatoes in, and there were already random mushrooms and penne pasta in that broth. I was careful to avoid any mushrooms, my old culinary nemesis.

We got these four sauces for spooning onto our plates to dip: a whipped herbed cream cheese, a creamy red pepper sauce that reminded me of thinner thousand island dressing that wasn’t spicy at all, honey mustard, and savory-sweet teriyaki sauce. Me being me, the Condiment King (with all due respect to DC Comics), I probably paid more attention to these sauces than my dining companions did. But since I wanted to let the meats speak for themselves, I mostly dipped the remaining breads in them.

One of my companions, a brilliant professor and scholar, and one of the kindest people ever, chose our dessert fondue: the Winter Caramel Crunch. It combined milk chocolate, salted caramel, and Irish creme (maybe the actual liqueur, which used to be delicious back when I drank), and was topped with crushed pretzels. I can usually take chocolate or leave it, but it was a very good choice. A real crowd-pleaser, in fact. From the name, I’m guessing it is also seasonal, so try it while you can!

The dessert fondue came with this tray of cream puffs, graham crackers, marshmallows, pretzels, cake pieces, Rice Krispy Treat pieces, sliced bananas, and strawberries. Dipping things in the fondue is always fun, but I ate the strawberries plain, since I like them best that way.

It was really nice catching up with these ladies, since I don’t work with them anymore, and the setting and dinner could not have been better. It would have been pleasant even if we went to some dive, but instead, we had a long, luxurious meal in one of the prettiest restaurants in Seminole County, if not the entire Orlando area.

Seriously, get over there ASAP, before they take down all those Christmas decorations! You won’t be sorry. If you get sentimental and nostalgic at Christmas (and I’m one of the few sad weirdos who doesn’t), you’ll be in holiday heaven. And if you don’t want to splurge too much, you can have a totally nice, light dinner date by just going with the Beginner trail: salads, a cheese fondue you all have to agree upon, and a chocolate fondue you all agree upon, with all the accoutrements, for $16.50 per person. Then you can just focus on dipping and good conversation, without having to cook your own meat.

Grand Central Market (Los Angeles)

Grand Central Market (https://grandcentralmarket.com/) first opened in Downtown Los Angeles in 1917. I can’t imagine the countless changes it went through during its first century, but it is now a culinary destination for Angelenos and tourists alike, with countless delicious options all concentrated in one dreamlike food hall. And there are few things I love as much as exploring and eating my way though a historic food hall in great American cities.

I will note that my adventures at Grand Central Market took place during three separate visits on three separate work trips to the city. I didn’t eat all this food on one trip, I assure you!

On my first visit, I got two tacos from Villa Moreliana, almost like a little snack. I knew they were going to be great, since there were so many different cuts of meat to choose from. I would have loved to try them all, or at least most of them. I can’t think of any taquerias here in Orlando that serve kidney or heart, but if you’re aware of any, let me know, since I would love to try those!

This is their magical, masterful al pastor, marinated pork slowly roasting on a vertical spit called a trompo:

The two tacos I ended up getting from Villa Moreliana were lengua (beef tongue) on the left and al pastor on the right. Both were served on double corn tortillas (made fresh), under a mountain of crispy and tangy pickled onions. The al pastor was masterful, and the lengua wasn’t bad either.

I wasn’t planning to order any pasta on my second visit to Grand Central Market (later in 2023), but once I paused under the neon sign for Knead and checked out all the fresh pastas to choose from, I had to try them for myself.

Here are some of the fresh, handmade pastas at Knead:

Look at that gorgeous squid ink pasta on the right! Goth pasta, I always call it.

But despite the Goth pasta, I chose mafaldine, such a great pasta shape that is hard to find most places. They cooked it up to a perfectly chewy al dente and served it with a trio of meatballs and some bright and fresh-tasting marinara sauce.

I make pasta at home once or twice a month, but even though I buy DeCecco and Rao’s pasta, bronze-cut and imported from Italy, these fresh noodles from Knead hit different.

On my second visit, I also tried Salvadorean food for the first time at Sarita’s Pupuseria, which was briefly featured in the delightful musical film La La Land.

Since it was my first pupusa, I ordered a traditional one that was listed first on the menu: the revuelta, with pork, beans, and cheese. I watched ladies rolling dough into balls, then flattening them out to add fillings, sealing them with more flattened dough, and grilling them to get the nice crispy exterior. I got a small piece of chorizo sausage on the side, as well as an order of platanos fritos, fried plantains that were so molten hot (temperature-wise, not spicy) that they scalded my mouth. The cole slaw-looking side is curtido, pickled cabbage, which is cool and crunchy and tangy, and it came with the pupusa.

Here’s a peek inside the revuelta, to see the pork, beans, and cheese therein.This is still my one and only time trying Salvadoran food. It would be nice to find a pupuseria here in Orlando and compare it to Sarita’s. Any recommendations, folks?

Ghost Sando Shop has expanded to six locations in and around L.A., including the one I visited on my second and third trips to Grand Central Market. On the new cop show Ballard (a spinoff of Bosch, both based on characters by the author Michael Connelly), they referenced Ghost Sando and showed the bag.

All their sandwiches (I hate saying “sandos”) come on these wonderful Dutch crunch rolls, which are large hoagie/sub-style rolls that are soft inside and lightly crispy-crackly on the exterior. Both times I visited Ghost Sand Shop, I got the Uncle Nikki to go, with Genoa salami, pepperoni, capicola, and provolone cheese, topped with lettuce, tomato, red onion, pepperoncini, and mayo, drizzled with house-made Italian dressing and house sub dressing (mad respect for dual dressings!) and sprinkled with Italian herb seasoning.
They wrap their sandwiches up tight, and they travel surprisingly well without leaking. Once I packed one of these bad boys in my backpack and ate it in the Dallas airport during a long nighttime layover home from L.A.

On my third visit to Grand Central Market, in 2024, I made the mistake of going in the evening rather than at lunchtime, and more than half the vendors were closed! Luckily for me, Nonna’s Empanadas was open, so I ordered a variety pack of six different baked empanadas: beef jalapeño, cheeseburger, salsa verde chicken, Filipino chicken, veggie, and samosa veggie (which was vegan). I didn’t eat all six of these in one sitting, believe me! They made great hotel room snacks over the next couple of days.

Here’s the beef jalapeño:

Here’s the cheeseburger:

This was the salsa verde chicken:

So this would have to be the Filipino chicken, with kind of a soy-based adobo thing going on:

Luckily for me, the veggie did not contain mushrooms, but plenty of broccoli, corn, onions, and I believe red bell pepper:

And this was the vegan samosa veggie, with potatoes, peas, and I think some peppers:

Sadly, the Grand Central Market location of Wexler’s Deli closed since my first visit to the market in 2023, along with the Santa Monica location. The only Wexler’s Deli location left is in Las Vegas! But this stacked, hand-sliced pastrami sandwich was the very first meal I EVER ate in Los Angeles.

The pastrami was rich and marbled, the rye bread was solid, the potato salad was creamy and tangy, and Wexler’s used Kosciusko mustard, which I reviewed in my second Cutting the Mustard review. It was a great pastrami sandwich, but I have since learned that Wexler’s smoked fish options were even better. I wish I could have tried them too, but I don’t see myself visiting Las Vegas anytime soon, if ever.

After visiting Wexler’s Deli and Villa Moreliana on my first visit to the Market, I picked up an assortment of eye-catching doughnuts from The Donut Man to bring to work, hoping to make the best possible first impression on my first ever trip to campus. I’m sorry I never got a photo of those doughnuts, but I will never forget the dozens of bees buzzing around The Donut Man stall, and how nonchalant and completely unbothered and unworried the employees seemed. I guess they just get used to the bees, and the bees get used to the people, but I was nervous for them and for myself as well! The Donut Man has been operating in suburban Glendora (which I only know from the Rilo Kiley song) for over 50 years, but opened its stall in Grand Central Market in 2020.

I put off publishing this review because I visited Grand Central Market twice in 2023 (August and November) and once in 2024 (November), and I wasn’t sure when or if I would return. But after waiting all that time, Wexler’s closed, so I decided to run the review and not wait any longer.

I will also say that if you do visit the Market, it is literally across the street from two Los Angeles landmarks that have been featured prominently in some classic movies and television shows, so you should totally play tourist and experience them for yourself.

One is the ornate and timeless Bradbury Building, which opened in 1893 and was featured most prominently in Blade Runner (1982), the legendary sci-fi neo-noir set in a dystopian (but somehow still beautiful) future L.A. It was also used as a location in Bosch, (500) Days of Summer, Lethal Weapon 4, and the Lethal Weapon TV show, which you probably forgot existed — but it was fun! As a tourist, you can only go into the lobby, but I took plenty of photos from down there. Here are but two, to set the scene:

And for only a dollar each way, you can ride Angels Flight Railway, the world’s shortest funicular railway, up and down a hill. Angels Flight has been operating since 1901, and over the last century and a quarter, it has been featured in so many things, including Bosch, the excellent HBO Perry Mason series (and the original series too!), La La Land, and so much more.

I rode the Angels Flight Railway on my second trip to Grand Central Market, after my lunch. There are some beautiful views of DTLA at the top of the hill, along with a beautiful little garden area with tables and chairs and a cool, pleasant breeze blowing through. I will remember to get my order(s) to go whenever I return, since dining up there would beat being crammed onto a stool eating in the busy food hall.

And I absolutely hope to return to Grand Central Market in the future. I love food halls, and while it isn’t as massive and sprawling as Reading Terminal Market in Philadelphia or Pike Place Market in Seattle, it still has a huge variety of restaurant stalls to choose from, and I’ve never been disappointed by anything I’ve tried there. Whether you’re a local or a tourist, you will have a blast exploring and eating your way around the Market. Just try to time your visit for lunch, since I discovered so many of the stalls close early.

Il Pescatore

Il Pescatore (https://ilpescatoreonline.com/) is an old-school Italian restaurant in Orlando’s Milk District, nestled between Vietnamese restaurants Pho Vinh and Pho Hoa on Primrose Drive, directly south of East Colonial Drive. Se7en Bites and Smoke & Donuts BBQ are just past it, too. The Milk District is full of treasured restaurants, and Il Pescatore turned out to be one more. It’s not new, and many Orlando locals probably know it already, but it’s still relatively new to me, okay?

I honestly don’t go out for Italian food very often anymore (excluding pizza and my beloved Italian subs), since I make myself multiple salads a week at home and work wonders with pasta. But my first visit to Il Pescatore two years ago was kind of a treat, and also an emotional milestone, because two valued co-workers and great friends took me to lunch there on my last day of a job I had held for 15 years. Even though I worked close to the Milk District for that many years, I had never gone to Il Pescatore before, because I thought it was a fancy, upscale restaurant, and those are usually not my thing. I was wrong! It was cozy, comfortable, and welcoming, and the food was super-solid.

This was my side salad, with fresh, crunchy iceberg lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, red onions, a bit of shredded red cabbage, and an excellent house-made vinaigrette dressing that really stood out.

One of my colleagues ordered the tri-color salad with romaine lettuce, tomatoes, and fresh mozzarella, topped with the same house dressing.

Another colleague ordered this Greek salad, with mixed greens, feta cheese, kalamata olives, tomatoes, cucumbers, whole pepperoncini peppers, red onions, and that incredible house dressing.

I did not try this funghetti al ‘aglio, mushrooms sautéed in olive oil-based garlic sauce, but my colleagues seemed to really enjoy it.

This was good ol’ bruschetta, a crowd-pleasing classic, with tomatoes, garlic, and herbs tossed in olive oil and served over toasted Italian bread. We all dug into this appetizer and enjoyed it.

This was my colleague’s calzone, which would have been stuffed with ricotta cheese and mozzarella. Like the lasagna, you can’t go wrong with something like this! By the way, Il Pescatore’s red sauce slaps. You can tell they make it fresh in house and aren’t just opening some industrial food service can.

I ordered this baked lasagna from the lunch menu, and while I wish I remembered it better after two years, I’m sure it was great, as anything smothered and baked in red sauce and mozzarella cheese would be. Lasagna is one of my favorite dishes of all time, but I make such an amazing version myself (especially in the winter), I rarely order it at restaurants. Once in a while, I make an exception, and I’m sure I chose wisely here.

This combo sub was definitely mine too: ham, genoa salami, capicola, provolone cheese, shredded iceberg lettuce, tomatoes, and more of that house vinaigrette on a nice, soft roll, served cold. I have a hard time passing up an Italian sub, and while this one wasn’t the biggest or the best of all time, it definitely hit the spot.

I didn’t order the tiramisu, but my colleague/mentor/friend was kind enough to offer me a taste. It’s a wonderful dessert I rarely partake in but always enjoy whenever I do: an architectural marvel of lady finger cookies layered with mascarpone cheese and espresso.

I returned to Il Pescatore this past week with the same two now-former co-workers, along with a third. Of the four of us, only one person is still at the old workplace. I think the world of these people, and I am so glad we have kept in touch. The last time we got together to catch up over a meal, earlier this year, we also ended up at an Italian restaurant, Terralina Crafted Italian at Disney Springs. This time, it was a lot closer to people’s work and home (and for me, they are one in the same).

I ordered an appetizer of fried smelts, hoping to share them with the group, but my one male colleague had one, the two ladies wanted absolutely nothing to do with them, and I enjoyed the rest. I am a huge sardine eater, so finding small fried fish like sardines and smelts at restaurants is a rare treat. Olympia Greek Restaurant used to have good ones, but it closed years ago. These were very good, especially dunked in Il Pescatore’s wonderful red sauce.

My vegetarian colleague ordered this lovely pizza bianco, a white pizza topped with mozzarella and ricotta cheeses, sliced tomatoes, crushed garlic, and fresh basil. I thought she ordered the 12″, but it seemed a lot bigger than that.

Someone got the chicken parmesan with linguini, which looked like a HUGE portion:

And someone else got the similar-looking eggplant parmesan, also with linguini:

Since I studied the menu over the two years since my first visit, I learned about a dish on Il Pescatore’s dinner menu called tortellini di Stefano. It sounded so perfect, but it isn’t on the lunch menu. Luckily, when I mentioned it to our server, she told me they could still make it, but there wasn’t a more moderately priced lunch portion. Hey, that was fine with me! It was really satisfying and different enough from the pasta dishes I make at home that I felt like I made the best possible choice. It arrived with a melty, oven-baked layer of provolone (not mozzarella!) cheese, and I do love provolone.

After folding in the cheese, you can get a better idea of what the dish looks like beneath. The tortellini pasta was in a “creamy meat sauce with a touch of prosciutto,” almost like a cross between a creamier Bolognese meat sauce and a vodka sauce. And prosciutto is one of my favorite foods — not just meats, but foods in general. I shook some red pepper flakes onto the pasta to add a bit of heat. They aren’t just for pizza anymore! This tortellini di Stefano wowed me. I would totally order it again whenever I return to Il Pescatore, and hopefully that won’t take me two more years.

“Red sauce” Italian is pure comfort food for me. My family used to go to Anthony’s Pizzeria in Kendall throughout the ’80s and into the mid-’90s, and when it closed, they switched to getting takeout from The Big Cheese, a South Miami/Coral Gables institution. I love a good bowl of pasta in red sauce, which sometimes I make from scratch and sometimes I leave to the experts (Rao’s). When I’m stressed or depressed (which happens a lot, surprise surprise), pasta and a good salad and some bread help get me through, and when I’m feeling celebratory, relaxed, and relieved, the same meal sounds just as good then.

After trying the humble but excellent food at Il Pescatore twice now, I know they have a lot more interesting options than the same pasta and sauce I can easily make myself at home. The tortellini de Stefano was a dynamic dish, but next time, I might try the linguini scungilli, with conch in a garlic tomato sauce. If I’m feeling flush, I might treat myself to the zuppa di mare Trapanese, a Sicilian seafood platter with shrimp, mussels, calamari, clams, and snapper, all simmered in tomato sauce. Maybe I’ll just get the eggplant parm like my colleague ordered this week, since my attempts at eggplant parm at home never come out well. I know Il Pescatore won’t let me down! They haven’t so far.

The Baker’s Son by Valerio’s

The Baker’s Son by Valerio’s (https://thebakersonusa.com/) is a Filipino-American bakery/cafe that first opened in Jacksonville, but opened a second, much larger location in Kissimmee this past Thursday, December 4th. (The address is 4797 W. Irlo Bronson Memorial Highway, Kissimmee, FL 34746, in front of the Target.) I have been following its progress, excited about sampling new and unfamiliar sweet and savory baked goods, as well as any drinks and dishes they might serve.

According to the website, owner-operator Jun Valerio is a third-generation Filipino-American baker, and his family owns multiple Valerio’s bakeries on the West Coast. Jun and his wife Kathleen ran Valerio’s locations in California, Seattle, and Canada before opening their own spinoff, the first Baker’s Son location, in Jacksonville, which has a larger Filipino population than the Orlando area. But now that they have opened in Kissimmee, I have a feeling they will have a huge hit on their hands with mass appeal that will reach beyond Filipino locals and tourists.

I finally made the hour drive to the new Kissimmee location on Saturday morning, hoping to beat the lunch rush, but instead I found myself in a slow, serpentine line that wrapped around the entire store. There weren’t any employees directing traffic, but customers walked to the left upon entering to grab any packaged breads and sweets off the shelves, then found their way to the end of the line. I estimate it took me an hour and 15 minutes from entering the store to ordering my food and paying at the front counter, but I chatted with the guy in front of me, and everyone was patient and polite, helping point the newcomers in the right direction.

The full menu is not on the website, so I took photos for my dozens of readers, so you can study in advance. Try right-clicking on these menu photos and opening them in new tabs for slightly larger images.

This is the coffee, tea, boba, and signature drinks menu:

Here is the food menu, with merienda (snacks), rice plates, sandwiches, burgers, healthy eats, and breakfast sweets:

And this is the Cloud Series (The Baker’s Son’s version of milkshakes), plus soft serve ice cream:

The coffee drinks people were picking up from the cafe counter all looked delicious, but coffee makes me feel terrible. I, on the other hand, have never met a cold, refreshing, citrusy drink I didn’t like, so I got the fresh calamansi juice. Calamansi is a fruit that is similar to lime, and its juice adds sour notes to many Filipino recipes. This was similar to limeade — sweet, sour, and so refreshing.

After how long the line took, I didn’t know how long it would take for the food I ordered to be served, so I asked for an empanada when I got to the counter. They looked really good. This was a little smaller than a typical Cuban empanada:

It had a saucy, seasoned beef filling with some raisins, but it was nothing like the picadillo filling I’m used to in Cuban empanadas. It was definitely saucier, and the fried shell had a really pleasant salty-sweet flavor and didn’t taste or feel greasy.

I really wanted to try something with longanisa, a sweet and savory Filipino sausage. They offer a longanisa burger, but since I was planning to eat there after waiting that long, I chose something that would not have traveled well: loaded longanisa fries. These were really crispy fries that any fry lover would love, topped with crumbled longanisa sausage, caramelized onions, creamy garlic sauce (like an aioli), and an over-medium fried egg. It was so delicious and decadent.

I’ve had bacon, egg, and cheese breakfast sandwiches on my mind recently, so since I didn’t get a burger, I opted for the tocino glazed bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich, served with sweet glazed bacon called tocino, scrambled eggs, American cheese, and a crispy hash brown patty on a pillowy-soft roll called pan de sal (literally “bread of salt”) that had been grilled to crisp up its interior. Pan de sal (sometimes stylized as pandesal) is one of the specialties of The Baker’s Son, so I’ll come back to that a little later.

This was sinigang popcorn chicken off the merienda (snacks) menu. I certainly didn’t need it, and it was a bit of an impulse buy, but the guy in front of me said he was going to get it, and I trusted him. He said it should have a sour seasoning sprinkled on it, but even though mine was good, with a crispy, crunchy batter, it didn’t taste sour to me. While writing this, I found out that the sour sinigang flavor usually comes from tamarind.
I ate most of the above food on site, but took most of the chicken home with me, where I will try it with my huge collection of condiments and sauces.

But since I was at a brand-new bakery, I couldn’t leave without buying some bread. I bought the smallest bag of pan de sal they had. These were smaller rolls, like dinner rolls, but they had much larger bags with larger rolls, more like what I had with my bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich (think of typical burger buns). They are made with flour, eggs, yeast, sugar, salt., and powdered milk, so they will be nice and light and fluffy and slightly sweet. They reminded me a bit of Japanese milk bread.

This was pan de coco, more small, fluffy rolls stuffed with a sweet spread made of young coconut. (If any MCs are looking for a new stage name, may I suggest “Young Coconut”?)

And this box of Spanish bread is a bit like buttery, soft brioche, with a sweet, buttery, creamy filing in the center. I would have been fine with one or two, but they only came in boxes of six.

They had so much more to choose from, including a lot of sweeter breads, rolls, and pastries, many of which had lots of icing and/or ube (sweet purple yam) filling. But I knew my wife wouldn’t be terribly interested in any of these, so I reigned myself in. I like to make sandwiches at home, so I could level up my sandwich game with all these different rolls.

I would definitely recommend The Baker’s Son, even though people might want to wait a little longer to avoid the long lines. Most new restaurants will have a certain amount of hype involved, and I did make the choice to go on the third day it was open, but I suspect it will calm down soon enough (and probably be a lot more chill on normal weekdays, rather than the Saturday of its opening week). Most of the people waiting inside with me were Filipinos of all ages, and I could sense their excitement and pride in The Baker’s Son. I couldn’t be happier for them, or for the Valerio family and their staff, or for the rest of us, having a bakery/cafe like The Baker’s Son as an option in the Orlando area. Head down to touristy Kissimmee when you can, and please let me know what you ordered and what you thought!

Fiesta Cancun

Fiesta Cancun (https://fiestacancunfl.com/) is a beautiful, festive, casual Mexican restaurant in Altamonte Springs. It is tucked off the beaten path at 260 Douglas Avenue, just off busy Semoran Boulevard (State Road 436) and a minute from I-4 exit 92. You can’t see it from Semoran, but turn onto Douglas, and it will be on your left before you hit the Waffle House on the left and the Cracker Barrel on the right.

The dining room is so colorful and fun, it is hard not to get swept up in a celebratory spirit and feel like you’re on vacation. I blacked out the faces of nearby diners to preserve their privacy, but you can still tell that the vibes are super-festive.

I’ve said this before, but whenever a Mexican restaurant offers aguas frescas, I know we’re going to be in for good, authentic food. I got a passion fruit agua fresca (one of my favorite flavors of anything), and my wife chose jamaica (hibiscus flower). The glass mugs were huge, but our bill said they cost $7.50 each, and refills cost extra! (The menu says they cost $4.25 each, so maybe they did charge us for refills.) As much as I love it, I’ll stick to water in the future and not drink my calories.

The fresh, free tortilla chips were fine after adding a little salt, and the table salsa was fresh and bright-tasting. But even better, Fiesta Cancun offers a salsa bar, which was a real treat to me.I love a salsa bar, and it is one of the many reasons I’m such a fan of Las Carretas. I appreciated that Fiesta Cancun had handwritten signs posted above each salsa explaining what each one was, and what the ingredients were.

Top row:
Sliced onions with habanero peppers, tomatoes, and lime juice
Spicy molcajete sauce with serrano chiles and onions
Spicy taquera sauce with avocado, serrano chiles, onions, cilantro, and mayonnaise to make it creamy

Bottom row:
Spicy red sauce with chiles de arbol, tomatillos, and onions
Non-spicy salsa verde with tomatillo and cilantro (the only one my wife wanted anything to do with)
Spicy Jalisco sauce with chiles de arbol, serrano chiles, tomatillos, and onions

They all looked so good, and of course I tried them all! They have plenty of tiny plastic cups for you to fill.

My wife was craving a good taco salad in a crispy fried shell. This one included shredded iceberg lettuce, a healthy dollop of guacamole, and pico de gallo and sour cream on the side. I availed myself of the pico, since I am a giant fan of the stuff, and she doesn’t care for onions or tomatoes. You can choose between ground beef, shredded beef, and shredded chicken with the taco salad, but I didn’t see any meat in the photo, and I don’t remember which one my wife ordered.

I had studied the large menu in advance, and I was so excited to see that Fiesta Cancun offered cochinita pibil, a dish from the Yucatan Peninsula that is sometimes called puerco pibil. It consists of citrus-marinated, slow-roasted pork with a complex array of spices and flavors, cooked until it is fork-tender. I am always inspired to order it whenever I see it on a menu thanks to the 2003 action movie Once Upon a Time in Mexico, in which Johnny Depp’s antihero also ordered the dish whenever he encountered it. The DVD extras (remember those?) included badass writer-director-composer Robert Rodriguez demonstrating his own recipe for puerco pibil*, which I made for a work potluck once. It was a labor-intensive recipe, and my version came out great, but my old co-workers were a tough crowd that didn’t share my enthusiasm. My old director actually had the audacity to tell me I should not have wasted so much time making it, and she wouldn’t even try it! To make a long story short, the cochinita pibil at Fiesta Cancun was dry! I know, right? I was disappointed, but I still ate it, and jazzing it up with the various salsas helped immensely. The black beans were fine, and I did love the rich Mexican rice and tangy-sweet, crunchy, pink pickled onions. I wouldn’t order it again, but I wasn’t even mad. I was still having a grand time.

I had also ordered a chile relleno off the a la carte menu, intending to have it later, but I busted into it to make up for the dry pork. I apologize for not photographing a cross-section of the battered and fried poblano pepper stuffed with melty cheese, but I honestly liked it a lot more than the cochinita pibil. I would totally come back and try other things on the menu, but I’d get that chile relleno again too.

I couldn’t take my wife to a Mexican restaurant and not order her churros or sopapillas! This time, the churros won out. The fried dough sticks were covered with cinnamon and sugar and came with a chocolate dipping sauce.

So even though I was disappointed by my cochinita pibil, I would still return to Fiesta Cancun and try other things in the future, if I was ever in Altamonte with people who wanted Mexican food and fun surroundings. You might have already noticed how vast the menu is, and how they offer a lot more seafood dishes than most Mexican restaurants, which makes sense, given that Cancun is a coastal city on the tip of the Yucatan Peninsula. I think it would be a crowd-pleaser for most groups. If you’ve been there before, what are your favorite dishes on the menu, and what should I try next time?

*By the way, I’ve been a fan of Robert Rodriguez ever since I first saw his $7,000 self-financed independent debut El Mariachi back in the early ’90s. As much as I’ve enjoyed most of his movies, his coolest career moment might be when he says in the above video “Not knowing how to cook is like not knowing how to fuck.” Spot on. I also love his advice about learning to cook your two or three favorite dishes very well and making a little restaurant-style menu for your kitchen, to the point where you could always offer a few house specialties to guests with minimal notice or prep. That’s entertainment!