November 2020 – The Saboscrivner

Tuscany Pizza

Sometimes the best food can come from the humblest locations. A co-worker from New Jersey with strong opinions about good pizza recommended Tuscany Pizza (http://www.tuscanypizzawp.com/), a tiny storefront pizzeria in a tiny shopping plaza on Howell Branch Road, in the Seminole County side of Winter Park, very close to Casselberry. This co-worker and I have enjoyed pizzas from Pizzeria Del Dio and Paradiso Restaurant and Pizzeria before, and she said Tuscany was easily as good, if not better (in her opinion). I had to find out for myself, so I’ve been there twice so far and ordered takeout both times. They have a few small inside tables, but I’m still not dining in anytime soon.

On my first visit ordering takeout earlier this year, I brought home Tuscany’s thin crust sausage pizza. You can get regular hand-tossed or thin crust for the same price, or “thick crust” (not sure if that’s specifically Chicago-style deep dish, or just slightly thicker than normal) for a dollar more. I believe this was an 18″ XX large for $14.99, because it was only a dollar more than the 16″ X large. It was very good, but not that different from a regular hand-tossed pizza in consistency and size, lacking the crispy, crackery crunch you expect from thin crust pizza. My wife and I still enjoyed it, though.

This was another thin crust XX large sausage pizza from a second, more recent visit, cut in the “party cut” style in rectangles I associate with thin-crust pizza. Maybe due to the party cut, it felt crispier.

I always have to try the regular hand-tossed style too, and I’m somehow convinced this kind of pizza is always better by the slice than as a whole pie. These were two slices of regular New York-style pizza for $2.29 each. They automatically cut them into four thinner slices, which was perfectly fine with me. And even though these were also on the thin side, I think I preferred them just because they were separate slices and not an entire pie.

We both like stromboli, so we decided to try a large stromboli supreme ($18.99). It was ridiculously large, and the two of us got multiple meals out of it.

The stromboli supreme is full of pepperoni, ham, cheese, onions, green peppers, and tomatoes. The regular stromboli doesn’t include the vegetables. This reminds me of a joke I tell my poor students every semester: “What’s the difference between the Supreme Court and a regular court?” They’re always so earnest, they start volunteering serious, thoughtful answers before I interrupt: “The Supreme Court costs more, but it’s larger and comes with extra toppings.” That’s what I call a wayhomer, a joke you might not get immediately, but you’ll figure it out on the way home. Somehow I still get decent evaluations from my students.

These were delicious and beautiful garlic knots — an order of twelve for $5.29 (although we actually got 14, if you count them). They could have used more garlic butter, but they were still absolutely delicious — fluffy and soft inside, light and crispy crust outside, and fun to untwist. The marinara sauce was thick and robust, which I always appreciate, and they weren’t stingy with two nice-sized cups. My wife isn’t a sauce person or a dipper, so it was all mine!

It’s easy to miss Tuscany Pizza unless you go looking for it, or stumble upon it on a mission for doughnuts at Donut King or shaved ice at Rainbow Sno-Cones Shaved Ice in the same plaza. There is a hot dog place in there too, but I haven’t tried it yet. And we all know there are plenty of good pizzerias in and around Orlando, so don’t let your New York and New Jersey friends convince you they all suck. Tuscany joins the esteemed ranks of the aforementioned Del Dio and Paradiso, Tornatore’s, and Tomasino’s for excellent New York-style pizza, and from what I hear (or don’t hear) online, they might be the least-known of all of these pizzerias, so please give them a chance.

Grocery Grails: A Plethora of Pickles

I spent most of my life not liking pickles, despite being a Jew who loves New York-style Jewish deli food more than just about anything. So I’ve been on a long quest to find pickles I liked, with most of them ranging from “meh” to “feh.” My long-time readers will recognize that I’ve brought this up a lot. I can’t try any pickles without commenting on them and somehow ranking them in my head.

Well, thanks to our local barbecue maven Chuck Cobb of Git-N-Messy BBQ (which I reviewed right here on The Saboscrivner last fall and have been frequenting ever since), I’ve found the best pickles I’ve ever tried, and very possibly the best pickles ever: Grillo’s Dill Pickle Chips. Don’t worry, in pickle parlance, “chips” refers to round slices, not pickle-flavored potato chips. See https://www.grillospickles.com/ for more information. But I have snacked on them like potato chips or tortilla chips; they’re that good!

The only ingredients are cucumbers, water, distilled white vinegar, salt, garlic, fresh dill, and GRAPE LEAVES. They are firm, crunchy, and not overly salty, which is always nice. There’s a slight sweetness to them, something I felt was missing from every bite I’ve ever taken of a dill pickle before, but there’s no sugar listed, so maybe it’s the grape leaves. They’re fantastic. I’d put them on just about anything.

At least at Florida’s ubiquitous Publix supermarkets, Grillo’s Pickles are in the refrigerated case above the hot dogs, where they keep the “fancier” pickles and sauerkraut. These came in a relatively small container that cost $4.99, but they’re worth every penny. Sometimes they go on sale. If they do, stock up, pickle peeps!

And of course, as a librarian and a nerd, I have to research anything I like, so here’s an article about Grillo’s Pickles from FoodDive.

More recently, I was at Target picking up a few things and found Grillo’s Classic Dill Pickle Spears in a 32-ounce plastic container in their refrigerated case. I was a little more hesitant to get full spears, rather than the sliced chips that fit so well in sandwiches, but it was a very good price: $5.99 for that much larger container. Well, even though they taste the same as the chips, I didn’t like chomping on the spear as much, compared to the perfect flatness and crunch of the sliced chips. Plus, the spears were just a little more inconvenient for fitting on a burger.

Grillo’s makes hot pickles too, so I’ll have to try those eventually. I never thought I’d be so enthusiastic about pickles, but if I could like Grillo’s that much, then normal people who have always liked pickles should really taste the difference as well. The brine is so good, I always keep it and make pickled eggs in the Grillo’s brine.

I am also a huge fan of shopping at Aldi, the discount supermarket chain that offers amazing deals on everything, including some serious gourmet shit. I buy the majority of our groceries at Aldi now — they can’t be beaten for quality and value on staples like fruit, vegetables, cheese, eggs, and salami. I check their weekly ads online every Wednesday to see their special buys for each week — interesting foods and other products that are only there for a week, or until they run out. Aldi sells a lot of “private labels” that are usually national or international products from familiar brands, just relabeled as store brands that are exclusive to Aldi.

In recent months, I’ve discovered and tried three delicious kinds of sliced pickles from Aldi — two private labels and one national brand. These were all weekly “Aldi finds” that I picked up at various times. They probably won’t be available there now, but watch those weekly ads, and be on the lookout for their return.

The two private labels are the Great Gherkins spicy maple bourbon pickles, which were new to me, and the Park Street Deli sweet horseradish pickles, which were my favorites until I discovered Grillo’s. I still like them a lot, though. Like the Grillo’s brand, the Park Street Deli pickles are sold refrigerated, and they have other varieties, including regular spears and “atomic spicy.” Suckerpunch Gourmet Pickles is a national brand, and I wanted to try their Spicy Bread N’ Better pickles too, since I was reminded of a friend and colleague’s ska-punk band I like a lot.

I recently tested out all three of these pickles on Krystal sliders, one of my favorite snacks that I’ve reviewed before. I ordered a dozen Krystals with cheese, the standard yellow mustard, and extra onions, but I asked them to hold their usual mediocre pickles.

Here are the Great Gherkins spicy maple bourbon pickles on four Krystal sliders, so I could gauge their full effect. I think the strong flavors overpowered the sliders. They have that nice crispness, but they’re a little too sweet and not as spicy as I was hoping.

The Suckerpunch Spicy Bread N’ Better [sp] pickles were also sweeter than they were spicy. They would be a perfect pickle on a larger, more substantial burger to cut the juicy richness and saltiness, but again, Krystal sliders are delicious but puny, and these pickles were overpowering.

I’ve been buying Aldi’s Park Street Deli sweet horseradish pickles the longest, so I already knew I liked them a lot, especially on homemade burgers. Of these three kinds of pickles, they were the best on the Krystal sliders, but the slices are thicker than I would like. They are nice and crunchy, not quite as horseradishy as I would like, but not as sweet as the two aforementioned pickles. These were the best of the three, but would have been even better if the slices were thinner.

Sharp-eyed Saboscrivnerinos, you can see Krystal has pretty decent breaded onion rings now. RING THE ALARM, WHAT WHAT!

But I felt like the two newer, sweeter pickles still deserved another chance, so I made my own really delicious cheeseburgers to try them. I don’t like the flattened “smash burger” style, so my burgers are thicc, juicy, and medium rare. I served these with American cheese (the best cheese for a burger), Cuban mustard, and a little ketchup. Check out these perfect golden buns, spread with garlic aioli and lightly browned in the pan:

Now with the Great Gherkins and Suckerpunch pickles:

Both of these pickles went so much better with the juicier, higher-quality burgers, with their sweetness working well to offset the saltiness of the meat and tanginess of the mustard and ketchup. Their crunch held up well, especially with the light, toasty crispiness of the pan-grilled buns. I give the edge to the Suckerpunch Spicy Bread N’ Better pickles here, but they were both good pickles that led to even better burgers.

Now I’m thinking about all the foods that pickles could go well with, and I am psyched to experiment more. I’ve already chopped pickles up in chicken and egg salads and made my own relish the last time I cooked hot dogs. (I buy the Boar’s Head all-beef hot dogs with the snappy natural casing, and they are awesome.) Salty, sour Saboscrivnerinos, which pickles do you like, and how do you eat them? Inquiring minds want to know!

But so far, the only pickles I’ve just gone to the fridge and sought out as a solo snack are the Grillo’s, which are above and beyond all the rest. In this pickle pantheon, they sit on the throne of gods.

Thai Halal Grill

Thai Halal Grill (http://thaihalalgrill.com/) is a new fast-casual restaurant located inside the Apna Bazaar, a Halal Indian grocery store in Longwood, north of Orlando. The restaurant just opened recently — I believe in October 2020. When you walk into Apna Bazaar, you can’t miss their round sign lit up on the right of the market.

The menu appears on a large TV monitor above the counter where you order, but they also have the menu on their website and full-color paper menus to take. I was not planning to order food when I got to Apna Bazaar — instead I was looking for ground lamb for a pastitsio recipe. But a friend and co-worker with good taste and opinions I respect raved about Thai Halal Grill after discovering it recently, so I placed an order and shopped around the grocery store while my food was being prepared, picking out some snacks and sweet basil seed drinks. It only took about ten minutes.

I saw they had spicy halal meatballs in chili sauce with fried rice, and I almost order that when I saw the meatballs could also come with stir-fried noodles. Sold! That dish was a very reasonable $10.95 for a huge portion. In fact, everything on the menu is $10.95 except for the stir-fried beef and pepper with white rice, which is $11.95. I might try that next time, or the Thai fried rice, ore even one of the curries. The lady working the counter was so sweet, warm, and welcoming. She gave me a tangerine to take with me, for dessert.

Here’s a close-up photo. I loved this dish. The meatballs were extremely flavorful, with the nice spongy texture you hope for from a meatball. It contained red and green bell peppers, onions, and peas, but luckily no carrots. I can take or leave carrots in dishes like this, as they never seem to add much in the way of flavor. The noodles were soft and delicious. I could have easily gotten two servings from this portion, but I chose not to.

I will totally go back to Thai Halal Grill and try something different next time, plus it was fun browsing around Apna Bazaar. But I didn’t want to wait any longer on this review, since I got a little distracted by all the big news last weekend and never published anything this past week. This is a tiny local restaurant that could use your business. Please stop by and give them a chance, and I guarantee you’ll be tempted to buy some stuff from the market too. Longwood isn’t known as one of Orlando’s super-hip foodie areas, but I’ve also reviewed Oh My Gyro and Pickles Delicatessen in the area, and there are more delicious destinations in Longwood I have plans to revisit and review soon.