July 2024 – The Saboscrivner

Dough Boyz Pizzeria

Dough Boyz Pizzeria (https://doughboyzpizzaoviedo.com/) is located in a small, nondescript strip plaza in Oviedo, near the intersection of Aloma Avenue and Tuskawilla Road, just west of State Road 417. It is a few doors down from Ramen Takagi, a Saboscrivner favorite and home of the best tonkotsu ramen in the Orlando area. It is also a few moments from another newer discovery I enjoyed earlier this year, Alma Argentina.

Like any good New York-style pizzeria, Dough Boyz offers pizza by the slice, which is my preferred way to try any new pizzeria. While I was bringing home a whole pie, I had to try a plain cheese slice, crispy and warm from the oven, while I was still on the premises. To me, that’s the best way to get an idea of any pizzeria at its best. I ate this huge slice in the car, and it did not disappoint. It was the perfect blend of crispy and chewy, with nice robust sauce (not too acidic nor too sweet), melty mozzarella, and a thin crust that wasn’t burnt to a crisp. It was a little floppy, but that doesn’t bother me at all.

But this was the main event that I brought home, the grandma Sicilian, a thin-crust square pizza that is already pretty unique, because most Sicilian pizzas in my experience are thick and on the chewy side, with crispy bottoms and edges from cooking in a pan. Dough Boyz does that thicker Sicilian style too, but this was one hot grandma! It was topped with their house-made plum tomato sauce, fresh mozzarella (it’s fun to call it “MOOT-sa-DELL”), and homemade pesto sauce — a perfect combination. The only things I could have possibly added to edge this pizza pie further into pie-fection would have been some fresh basil leaves and a swirl of balsamic glaze. But I can’t complain, because it was a little slice of heaven — or more like twelve huge, rectangular slices of heaven.

A major reason I wanted to try Dough Boyz, out of all the friendly neighborhood pizzerias in every single strip plaza around here, was because they sell cheesecake from a local baker based in DeBary, Florida, Cheesecake Chino’s. I haven’t met Chino himself, but I have interacted with him online, and I wanted to try his New York-style cheesecake to compare it to familiar ones like Publix, the Factory, and my personal favorite cheesecake, from the New York-based Junior’s. The slice I got reminded me more of Junior’s than any other cheesecake I’ve had, and I mean that in the best possible way. It was a plain, dense slice with no toppings or additional flavors (fine with me), with the slight tangy tartness I crave from cheesecake, and an interesting chocolate crust, rather than a more typical graham cracker crust (or the weird cakey crust Junior’s uses, which is maybe the only thing I don’t love about their cheesecakes). It was very good, and I would be really interested in trying some other varieties from Cheesecake Chino’s in the future. I’m always thrilled to support local bakers, just as I love supporting local restaurants.

Two weeks had not passed before I returned to Dough Boyz for another takeout mission. I had not seen arancini on the menu, but when I arrived at the restaurant and saw them, I had to order one for my wife. She loves these things: a ball of creamy rice stuffed with seasoned ground beef and peas, rolled in seasoned bread crumbs and fried to perfection: crispy on the outside and soft and yielding on the inside. If you’ve ever had a Cuban papa rellena, it’s surprisingly similar, just with risotto instead of mashed potatoes.
It came with a dipping cup of marinara, but she wanted nothing to do with that, so I had something to dip my pizza crusts in. Score!

I ordered an eggplant rollatini pizza for us to share over the next few days — a classic New York-style pie with plum tomato sauce, “special blend” ricotta cheese, and thin slices of breaded and fried eggplant, but no mozzarella cheese. My wife likes eggplant and especially eggplant rollatini more than I do, but I ended up liking this pizza more than she did. I know she doesn’t share my red sauce obsession, but I think Dough Boyz has a particularly good, fresh-tasting tomato sauce, and I’m not at all surprised that they make it in-house.

And after trying the thin crust Grandma Sicilian last time, I had to go back for the thicc Brooklyn Sicilian this time. I would have settled for a slice, but they didn’t have any Sicilian slices left, so I sprang for a whole pie, knowing I’d make it last over several days. It started out with twelve slices, but I HOUSED three of them before remembering to take this photo. I loooove Sicilian pizza, you guys. I used to get slices at Cozzoli’s Pizza in the Dadeland Mall food court in suburban Kendall as a kid, and that’s how my love affair with rectangular, pillowy-soft, crispy-edged Sicilian pizza started, in the early ’80s in Miami.
This Brooklyn is slightly different from other Sicilian pizzas I’ve had elsewhere (including from Orlando-area mainstays Valdiano, Del Dio, Paradiso, and Antonella’s) because the chunky, robust tomato sauce is applied on top of the mozzarella and provolone cheeses, and then the whole thing is topped with oregano, grated parmesan cheese, and olive oil. It makes it messier to eat, but really, really good. I have always said that the sauce is usually the most ignored ingredient on pizza, but Dough Boyz takes their sauce as seriously as their dough and cheese.

Finally, for dessert on this epic second takeout trip, I brought home Dough Boyz — not the staff of the actual pizzeria, but fried dough balls topped with so much powdered sugar that they looked like they were partying in the aforementioned Miami, perhaps in the 1980s. You may know them better as zeppoli. My wife absolutely loved these, even more than the cheesecake, but I stand by the cheesecake.

Dough Boyz Pizzeria does have a few tables for dining in, but it is a no-frills place, and I’m guessing the vast majority of their business comes from takeout. I’m sold. It is twelve minutes from my home, and I pass a few other pizzerias to get there, but they have earned a loyal and enthusiastic regular customer moving forward. Give them a try, especially if you’ve heard the tiresome bleats of ex-New Yorkers saying there is no good pizza in Orlando. There is plenty, and you can just click on the “Pizza” category link in this review to read my other reviews on the subject (or just click on all the other links I’ve made sure to sprinkle into this review, like so much parmesan cheese). My personal favorite pizzeria is too much of a schlep across town to just get there anytime I crave it (sorry, John & John’s – A Pizza Shop), but Dough Boyz is my new friendly neighborhood destination, and I’ll be back again before long.

Royal Thai Cuisine

Royal Thai Cuisine (https://royalthai-orlando.com/) opened in 1996, and I started dining there with friends shortly after moving to Orlando back in 2004. It helped that it was so close to the job I held for 15 years, but along the way, other Thai restaurants opened, and I got distracted. I recently returned to Royal Thai with two friends — both former co-workers from that old job — and I realized it had been several years since my last visit, definitely before I started this blog in 2018.

It was nice to go back there after so many memorable lunches and dinners, including an unforgettable Halloween dinner over 15 years ago, where my wife (then just my girlfriend) and a group of friends and I showed up there in full costume. My old roommate was dressed as a sleazy redneck in a sleeveless white T-shirt and a mullet wig under a ball cap, and he must have looked like trouble when we entered the crowded restaurant that night. When he took off the cap and the mullet came off with it, everyone in the dining room cracked up. Needless to say, my former co-workers and I were a lot more sedate on our recent visit.

We started with an order of crispy spring rolls, listed as #1 on the menu (completely randomly), but they might be #1 as far as spring rolls go. Royal Thai serves an order of three spring rolls, each one bisected into six more or less equal pieces, perfect for sharing with two friends (or devouring alone). The dipping sauce is plum sauce — sweet and sticky; not spicy at all — but I was the only one who availed myself of it.

Here’s a cross-section of the crispy spring roll. It is loaded with savory clear noodles, onions, cabbage, and carrots. Some places sneak mushrooms into these things, but I was relieved Royal Thai doesn’t do that.

One friend ordered a dish called param, which was completely unfamiliar to me: a protein (she chose chicken) served over fresh spinach leaves and topped with peanut sauce. It came with a side of fragrant, nutty smelling jasmine rice that I didn’t photograph, but you all know what a bowl of white rice looks like.

Another friend, who happens to be a vegetarian, ordered pad Thai with tofu. I love pad Thai, but I rarely order it for myself because I almost always end up with someone else who gets it for themselves. The noodles were stir-fried with bean sprouts and green onions and topped with some fresh shredded cabbage and carrots, with crushed peanuts on the side. I asked her if it was tangy or sour, because that’s how I really like my pad Thai to be. She was kind enough to let me try a forkful, and while it was a solid version of the classic dish, it wasn’t terribly tangy.

After so many years without visiting Royal Thai, I was having a hard time deciding what to get, but I defaulted to my standard dish at any Thai restaurant: pad kee mao, or drunken noodles. I love this dish of wide, flat rice noodles stir-fried with onions bell peppers, fresh basil, and a sauce that is usually a little sweet and a little spicy, but everyone’s version is a little different. Royal Thai also includes bamboo shoots (I was intimidated by these until trying them for the first time five years ago at Susuru), snow peas, and baby corn — ingredients I don’t usually seek out, but they were perfectly fine here. They also include mushrooms — my culinary Kryptonite — but were nice enough to hold them for me. I got pork as my protein, by the way.

To this day, I don’t know if I could identify the best drunken noodles in Orlando, even though I have ordered them at least once at every Thai restaurant I’ve ever been to. Of course, there are still a lot more Thai restaurants I need to visit. I usually order them with the hot spice level, but I was taking my wife to St. Petersburg the next day (see last week’s review of Ted Peters Famous Smoked Fish) and decided to go easy on my stomach and get these drunken noodles medium-spiced. Whenever I return to Royal Thai (which I will, and I won’t wait as long either), I’ll probably order something different next time to work my way through the lengthy menu, and I’ll definitely try it hot instead of medium. After all these years, I have the utmost faith in them to do a good job of anything.

Ted Peters Famous Smoked Fish (St. Petersburg)

Ted Peters Famous Smoked Fish (https://tedpetersfish.com/) is a legendary landmark in St. Petersburg, Florida, right off the beach. It is a perfect example of a classic “Old Florida” seafood restaurant and smokehouse, the kinds of places that barely exist anymore, but those that remain are both time capsules and treasures. Founded in 1951 and still family-owned and in its original location, Ted Peters conjures up sights, smells, and tastes of a bygone era, but luckily we can still enjoy them today. In fact, just last month, Southern Living magazine (which features some pretty great food writing) included Ted Peters in its list of Florida’s 17 Most Legendary Restaurants. (I have been to five of them and reviewed one other on this blog, Bern’s Steak House.)

I first visited Ted Peters with my wife several years ago, long before I started writing as The Saboscrivner in 2018. But strangely enough, neither of us remembered much about our first visit, aside from that I liked it. I’ve been wanting to return for years, and on a recent weekend getaway to St. Pete Beach, it was my first stop after checking into our hotel and depositing my wife in our room. I brought back a takeout feast, knowing the room had a mini-fridge in case we couldn’t finish everything. But we were both stunned by the portion sizes upon my return — somehow you’d think that would have stuck in my memory when we ate there the first time, but it didn’t. This recent visit was like getting to experience it all again for the first time.

Just so you know, it doesn’t get much more casual than this place. There are plenty of tables on a covered patio, and they can pull down outer walls in case it rains, as it did on the sweltering late June afternoon I showed up there. There is also an enclosed dining room with some rustic decor — wood-paneled walls and stuffed animal heads. I just poked my head in the room but didn’t linger. You can order beer (or root beer) in frosty glass mugs, but it’s a family-friendly restaurant in every way, not some kind of dirty dive (although it was featured on Guy Fieri’s Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives show).

This is the menu that hangs above the bar, with accurate prices as of June 30th, 2024:

They offer four kinds of smoked fish, all smoked over red oak wood: salmon, mullet, mahi mahi, and mackerel, but mackerel was out of season. Both of our orders came in huge white paper boxes, like the kind of boxes a bakery would send you home with a large pie or cake in. Like I said, we were both stunned back at the hotel when I opened everything up and saw how much fish they give you.

My wife asked for a smoked salmon lunch, which comes with fish, tomato, onion, pickle, and lemon. It was a huge hunk of salmon, hot-smoked to a golden brown color, compared to the delicate pink nova salmon we know and love from a lifetime of bagel breakfasts, appetizing stores, and delicatessens. The hot-smoked salmon was drier and flakier than the tender, thin-sliced nova that melts in your mouth, but it was still really good. You just have to think of it as its own thing — not as salty as nova, but much more oily and “fishy.”
The entire piece had thin, crispy salmon skin underneath that was easy to separate, even with the flimsy plastic fork and knife they included, but we both love salmon skin, so it was a nice surprise treat.

Because mackerel was out of season, I ordered a mullet dinner for myself, and not just because I had a mullet back in 8th and 9th grade. This was a nice piece of fish, even longer than the salmon filet, just not as thick because mullet is a smaller fish. This one reminded me more of the golden smoked whitefish I treat myself to every few years, which I pull apart to make rich, decadent whitefish salad. Like whitefish, mullet is full of long, thin, plasticky, pin-like bones that you have to carefully remove, as well as one long spine that you can pull out in one piece like a cat in an old-timey cartoon. As a result, the mullet was harder to eat in a hotel room due to how messy it is, but we brought a lot home, packed tightly in a cooler with ice, and I made it into some smoked mullet salad back in my kitchen.

Unlike the salmon, you can’t eat the scaly skin of the mullet (the entire underside), so I did what I could to peel it all off, along with the tail, fins, and all those bones. The little sauce containers were a creamy horseradish sauce that had a slight sweetness (not nearly as intensely spicy as the horseradish sauce at Orlando’s beloved Beefy King) and another sauce that was seemingly ranch (that one was for the Swifties), but possibly with some Cajun seasoning added. I brought those home as well and added them to the flaky, deboned mullet (because the meat is also drier than the smoked whitefish I’m used to).

The difference between the lunch and the dinner is that the dinner comes with cole slaw and potato salad, so of course I had to try those! The cole slaw was creamy, crunchy, and refreshing, perfect for cutting through the intensely fishy, oily, smoky flavors and textures.

The potato salad is actually German potato salad, so it is tangy and the slightest bit sweet from being made with apple cider vinegar instead of the standard mayonnaise. It is also rich, smoky, and has a nice blend of soft and crunchy textures from crumbles of bacon. It was served warm, as German potato salad usually is, and it was terrific. I’m so glad I sprang for the dinner instead of the lunch.

I couldn’t go to Ted Peters and not try their famous smoked fish spread, which I definitely did not try on my first visit however long ago. My wife didn’t care for it as much as the salmon and mullet, but surprise surprise, I liked it even more — maybe due to it being less intensely fishy and smoky. The fish (I’m assuming mullet, but it could be a blend) was mixed into a uniform creamy consistency with mayo and sweet pickle relish, adding some sweetness, coolness, and crunch. It reminded me of a really terrific tuna salad with that smoky flavor shining through but not overpowering.
At the restaurant, you can order smoked fish spread with Saltine crackers, but for takeout orders, you just order it by the half-pint, pint, or quart. I got a half-pint, and it didn’t come with crackers, so I had to run by Publix to buy some Saltines. They were fine, but I still contend that anything Saltines can do, Ritz can do better. But my wife loves Saltines, and I wanted to follow the founders’ intent here.

At this point, a couple of you might be lamenting “What if I don’t eat fish?” or “What if I don’t like smoked fish?” Well, first of all, I would probably suggest trying a different restaurant. There are so many to choose from up and down St. Pete Beach and on the mainland, and many are in the good-to-great range. But just in case, I had always read that Ted Peters Famous Smoked Fish serves really tasty burgers, and I had to put that to the test. I’m a cheeseburger guy, and I think American cheese is the best cheese you can put on a burger. But my wife doesn’t like cheese on burgers, so I ordered a plain hamburger with her in mind, just in case any of the fish were “too fishy” for her. When I showed her the plain burger as an option, she said it looked a little sad, plus she surprised both of us by liking the smoked salmon and mullet as much as she did.

Now I like a lot of stuff on a burger (surprise, surprise), so if it looked sad, that’s because it was plain. Since she wanted nothing to do with it, I added ketchup, yellow mustard, and relish (from included packets), the “seemingly ranch” sauce, and lettuce and tomato. It was delicious! It tasted like a burger you’d get at a cookout with that nice flavor from the grill. The bun was your typical squishy white bread bun, not grilled or toasted or anything, but absolutely fine for what it was. Adding American cheese and grilled onions and grilling the bun might have brought this burger over the top, but I have no complaints. If you don’t want your fingers or your breath to smell like smoked fish for hours after dining, like if you’re on a really hot date at Ted Peters, then consider the burger.

Now key lime pie is one of my favorite desserts ever, but my wife doesn’t share my love for it. I was all ready to skip the tempting key lime pie on Ted Peters’ menu for the second time, but it was actually her idea to order a slice. Of course I did not argue! It was nice and tangy, an ideal dessert for balancing out smoky, rich fish, but the crust was rather crumbly and a bit bland. Rather than the standard moist graham cracker crust, it might have been made of shortbread or even ‘Nilla Wafers, that mainstay of Southern-style banana pudding. (When I was a little Saboscrivner, before I spent 15 years working for a Catholic law school, I used to think the “wafers” consumed during Catholic mass were ‘Nilla Wafers.)
I would definitely recommend it anyway, since key lime pie is Florida’s official dessert (or should be), and it does go so perfectly at the end of a meal like this. But this is a rare occasion where I might give the edge to the Publix bakery, and I would be remiss if I didn’t credit the award-winning baker Evette Rahman of Sister Honey’s Bakery in Orlando for making the best key lime pie I’ve ever had in my life.

So anyway, Southern Living is right on about this place. And if you don’t believe me and don’t believe them, my friend and role model Amy Drew Thompson, the food writer for the Orlando Sentinel, is a fellow fan of Ted Peters Famous Smoked Fish, and she definitely knows what she’s talking about. But hopefully you can see from my words and pictures that Ted Peters is a unique experience, something that is all too rare in Florida and almost nonexistent anywhere else. After our most recent visit to St. Pete Beach, I said again what I’ve said before, that if I had to live anywhere in Florida that isn’t in or around Orlando, the St. Pete/Tampa area would be it for me. My wife and I love St. Pete Beach for short little weekend getaways, but it would totally be worth a day trip from Orlando just to take in a taste of timeless Old Florida at Ted Peters Famous Smoked Fish. Eat on the patio, spring for the dinner so you can have German potato salad and cole slaw, get your hands a little dirty, raise a frosty mug, and be glad that after all these decades and generations, the crew at Ted Peters still smokes fish every day.