Month: July 2026

Bachour (Coral Gables)

Bachour (https://antoniobachour.com/) is a beloved bakery-cafe-restaurant in Coral Gables, a historic and tony area of Miami.  I was down that way back in May, visiting my family in Kendall for the first time in far too long.  I also spent some quality time with my best friend (going back to elementary school) and his amazing girl, taking advantage of their generous hospitality and visiting parts of Miami I never ventured out to when I grew up down there.  The last day I was in town, we had brunch at Bachour, and his mom — who just happened to be my first-grade teacher! — joined us.  We had a great time, despite getting rained on while we ate in a semi-covered outdoor alcove.  The food, which combined French and Latin influences, was magnificent.

Founded by Puerto Rican-born Chef Antonio Bachour, Bachour is known for gorgeous pastries, arranged artfully in glass display cases:

We started out with an order of arepa fritters, one perfect crispy fried sphere for each of us, stuffed with cotija cheese and held in place with avocado puree underneath.

We also got an order of tequeños, small pastries made of long, flat strips of dough wrapped around salty queso blanco and baked or fried.  (These were fried.)  They were served with cilantro garlic aioli dipping sauce, which was so good, I kept it for whatever was coming next.

This stunning swirled pastry is Bachour’s version of a cinnamon roll.  Look at those crispy, light, flaky layers of laminated dough.  It was a work of art.

My boy’s mom ordered this creme brulee French toast with vanilla custard and mascarpone creme as her entree, even though that’s a dessert in my book.  

His lovely ladyfriend got this breakfast sandwich with scrambled eggs, applewood smoked bacon, aged cheddar, truffle butter, and arugula (it’s a veg-EH-ta-ble) on a soft brioche bun.  

She also ordered a side of crispy home fries with it.

My friend got the Bachour crispy chicken sandwich, with butter lettuce and creamy, crispy slaw on a brioche bun, and he said it was one of the best chicken sandwiches he’s ever had.  He chose fries as his side instead of a salad, which makes me think of John Mulaney’s routine about ordering a chicken sandwich and choosing between the two most different foods in the universe.

And as for me, your friend and humble narrator, one of those foods that always tempts and tantalizes me is smoked salmon, so I got something I normally never order anywhere, a club sandwich (a triple-decker sandwich with bacon, lettuce, tomato, and mayonnaise on white toast) with smoked salmon and a bit of avocado added in.  Club sandwiches often slide apart, or the toasted bread crumbles under the architecturally unsound structure of its fillings, but I am a grown man, and I promise you I did my best.   
Even though I really have been trying to eat healthier, I kept the server from removing that delicious cilantro garlic aioli from earlier, so I ordered fries instead of a salad too, figuring I would share them with everyone else at the table to assuage my guilty conscience (another Mulaney bit).

I brought home two croissants for my wife.  This one was pistachio:

And this one was almond.  She loved both, but I don’t think she mentioned a favorite between them. 

All in all, it was a nice visit back home, and a highlight of the trip was this wonderful brunch shared with some of the best people I know.  I had heard of Bachour before, but just like 90% of places I hear about in Miami, I never thought I would actually go there.  Well, on this recent trip down, I scratched a few of those semi-mythical spots off my list.  This was a great meal, and the company couldn’t be beat.

Lo Mejor Del Mundo Cuban Cafe

Lo Mejor Del Mundo Cuban Cafe (https://www.facebook.com/lomejordelmundocubancafe/) is a small, casual, no-frills Cuban cafe and restaurant (hence the name) at 181 Oxford Rd, in Fern Park, Florida.  Where Casselberry ends and Fern Park begins, I have never quite figured out, and I live around here!  That stretch of Oxford Road is currently torn up by construction, but if you can get through, it is definitely worth a stop in.  On my first visit in a long time, these guys were waiting outside the door, wishing they could get in:

As I often do, I brought home takeout.  This was ropa vieja (literally translated to “old clothes”: a savory, hearty dish of shredded beef stewed in a tomatoey sauce with onions and bell peppers, served with fluffy white rice and sweet fried plantains (maduros), which are always one of my favorite foods. 

My wife wanted this bistec con chimichurri, steak cut thin and pounded even thinner, then topped with chimichurri, a bright condiment made of parsley, garlic, olive oil, and salt that goes perfectly with just about any meat.  She is always much more into steak than I am.  It was served on a bed of moros rice (white rice mixed together with savory black beans, sometimes referred to as congri), with even more maduros on the side. 

Each meal came with beans, which they served in separate containers to avoid them dripping out of the styrofoam boxes.  I prefer red beans when they are an option, and my wife is a traditionalist and prefers the black beans.

I hadn’t been here in so long, I also got a Cuban sandwich for the purpose of reviewing it here.  It isn’t the biggest Cuban sandwich in the Orlando area, nor the best, but even a mid Cuban sandwich is better than not having one at all.  It was also on the dry side, but a lot of places serve really dry roast pork on their Cubanos.  I think I might have added more mustard from my vast mustard collection and more pickles (Grillo’s, natch) once I unwrapped it and took the first few bites.

These pastries were far better: a pastelito con carne and a fried empanada con carne.  But you can never go wrong with either of these! 

Yes indeed, they were both stuffed with seasoned ground beef.  Some places add tomato sauce and even olives and raisins for a specific Cuban dish called picadillo, but these were much more standard.  I love how the baked pastry shell of pastelitos is often slightly sweet, contrasting against its savory fillings, and you can’t ever go wrong with the rich fried dough shell of Cuban empanadas.

And finally, I got a quesito for each of us — sweet pastries stuffed with sweetened cream cheese.  Funny thing is, growing up on Cuban food in Miami (mostly from Latin American Cafeteria, which we could walk to from our house, and La Carreta), I don’t remember ever getting quesitos like this down there.  But when I moved to Orlando in 2004, they were ubiquitous at Cuban restaurants, cafes, and bakeries.  Hey, I’m not complaining!  

It was interesting revisiting Lo Mejor Del Mundo Cuban Cafe after so many years.  Not being on a main road, and with all the construction happening right in front of the little shopping strip it’s in, the place could definitely use a spotlight shined on it.  That said, everything I brought home was perfectly fine, but in the future, I’ll drive a little further to Cubans on the Run (where Casselberry starts fading into Longwood) or further still to Vicky Bakery.

Wine 4 Oysters

Wine 4 Oysters (https://www.wine4oysters.com/) is a friendly neighborhood restaurant and bar with a nautical theme and a seafood-centric menu.  It has been on my radar for years, but it’s in East Orlando, at 1957 South Alafaya Trail in the Publix plaza, south of the sprawling Waterford Lakes shopping plaza and State Road 408, in a part of town I NEVER go to, so I had never made it… until two weeks ago.  I timed my visit with my wife for 4 PM on a very rare Friday off, to be there when Wine 4 Oysters opens, snag one of their few booths, and take advantage of their happy hour specials.

This is the counter.  I appreciate any blue decor in restaurants, which I find soothing and comforting. 

Here is the opposite side of the dining room.  There are two half-booths in the very front, up against the front window that lets in lots of natural light, and you can see the one other half-booth in the back. 

We both studied the menu in advance, but my wife was more prepared than I.  She knew exactly what she wanted, and she defaulted to two time-tested favorite dishes.  The first one was baked brie, which came in a ramekin, melty and warm, topped with walnuts.  They served it with toasted bread, cranberry sauce, and apple wedges on the side.  I love cheese, but brie honestly does nothing for me, so this was all her.  She doesn’t eat a lot, so she brought quite a bit of this home to enjoy the next day.

As for me, I love oysters, but they are such a rare treat for me.  I realize I haven’t had oysters in well over a year, but we’ve been dealing with some very stressful health-related situations lately, and I also had some good things happen at work that we haven’t had a chance to celebrate or even acknowledge.  Since we were finally at Wine 4 Oysters during their happy hour, I said “screw it” (actually, I said something a little more adult) and ordered 30 plump Gulf oysters for the excellent price of $35.  My wife doesn’t like raw oysters, so I ate them all myself… and I’d do it again.  They were so cool and refreshing, and so far, I am not regretting it. 

The oysters came with accompaniments: the lemon wedges and cocktail sauce above, plus hot sauce, a French mignonette with shallots in red wine vinegar, a different mignonette with jalapenos and lemon, and grated horseradish in the cylindrical container.  I tried them all in various combinations and permutations, and it was nice.  It was just nice being there, out on a rare Friday date with my wife, who has been through so much lately, enjoying a huge platter of one of my favorite “sometimes foods,” going through the ritual of topping them with various acidic accoutrements to enhance their fresh, briny flavor.

At happy hour (which is 4 to 6 PM, Monday through Friday), in addition to the 30 Gulf oysters for $35, Wine 4 Oysters also offers 30% off James River oysters from Virginia, oyster shooters, and cocktails.  And on Wednesdays, I believe they run an all-you-can-drink wine special, so bohemians, wine moms, and UCF students, just be careful, that’s all I ask.

I am always a sucker for smoked fish dip, that Old Florida standard that has infinite variations, but it’s almost always great.  Like Italian subs, chili, and onion rings, I will almost always order smoked fish dip if I see it on a menu, so I was immediately drawn to the house smoked tuna dip at Wine 4 Oysters.  It was presented as a large scoop over a spring mix salad with wasabi dressing, accompanied by long, thin, unsalted flatbread-style crackers (Sixty Vines serves similar ones).  I was a little disappointed that the “dip” was more like the consistency of tuna salad, rather than a creamy dip.  It tasted good because I happen to like tuna salad a lot, but it wasn’t what I expected or hoped for.  I blame myself rather than the restaurant.  The taste and texture made me think it was made from regular canned tuna fish rather than ahi tuna or some other higher-grade tuna.  I’ve made similar-tasting tuna salad at home, sometimes with a splash (or more) of liquid smoke, so even though it was fine, and I ate every morsel, it didn’t blow me away.

One thing my wife will always order on a menu is octopus.  She loves those tender, brainy cephalopods!  This lemon garlic octopus came with one large, heavily seasoned, super-garlicky tentacle, plus a mountain of white rice with some seasoning on top, a scoop of relatively thin baba ghanoush, and a mixed greens salad with pomegranate dressing, probably made from pomegranate molasses.  She loves baba ghanoush too (and she orders that anywhere it is available), so this was a winning combination for her. That said, since she was pretty full from the baked brie and doesn’t eat that much to begin with, she only tried a tiny bit of the octopus at the restaurant.  We (mostly she) brought home a bunch of leftovers, and she had more of the octopus the following day, just chilled, straight out of the fridge.  She said it was much tastier the following day, eaten cold!

Finally, I thought we would both enjoy the Russian beef pelmeni dumplings, and we did.  They were pretty much what I hoped for, with thin, chewy dumpling wrappers, similar to Chinese wontons and the wonderful, beautiful manty dumplings we enjoyed so much recently at Uzbek restaurant Chayhana, but with seasoned beef filling.  They were served in a pool of melted butter and topped with a dollop of rich sour cream and plenty of parsley.  Both of us enjoyed these quite a bit.  I don’t know if they were handmade (because you can buy frozen pelmeni from multiple brands at Green Hills Supermarket, the huge Russian and Eastern European grocery store in Altamonte Springs), but it doesn’t matter, because they might have been my favorite part of the entire meal. 

I don’t know when I’ll make it back to Wine 4 Oysters, but it’s the kind of place more people should know about, so here I am, boosting the signal.  I love oysters so much, and even though I’ll always sing the praises of High Tide Harry’s and The Osprey, two of my favorite restaurants in the entire Orlando metropolitan area, it is always good to have options.  Wine 4 Oysters is another fine oyster option, especially for people living on the east side of town.