Bakery – Page 4 – The Saboscrivner

The New York Adventure Part 1: Ess-A-Bagel

My wife and I are celebrating our TENTH wedding anniversary in October, and we both wanted to make a big thing of it by returning to New York City, where we spent our honeymoon in 2009. We haven’t had a chance to return in this entire last decade, but since my wife is a college professor and I’m also in academia, October is a pretty busy time for us, and it would be impossible to get away then. So we opted for a mid-May getaway, during the empty and quiet weeks between the spring and summer semesters, before New York starts to rival Florida’s heat and humidity. We also had some personal and professional milestones to celebrate, so the timing was right and the stars lined up for us. We planned to take in the sights, see shows, and eat like kings.

Just as we did on our honeymoon, we chose our hotel based on its proximity to the legendary Midtown Manhattan bagel restaurant Ess-A-Bagel (https://www.ess-a-bagel.com/), considered by many the best bagel shop in the bagel capital of the world (sorry, Montreal!). And wouldn’t you know it — we ended up reserving the exact same hotel, just under a different name and new management, ten years later. It was meant to be!

So here is where the magic happens, this hole-y site. I’m always taken aback by just how small and cramped many iconic New York restaurants and businesses are, and Ess-A-Bagel is no exception. You enter and automatically line up, make your way down the counter until someone calls you, place your entire order with them, pay at the end, and hope there’s a tiny table available for you by then.

Ess-A-Bagel boils and bakes some of the largest bagels I’ve ever seen, with all the classics represented: plain, sesame, onion, garlic, salt, everything, pumpernickel, and cinnamon raisin, among others. Here’s a gigantic everything bagel, which is our favorite — coated with sesame and poppy seeds, toasted onion and garlic, and coarse kosher salt crystals.

You have a ridiculous choice of cream cheese and tofu-based spreads, all made fresh in-house. This is like heaven. The choices are unlimited, but you cannot go wrong.

In addition to all the standard cream cheeses, Ess-A-Bagel has a large selection of smoked, cured, and pickled fish, all standard Jewish fare that accompanies bagels. Most people are familiar with nova salmon — sometimes referred to as lox, although most lox is MUCH saltier than the more familiar nova your basic brunch spot offers. It pairs so perfectly with cream cheese. But when you get out of Orlando, you have far more fishy options for your bagels, and these are everything to me: smoked whitefish salad, large golden smoked chubs (whitefish), pickled herring fillets in either a sweet wine-based sauce or a sour cream-based sauce (both with plenty of sweet pickled onions!), rich smoky sturgeon, and the finest of all the smoked, cured, and pickled fishies: buttery sable, which sounds far more appetizing than “black cod.” Sable is the finest thing you can eat, and here is an article I found with a recipe and more information about it, for the uninitiated. These are the foods of my people, and they fill me with such joy.

You also have a wide variety of tuna, salmon, and other seafood salads.

And some pasta salads, potato salad, cole slaw, and additional vegetarian options, sold by the pound to enjoy as sides.

You can also order bagel sandwiches with the sliced deli meats and cheeses of your choice, but it seemed pointless to me to come all the way to New York and Ess-A-Bagel for a turkey, roast beef, or ham and cheese sandwich. (Despite its traditional Jewish specialties, Ess-A-Bagel is not a kosher restaurant, and I’ve never kept kosher anyway.)

The day we left for New York, we woke up at 3:30 AM to catch our 6:30 AM flight, got caught in morning rush hour traffic from Queens to Manhattan, and made it to our hotel to find out our room wasn’t ready yet. At that point, it was 12:30 PM — nine hours since we got up, and we hadn’t eaten anything yet. So we walked to Ess-A-Bagel just in time to join the long lunch line, and by the time we got our food and snagged one of those aforementioned tiny tables, almost an hour after that, it didn’t occur to me to take any pictures. Mea culpa, although some long-suffering Saboscrivnerinos may be relieved.

That first day, my wife ordered a toasted and buttered everything bagel, with a quarter-pound side of whitefish salad on the side. I wanted a bialy, that lovely cross between a bagel and a roll (baked, but never boiled!) with an indentation in the middle for baked onions, but they didn’t have any left. (See this Food Republic article for some bialy background!) So I got an everything bagel with sun-dried tomato cream cheese and my sweet, sweet sable. I also ordered a huge, fluffy salt bagel to tear off chunks and scoop up a quarter-pound of smoked shrimp and crab salad that looked and sounded great, and tasted even better. Everything was magnificent. My wife had fond memories of an apple cinnamon muffin from our last visit a decade back, but that was crumbly and dry, failing to live up to her nostalgia the way the bagels and fish did.

Our second day in the city, we wanted to take it relatively easy and eat a light lunch in our room, in preparation for seeing a show that evening. I walked back to Ess-A-Bagel to bring everything back to our hotel, and that time I remembered to take some photos.

My wife tried my sable the previous day and understood what I had raved about on and off for the last ten years, so she asked for an everything bagel sandwich with sable (left), and I happily obliged. I decided to try something different: a bialy sandwich (finally!) with baked salmon salad (right), at once smoky and creamy, so it didn’t need a layer of cream cheese.

Here’s a half of my bialy sandwich, generously stuffed with the baked salmon salad:

And her sable bagel, with nice thick chunks of the buttery, rich fish to melt in our mouths:

That huge everything bagel I showed you earlier came from this second visit. I also got a quarter-pound of their smoked tuna spread to go with that, and it was another good choice. I grew up eating canned tuna, to the point where I was shocked the first time I ever encountered rich, deep purple raw tuna in sushi in my late teens. My wife doesn’t like the smell of canned tuna, and it’s high in mercury and unsustainable, so I haven’t bought or even ordered it in years (although I am a huge sardine aficionado, and those are super-healthy and super-sustainable). But trying smoked tuna seemed like a worthwhile move, and it was far better than any conventional tuna salad I’ve ever had before.

My wife also asked for a black and white cookie, that New York deli and bakery classic. These should be more cake-like than anything — thick and moist, never crunchy or crispy. This one was unique for having a slight lemony flavor to the yellow cookie/cake underneath the layer of black and white icing that reminds us “We’re not so different, you and I.”

And then we went to see Hamilton, and I think it tied with seeing Tom Waits in concert in 2006 as the greatest musical experience… no, greatest cultural experience of my life. I love American history, and I come by it naturally. My dad was an esteemed history and social studies teacher, and now I teach a class that incorporates some U.S. history too. Combine that with my deep loves of musical theater (encouraged by my wife, a former child and teen actress) and hip hop, and Lin-Manuel Miranda’s award-winning show always felt like it was made just for me. I have obsessed over the original cast album for over three years, so finally being able to see it (and in the greatest city in the world, no less!), being right there in the room where it happens, was awe-inspiring.

Like I said, we ate like kings over our few days in the City, so stay tuned over the next week (or let’s face it, probably longer) for more of our culinary New York Adventures, right here on The Saboscrivner!

Cafe Madrid

Many years ago, I went to lunch with some co-workers at a Cuban restaurant that was fine. Not bad, by any means, but I thought it was just okay. I grew up in Miami, and while my parents didn’t love adventuring all over the city to try new restaurants the way I do in Orlando, they sure appreciated good Cuban food. We were surrounded by some of the finest Cuban cuisine in the world: the Latin American Cafeteria within walking distance of our little 1950s-era house in the Kendall suburbs, two different La Carreta locations within easy driving distance, and the legendary, iconic Versailles, maybe the most quintessentially “Miami” dining experience there is, still not too far away.

As a result of this, my standards for Cuban food are high, and it is honestly hard to find any Cuban restaurants in Orlando that can compete with the classics in Miami. So that little Orlando restaurant seemed much saltier and greasier than I was used to, I never found my way back to it, and I hadn’t thought about it in years.

Well, I recently went into work early and had to stay late, so I figured I’d go out to lunch to break up the day. Believe it or not, dear readers, this is a rare thing for me. I almost always pack my own lunches, and they are usually boring and relatively healthy — so unlike what I review on The Saboscrivner! I happened to be driving west on Curry Ford Road, hungry and indecisive, and saw that familiar sign: Cafe Madrid (https://www.cafemadridfl.com/). It had been so long, I figured I’d give them another chance, because even just okay Cuban food is better than a lot of things.

And to my pleasant surprise, Cafe Madrid was a brand new restaurant. Same name and location, but new owners, new decor, new menu, new everything that matters. They had only been open for four months in this new incarnation. It was a much brighter, open, welcoming space, and instead of a Cuban restaurant, the new owners had reinvented it as a Cuban-Spanish bakery and deli, specializing in sandwiches and beautiful pastries displayed in glass cases, along with some tapas and hot lunch specials. It ended up being exactly what I… wanted? NO. It ended up being exactly what I NEEDED.

Again, hungry, indecisive, and expecting a longer night than usual at work, I was torn between two sandwiches and decided to order both: a chorizo sandwich and my old Miami standard, the medianoche, AKA the midnight sandwich. I figured I’d enjoy one there and save the other for later, possibly even for the next day.

The chorizo sandwich came with thin slices of Spanish chorizo sausage, served warm on fresh pressed Cuban bread, baked in-house. It included melty provolone cheese and was served with lettuce, sliced tomatoes, and mayo. Due to the lettuce and tomato factor, that’s the sandwich I unwrapped and ate at the restaurant. It was great!

The wet ingredients made it want to slide apart as I ate, but I am a grown-ass man and didn’t even get any on myself. I would have liked more chorizo, but no matter the situation in life, it would be safe to say I would always like more chorizo. You will never catch me saying “Maaaan, I wish I had less chorizo!”

Flash forward to work the next day, I ate the medianoche sandwich straight out of the fridge because the less said about our break room toaster oven, the better. And you know what? It was a delicious sandwich, even cold. I love the sweet, yellow egg bread of a medianoche even more than typical Cuban bread, and it was also pressed like a traditional Cuban sandwich. The ingredients are the same as a Cuban, otherwise: roast pork (not dry at all, even after being made the day before, refrigerated, and eaten cold), sweet ham, swiss cheese, yellow mustard (I am a mustard aficionado, and Cuban and medianoche sandwiches are the only times I settle for plain yellow), and plenty of crispy pickles (which I am slowly developing an appreciation for). It was definitely more generously stuffed than the chorizo sandwich.

I rarely drink coffee, which is a rarity among librarians and people in general, it seems like. The two kinds of coffee that tempt me are cool, creamy, sweet Vietnamese iced coffee, served with sweetened condensed milk, and rich, frothy, strong Cuban cafe con leche. Coffee usually jazzes me up too many hours after I need the extra energy, and I often don’t like the way it makes me feel, with my heart feeling like it’s going to bust out of my chest, preceded by the acrid sadness of acid reflux. But with that said, I suppose I like my coffee like I like my women: strong, sweet, and thick.

In a moment of weakness, I chugged this cafe con leche at 4 PM, which was ill-advised. I do wish they had added their own sugar, since I stirred in two packets and it still wasn’t nearly as sweet as the cafe con leche I love from back home. And I have no doubt the walk-up windows of Miami add a lot more than two packets worth of sugar to their sweet, sweet rocket fuel.

I also ate a crispy fried empanada while I waited for my sandwiches at Cafe Madrid, stuffed with pizza fillings: delicious tomato sauce and melty mozzarella cheese. I loved that, but to paraphrase comedian Jim Gaffigan, there’s no such thing as a bad empanada. (Some are certainly better than others, though, and the fried Cuban style is my favorite by far.)

And I selected an assortment of pastries to bring home to share with my wife: a guava and cheese quesito for me, a regular cheese quesito for her, a cannoli, a piece of sweet cornbread (Southerners may not appreciate that, but we did), and a chocolatey rolled cake called braza gitana, or “gypsy’s arm,” which ended up being very moist, and probably my favorite of the group.

Braza gitana!

So Cafe Madrid had nothing in common with the restaurant I ate at nearly a decade ago, aside from the name and location. If you weren’t sold on it before, it might as well be an all-new place. And if you loved the old Cuban restaurant, give this bakery/deli/sandwich shop a fair chance, and you should be pleasantly surprised like I was. While none of the Cuban food in Orlando measures up to my Miami favorites, Cafe Madrid totally hit the spot, filling my heart and my stomach with nostalgic tastes of home.

CLOSED: Pho Cali and Quickly Boba

EDITOR’S NOTE: Pho Cali and Quickly Boba closed some time ago.

***

There’s a strip shopping center along Aloma Avenue in Winter Park (in an area that feels more like Casselberry) that once housed a Publix and several other businesses. The Publix moved to a newer location ten minutes up the road, and most of the other tenants moved out. I thought the entire strip was dead for sure, but a gym moved in, and now some restaurants have opened in there. One of them is essentially two restaurants in one: a new Vietnamese restaurant called Pho Cali (https://www.facebook.com/phocalialoma/menu/), connected to an interesting chain called Quickly Boba. They share the slick, modern dining room, but Pho Cali has table service, while you order at the counter at Quickly Boba. They just opened in late August.

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The night I stopped by to check them out, I ended up bringing home some takeout from both. Pho Cali has a pretty typical menu for a Vietnamese restaurant, but a little more expensive than most of the restaurants in Orlando’s Mills 50 neighborhood. My wife asked for grilled beef with rice vermicelli, her go-to standard when she doesn’t order pho. It even came with three spring rolls, which were a pleasant little bonus.

I’ve been to a few other Quickly locations in Orlando, and they’re all a little bit different. They usually offer boba teas, smoothies, and slushes with a long list of flavors, macarons, and sometimes they have food menus with spicy popcorn chicken, Vietnamese banh mi sandwiches on baguettes, or even poke bowls. This location had a lot of bakery items and desserts I’ve never seen at other Quickly stores, displayed in attractive glass cases.

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This is where they customize your boba drinks, and dig the multicolored macarons on top of the glass.

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I was thrilled to see that this location had banh mi, because sometimes I crave those sandwiches, my previous favorite banh mi shop Mai Bistro closed recently, and the current reigning contender, Nha Trang, is much further from home than this place.

A good thing about banh mi sandwiches is that they’re usually cheap, like in the $5 range. In addition to whichever sandwich filling you choose, as the crusty baguettes are typically dressed with butter or mayo, pork liver pate (similar to liverwurst or braunschweiger, but less smoky-tasting), crunchy pickled carrot and daikon radish, cucumber spears, sprigs of refreshing cilantro, and slices of fresh, crunchy jalapeno peppers, which are much hotter than the pickled jalapenos most people are used to. I was impressed to see this Quickly had an open area where you could watch your sandwiches being made and request custom ingredients, a la Subway. Most places just disappear into the back to make them.

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I usually get a cold cut combo sandwich, but I noticed this Quickly location had crawfish on the menu, so I decided to get one of each, have half of each when I got them home, and save the other halves for the next day. I don’t know why I was expecting breaded and deep-fried crawfish tails, but these were chilled and marinated, like a tangy crawfish salad. I like seafood salads, so I figured I would try it.

The cold cut banh mi:

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The crawfish banh mi: 20181022_204138_resized

Both were very fresh and tasty. They’re always much lighter and more refreshing than most subs or hoagies, and a good banh mi should taste very fresh, with a variety of textures and flavors: crunchy bread and vegetables, soft meat fillings, some tangy, some spicy, and richness from the creamy mayo and smooth pate. I don’t know if they dethrone Nha Trang or the late, lamented Mai Bistro, but they hit the spot, the price was right, and I’m glad I have the option much closer to home.

I also picked out a bun from the Quickly bakery case, with strands of salty, soft shredded pork baked on the top. It was a savory bun with the slightest hint of sweetness, very buttery, and much softer and lighter than you would expect.

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It’s an interesting combination, and maybe just what this desolate shopping strip needs to revitalize itself. I’m happy to provide some good word of mouth to help send business their way, and I wish them the best over there on Aloma. It’s a very nice, cool dining room, reminiscent of Bento, a local favorite. I think if people check it out, they will be pleasantly surprised. Even if Pho Cali is a little more expensive than the Mills 50 stalwarts that have been serving Vietnamese food for far longer, I suspect it will win over folks in Winter Park, Winter Springs, Casselberry, and Oviedo that don’t want to drive all the way out there.

And next time I’ll actually try the pho!

Tampaversary Part 2: La Segunda Central Bakery

Our original plan was to have lunch somewhere after checking out of our Tampa hotel, then to visit another nearby local landmark, La Segunda Central Bakery, to get some pastries and possibly sandwiches to go, before driving back to Orlando. But when we woke up, my wife was hungry, ready to get home sooner, and didn’t want to wait for most restaurants to open at 11. We decided to go straight to La Segunda and then take off, and to save other restaurants for other trips, when we have more time and could make plans with local friends.

We easily found La Segunda Central Bakery (https://www.lasegundabakery.com/), but what I didn’t realize was that it was just a takeout operation with no dine-in seating. They have a second location that is more of a cafe setup, but leave it to me to want to visit the original. We are already huge fans of Tampa’s other historic bakery, Alessi (http://www.alessibakery.com/), which was founded in 1912. La Segunda had been described as very similar, and it was founded in 1915. I wanted to compare the legendary bakeries, and I can safely say they are both great, and if you like one, you’ll certainly like the other and ought to give it a chance too.

Since they didn’t have tables, we just decided to get stuff to go, and to have a mini-picnic in the car on our way out of town. My wife ordered buttered Cuban toast with a side of crispy bacon, made on the absolutely gigantic loaves of Cuban bread people were carrying out by the armful. These loaves were several feet long; my wife is five feet tall, and they very well could have been her height! La Segunda’s website purports to be “the world’s largest producer of authentic Cuban bread,” and I wouldn’t be surprised if that is true. We were both a little distracted by sensory overload in that bakery, and it didn’t occur to me to order one of those giant loaves to go. Oh well, another time. I grew up in Miami, so I’ve had A LOT of Cuban bread. It’s great the first day, but by the second day, Harley Quinn cosplayers could definitely use it as a prop baseball bat. But I digress!

I don’t eat breakfast and don’t like to eat a heavy meal before a long drive, so I just ordered stuff to enjoy later on. I ordered two of La Segunda’s sandwiches: the Medianoche and the Patrinostro. Growing up in Miami, my typically non-adventurous family loved Cuban food, and we had some of the best Cuban food in the country to choose from, all within a small radius of our suburban home. My mom instilled in me a love of the medianoche (midnight) sandwich over the traditional Cuban sandwich, and I stand by it to this day. Both contain the same ingredients: roast pork marinated in mojo criollo (with onion, garlic, and sour orange juice), sweet sliced ham, swiss cheese, mustard (typically yellow mustard, one of the only times this mustard aficionado is A-OK with the plain yellow stuff), and sliced pickles. I’m trying to make myself like pickles more, but one of the rare times I’ve always been a fan is on medianoche and Cuban sandwiches.

Anyway, whether you get the sandwich on Cuban bread or the sweet, yellow medianoche roll (similar to challah), it is then pressed flat (sometimes buttered first), to warm the ingredients, melt the cheese, and get the bread super-crispy. Miami people may recoil in shock and disappointment (and I know my best friend will be pissed), but I actually love the Tampa version of these sandwiches. Due to the Italian influence, Tampa Cubans and medianoches also include genoa salami with the roast pork and sweet, smoky ham, and one could argue that anything with genoa salami is better than the same thing without. Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it! And when I finally tried it at home, it was an excellent example of a medianoche. Perfect confluence of ingredients on that wonderful sweet, crispy-yet-yielding yellow bread. La Segunda advertises a “special sauce” instead of mustard. I couldn’t pick up on what it was (probably a remoulade or some kind of Mustardayonnaise), but it was a great sandwich regardless.

And since I had to experience La Segunda’s Cuban bread for myself, my second sandwich order was the Patrinostro, an Italian sandwich with ham, capicola, mortadella, pepperoni, provolone cheese, onions, oil, and vinegar. I asked for it hot because I wanted the pressed Cuban bread, and asked them to leave the lettuce and tomatoes off, since I wouldn’t be eating it for two hours and didn’t want them to get slimy on a hot sandwich. I was conflicted, because I don’t like my Italian cured meats hot, but everything was still delicious by the time we got home, and the bread was still crispy. It looked naked without the lettuce and tomatoes, so I added my own tomatoes, as well as hot cherry pepper relish and a drizzle of balsamic glaze at home. It was good, but it would have been better fully dressed and eaten immediately, with cold ingredients served on bread that had already been pressed and warmed by itself.

I also ordered two slices of scachatta, which I was delighted to see at La Segunda. I first read about scachatta on Saveur’s website years ago, a pizza-like bread served only at Tampa’s historic Italian-influenced Cuban bakeries. It is served cold or at room temperature on soft bread tinted yellow by egg yolks, with a savory-sweet tomato sauce containing very finely-ground beef, and no cheese melted on top like any pizza you’re envisioning. Alessi’s scachatta has a dusting of parmesan like the lightest snowfall, and La Segunda’s didn’t seem to have any cheese at all. It might sound weird, and if you’re expecting traditional pizza, you may be a little disappointed. But think of it as its own delicious hybrid and give it a fair chance. I love the stuff and wish I could get it anywhere in Orlando, but maybe that’s for the best. I can’t tell you whose scachatta is better, but they are both damn fine.

My wife also ordered a selection of cookies that were weighed by the pound. I think of them as “tea cookies” — little things with sprinkles and powdered sugar coatings and shaped liked red and green leaves. Bakeries of my Miami youth used to carry those, and my mom loved them too. They have never really been my thing — if I’m going to eat a cookie, I want it to be soft and chewy… or an Oreo in their latest weird flavors.

I couldn’t leave this beautiful bakery without getting myself something sweet too, so I gambled and chose a little square of pineapple crumb cake, since I love anything pineappley, as well as crumb cake. When I finally got home and tried it, it was superb. Moist, rich cake with the most delicious sticky-sweet pineapple glaze and streusel-esque topping. It only cost $1.95, and it put any of the extravagant, expensive, and somewhat disappointing desserts from Bern’s to shame.

So La Segunda was awesome. Would I go back? Honestly, I think we’d probably return to Alessi Bakery instead, where you can at least sit down and eat a meal. But everything we tried was just as good here, don’t get me wrong.

Stasio’s Italian Deli & Market: Opening Day review!

Well, after tracking its progress for what seems like a year, Orlando’s first Italian deli and market, Stasio’s, finally opened for business today, as a soft opening. (https://www.facebook.com/Stasios-Italian-deli-194418224503776/) I love Italian delis and markets — Mazzaro’s Market in St. Petersburg is one of my favorite destinations in all of Florida (and I don’t just mean restaurants), and DeLaurenti inside Pike Place Market in Seattle and Eataly in Chicago are two of the coolest places I’ve ever been. Needless to say, I had to make a pilgrimage to Stasio’s on its opening day, and I’m so glad I did, because they are filling a void in Orlando’s burgeoning culinary scene. The family that owns Stasio’s also founded the venerable and much-missed Louie and Maria’s Italian restaurant, as well as the Pizzeria Valdiano location in Waterford Lakes, so they aren’t new to Orlando or to delicious Italian food.

My co-worker and I arrived around 1 PM, and I was glad to see the place busy and bustling. We immediately got in line to order sandwiches at the deli counter, where we were presented with a laminated menu. For me, choosing the Stasio sandwich was an easy choice: prosciutto, hot capicola, mild soppressata, fresh mozzarella, roasted red peppers, red onion, and white balsamic vinaigrette on a sub roll, for $11. That’s my idea of a good time! My vegetarian co-worker ordered the Melenzani sandwich, with eggplant, spinach, roasted red peppers, marinated tomatoes, fresh mozzarella, and balsamic reduction, which only came as a panini, for $11. (Editor’s note: she e-mailed and said it came on a sub roll after all, despite the menu saying it would be a panini.)

They were slammed on their first day, so it gave us time to browse around. At the deli, I ordered some sliced Italian beef brisket and porchetta, both made in-house, while my co-worker picked up some beautiful fresh sfogliatelle (flaky, shell-shaped pastries) from their bakery counter. They had plenty of other meats and cheeses, huge square slices of pizza ($4.95 for a gigantic slice), deli salads and vegetables, including broccoli rabe, multicolored roasted peppers, stuffed cherry peppers, and sundried tomatoes glistening in oil, marinated imported anchovies that looked like actual silvery fish and not the salty brown fillets that everyone except me dreads on their pizza, and prepared Italian meatballs and sausage. Shelf-stable groceries included all kinds of fancy pasta you will NOT find at Publix, and plenty of cans, jars, and bottles of delicious Italian delicacies.

Stasio’s does not have tables, but the store is lined with a long counter for people to enjoy their food while sitting on stools. We brought ours back to work, though. They also have an espresso counter near the cash registers at the front, and it looks like you can also order wine by the glass there, but I could be wrong. (Don’t drink, wasn’t paying that close attention.)

Upon returning to work, I couldn’t be more pleased to say how great the sub was. The melange of meats worked together in perfect harmony with the fresh “mutsadell” (I promise I’ll never do that again), and roasted red peppers are a welcome addition to almost any sandwich. I’m sure someone is wondering how the sub roll was, and I’m happy to report it was the perfect amount of chewy with an exterior that wasn’t too crusty — just how I like them. The rolls were also baked in-house, of course. I would have liked more toppings on the sub — lettuce, tomato, maybe some of the long hot peppers they advertised on other sandwiches — but ordering was a bit of sensory overload today, and I didn’t even ask. Next time!

Here’s a much better photo of a different Stasio sandwich from a later visit:

I also impulse-bought a Manhattan Special espresso soda in a glass bottle, because even though I’m not much of a coffee drinker, I sure love trying new and interesting soda flavors. It was good, although I think a cappuccino/latte version with some creaminess would have been much better. All they had were regular and diet version of the espresso soda, though.

Well, I am very happy Stasio’s is finally open, and so close to my work! I’ll definitely add it to my regular restaurant rotation, and I suggest my dozens of loyal readers (bakers’ dozens?) give it a try at your earliest convenience. I wish them the best and welcome them to the neighborhood!

ADDENDUM: My co-worker gave me one of her shell-shaped sfogliatelle pastries, and it was delicious. The crispy outer dough is very flaky and fragile, able to be peeled apart in thin, spiral-like layers. The inside is kind of like a thick, lightly-sweetened cheese (not creamy or runny at all, more like the filling of a cheese danish but not nearly as sweet), speckled with tiny, chewy bits of candied lemon for a subtle fresh citrus taste and scent.

ADDENDUM 2: If you go on a weekday afternoon, Stasio’s will often have huge rectangular slices of Sicilian-style pizza, which I just love. I highly recommend seeking one of these big baddies out.

Baltimore, Part 2: Dangerously Delicious Pies

When you’re a grown-ass person, you can choose to have dessert for dinner if you want to. Normally that isn’t my ideal meal; I like some sweets, but I’m more likely to crave a good sandwich (almost everything is better in sandwich form), pasta, or salty, crunchy snacks. But when it comes to desserts, my favorite might be PIE. I’ll take pie over cake any day; I love pie, and I’m sad that for the most part, pie isn’t hip or cool or popular. There was a time in the U.S. when pie wasn’t just for Thanksgiving — and true confession time, I think apple and pumpkin may be the most boring, pedestrian pies, and Thanksgiving dinner is boring and bland in general. But that’s a hot take for another blog entry!

There were times past when you could take a date out for coffee and pie after a movie, or convince more people to attend a voluntary meeting if you promised punch and pie. Those days are gone, and what desserts are en vogue now? We’re left with trendy cupcakes, crumbly dry nibbles of cake buried under mounds of sickly-sweet, greasy frosting; macarons, tiny pastel burger-looking things that still look much prettier than they taste; and biscotti, a cruel joke against anyone who likes cookies.

But pie is comfort food, nostalgia, hope — all the good parts of America with none of the bad, the most pastoral of pastries, equally at home cooling on a farmhouse windowsill or resting under a glass dome in a lonely big-city diner straight out of an Edward Hopper painting. I even fulfilled a lifelong dream I never even knew I had earlier this year, when I volunteered as a judge in the American Pie Championship, right here in Orlando. That was an experience I’ll never forget or regret, even though I got stuck with the apple pie category and never need to have apple pie again.

So needless to say, I was thrilled when two Facebook friends alerted me to the presence of a pie restaurant right here in Baltimore, where I’m spending the next few days! Dangerously Delicious Pies (https://www.dangerouspiesbalt.com/) was founded by Rodney Henry, frontman of Baltimore rock band The Glenmont Popes, and apparently quite a baker as well. The restaurant has two locations in Baltimore, and they specialize in sweet AND savory pies! The menu is huge, almost to the point of intimidating, but I figured I’d get a piece of savory pie so I could feel like a functional grown-ass person and have more than just dessert for dinner, but follow it with a sweet slice.

I took a Lyft ride to the scenic Canton neighborhood location with an old friend and one of her work colleagues. It was a cool, funky little restaurant, with walls painted red, some rock ‘n’ roll decor, and a glass case teeming with gorgeous, tempting pies. All savory pies are $7.50 per slice, and quiches and sweet pies are $6.50 per slice. Every pie is baked in a 10″ pie pan, and they are cut into six equal, generous slices.

My friend selected the Hot Rod Potato pie: kind of like potatoes au gratin with potatoes, roasted peppers, cream, cheeses, onions, and bacon. 20180714_192934_resized

Her colleague had just flown into Baltimore and was hungry enough to order two slices: the Cannonball (bratwurst, onions, and peppers roasted in Heavy Seas Loose Cannon beer) and the Polka pie (Kielbasa, sauerkraut, potatoes, and cheese). They were kind enough to let me try theirs, and I did the same.

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I think I panicked from the seemingly-limitless options, because I chose the sausage, tomato, and fennel pie — good, but not as great as all of theirs. I love tomato-based sauces on pasta, pizza, salsa, you name it, but this had chunks of stewed tomatoes that were a little too large for my liking. I think it came down to a texture issue for me, as I’d rather have a smoother sauce without huge chunks when it comes to hot, cooked tomatoes. But my pie included both sweet and hot sausages, and it still tasted really good. It could have used some cheese, though — either melty mozzarella or provolone, or even a gooey white American or cream cheese to balance out the acidic, chunky tomatoes.

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All these pies had the same crust — fork-tender, flaky, buttery, a little salty, chewy yet also crispy, not really sweet. It was a really solid pie crust that got thicker and a little dryer toward the back. Like a lot of dry pizza crusts, I wasn’t too tempted to eat the outer crust pieces, but the tops and bottoms were terrific.

The pies all came with complimentary sides of either a vinegar-based cole slaw with poppy seeds, or a simple side salad. I opted for the cole slaw, which was great, except for the poppy seeds that got lodged between some of my teeth all night. I still contend they need to develop an app that warns you about visible food caught between your teeth.

For her sweet pie, my friend went with the house specialty, the Baltimore Bomb, a vanilla-custardy chess pie with Berger cookies, a local delicacy similar to New York’s familiar black and white cookies, melted and swirled into the custard filling. Berger cookies are smaller than your average black and whites, but they’re comparable “cakey” cookies, covered with rich, thick chocolate icing. It was in the same kind of flaky, buttery crust as the savory pies, but it was almost a sweetness overload.

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I had a much easier time choosing my sweet pie, especially after studying the menu in advance: the Pineapple Right Side Up pie, white chocolate maple chess pie topped with brown sugar and pineapple. As I write more on this blog, you will learn that I love anything with pineapple and anything with maple, but it’s very rare for a dessert to include both flavors. Needless to say, it was delicious, but also ridiculously sweet and rich. I would have liked a little more of a pineapple upside down cake taste mixed throughout (that’s one cake that I’ll always love) and a little less of the rich custard, which was extremely “eggy”-tasting in both sweet pies. And normally I love chess pie!

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Anyway, it was an awesome dinner, a unique restaurant, and a great value. None of us had any regrets, even if I don’t feel like I chose the best savory pie option. I’m so glad some of my hip friends hipped me to the existence of Dangerously Delicious Pies, because I came across as so cool recommending it to my other friend and her friend. Now I can say that almost everything is better in sandwich form AND pie form.

This place opens at 10 AM during the week and 9 AM on weekends, and stays open until 10 PM most days, and midnight on Friday and Saturday. You could literally have pie for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and I strongly recommend you try that at least once.

To quote FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper from Twin Peaks, one of my favorite fictional characters of all time from one of my favorite shows of all time, these were some damn fine pies.

Buttermilk Bakery

This morning, my wife wanted croissants, and I agreed they sounded good. But we couldn’t get ourselves out of bed at a reasonable time to go out, and I was plagued by nightmares about vacationing with friends to an unfamiliar beach that turned out to be a dystopian hellscape, with crumbling, graffiti-strewn hotels and roving gangs of punks straight out of an ’80s movie, daring vacationers to pass their flaming barricades and swinging chains to catch a glimpse of the ocean. But enough about my inner turmoil!

By the time I got up and dressed, I figured most bakeries would be slammed by the brunch crowd, so I went off to bring home croissants from Buttermilk Bakery, a newish Winter Park bakery we’ve only been to once before, but I never reviewed. (http://www.buttermilk-bakery.com/)

I was lucky to find the last parking space in the back, since they were doing bang-up business, with every table full and a line almost out the door. But once I got up front, I was greeted by friendly bakers and a dazzling array of croissants and other pastries:

Since we rarely make it out there, I ended up bringing home two plain croissants (although there is nothing “plain” about them), a morning bun, a monkey bread croissant, and a cinnamon sugar brioche doughnut. They definitely made my wife’s morning, especially after I brewed up some cafe con leche for her. After dreaming of seaside terrors and a fight for survival amid Art Deco ruins, the flaky, buttery, rich croissant and vaguely floral-accented morning bun helped me find my center as well.

We are so lucky to have access to a plethora of awe-inspiring bakeries here in Orlando. At this point, I don’t even mess with anything from the Publix bakery. We have so many better local options, for the rare times I indulge in sweets. (My wife is the one with the sweet tooth!) We’re the hugest fans of Se7enbites, especially for pie, and we’ve had great experiences at Benjamin French Bakery and now Buttermilk Bakery for croissants. Heartsong Cookies and Gideon’s Bakehouse both make some of the best cookies I’ve ever had, and The Gourmet Muffin specializes in… well, you can guess. These are all baked goods — no baked bads among them!