Chicken – Page 5 – The Saboscrivner

Caribbean Sunshine Bakery

Jamaican food is one of my favorite kinds of food. For many years, I was loyal to the Golden Krust location in East Orlando, and that’s because it is awesome. But when I started branching out, I discovered Mark’s Jamaican Bar & Grill last year, and that was pretty good too (even if they left the roti I paid for out of my order; I have a long memory). My most recent Jamaican discovery is Caribbean Sunshine Bakery, a restaurant with two locations in west Orlando and one in Winter Garden. I have paid two visits to the location on West Colonial Drive and John Young Parkway.

I was surprised to see they had multiple small restaurants on the inside: the Jamaican place (the main attraction) taking up the left side of the space, and small soul food and Haitian restaurants off to the right, along with a T-shirt shop. I went straight to the thatched hut to place my order, then waited for it along the left side, so I didn’t get to check out the menus of the Soul Food Cafe or the Haitian restaurant.

But since the website listed on the door and the website listed on the paper menu are different, and neither work, I took the liberty of scanning the paper menu:

I always love spicy beef patties, but that’s what I almost always get. I even have a frozen Golden Krust spicy beef patty in my freezer right now! So when I saw Caribbean Sunshine Bakery offered a salt fish patty ($2.35), I had to try that. First I asked for an ackee and salt fish patty, to represent the national dish of Jamaica, but they were sold out of those. I’m glad they still had regular salt fish patties available when I got there in the afternoon, since that is traditionally a Jamaican breakfast dish. Because Caribbean Sunshine is a bakery, I decided to get my patty wrapped in coco bread ($1 additional) to try their version of the soft, fluffy bread. Carbs on carbs!

The crispy golden patty had a nice flakiness and tasted very fresh. The fish inside was suitably salty, surprisingly smoky, and seasoned well with some red pepper — maybe pimiento? It wasn’t spicy, for those who fear Jamaican food might be too spicy for them. This sandwich, laden with carbs, salt, and grease, had a nice blend of textures, and everything was fresh and delicious. Salt fish patties, where have you been all my life?

This is the large oxtail meal ($11.95), served over rice and peas with steamed cabbage, sweet fried plantains, and a round fried dumpling with the very festive moniker of festival. Oxtail and maduros are two of my favorite foods in the entire world, together or separately, and these were awesome. I wish I could cook rice and peas and cabbage like this! The rice has the slightest coconutty flavor, and I wish I could duplicate the magical recipe that most Jamaican restaurants use at home.

I almost never order jerk chicken, but I don’t know why that is, because I feel more comfortable eating meat when I know the animal had been a jerk. Also, I usually prefer brown stew chicken, but I asked the friendly woman at the counter which one of the two she recommended, and she said to go with the jerk. I didn’t want to be a jerk after asking for her recommendation, so I went for it. This was another large meal ($11.95), and it was great. I forgot to specify I always prefer dark meat chicken, so I was disappointed to see breast meat when I got it home. But even though some restaurants overcook their white meat chicken, this was very moist, tender, juicy, and full of incredible flavor. The jerk seasoning had a little bite, but wasn’t overwhelmingly spicy at all. I loved it.

I returned to Caribbean Sunshine about a month back, to pick up lunch for myself and three co-workers. One woman ordered the jerk chicken I enjoyed so much last time, and two others ordered the brown stew chicken. This was a small brown stew chicken meal ($9.75), with rice and peas, cabbage, and festival:I traded a piece of my jerk pork for a piece of her brown stew chicken, and all three of us who tried it agreed how good it was.

Oh yeah, the jerk pork! I ordered a small meal ($10.85) and really liked it. There were a few large bone fragments to pick out, but the meat was so tender, it was easy to pull the bones out cleanly, with no shreds of meat sticking to them. Never mind the chicken wing on top of the cabbage in the picture above — you won’t get that in a jerk pork meal unless you trade some food with your friend.

I had to get another salt fish patty on this takeout trip, but this time I also tried my old standard, the spicy beef patty ($2.35). These are much larger patties than you get at other Jamaican restaurants, convenience stores, and random Cuban restaurants and pizzerias. You can tell they are made fresh here at Caribbean Sunshine Bakery. After taking this first taste, I ended up eating the patties the next day. They were still nice and flaky after a quick trip through the microwave. (Not at work; I don’t microwave fish at work because I am not a sociopath.) The salt fish was nice and smoky like last time, and the beef patty was quite spicy, which was what I hoped for. It made my tongue tingle for a while afterwards!

I really love Jamaican and Caribbean food, and I’m glad to discover new restaurants around Orlando all the time. If you haven’t been to Caribbean Sunshine Bakery, definitely make a special trip to one of the three locations some time. The West Colonial one is directly across the street from Lotte Plaza Market, the sprawling Asian supermarket that houses another one of my favorite restaurants in its food court, the Filipino-American fusion restaurant Taglish. That whole stretch of West Colonial Drive has some of Orlando’s best Caribbean and Asian grocery shopping and dining options, so don’t sleep on it, even though it isn’t a toney or touristy part of town. You’ll be missing out on some real shining gems, like Caribbean Sunshine.

Cubans on the Run

Cubans on the Run (https://www.cubansontherun.com/) is a small, casual Cuban restaurant located in Casselberry, but practically on the edge of Longwood. Yesid Saavedra opened it as a small sandwich shop with his late father-in-law Jose Torres in 1993, but it was destroyed by Hurricane Charlie in 2004. Undaunted, they rebuilt and reopened it as a larger space, with an expanded kitchen and a fuller menu to match, adding Cuban entrees beyond sandwiches.

My wife and I have enjoyed Cubans on the Run for years, but because it is closed on Sundays, sometimes we don’t make it there when we get the bright idea to go. I’ve never eaten in the dining room, even in all the years before the pandemic, but it’s a fantastic restaurant to pick up takeout. They have one of the best Cuban sandwiches in town — not as large as College Park Cafe‘s Cubano, but definitely one of the better ones in the Orlando area. Those two are my Top Two, for sure.

My wife doesn’t share my obsession with sandwiches, but she likes steak much more than I do, believe it or not. At Cuban restaurants, she almost always orders a thin grilled steak, like this one here ($10.99), served with chimichurri sauce on the side, and topped with a mound of thin-sliced grilled onions she hates, but I love. I am always glad to scoop up her onions. She requested white rice with it but got yellow rice, which she was fine with. Those are tostones on top — savory, starchy, salty, crunchy fried plantains, and a cup of red beans underneath that I would end up eating. The steak is very thin, but it was a huge portion. There was a second entire piece of steak underneath that one, almost the same size!

I am making a conscious effort to eat a little healthier in 2021, so on this visit, I ordered chicken fricasee for the first time. This herculean portion was only $7.50. I requested dark meat, so I got a huge chicken thigh with the bone still in and the skin still on, a huge leg, a couple of chunks of potato from the stew, a bed of rich yellow rice, a cup of red beans, and four maduros — sweet fried plantains, definitely a Top Ten favorite food of mine. Sometimes you order chicken and it’s disappointingly dry, which is one reason I tend to prefer dark meat, especially thighs. This was perfect chicken — so moist, juicy, tender, rich, flavorful. It was prepared so well, I feel inspired to try to recreate my own version at home. Loved this chicken. One of the best chicken dishes I’ve eaten in the Orlando area, without a doubt!

But for the purposes of this review, I couldn’t go to Cubans on the Run and not order one of their signature sandwiches. But instead of the traditional Cuban sandwich that Cubans on the Run is acclaimed for, I switched it up and got my childhood favorite from Miami, the medianoche (midnight) sandwich ($5.99). It has all the same ingredients as the Cubano: roast pork, sweet ham, Swiss cheese, yellow mustard, and pickles, only it is served on a sweet, egg-based yellow bread, rather than Cuban bread. But I’ve had the Cubano before too, and like I said, both are among the finest in Orlando.

This is a chicharron ($3.75), crispy fried pork with the crunchy skin attached. This one was harder, drier, and crunchier than I like, but we caught them late on a weekday evening on this particular visit, and usually I go earlier on Saturdays when the chicharrones are fresher and more tender.

My wife and I both love arepas ($3.75), sort of a sandwich made with two sweet corn patties fried on a grill, with melty mozzarella cheese in between them. Growing up in Miami, you got an arepa from a cart whenever there was an outdoor event, like a fair or festival. I have recently learned these are often referred to as arepas con choclo, or cachapas, since there are other kinds of arepas (Colombian, Venezuelan, etc.) that aren’t the sweet corn cakes.

These are two perfect churros ($3.25 for the pair), which are doughnut-like pastries that are fried and dusted with cinnamon sugar. They should be crispy on the outside and moist and cake-like on the inside. These churros are made fresh, and you can get them with or without cream down their long hollow centers. I like the cream, but my wife prefers them without. Guess how we got these!*
*We got them without cream, the way my wife likes. Fellas, consider this a teaching moment.

I have a hard time going to any Cuban restaurant and not trying my old Miami standards of a beef empanada ($1.85) and one or two croquetas de jamon (75 cents each).

Empanadas are savory pastries, usually filled with some kind of meat wrapped in a half moon-shaped crust, then baked or fried. Cuban empanadas are wrapped in a flour dough crust, then fried until crispy, flaky, and soft. I like them the best, especially when they’re stuffed with picadillo, a dish of seasoned ground beef. This was a nice light empanada, crispy yet soft and yielding, barely greasy, although I wish the ground beef was a little more tomatoey. (Everyone seasons it a little different, and sometimes you find olives in there, stewed with the picadillo.)

Croquetas are small fritters of diced ham mixed with a rich, creamy bechamel sauce, dipped in bread crumbs, and then fried until crispy and solid, but soft and creamy inside. I love them, but nobody loves them more than my best friend since childhood, a lifelong Miami resident who is currently blogging about his quest to discover and review Miami’s finest croquetas, in The Croqueta Diaries. I’m a dabbling dilletante, but consider my dude Captain Croqueta.

And even though Cuban food is not known as spicy food, Cubans on the Run is well-known for their housemade hot sauce. Usually they will give you one or two tiny plastic cups, even with a big order like this, but this time I remembered to ask to purchase a bottle (I believe it was $5).

I’ve tried several other Cuban restaurants around Orlando, but Cubans on the Run is definitely one of my favorites, and one of the best. It isn’t far from home, but much too far from work to dash off to for a quick lunch. Since it is closed on Sundays, that means we can pretty much only ever go on Saturdays or rare mornings after dental appointments nearby. But as you can see from the hearty, unpretentious, delicious food here, it never disappoints. Run, don’t walk, to Cubans on the Run!

Bombay Street Kitchen

Hold onto your hats, true believers, because I’m bringing you a review of my favorite new restaurant to open so far in 2021. Five months into the year, I’m pleased as punch to profess that Orlando has a big hit on its hands with Bombay Street Kitchen, a beautiful new Indian restaurant located on South Orange Blossom Trail near the Lancaster Road intersection, directly next door to one of my favorite Mexican restaurants, Tortas El Rey. It takes a special schlep for me to get down to that side of town, but it’s so worth it, now more than ever before.

I can’t rave enough about this place, and I had to visit it twice, a week apart, just to try as many dishes as I could to do justice to it in a review. Bombay Street Kitchen boasts a huge menu, covering cuisine from all over the Indian subcontinent, a stark contrast against many other Indian restaurants that focus on a certain geographical area. My Saboscrivner suggestion is to study the multitudinous menu options in advance. The good news is that a lot of the dishes are extremely reasonably priced, and it is an ideal place to go with a group of fully vaccinated, like-minded, culinarily curious colleagues and compatriots, so you can order multiple dishes and share everything.

Or, you can go alone and still order multiple dishes, as I did for my first trip there this past weekend, for an early Saturday lunch. I arrived right when it opened at 11:30, and I ate like a king, or at least a man who just got out of prison. The dining room is gorgeous — modern and very colorful.

I started with an order of pani puri ($7), puffs of crispy, hollow, paper-thin fried bread stuffed with seasoned potatoes, and served with two bottles of tangy water to splash into them before eating. The brown bottle is sweet and the green is spicy. This was a new dish to me, one I learned about while watching the delightful kids’ show Waffles + Mochi on Netflix, where two puppets travel around the world learning about food. Despite being child-free by choice, my wife and I enjoyed the hell out of the show, and I never forgot Waffles and Mochi singing about a “pani puri party,” so I couldn’t resist. I’m so glad those puppets hipped me to the popular Indian street food, because it was so good! The whimsical plating in the little cart adds to the pani puri party atmosphere here. Since there were eight pani puri puffs, I was methodical and tried two plain, two splashed with the sweet water, two splashed with the spicy water, and two splashed with both. I couldn’t even tell you which one was best, because I loved every possible permutation.

When I saw keema pav ($11) on the menu under “bigger plates,” I was intrigued. The description simply read “pav bread, minced lamb, onions.” Well, I love bread (despite not knowing what pav bread was), lamb, and onions, so I was an easy mark. Then this beautiful platter arrived, with three perfect little buns, a bowl of what looked like chili, and some diced tomatoes, red onions, cilantro, and shredded red cabbage, Was it really a make-your-own sandwich kind of setup? I never would have expected that, but this was one of those rare times when I took a wild guess on a menu and was rewarded with a new take on a familiar, beloved comfort food — in this case, sloppy joe sandwiches.

The pav bread was like perfect little hamburger buns with smooth, shiny crowns, the ideal size for sliders. The cut sides were lightly grilled (as all good burger buns should be) and dabbed with what looked like a cilantro-mint chutney (the green sauce) and another sauce that was really good. The minced lamb was served as a spicy chili, not that different from the chili I love to make at home the minute Florida temperatures dip below 70 degrees. As much as I love to cook with ground lamb, I’ve never used it in my chili before, worried that the unique gamey flavor of lamb would get lost amid the tomatoes, onions, peppers, and spices I use. This wasn’t the same familiar chili or sloppy joe recipe most Americans would know, but it was a comparable dish, and the lamb flavor came through. This picture is much prettier than what my assembled “sloppy joes” would eventually look like., but they were so delicious and fun to assemble. Looking it up later, I learned that “pav” just means bread, but it comes from the Portuguese word “pão” for bread, since Portuguese explorers (colonizers) brought their bread recipes to India. I have enjoyed all the Indian breads I’ve tried before — naan, roti, parathas, and kulcha — but pav was completely new to me, and yet completely familiar.

Speaking of which, since I wasn’t expecting the pav to be familiar buns, I also ordered chilli naan ($4), the soft, warm, fresh bread baked in a clay tandoor oven, that goes so well with any Indian dishes. For some reason, I was expecting it would be stuffed or covered with chunks of spicy peppers, maybe cooked or maybe pickled, but it was just sprinkled with dried chili flakes, like what I often shake onto pizza. Still, it was great naan.

Longtime readers (The Saboscrivner Squad, aka Saboscrivnerinos) know I like to eat and review onion rings anywhere I go. I have a whole category for those reviews, accompanied in my mind by a DJ’s obnoxious air horn sound effect:

RING THE ALARM!
BWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA! BWAA BWAHH BWAAAHHHHHH!

Of course Bombay Street Kitchen doesn’t serve onion rings, but they have the Indian equivalent: crispy, deep-fried fritters called onion bhaji ($5), which featured some unfamiliar but very welcome spices in the batter and served with cool cilantro-mint chutney (green) and sweet, sticky tamarind chutney (brown). I loved these, needless to say.

I should note that I had a new, fun, cool experience on my first visit to Bombay Street Kitchen. A family of three was seated near me as all of my dishes were being walked out of the kitchen. The father asked me what everything I ordered was, and me being me, I very enthusiastically told him what I got, what was in it, and how much I was enjoying it. When the server came by to take their orders, he told her to just bring him everything I got. I felt so validated, especially when I asked them how they liked everything. I can’t speak for the mom or the teenage daughter, but the dad seemed over the moon with all of our selections. He said “You should be a food writer!” Of course, me being me, I told him I did write a local food blog. On my way out, I found a receipt in my pocket (ever the professional), wrote down http://www.saboscrivner.com, and dropped it on their table. So I says to him, I says “If you’re ever REALLY bored, you should check out my food blog!”

On my second visit today, I met two friends from the Orlando Foodie Forum, a delightful couple who are the coolest people, who make me feel cooler just by being friendly and welcoming toward me. I met them for the first time in a local French-Vietnamese bakery, Paris Banh Mi, almost two years ago, and somehow they recognized me just from being Facebook friends. Today was the first time we ever actually hung out and shared a meal, but hopefully not the last.

We started out with refreshing mango lassis ($3.50 each), and I made mine last, to help neutralize any spicy food ahead.

My friends, much hipper and more worldly than I, have had pani puri before, but I had to order it again to share the pani puri party with them, so they could try Bombay Street Kitchen’s take and check out the little cart:

One of my friends also ordered the lamb keema pav today, and they dug into making their own little sloppy joe sliders with the spicy ground lamb “chili.” As much as I liked it last weekend, I stayed out of theirs and let them have all the fun with it this time.

I had my eye on the Szechuan chicken hakka noodles ($11), but my friend ordered it and let me try it. I was introduced to Indo-Chinese food at Rasa, a really nice Indian restaurant I discovered and reviewed in early 2020, just months before it closed permanently. I’m glad Bombay Street Kitchen isn’t going anywhere, because this was one of my favorite dishes of the day. The rice noodles had just a little heat from the chili sauce they were stir-fried in, but nothing overwhelming, like I was expecting from the Szechuan designation. The chunks of chicken were crispy and savory, and there were nice, tender-yet-crunchy slices of stir-fried onion and multicolored bell peppers mixed into the dish. I always gravitate toward noodle dishes, and this is one I will remember and return to.

I had been curious about the chicken momo ($9), a Nepalese dish of pan-fried chicken dumplings. They tasted even better than they look, and they weren’t spicy, like I had been expecting.

My friend was excited to see chicken lollipops ($9), so he ordered the dish of chicken “winglets,” rubbed with chili and spices and fried until crispy. Normally I’d pass on a dish with that description, thinking that I could try fried chicken wings anywhere, but I’m so glad he ordered this and let me try one. It was so great — very crunchy, tender and juicy, and extremely well-seasoned, with the perfect amount of heat. Absolutely delicious. Much more interesting than the name let on.

But wait, there’s more! My one friend ordered the masala dosa ($9), a gigantic, crispy rice crepe stuffed with yellow curry-spiced potatoes and curry leaves. It’s hard to get a sense of scale, looking at this thing, but this dosa is the kind of thing that would draw everyone’s attention in the dining room when a server walks it out to your table. I quote the great thespian Jason Statham in the 1998 Guy Ritchie film Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels: “It’s as long as my arm. I wish it was as long as something else!”We all pulled pieces off this colossal crepe, and dipped our divided dosa in a lentil-based vegetable curry called sambar, along with coconut chutney (in the smaller cup). No double-dipping was done.

Dosas are a South Indian street food specialty I tried for the first time in 2019, at the Hindu Temple cafeteria in nearby Casselberry. As long as we were ordering so much food to share, I couldn’t help ordering a second dose of dosa, specifically the street special dosa ($11). This one didn’t arrive looking as staggeringly stupendous, because it was already neatly sliced into three equal pieces, but it was still a huge overall portion. It had the same pleasing, paper-thin, crispy texture, but it was stuffed with a variety of vegetables, not unlike an Indian burrito. This one was another hit with all of us, and new to all of us as well.

I had never heard of xacuti (pronounced “za-COO-tee”), but it is a curry dish my friends love, made with coconut masala gravy. You can order xacuti with chicken for $15, or fish, shrimp, or goat for $17. They ordered it with goat and let me try it, and for that, I was grateful. I developed an appreciation for spicy lamb curries like vindaloo and rogan josh at my usual Indian restaurant, Moghul, but never had anything like this before. The goat had a few small bones, but the meat was so tender, the bone chunks were easy to pull out.

I had to order onion-garlic naan for us to share ($4), and it went so well with the xacuti and the other sauces we shared.

I realize this has been a long review, but this was also after two visits to Bombay Street Kitchen, a week apart. And the second visit had three people ordering multiple dishes to share, so I pass all of our accumulated knowledge and experience onto you, stalwart Saboscrivnerinos. Like any good nerd, I tend to get enthusiastic about the things I love, especially when something is new and novel, broadens my horizons, brings new experiences, and changes my world for the better. Well, I hate to overhype anything, but this restaurant is worthy of every bit of hype, praise, enthusiasm, and excitement it garners. Every single dish knocked it out of the park — or the cricket stadium, if you will.

Back in 1985, before some of my dozens of readers were even born, a rock group called The Power Station sang “Some like it hot, and some sweat when the heat is on.” Well, no matter which of those you are, whether you love spicy food or hate it, you’re going to find a lot of flavors to savor at Bombay Street Kitchen. If you’re a vegetarian or an omnivore, if you crave new foods to try or take comfort in the familiar, if you’re an Indian food aficionado, the most casual of diners, or worried you’re stepping a little too far out of your culinary comfort zone, you’re coming to the right place. I give Bombay Street Kitchen one of my highest possible Saboscrivner Seals of Superiority, so come join the pani puri party!

Mediterranean Street Food by ShishCo

Mediterranean Street Food by ShishCo (https://www.mediterraneanstreetfood.com/) is a small free-standing shack in the middle of a shopping plaza parking lot on State Road 17-92 in Maitland, between Casselberry and Winter Park, not far from Lake Lily, the Enzian Theater, and Luke’s Kitchen and Bar. If you live in Orlando, you’ve probably driven by it countless times and might not have given it a second glance. But if you know, you know. I first ate there on New Year’s Day several years ago. It is a perfect setup for drive-through or takeout, but they have a few outdoor tables under an awning, and it was a gorgeous, sunny, chilly day for an al fresco lunch. It helps that I absolutely love Mediterranean and Middle Eastern food. It’s rare when food is so delicious, yet also relatively healthy.

But I hadn’t been back in a while — not since I started The Saboscrivner in 2018 — so I was long overdue for a return for some serious takeout. About a month back, I ordered us the sampler platter, and me being me, I chose the one that feeds three ($13.50) so my wife and I would have plenty of leftovers, instead of the sampler platter that feeds two ($11.50). It was a huge amount of food, and probably worth the extra two bucks. I think this top container in the photo below was supposed to be babaganoush, but it was nothing like the creamy, smoky eggplant dip we’ve had at other restaurants and always love. It was almost more like a chilled, spicy salsa, with lots of tomatoes in it, and maybe some eggplant too? Nothing like that was listed in the menu online. My wife was disappointed because it wasn’t standard babaganoush, and it remains a mystery to me. The hummus was much better, and you can see they were extremely generous with grilled pita wedges. But that’s not all…

The sampler platter also came with a generous portion of falafel balls (that were more like patties) and the most delicious Turkish egg rolls called sigara boregi — crispy phyllo dough cylinders wrapped around a blend of spiced savory cheese. You can order those separately, and I’d definitely get them again next time. There were stuffed grape leaves too — one of my favorite foods — but I guess I ate those before getting a photo. The sampler also came with tahini and tzatziki sauces.My wife is going through a major falafel phase, so I think we added on a few extra falafel balls for her (75 cents each). The extras came packaged separately, but trust me, they look the same as the ones above.

This is the doner/gyro bowl ($10.49), which is a huge amount of food and a terrific value for the price and quality. The doner/gyro meat is a combination of beef and lamb, served in a soft, fluffy bread bowl over rice with lettuce, tomatoes, and red onions, all dusted with savory za’atar seasoning. This is what I ordered on my first visit a few years ago. I sat at one of their tables under the awning on a beautiful, sunny, cool January day and felt like a king, eating this in the middle of that parking lot. I loved it then and loved it this time too. The bread bowl is really fantastic. I like to tear off pieces and make little roll-ups with all the ingredients.

And this is the chicken shish kebab bowl (also $10.49), served the same way. I hesitate to order chicken at a lot of restaurants because it is often dry and bland, but I knew this would be good because the menu said it was grilled dark meat, marinated in spices. I love dark meat chicken, especially thighs, and the best thing you can do to prepare chicken is marinate it before cooking. It was very tender, juicy, and flavorful, plus you got more of that nice rice and another fluffy bread bowl. Needless to say, the two of us got a few meals out of all of this bounty.

These two bowls might have come with additional tzatziki sauce cups too — I’m afraid I don’t remember, but they probably should have. I made sure to request a little two-ounce cup of the “Julides hot relish” listed on the menu under Add Ons (50 cents), and that was terrific stuff. It’s one more condiment I would happily buy by the jar.

Anyway, I don’t intend to stay away from Mediterranean Street Food this long again. In an attempt to live a little healthier (and longer), we have both been eating a lot of Mediterranean and Middle Eastern food recently, especially from Casselberry’s Beyti Mediterranean Grill, an amazing Turkish restaurant that opened last October, that we have been to many times. We love that place! This return trip to Mediterranean Street Food in Maitland was an attempt to switch up our routine, and it was good too. I can’t think of too many world cuisines that are just as tasty and somehow also pretty healthy. Usually you have to trade one for the other, but not at Mediterranean Street Food.

Singh’s Roti Shop

It’s not every day I get to try a whole new regional cuisine, but my first visit to Singh’s Roti Shop (https://www.facebook.com/SinghsRotiShop/) on Old Winter Garden Road, just east of Kirkman Road in West Orlando, was my first experience eating Trinidadian and Guyanese food. Trinidad and Tobago is a small dual-island country in the southern Caribbean Sea, just off the northern coast of South America, while Guyana is a slightly larger country in the north of the South American mainland, directly east of Venezuela. The two countries are relatively close, geographically, and both have similar demographics, with large Indo-Caribbean populations who influenced their culinary cultures.

I was so excited to make the schlep out to Singh’s for the first time, and I loved all the West Indian delicacies I brought home. The closest I’ve come to this cuisine is Jamaican food, which is one of my favorites. Many of the dishes at Singh’s were familiar to me from Jamaican menus, but the flavors here were somewhat different, and often spicier. But Singh’s food also had a strong Indian influence, and then they even had an entire Chinese menu with West Indian takes on familiar Chinese dishes.

The menu is not available online, so I scanned their paper menu. Right-click these menu images to open larger images in new tabs. When you enter Singh’s, you will see illuminated menu signs above the counter. I took pictures of those too, but I think it will be easier to read this printed menu.

This was the stew oxtail meal ($15.50). I can’t go to a restaurant with oxtail on the menu and not try it! It is one of my favorite meats, and one of my favorite dishes, period. Each culture prepares oxtail a little differently, but usually stewed or braised to break down all that wonderful collagen for some of the most tender, unctious meat. This oxtail was spicier than the Jamaican-style oxtail I’m used to, which is savory but also a little sweet, in a darker sauce. I loved this hotter, redder regional variation!

And this was the curry duck meal ($13.50). It was a very generous portion of bite-size pieces of duck stewed with potatoes and some chick peas in a thick, rich, very spicy curry sauce. I love duck almost as much as I love oxtail, so when I saw it on the menu, any thoughts of other meats went out the window. The duck was so tender, it was very easy to pull the bones right out. I wonder if it was cooked in a pressure cooker. This was probably a mild curry, but it was noticeably, pleasantly spicy by my standards.

Note on the above menu that main entree meals come with either roti or rice, and they way I see it, the place is called Singh’s Roti Shop, not Singh’s Rice Shop. I’m sure the rice is good, but you can also get rice almost anywhere, and roti is something you would probably love if you haven’t tried it before.

This is the dhal puri, one of two kinds of roti that you can choose with the main entree meals, or you can order it separately for $2.50. It is a huge, round, chewy, golden blanket of dough stuffed with seasoned ground chickpeas. If you unfold the whole thing or tear off a piece, be really careful to avoid causing a messy shower of fine chickpea crumbs. I made that mistake the first time I ever ordered a roti at the Jamaican restaurant Golden Krust, so I moved a little more gingerly as I tore into this one.

But because I am a bit of a rube, I didn’t even realize there was a whole other kind of roti, listed on the menu as the paratha buss up (also $2.50 if you get one a la carte, or included with a meal). The name comes from “buss up shut,” West Indian slang for a tattered, torn, “busted up” shirt. I think I accidentally ordered the dhal puri with the oxtail meal and the paratha buss up with the curry duck meal, which was a lucky break. If I had known what I was doing, I’d place the exact same order. The paratha buss up was even softer, fluffier, and chewier than the dhal puri, but equally gigantic when unfurled. But this was a little more buttery and less “earthy”-tasting than the dhal puri — more like a cross between really soft and fresh Indian naan and a puffy, fluffy Mexican flour tortilla. Here it is after my wife and I had torn it up a little — a buss up shot of a buss up shut.

The top item on the plate below is a fry bake ($2), a breakfast offering that is warm, soft, fluffy fried dough, much like Native American fry bread, and very similar to the batura I enjoyed so much at Rasa, an Indian restaurant I reviewed months before it closed last year. I would have also ordered some smoke herring to go with this, but breakfast hours were over, and they were all out! The fry bake would have also been delicious drizzled with honey and cinnamon for a dessert, like a giant sopapilla, but that would be a bastardization of this wonderful, simple treat. But to be fair, it’s so good and such a perfect blank canvas that it would go well with anything, savory, spicy, or sweet. The pastry below it is an aloo pie ($1.50), a soft fritter that is stuffed with spiced mashed potatoes. Both of these were a little greasy, but very tasty, with great textures — the lightest outer crispiness but so perfectly fluffy, soft, and warm on the inside. These were my wife’s two favorite things I brought home.

Here is a separate aloo pie split down the long way and stuffed with tender and spicy curry beef ($4.50). I chose the beef after getting oxtail and curry duck in the main meals, but the nice folks at Singh’s let you choose whichever meat you want! This could be a terrific option for visitors wanting to maximize the things they can sample on a single visit — a few aloo pies with different meats.

This is a doubles ($1.50), a popular Trinidadian street food dish of curried chickpeas called channa, served as a sandwich between two soft fried flatbreads called baras. Baras are direct descendants of South Indian vadas, another fried bread I tried for the first time at the Hindu Society of Central Florida’s cafeteria in Casselberry. The classic doubles costs only $1.50, and most people in front of me in line were ordering several of them. Indian food aficionados might have noticed this is similar to the South Indian dish chole poori, another lesson in how immigration and diaspora inspire regional recipes. As much as I love foods made out of chickpeas, particularly falafel and hummus, I’ve never been too keen on plain old chickpeas, because my mom used to buy cans of them, and I hated that texture and the slippery, goopy liquid they were packed in. These curried chickpeas in the doubles were so flavorful, and had a good soft texture too, like well-cooked beans.

I brought home a doubles with meat ($4.50) as well, choosing chicken as the meat option, so we could sample yet another meat too. That photo didn’t come out looking very appetizing, so I spared you, but I assure you the chicken was tasty!

Finally, this is a piece of macaroni pie ($3.50), very much like a baked macaroni and cheese casserole that uses long bucatini-like noodles. I wish it was a little cheesier and gooier, as I always do with baked mac and cheese dishes that crisp up the cheese too much on top and aren’t cheesy enough all the way through, but I’m glad I tried it too.

Singh’s Roti Shop doesn’t have a working website at the moment, but the address is 524 Old Winter Garden Road, Orlando, FL 32811. The phone number is 407.253.2900. You have to go! I just wish I had gone sooner, but hopefully I have demystified the basic menu options for first-timers. Once again, I recommend a new visitor try the doubles and the aloo pie because you can’t go wrong for $1.50 each. They would be perfect vegetarian snacks, and then you can order more with different meats for $4.50 each. And you absolutely can’t miss the two kinds of roti — the dhal puri and the paratha buss up — for $2.50 each.

Plenty of people around Orlando have probably been fans of Singh’s for years and years, but it is one of my favorite recent discoveries. I’m always a late bloomer, but better late than never!

Yellow Spoon Kitchen

Orlando is a really diverse, multicultural, cosmopolitan city — far more than most outsiders would believe, and sadly far more than most tourists ever get to see for themselves. But locals know we have so much more going on than theme parks and chain restaurants (even though for most people, there is a time and a place for those too). Our culinary scene has advanced so much that we have all kinds of exciting pop-up restaurants now, many of them cooking out of ghost kitchens and specializing in takeout food you preorder online. This is a great way to adapt to the changing needs of diners, allowing creative chefs and enterprising entrepreneurs to minimize expenses and personal contact during the COVID-19 pandemic, when fewer people feel comfortable dining in restaurant dining rooms. I’m always on the lookout for new, unfamiliar cuisines I’ve never tried before, especially when pop-up restaurants are involved. These ephemeral eateries motivate me to get out and try things while I can, because you never know when they’ll be back, or what they will offer next time.

So imagine my excitement when I first hear about Yellow Spoon Kitchen (https://yellowspoonkitchen.com/) on the tried and true Orlando Foodie Forum Facebook Group. This is a pop-up restaurant specializing in Indonesian cuisine, which is definitely new to me, as well as healthy pre-made meals. Guess which one caught my attention!

The young chef behind Yellow Spoon Kitchen, Ridwan Nurjaman, is also a sushi chef, according to his Facebook profile. This is an ambitious side hustle, introducing a mostly unfamiliar population to Indonesian food out of a shared ghost kitchen in the East End Market in Audubon Park. But that’s a great location for him — in one of Orlando’s foodie landmarks, our small food hall easily accessible from most of our hippest, most diverse, and most open-minded neighborhoods that are home to some of our finest local restaurants. This week he advertised two different Indonesian dishes up for preorder this weekend, so I ordered one of each — one for me and one for my wife — and requested to pick them up today, Saturday, at noon.

Me being me, I arrived almost an hour early because parking is terrible at the East End Market on weekends. Then I realized I had no idea where the food pickup was supposed to be. The place isn’t that large, but the e-mail receipt didn’t have any information, so I searched high and low for the mysterious ghost kitchen. At one point I walked through some unmarked doors on the second floor of the building and interrupted a church service, with a keyboard player and singers and everything. That was definitely not one of my finest moments! Eventually I found a door in the very back of the market with a small sign on it — the ghost kitchen entrance, where we could pick up our Yellow Spoon Kitchen preorders. My order wasn’t ready until after 12:30, but I had a book I have to read for work, and I was content to wait in the back and avoid everyone eating at tables in the busy parts of the food hall. I’m still doing everything I can to avoid crowds and any unmasked people, which includes pretty much everyone dining in public.

This is an Indonesian “heavy salad” called gado-gado ($10), requested by my wife. According to the website, gado-gado is an “Indonesian salad of slightly boiled, blanched or steamed vegetables and hard-boiled eggs, boiled potato, fried tofu and tempeh, and lontong (rice wrapped in a banana leaf), served with magic spicy peanut sauce dressing. In 2018, gado-gado was promoted as one of six national dishes of Indonesia.” Neither of us noticed any hard-boiled eggs or rice in a banana leaf in this particular salad, but there were definitely bean sprouts on the bottom. She loves tofu, tempeh, and peanut sauce, so I think those were her favorite parts.

This was the peanut sauce, in a generous-sized plastic cup:

This was my meal, the nasi padang ($13), a segmented platter with all kinds of dishes, like a Japanese bento box, an old-school TV dinner, or the school lunches of my youth, only a lot better than the latter two. Whenever I eat somewhere new, I usually have a hard time deciding between a few dishes, so I always love some kind of sampler platter that lets me try a few different things. I was so happy this was something he offered today, since it was my crash course in Indonesian food. The top left dish is beef rendang, a spicy, savory stew of beef slow-cooked in coconut milk, herbs, and spices for hours until it is fork-tender. It’s kind of like a curry, but more of a dry curry that isn’t overly saucy. I tasted some familiar flavors, but as a whole, it was an entirely new taste experience for me. To the right of the beef rendang was a savory omelet full of peppers and other vegetables. Miraculously, it was still warm by the time I got it home. I love omelets and cooked them often for myself at home, until a recent physical confirmed I have high cholesterol and blood pressure, and my doctor told me eggs are the enemy. (Funny, I know I indulge in delicious and unhealthy foods sometimes, but I always thought eggs were a reasonably healthy and uncontroversial thing to eat. What are you gonna do?) And next to that was a bed of rice, perfect for cutting the heat of some of the dishes in the bottom left compartment.

The immediate bottom left of the nasi padang tray contained jackfruit curry. Jackfruit is a large tropical fruit grown between India and Malaysia. It isn’t sweet, but vegetarians love it because it can be used in a lot of savory recipe as a decent meat substitute. The texture was softer and more yielding than chicken or pork, but I could finally see what my vegetarian friends rave about, how it could be a satisfying substitution in so many dishes because it takes on the flavor of whatever you cook it in — in this case, a mildly spicy curry sauce.

The greens in the photo above are steamed kale. I usually hate the harsh texture of raw kale, but I’ve enjoyed it in a stew with sausage, potatoes, and white beans, and I liked it with this softer texture from steaming. It was seasoned with something that made it surprisingly spicy, though.

Directly above the kale, there are red and green condiments called sambal. The green one is sambal ijo, and forgive me, but I don’t know what the red one is called. I ate every drop of these, mixed with the rice, because they were so spicy. The green sambal ijo was much hotter than the red one, but I liked the flavor of the red one more.

At first I was like “Man, what a small little chicken leg!” but this was the standout of the nasi padang — definitely my favorite part, and one of the best pieces of chicken I’ve eaten in some time. It was fried, but not breaded or crispy, and definitely not greasy. I would not be surprised if it was brined or marinated first, because it had such a good flavor — very savory, with a hint of sweetness. No spiciness here, unlike several of the other ingredients. I wish Chef Ridwan would offer a whole meal of Indonesian fried chicken, because I would totally order that.

These were lightly crispy, crunchy, salty chips that were included. I’m not sure which of the two meals they came with (maybe both?), but I have bought similar chips at Asian markets around Orlando, and I always like them.

I thought about holding off on writing my review of Yellow Spoon Kitchen because I don’t know when and where Chef Ridwan will pop back up with new menu items. But life is so unknowable these days, and everyone is still hunkering down and ordering takeout, while craving some novelty to break up the monotony. I wanted to start spreading the good word now, so people can be on the lookout for his eventual triumphant return and discover his Indonesian cooking for themselves.

CLOSED: BaanChan Thai Restaurant

EDITOR’S NOTE: BaanChan Thai Restaurant closed permanently over the summer of 2022.

***

I had been hearing about BaanChan Thai Restaurant (https://www.baanchanorlando.com/) for years before finally making it there in December. I brought back takeout for my “lunch bunch” at work, and everyone really enjoyed what they ordered. It’s way out east on Colonial Drive, further east than I usually venture, almost out to Alafaya. But it is easily accessible via the 417 and convenient for anyone in the UCF area.

My one co-worker ordered the BaanChan ramen ($10), with noodles in a spicy lemongrass soup, mushrooms, onions, scallions, cilantro, whole chiles, and lime. It came with a soy-marinated soft boiled egg and several large deep-fried, breaded shrimp. This was a a uniquely Thai take on ramen. They wisely packed the broth, the fried shrimp, and all the other stuff in three separate containers for her. My photo of the broth came out blurry, so I left it out. You’re welcome!

Three of us ordered my go-to Thai dish, drunken noodles ($8.50), at various levels of heat. Because I like to tempt fate and sometimes ruin my afternoons at the workplace, I asked for mine to be hot. Drunken noodles, sometimes called pad kee mow or pad kee mao, are wide, flat noodles stir-fried to an al dente consistency in a spicy sauce with onions, bell peppers, and Thai basil, plus a protein. I chose pork, which was tender and not dried out from the stir-frying. These were much more oily than other drunken noodles I’ve ordered elsewhere, at places like Mee Thai, Naradeva Thai, and Thai Singha, but still had a lot of flavor and A LOT of heat.

Someone’s food came with fluffy jasmine rice, but it went unclaimed. That was a relief to me, because I ate it to cut some of the lingering heat from the spicy, oleaginous noodles. Sometimes carbs can save your life!

I also ordered two small appetizers for myself, so I could make everything last for lunch and dinner. I asked around, and a lot of people recommended the Thai heaven beef ($4.50), which is fried beef jerky! Because it was fried and not just cured like a lot of conventional jerky I’ve had, in addition to being sticky, sweet, salty, and slightly spicy, it was oily and also quite firm and crunchy, which I wasn’t expecting. I can see why this is a popular crowd-pleaser at BaanChan, but I don’t know if I would order it again.

My absolute favorite thing I tried on this first visit to BaanChan was the Thai sausage ($4). It was chewy and savory with a slightly crispy exterior, not spicy at all. It was a terrific sausage, and I loved it. It came with paper-thin slices of pickled ginger like you might get with sushi, and some intimidating-looking whole chiles that I wisely avoided.

You can also see a fried pot sticker that one of my co-workers gave me from her order ($4.50 for four). It was stuffed with ground, seasoned pork and vegetables and was a pretty standard pot sticker, but you can never go wrong with those.

I was glad to finally try BaanChan after reading about it for years. Whenever I make it back, I’ll definitely order that amazing sausage again, and I’ll probably try the pineapple fried rice, chili jam, or larb next time to switch things up.

CLOSED: Valisa Bakery

EDITOR’S NOTE: Valisa Bakery CLOSED at some point in April or May of 2022.

***

I pass Valisa Bakery (https://www.valisabakery.net/) every day on my way to and from work. It’s a Puerto Rican bakery that serves breakfast, lunch, and plenty of pastries and other snacks and sweets, and it’s another one of Orlando’s little treasures. This week, my co-worker had heard about a pulpo (octopus) sandwich they serve, so it sounded like a perfect opportunity to return, bring back takeout lunch for both of us, and finally review a place I’ve always enjoyed on my past visits.

This was her pulpo sandwich ($11.95), with chunks of tender octopus marinated in a citrus vinaigrette, with lettuce and tomato on fresh pressed bread. She wasn’t expecting it to be served chilled like ceviche, but it looked and sounded really refreshing, like a great summer sandwich.

I decided to finally try a tripleta ($8.50), the Puerto Rican sandwich that is great late-night drunk food and just as good in the middle of a workday when you don’t even drink. Tripletas can have infinite variations, as long as there are three meats on it. This one had thin-sliced, sauteed steak, roast pork, and sliced ham, served on a soft, fluffy, fresh roll with lettuce, tomato, garlic sauce (awesome), and creamy mayo-ketchup — an awesome combination. It was so big and heavy, I only ate half at work and finished it at home that night.

Tripleta close-up:

I was intrigued by the daily lunch specials, especially a Thursday special called canoas. I had to look it up, but canoas are sweet fried whole plantains, cut down the middle, stuffed with seasoned ground beef like picadillo, topped with a white cheese, and baked until it melts, so they look like little canoes. With that in mind, I was ready to take a canoe trip. I ordered two canoas ($3.50 each), not knowing how big they would be, but they were huge. My co-worker and I each had one, and I loved them. They reminded me of pastelon, my favorite Puerto Rican dish that I’ve had, which is kind of like a lasagna but with layers of sweet plantains instead of pasta sheets. Canoas were like single servings of pastelon.

Any good Latin restaurant should have great rice that is better than the rice I can make at home, and Valisa Bakery was no exception. I tried their yellow rice, which looked and tasted more like fried rice, rich from being cooked with pieces of pork, including rich, fatty chicharron. I have a hard time going anywhere and not trying macaroni salad or pasta salad, so I tried an eight-ounce container of ensalada de coditos ($2) and was glad I did. It was a creamy macaroni salad (but not runny at all), and the elbow noodles were very al dente. Of course I shared this too!

Finally, I already knew that Valisa Bakery baked some really good quesitos -sweet, flaky pastries stuffed with cream cheese that are like the beautiful love child of a glazed croissant and a cheese danish. I have an unimpeachable favorite destination for quesitos in Orlando, but Valisa is my second-favorite, and these quesitos ($2 each) were not disappointing.

So as you can tell, Valisa Bakery is more than just a bakery. It’s a great bakery, but it’s also a breakfast joint, a cafeteria with rotating daily hot lunch specials, a deli with a scintillating selection of sandwiches, and a Puerto Rican restaurant where you can get tostones, mofongo, and more. And did I mention it’s a great bakery too? I have enjoyed it for years, so I’m a little ashamed it took me this long to return and write a long-overdue review.

Oh My Gyro

I’ll never forget a trip my wife and I were lucky enough to take to New York City while we were dating and I was working my way through library school. Among other things, I grabbed this incredible lunch from a halal food cart near 30 Rockefeller Center. It was so simple, but pretty perfect: gyro meat (possibly lamb, but who can really say?), rice, salad, pita bread, mysterious white sauce and painful hot sauce, eaten out of a tinfoil plate while surrounded by the excitement, adventure, and passion of the greatest city in the world (as well as our own). When we returned for our honeymoon in 2009, I found an unrelated halal cart and tried their version of the gyro platter. It was almost identical, but still satisfying, especially with the nostalgia factor working for it.

We were even luckier to return to Manhattan last year, a decade later, to celebrate our tenth anniversary. (And how lucky were we that our tenth anniversary fell in 2019 and not the hell year 2020?) We ate like kings on that trip, but one thing I didn’t seek out were the halal food vendors. Who needed them, now that we have Oh My Gyro (https://www.facebook.com/ohmygyro/) to deliver the New York halal street food experience to the suburbs of Seminole County? Oh My Gyro is owned by the Kermali family, transplanted New Yorkers who have nailed the flavors of the ubiquitous street food and bolstered their menu with some Indian dishes and a few special surprises.

I can’t help it — I’ve been here four times (with far too much time in between each visit), but until today, I have always ordered the same thing, because it’s a flawless meal: the lamb combo platter ($9.89), with salty, garlicky gyro-seasoned lamb meat served over perfectly cooked yellow rice with pita bread, lettuce, and tomatoes. I ask for plenty of their cool, creamy white sauce (stop giggling, you guys!), a bit of the spicy red hot sauce (like the NYC version, it’s VERY spicy, and a little goes a long way, even for those who crave the burn), and it even comes with a soda.

They also offer chicken and falafel on these platters, but my wife and I both love gyros — and lamb in all forms, really — so that will always be our top choice. When I went back today, I ordered a large lamb platter for my wife (only $8.99 when it isn’t a combo with the soda, and peep that white sauce on the side). She liked it a lot, as I always do.

I have been missing the occasional Indian buffet lunches at Moghul Indian Cuisine my co-workers and I used to enjoy pre-pandemic, and I was craving samosas. Luckily, Oh My Gyro serves vegetarian, beef, and chicken samosas. I’ve never tried theirs, so this time I ordered the vegetarian ($4.99) and beef ($5.99), not realizing each order would come with four adorable, perfectly folded, perfectly fried samosas.
These were very thin and crispy, in what reminded me of spring roll wrappers. The samosas at Moghul, on the other hand, are larger and in a thicker, flakier, almost pie crust-like shell. But these both had a lot of flavor and a surprising amount of heat, from both the ground beef in sauce and the spiced mashed potatoes in the vegetarian ones.

But the main reason I returned to Oh My Gyro today was for a special they were only running today (Friday) — spicy, East African-style bone-in veal biryani ($12), which promised to be braised until tender. I am a sucker for stewed and braised meats, especially when they’re cooked low and slow until they’re tender enough to fall off the bone. I’ll take a Turkish lamb shank stewed in tomato sauce (like the ones at Cappadocia), German pork eisbein (like the ones at Hollerbach’s Willow Tree Cafe), or giant beef ribs (like the ones at Git-N-Messy BBQ) over steak. But then again, I don’t think steak is the be-all and end-all of meats.

Anyway, this was the veal biryani, served over fluffy basmati rice with a side of pickled onions, hot peppers, and random other vegetables. The meat was deliciously tender, and the sauce had so much flavor. It wasn’t nearly as spicy as I expected, which is fine. It came with a side of cool, creamy, yogurt-based raita to assuage the burn that never came, but it was so good, I was glad they included it.

The two little orange-red balls at the top of the plate, called ladoo, came with it as a bonus. My wife and I had never encountered these before, but they turned out to be sweet! I researched these, and ladoo (or laddu) are made with flour, fat, and sugar, and often contain nuts — these did. They were a pleasant surprise after our lamb platter, veal biryani, and samosassortment. (There. I just created a word.)

But there were more sweet balls in store! I had to get an order of gulab jamun ($2.99), those sticky, syrupy, spongy balls that are a joy at the end of any Indian meal. My wife had never had them before, but I was proud of her for trying one. Of course she liked it. What’s not to like? But they must be REALLY sweet, because she commented on how sweet it is, and how it was too sweet for her to have more than one. Hey, more for me!

As a last-minute choice, I ordered a mango lassi ($2.99), hoping to save it to cut any heat from the biryani. But anyone who knows me can predict what happened next: of course I drank it on the drive home, probably finishing it while I was still in Longwood!

Oh My Gyro is one of those neighborhood gems that doesn’t get enough foodie love, especially being tucked away in a small, easy-to-miss strip along State Road 434 in Longwood, between 17-92 and I-4. I highly recommend it, though. Unfortunately the biryani was a one-day special, but if we’re all lucky, they will bring it back. But if you’ve spent any time in New York City and romanticize the gyro, chicken, or falafel platters with rice you can buy from countless carts to eat on the street, Oh My Gyro will satisfy that craving.

CLOSED: Mason Jar Provisions

EDITOR’S NOTE: Mason Jar Provisions closed during the summer of 2022.

***

Mason Jar Provisions (https://www.masonjarprovisionsorlando.com/) is a brand-new Southern restaurant that just opened in the space recently vacated by Big Time Street Food, which I reviewed earlier this year after my one and only visit (before a KRS-One concert, which was one of the last fun things I did pre-pandemic). Located in the Thornton Park neighborhood near downtown Orlando, it’s a very small space with a few seats at a counter, but the restaurant is attached to Burton’s Bar next door (and now owned by the same people). Diners can take their food through a doorway over to Burton’s and walk back and forth between the establishments. By the time people read this, their hours will be 12 noon to 10 PM.

Before continuing my review, you have to check out this menu. Everything looked so delicious and tempting, I had a hard time choosing between six or seven different things. I had to go back to edit this review after first publishing it because I belatedly learned Mason Jar Provisions is co-owned by chef A.J. Haines, who used to cook at one of our favorite, long-gone, much-missed Italian restaurants, Wolfie’s PizzaMia, and he used to work magic and miracles in that kitchen. Burton’s General Manager Jeff Darnell is the other co-owner. But because Thornton Park is pretty far from us and parking is difficult around there, I called in a pretty big order on a weekday afternoon I had off, and was lucky enough to be able to park right in front to pick it up. That probably would not have happened in the evening or on a weekend.

My wife likes her food relatively plain and unadorned, without any condiments or sauces. So I ordered her the regular beef burger ($9) with its lettuce, tomato, onion, pickles, and ketchup on the side. It’s the kind of burger that is smashed flat on the griddle, cooked to medium well. It was served on a lightly-griddled brioche bun with a huge order of seasoned fries.

You may have also noticed two huge chicken tenders, which I also ordered for her, because she was intrigued by both. She doesn’t eat a lot, so we both figured she’d probably get three or four meals out of the big burger and the tenders (which actually come in an order of three for $9). She thought the burger was a perfectly okay burger, but LOVED the tenders. These were mild, but they also come in medium, hot, inferno, blackstrap (molasses) barbecue, or dry rub flavors. We were given a choice of a cup of ranch or blue cheese (she never wants either, so I chose blue cheese for myself), and they also came with a cup of buffalo sauce and four celery sticks.

I had been reading hype and praise for the titular Mason Jar burger ($13), so that’s what I had to get… well, one of the things I had to get. It contained TWO beef patties, tasso ham (such a nice alternative to bacon!), creamy and tangy remoulade sauce, melty American cheese (longtime Saboscrivnerinos know it’s one of my favorite cheeses to put on a burger), plus the usual lettuce, tomato, red onion and pickles. I like pickles now, so these were all welcome toppings for me.
The burger was juicy and flavorful, despite my initial skepticism about it being cooked to medium well, the grilled brioche bun was rich and perfect, and everything held together for an intoxicating melange of flavors, colors, and textures without threatening to slip and slide apart as I enjoyed it at home. And despite the schlep back to the Casselberry suburbs, the fries were still warm by the time I got home!

Maybe the most curious thing on the menu was the collard melt sandwich ($12), featuring braised collard greens, house-made smoked pimento cheese, chow chow (a Southern cabbage-based relish that is sometimes sweet, sometimes spicy, but always tangy), and balsamic reduction, all on grilled sourdough bread. These are all flavors I love that I never thought of combining into a sandwich, so I’m glad someone more creative than I did. It came with even more fries.I didn’t even eat this until the following day, after warming it up in the toaster oven. It was a winner. I seriously love collards, pimento cheese, anything cabbagey, and anything smoky, so it was a killer-diller, no-filler, thriller goriller of a sandwich for me. Vegetarians, rejoice! As long as you allow yourself to experience the joy of cheese, here’s a new sandwich every vegetarian in Orlando should seek out.

If it seems like I brought home a lot of food, I did. I wanted to order a few different things because I was trying a new place, because it’s hard to get over to Thornton Park, and because I wanted to give myself a break from cooking and avoid even being tempted to leave the house again for the next few days. And with all of this in mind, I also ordered the hot chicken sandwich. (My parents must be so proud.) I’ve been very obsessed with hot chicken ever since eating at the legendary Hattie B’s in Nashville in 2017, and I’m thrilled that Orlando has so many wonderful hot chicken options now, including Swine & Sons (a smoked thigh sandwich), Chicken Fire (tenders in or out of a sandwich), and Git-N-Messy BBQ (not covered in my review, but his hot half chicken may rule them all).

Mason Jar Provisions’ menu says their hot chicken sandwich ($13) says it’s a smoked, breaded, and deep-fried chicken thigh served with hot sauce, bread and butter pickle slices, and cole slaw, served on a grilled brioche bun with even more fries on the side.

As you can see, the sandwich included two smaller breaded thighs, but it wasn’t dripping in the intense oily, spicy seasoning of Nashville hot chicken like the aforementioned restaurants. It was incredibly tender and juicy meat, but it wasn’t really hot either. Like a couple of kids, I traded my wife the not-really-hot thighs from the sandwich for her burger patty — each missing a bite, so it was a very fair trade. They were thoughtful enough to pack the cole slaw in a separate cup with a lid, to avoid creating a mess that would have ruined the crispiness of the chicken and soaked through the bun and fries on my way home.

As much as I enjoyed my Mason Jar burger and the collard melt sandwich and would probably order them again in the future, I probably wouldn’t get the chicken sandwich again. Not when they offer a braised barbecue short rib hoagie with pickled onions and pickles (the Dave Dog). Why didn’t I get that instead? However, my wife gives the chicken tenders her Saboscrivner Spouse Seal of Approval, and she knows tenders because she is the most tender person there is!

Folks, it’s an unknowable, scary, and outright dangerous time right now. The restaurant business was hard enough already before COVID-19 pandemic struck, and we’ve seen too many beloved local eateries struggling and shuttering over the last few months. I can’t even imagine what it feels like to be opening up now, in late June, as infection rates are increasing almost exponentially here in Orlando. But we still have to eat, and restaurants are still considered essential businesses that are staying open to serve the rest of us. Most people are going to venture out of their bunkers for takeout food eventually. I implore you all to choose wisely and eat locally when you do, to support local restaurants that rely on your business and will appreciate your business. So consider paying a visit to Mason Jar Provisions, one of Orlando’s newest restaurants, for some Southern comfort food at a time when we can all use some comfort in our lives. Check out these drool-worthy photos and treat yourselves to something tasty and satisfying. It might just be the highlight of your week, as it was of mine.