Cocktails – The Saboscrivner

Talay

Talay (https://www.talayorlando.com/) is one of the newer and more upscale Thai restaurants in Orlando, located in the “North Quarter” on 861 Orange Avenue, right before you cross East Colonial Drive into downtown Orlando. I took my wife there for lunch a few weeks ago, and we had a nice meal in the spacious dining room, which was surprisingly empty. I’m sure it gets crazy crowded later on, though. Everything is light wood and creamy colors, making the space feel modern and elegant. There are some booths inside, and there is even more seating outside, on an inviting covered patio.

As usual, my wife started her with a creamy and refreshing Thai iced tea:

We ordered four different things, intending to share most of them and end up with leftovers. A few were relatively small portions, so it all worked out.

This was salmon chae nam pla, an appetizer with thin slices of raw salmon (each garnished by a paper-thin slice of pickled garlic), two little clusters of salmon roe, and mint leaves, all displayed on a sea of spicy cilantro chili-lime dressing. The dressing was too spicy for my wife, so I ended up eating most of these. I must be part bear (I definitely look like a bear), because I never tire of devouring raw salmon.

We also shared goong ob woon sen, a dish neither of us had ever tried before, or even noticed on any other Thai menus before. It included plump shrimp served with their tails on, glass noodles (traditionally made from mung bean or sweet potato starch, which turn translucent), thin slices of bacon, black pepper, sesame oil, celery, ginger, “Talay’s signature wok sauce,” and cilantro chili relish served on the side. Those leaves in the middle are a tiny celery stick garnish sticking out.

You wanted a noodle pull? Well here’s a noodle pull! This was a good dish, and the noodles had a nice chew to them. I didn’t pick this one, and I didn’t know what to expect (other than “bacon is always good”), but it all came together.

I finally got my wife into my favorite Thai dish that I used to order all the time as a benchmark of any new Thai restaurant, pad kee mao (sometimes spelled pad kee mow, and also known as drunken noodles). As long as she orders it mild, she loves it as much as she loves her old go-to, pad Thai. This was Talay’s pad kee mao, a stir-fried sensation with flat rice noodles (always so nice and chewy), green and red bell peppers, Thai basil, chili, and Talay’s spicy wok sauce, which they surely toned down for her. She chose crispy duck as the protein (for a small upcharge), and the duck was wonderful — tender, juicy, battered and fried to perfection. We are both big duck fans.

And as for me, I panicked. So many things sounded good, and I know for a fact I won’t make it back to this spot very often. Instead of going with a familiar favorite, I wanted to try something more unique off Talay’s Signature menu, since they have so many elevated dishes you can’t find just anywhere. I decided to go with something I always love on any menu, whether it’s a seafood shack or a Thai restaurant, soft shell crab. This was pu nim tod kra tiam, crispy soft-shell crab served with garlic, pepper, and a savory brown sauce. It ended up being a new twist on an old classic, and it was much less heavy than it looks here.

It came with white rice on the side, which I mixed in to gather all the sauce under the crab, and I asked to try the roasted chili relish, which costs $3 extra. All I got was the little ramekin on the right, and it was interesting. It definitely had some sweetness and funky umami, maybe from fish sauce.

Due to the location, I don’t expect we will become regulars at Talay, especially since I bring home takeout much more often than we dine out. But Talay is definitely one of the nicer Thai restaurants in Orlando, and it would be a fantastic place for a date or a big night out. It reminded me of Lim Ros Thai Cuisine that way, another Thai restaurant that is a little more elegant and elevated than usual. Both feature lush, sexy vibes, rather than the “hominess” of the more old-school Thai restaurants we honestly end up at more often (like Thailicious in Longwood). But I can’t say anything bad about either of them, and if you already know Talay, I’m sure you can’t think of anything negative about it either. If I ever do make it back, what should I order next time? I’m always happy to try anything new!

Lazy Moon Pizza

Lazy Moon Pizza (https://www.lazymoonpizza.com/) was one of the first pizzerias and “cool” restaurants I discovered when I moved to Orlando in late 2004. The original location opened around that same time, in a small shopping center on University Boulevard and Alafaya Trail, across the street from the massive University of Central Florida in east Orlando. Almost all the businesses in there were locally owned and operated, including Lazy Moon and Mama Millie’s Jamaican Kitchen, which was my first Jamaican restaurant in Orlando.

That original Lazy Moon reminded me of the divey college town establishments I loved back in Gainesville. It wasn’t the least bit corporate-feeling, bright, or shiny. There was a wall covered with stickers, they served pizza by the gigantic slice, and they had a $5 special called “Boxcar Willie,” a slice and a Pabst Blue Ribbon. (It is $7 now, which isn’t too bad compared to how inflation has hit so many other things.) Sadly, that shopping center was demolished several years ago to make way for a high-rise apartment building for college students. The ground floor is full of restaurants, but mostly chains (maybe all chains by the time of this writing).

Luckily, Lazy Moon reopened a few blocks west on University Boulevard, then opened a second location East Colonial Drive in the Mills 50 District (Orlando’s best neighborhood for dining) in late 2016. Most recently, a third location opened in Maitland, closest to me. I recently paid two separate visits to that Maitland location, and they were my first tastes of Lazy Moon’s pizza in close to a decade, back when the Mills 50 location had just opened. I was thrilled to say that the huge slices were as huge and tasty as always, ever since my earliest visits to that dingy dive near UCF 20 years ago.

This was a plain cheese slice I used for a “control”: the basis upon which to evaluate Lazy Moon’s crust, cheese, sauce, and their delicate balance. If a pizzeria can’t produce a good plain cheese slice, all the premium toppings in the world won’t make it a good pizza. Luckily, this was as good a pizza as I remember. Not super-gourmet, which is fine, and similar to a New York-style slice, just a lot larger. It is so thin and crispy, and it doesn’t flop when you pick it up or fold it. And if you’re going to pick it up, you almost have to fold it. My only complaint about Lazy Moon is the thickness of the crust, when they could probably cover more surface area with sauce and cheese. You can see how large it is compared to a normal-sized plate, fork, and knife. That’s the normal slice size!

This was a combination of caramelized onions and roasted red peppers, two of my favorite ingredients in anything: sandwiches, salads, pasta, and definitely pizza.

I noticed Lazy Moon served chili, but maybe they always had, and I was too single-minded to notice. This time, I tried a bowl. I love chili and always have to try it whenever it is on a menu somewhere, since every bowl is different and has its own merits. This was a pretty good, standard red chili with ground beef, kidney beans, tomatoes, and pretty typical chili spices (cumin, paprika, etc.), garnished with shredded cheddar cheese. It was really tasty and savory, but not spicy by any standard. I liked it and recommend it, especially now that we finally have some chilly (chili) weather. In fact, it inspired me to cook a pot of my own chili not that long after. Fear not, vegetarians and vegans, because Lazy Moon also serves a hearty vegetable chili with zucchini, squash, and beans simmered in “mild chili spices.” I haven’t tried it, but you may want to. You can even order giant slices of pizza with either the regular beef chili or the vegetarian chili on them!

On a second visit, I decided to try Lazy Moon’s alternative sauces for their pizza, even though I am usually a tomato sauce purist. This was a plain cheese slice with their tomatoey, smokey, slightly sweet barbecue sauce, just for the heck of it:

And this right here was the main reason I returned, to try their limited-time French onion slice, with broth-simmered caramelized onions, gruyère, asiago, and mozzarella cheese, and finely diced chives over their mustard base sauce. It sounded delicious on this chilly day, and it did not disappoint. It wasn’t drippy or soggy, but held up well and had a nice crisp crunch like all their other slices. I love French onion soup, and I love mustard, but it had never occurred to me to try their mustard-based sauce before. The mustard flavor was extremely subtle, probably more like a Dijon than a bright, overpowering mustard.

Lazy Moon makes much of their Cuban sandwich-inspired pizza, with ham, mojo criollo-marinated pork, dill pickles, and mozzarella over that mustard sauce, but I’ve never tried that one. I like Cuban sandwiches and I like pizza, but it always seemed like kind of a lot. Even though I really do consider myself a pizza purist, and I greatly prefer tomato-based sauces, this French onion slice was a real winner. But I’m publishing this review now because it is only available through “early January” (as per their Facebook post on December 22nd, 2025). So if you are intrigued, get out there ASAP to try it! By the way, the Mills 50 location did not have the French onion slice today (Tuesday, December 30th), but Maitland did, so maybe call your closest Lazy Moon first, before schlepping out to it.

In addition to the tomato, barbecue, and mustard sauces, they also offer pesto and whipped ricotta sauces for their pizza, which both sound good.

While I don’t think Lazy Moon Pizza will win over the most stereotypically loud and proud New Yawk transplants (because those people can’t lower their standards enough to enjoy any local pizza, probably because of dah watah), it is a fine place to get a huge, crispy slice with some interesting toppings and maybe enjoy a beer or cocktail with friends. All three current locations are casual and laid-back, with more modern, welcoming ambience than the ’90s college town dive bar vibes of the original, which I do miss terribly. But I like the new places too, especially the Maitland location. Regardless, don’t let that French onion slice pass you by, since the clock is ticking on it! That and a bowl of chili would be such perfect comfort food on a week like this, here at the end of 2025.

Pho Bar Vietnamese Kitchen

Pho Bar Vietnamese Kitchen (https://phobar.co/) has two locations in South Florida and one in Boston, but I didn’t label this review of its relatively new Orlando location with my “Chain Reactions” tag because it doesn’t feel like a chain… at least not yet. I recently went to Pho Bar for the first time, looked at the menu in person, but ordered everything as takeout to bring home to my wife.

She always wants summer rolls from any Vietnamese or Thai restaurant, so I brought her these two HUGE spring rolls (that’s what Pho Bar calls them, even though I think of spring rolls as the crispy deep-fried ones), with shrimp, pork, shredded lettuce, bean sprouts, and basil wrapped in rice paper and served with a peanut-hoisin sauce for dipping. These were much larger than most restaurants’ versions of summer rolls, and they came individually wrapped in plastic wrap. I should have waited for her to unwrap them before snapping this picture, but oh well.

I thought we would both enjoy splitting the grilled satay squid, which is always an impressive dish to me. The presentation is eye-catching for sure, with the grilled squid sliced into perfect rings and separate tentacles. It was seasoned with a chili soy marinade, and while I liked it, she didn’t love the flavor of this squid. It was chewier than we are both used to, and I give the edge to the similar-but-superior grilled squid at Z Asian Vietnamese Kitchen, just a few minutes east on Colonial Drive. The two sauces that came with the squid are ginger fish sauce, which was on the pungent side, and “green chili sauce,” which I really loved. It had a kick, but also a cool sort of flavor. I admit I used most of that sauce on some pork loin I marinated, roasted, and sliced very thin.

Like any good Vietnamese restaurant, Pho Bar packed our pho broth separately, so the rice noodles wouldn’t turn to mush while sitting in the hot brother. Unlike a lot of pho places, Pho Bar makes their rice noodles fresh in-house, and you can see they are wider than the traditional dried “rice sticks.” But for purists, they also offer traditional rice vermicelli instead. My wife always orders pho tai, with beef eye round, sliced paper-thin. It is always served rare, because it cooks in the steaming broth.

I will usually order pho dac biet, which comes with thin-sliced eye round, sliced brisket, chewy beef meatballs (nothing like Italian meatballs!), beef tendon, and tripe. But at Pho Bar, I was tempted by a more expensive option, pho suon bo, with brisket, meatballs, and short rib, which is a cut of beef I always love. Here’s my bowl before I added broth to it, but the short rib was too large to fit:

That was a whole meal in itself, so I ended up with the short rib standing alone at the end! It was a huge piece of meat, rich and marbled with fat, and the long bone slid right out. We had so much extra broth left over, I cooked up some noodles (the knife-cut Taiwanese noodles with fluted edges that I always keep in the pantry, not proper rice noodles for pho) and got a whole extra meal with that giant short rib.

And as we’re about to experience some unseasonably cold days here in the Orlando area, I still have even more of Pho Bar’s pho broth left over, so I have since bought some rice noodles for when I heat up the rest. This is going to be perfect weather for pho, which is why I’m publishing this review today, of all days.

I still contend the pho at my beloved Pho Huong Lan is the best in Orlando, and I am more likely to return there than to Pho Bar. But I’m certainly glad I tried the new place. It wasn’t bad by any means, even if neither of us loved the grilled squid. If you’re planning to dine in at Pho Bar, the restaurant itself is much nicer than Pho Huong Lan — less cramped, modern decor, comfortable booths. I expect it will do well in the Mills 50 neighborhood, even with so much competition within the same few blocks. It feels like more of a “date place,” complete with full bar (hence the name). The website lists a whole menu of cocktails in addition to beer, wine, and sake, or as hipster foodie influencers prefer to call it, a “cocktail program.”

Bites and Bubbles

Bites and Bubbles (https://www.bitesbubbles.com/), located in the Mills Park shopping area at 1618 North Mills Avenue in Orlando, serves contemporary American cuisine with European flair. You might detect a slight French accent (hon hon hon). It is located right next door to Yamasan, a Japanese restaurant my wife and I loved when we discovered it this past summer. Now we have two new favorites next door to each other!

Bites and Bubbles is owned and operated by Eddie Nickell and Nicholas Olivieri, two restauranteurs who have had other successes around Orlando over the years. My wife and I had dined at two of their past restaurants, Prickly Pear (a Southwestern concept in downtown Orlando, bringing a much-needed and now much-missed cuisine to town) and Bananas (a diner that was the previous tenant of the current King Cajun Crawfish space in the Mills 50 neighborhood), and I always liked them. We never made it to Funky Monkey or Nick’s Italian Kitchen, but those were their places as well, and some of my readers may share fond memories from all of their spots. But it seems like Bites and Bubbles has been Nick and Eddie’s greatest hit so far, and now I see exactly why. The menu is incredible, and the service was impeccable.

I had been wanting to come here for several years, but because it is not open for lunch or on Sundays, I work late during the week, and my wife and I rarely go out to dinner (believe it or not), it felt like the universe was conspiring to keep us away. But finally, with about a week left in Orlando’s annual Magical Dining promotion, we made it for dinner on a weeknight and were able to snag a reservation for a comfortable table indoors. They also have a covered outdoor patio and rooftop seating that must be lovely in the winter, but it was still too muggy in September, and it also looked like rain.

For those who are unfamiliar, Magical Dining comes around every September, when some of the nicest restaurants in and around Orlando offer a special prix fixe menu where you choose an appetizer, an entree, and a dessert (from a list of three or four of each) for either $40 or $60, and some of the bill goes to support a different charity every year. This year, the charity is the REED Charitable Foundation, which promotes children’s literacy, specifically reading instruction and educator training. As if we weren’t already on board with the concept, I’m a librarian, and my wife, Doctor Professor Ma’am, is a college professor, so the cause is near and dear to our hearts. I’m so glad all these restaurants are helping.

And on top of the charitable donations, Magical Dining is a perfect opportunity to try new restaurants that tend to be more on the upscale side (which we rarely go to), and to sample more dishes than you normally might. Bites and Bubbles offers a $40 menu, which was definitely easier to swallow than the $60 options elsewhere, and it included most of the decadent dishes on their regular menu. That’s an offer we could no longer refuse, so it was the ideal time to finally visit.

The interior is a beautiful space with sexy decor, blending baroque and modern styles. There are plenty of red accents to break up the darker colors, and here in late September, they have put up some tasteful Halloween decorations (note the skull on the bar below). There are no booths, but we were seated at a table with comfortable chairs.

They offer a huge wine list (I believe curated by Nick), lots of beers, and a vast selection of cocktails with clever names. My wife is always happy to see mocktails available, so she ordered this drink called a gingerberry fizz that was spicy ginger beer (non-alcoholic, natch) mixed with cranberry juice and garnished with a slice of lime. She liked it, and it sounded really refreshing. She hates spicy food, but loves really spicy ginger beer. That stuff is nothing like the ginger ale people drink on airplanes!

Our server Julian dropped off the first of many special surprises of the evening: an unexpected appetizer featuring house-made pimento cheese (always a favorite of mine) topped with jammy roasted tomatoes in one bowl, some vegetables in another bowl (fresh carrots, marinated gigante beans, pickled okra, fresh and crunchy carrots, and a slice of grilled eggplant), and some toasted baguette slices and water crackers for spreading and dipping. I didn’t even know this was an option, and it definitely wasn’t part of the Magical Dining menu! Note the whimsical Halloween-inspired three-bowl setup, too.

My wife loves winter root vegetables, so she was very tempted by the butternut squash bisque, even though it wasn’t one of the Magical Dining options. Since we are a fun couple who know how to party, she went for it. The bisque was thick, rich, creamy, savory, and slightly sweet, and that is whipped cream and some toasted pepitas in the center. It was a perfect soup for the fall (by which I mean the season, but it would also be a comforting soup to take the edge off the end of civilization).

For her Magical Dining appetizer, she chose the escargot, which I would have definitely ordered if she didn’t. It was a generous portion of gastropods for this pair of gastronomes, and it was so nice that they were all removed from shells and resting in the thick, savory brandy mustard crème sauce. (The three shells were strictly decorative, but including the shells is de rigueur for serving escargot, whether you have to dig them out of the shells or not.) For those who haven’t tried escargot, yes, they are snails. They are traditionally served in garlic and butter, so they taste like garlic and butter, but these had an interesting flavor, both earthy and ocean-y, plus what they picked up from the sauce. They have the consistency of mushrooms, a little firmer and chewier than tinned oysters or mussels. Did I use that nice toasted bread to soak up all the brandy mustard crème sauce? You better believe it.

My Bites and Bubbles-obsessed friend had told me you could order a second appetizer for Magical Dining instead of a dessert, and our wonderful server Julian confirmed that. I would have loved to try all four of the apps, but we made out like bandits, being able to get three of the four.

This app is their fried goat cheese, which is a large, round patty covered with crispy, golden-brown panko bread crumb and almond breading. The inside was equal parts creamy and funky, like goat cheese should be. It was served on a toasted baguette slice, topped with more of those terrific roasted tomatoes, and served with the most delicious fruit salsa, blackberries, fresh basil leaves, and the first fresh figs I’ve had all year. It was a wonderful combination of sweet, savory, tangy, creamy, crunchy, soft, and sticky, and it was plated like a work of art. The presentation made me think of the gorgeous dishes food stylist Janice Poon created for the Hannibal TV series, so artful and beguiling even when they were macabre (although this app was anything but macabre).

This was my second app, another beautiful tableau: house-made pork liver paté that was savory and salty and not a uniformly smooth texture throughout, so it was a fun experience spreading it on the toasted baguette slices and water crackers and dipping it in the grainy mustard. (I am truly, literally obsessed with mustard, so I really should have gotten the name of that mustard they used or found out if it was made in house.) Like the goat cheese app, this one came with so many accoutrements to make each bite a unique pleasure of tastes and textures: the bread and water crackers, the mustard, house-made cornichons, marinated gigante beans, drops of balsamic glaze, more fresh figs (that paired perfectly with the balsamic glaze), a sprig of fresh dill, and my favorite of all, the balsamic-marinated, grilled cipollini onions at 11 and 3 o’clock. I’ve only ever seen them in the olive bar at Whole Foods, where they are very expensive, but I could eat those like candy. As much as I love the things that go onto a charcuterie board, I never order them when I’m out at a restaurant. I’d rather snack on all that stuff at home, and then I always get the thought “Why should I put this on a board when I can put it on bread, which is an edible board?” And then I recreate THE SANDWICH. But this pristine pork paté plating restored my faith in charcuterie boards.

With four entrees to choose from, my wife went with the duck confit, a classic French recipe for preparing a duck leg quarter (including the thigh) by curing it with salt and herbs, then slow-roasting it in its own rendered fat. I tried duck confit for my first time earlier this year at a legendary Los Angeles restaurant I haven’t reviewed yet, and I think this was my wife’s first time. However, never content to do things the easy or expected way, Bites and Bubbles served their duck confit like an upscale take on a classic Thanksgiving dinner, with country cranberry stuffing, mashed sweet potatoes, cranberry relish, and duck gravy with diced carrots, served with haricots verts on the side (that’s green beans for you non-Francophiles).

She loved it! She typically doesn’t like things covered with gravy or any kind of sauce, but she ended up loving the rich duck gravy they used. She normally doesn’t like Thanksgiving stuffing either, but she said that was her favorite part! She was also pleasantly surprised that the mashed potatoes turned out to be mashed sweet potatoes, which she greatly prefers.

As for me, I was tempted by all the entrees. I might have chosen the classic French dish beef bourguignon, which is canonically Superman’s favorite meal in DC Comics (although he likes his with ketchup because he is still that farm boy from Smallville, Kansas). Unfortunately, that dish includes mushrooms, which, much like Kryptonite is for Superman, are my personal Kryptonite.

So instead I chose one of my favorite meals, a braised lamb shank. This is one of my favorite things to eat in the world, and I love ordering them at Turkish and Greek restaurants. In fact, I love braised lamb shanks so much that I learned how to make my own in a rich, thick sauce of crushed tomatoes, onions, roasted red bell peppers, and hot cherry peppers. My sauce takes on so much rich lamb fat, and it makes a perfect pasta sauce that lasts for days after all the meat is gone. I usually braise mine for five to six hours until the meat is literally melting off the bone, but I could tell this lamb shank wasn’t cooked quite as long, since it held its form better, clinging to the bone. It was tender and unctuous in its own tomato broth, and I tasted cumin as the main flavor in there. it was served on a bed of mashed potatoes (not mashed sweet potatoes this time), with haricots verts and fresh dill on top, and it was lovely. I ate most of this dish at home the following day, since another distraction arrived at the same time.

One Bites and Bubbles specialty I’ve been hearing about for years is their duck fat-infused burger, and even with all our other delicious food, it was such an ordeal to finally make it there for dinner, we couldn’t leave without sharing it. I’m so glad we did. It consists of two smash-style patties cooked in duck fat, shredded lettuce, a tomato slice, thin-sliced pickles, and house sauce on a soft and fluffy brioche bun. It also comes with Swiss cheese, but my wife doesn’t like cheese on burgers, so Julian brought the two slices of Swiss on the side for me. In fact, she doesn’t like dressed burgers or buns, so I slid the bottom patty out for her, threw the cheese on the other patty, and ate the burger in the form of an actual burger, as intended. It was like a fancy version of a Big Mac, especially with the flavor of the lettuce, pickles, and tangy sauce that was reminiscent of McDonald’s “special sauce.” Of course, long time Saboscrivner subscribers should remember that McDonald’s totally ripped off their Big Mac from the Original Double-Deck burger, the most popular burger from legendary Los Angeles-area diner Bob’s Big Boy, which was once a national chain.Even though I like ketchup on burgers, I didn’t add any, because I wanted to taste the meat and the combination of Chef Eddie’s intended flavors without the strong flavor of ketchup horning in. The fries were a $4.99 upcharge, but so worth it. They were Sidewinder fries, which are among my favorite fries due to their crispy, crunchy outer layer. We were too full to mess with them, but they crisped back up just fine in our toaster oven today.

My wife is much more of a dessert person than I, but I made my choice to go with two apps instead. Nothing would sway her from the chocolate fudge layer cake, drizzled with chocolate sauce and topped with a dollop of whipped cream, a buttery, shortbread-like cookie, and a Pirouline rolled wafer cookie filled with chocolate or hazelnut spread. Like everything else in this glorious epic dinner, the presentation was stunning, and she said the cake itself was superb. She brought about half of it home and said it was even better — even more moist — after a night in the fridge!

And this is when Bites and Bubbles outdid themselves again, bringing out a second dessert that wasn’t even one of the Magical Dining options: their pistachio gelato affogato. We never saw it coming and didn’t ask for it, so it was the most pleasant of surprises: scoops of pistachio gelato, mini bombolini (like little Italian doughnut holes filled with custard), crushed pistachios, more of the buttery shortbread-like cookies and Piroulines, and dollops of whipped cream. It was an affogato because it came with a shot of espresso we were supposed to pour over it, but my wife never drinks coffee after 3 PM, or it will literally keep her up all night, which means we would both be up all night. Instead of pouring the espresso over this lavish, decadent dessert to make it a true affogato, I dunked the bombolini and cookies in the tiny metal cup of espresso to make my own wee, personal affogato.

I can’t get over the incredible food at Bites and Bubbles, the artful presentations, the intimate setting. But I have to rave about the service even more. Julian was one of the kindest, most knowledgeable, most patient servers we’ve ever encountered in Orlando, and Nick and Eddie were the hosts with the most. They came to our table to personally check on us and did everything in their power to give us one of the nicest dinner dates we’ve ever had, anywhere.

Have you ever seen Goodfellas, Martin Scorsese’s 1990 masterpiece when Henry Hill (the late Ray Liotta) takes his girlfriend Karen (Lorraine Bracco) on an extravagant date to the Copacabana nightclub, and a long, uncut tracking shot follows them from the kitchen entrance through the bustling restaurant, where everyone is being so nice to them, moving a table right up in front of the stage, doing everything they can to give them an unforgettable, glamorous experience? Well, that’s how I felt, taking my wife to Bites and Bubbles for the first time. I don’t think I’m a particularly cool guy, and I always say that I’m no influencer, nor do I want to be. But they made us feel so welcome and so special, like a couple of big shots, and I’m pretty sure that anyone who dines at Bites and Bubbles, whether Magical Dining is going on or not, will get that kind of warm reception. I can’t recommend it highly enough or rave enough about this dinner we enjoyed there.

Of course, we returned home with enough leftovers for a few more meals because we went a little wild there, but now that we’ve experienced Bites and Bubbles, I have no doubt we’ll return, and hopefully sooner rather than later. If you have a hot date, friends in from out of town, dinner with parents (who actually like trying new things, unlike our parents), or something to celebrate, this is probably one of the best restaurants in Orlando for a special occasion dinner to commemorate something like that. Ask for Julian, and leave yourself in Eddie and Nick’s capable hands. They will treat you right!

Moa Kai Hawaiian Diner

Moa Kai Hawaiian Diner (https://www.moakaidiner.com/) just opened the week before last in the old Mongolorian location at 2217 East Colonial Drive in Orlando, just west of Bumby Avenue. The restaurant is still in its soft opening phase, but it is fully open for business every day except Sunday. Sunday brunch hours will be added in due time. It is owned by the same owner of my beloved Poke Hana (honestly one of my favorite restaurants in Orlando since 2018) and Korean fried chicken joint Chi-Kin, which I still haven’t been to yet.

I love Hawaiian food, and Poke Hana is a big reason for that, since I’ve never actually been to Hawaii. Even before that, there was a short-lived Hawaiian restaurant in Oviedo called Hawaiian Grindz that introduced me to most Hawaiian dishes. Unfortunately, it didn’t last very long, perhaps because the owners seemed to be very laid-back, to the point of not always opening when their posted hours said they would.

Anyway, Moa Kai Hawaiian Diner is a very professional setup with a busy, happy-looking staff, all in festive aloha shirts. It is a classic diner layout with booths along the window, tables, stools overlooking an open kitchen (separated by a plexiglass screen) and more stools at the bar. For my first visit earlier this evening, I sat at the bar and placed my takeout order with the very friendly and welcoming Olivia, the bartender.

While I waited for my takeout, I ordered a POG juice. I remember how popular Pogs were in the early ’90s, especially at the comic book shops I used to frequent, and how quickly the Pog fad came and went. But don’t worry — POG juice is passion fruit/orange/guava juice, and it is so sweet and tangy and tasty. It is surprisingly thick and heavy, as fruit juices can sometimes be, but I already love all tropical fruits, especially passion fruit and guava, so I enjoyed it and highly recommend it.

(That is the ever-patient Olivia’s arm back there.)

After that, I also tried the lychee lemonade, since I am now a lemonade connoisseur. It was also wonderful, and a lot lighter and more refreshing than the POG juice. I would definitely order that again.

I placed a large order, figuring my wife and I would get four total meals out of everything, and it was ready quite quickly.

My wife requested the shoyu poke bowl, with cubes of raw ahi tuna marinated in house shoyu (soy) sauce with Hawaiian salt, shelled edamame soybeans, macadamia nuts, chili flakes, sweet onions, and dried seaweed called ogo. These are all flavors she likes (except the onions, which she figured out after one harsh bite), so she was really happy with it. She said she liked this poke even more than Poke Hana, where we have eaten dozens of times, so that’s high praise coming from her.

I couldn’t decide between a few things, so I ordered an assortment, hoping to share, and if not, knowing I’d have leftovers for tomorrow. These were the kalbi ribs, beef ribs marinated in shoyu and fruit juices, sliced across the bones, and grilled. They had a lot of flavor from the grilling process and were so tender. I always love peeling the flat bone slices out of kalbi and enjoying the almost chewy meat around the edges of the bone. Even my wife liked the piece she had.

All “plate lunches” at Moa Kai come with two scoops of white rice and one scoop of macaroni salad, but you can also choose different sides, and some require a nominal upcharge. I already know I love Hawaiian-style macaroni salad, including from Poke Hana, so I was looking forward to this, but instead of white rice, I got garlic pan-fried noodles, hoping my wife would want to try them. We both loved them! As great as the kalbi and macaroni salad were (and they were), these garlic noodles were the truth. Whenever we return, we will split a full-size order of them.

Kai Asian Street Fare on the edge of Casselberry and Winter Park makes the closest thing in town to these garlic noodles, and theirs are also awesome, just a little more buttery-greasy. But I had a lousy phone camera back then, so forgive the ugly, blurry shots in that early review.

I got a second plate lunch, the mix plate, where you can select two house favorites. For one of my choices, I went with the spicy ahi poke with cubed, marinated ahi tuna, sweet onion, masago, and crushed macadamia nuts in house-made spicy sauce (think spicy mayo), topped with scallions. This was fire! Poke is one of my favorite foods, whether from Poke Hana, Rion’s Ocean Room, or even Costco, and I especially love spicy ahi or salmon poke like this. It was a small serving, but that’s what happens in a sampler platter like this. I could eat this by the bucketful.

The other thing I ended up with was the grilled shoyu chicken, which was a shoyu-marinated, grilled boneless chicken thigh, topped with teriyaki sauce and scallions. It was so tender and juicy and well-seasoned, and I always say chicken thighs are the best part of the chicken, aside from the oysters. Thick thighs save lives! (And if you were intrigued by the garlic noodles above, the full-size order comes topped with this shoyu chicken.)
The only reason I said I “ended up with” it was because I ordered the Korean chicken instead, which sounds like it would have been similar shoyu-marinated chicken, but cubed, battered, fried, and tossed in house-made Korean garlic sauce. I am not disappointed at all that I ended up with the grilled chicken instead. It was a slightly healthier option, and so damn delicious, I would happily order it again. I don’t own a grill, merely because it is so blasted hot and humid in Orlando nine months out of the year, I know I wouldn’t use it much. Knowing myself, that would lead to all kinds of cognitive dissonance and self-resentment, and I deal with that enough already without feeling guilty about buying a grill and not using it often enough. But I always miss the flavor of good grilled meats, and the grilled shoyu chicken thigh was a perfect piece of chicken. WE HAVE SUCH SIGHTS TO SHOYU!

I got macaroni salad with this plate lunch too, but instead of the white rice, I got Spam fried rice for an upcharge. Spam is so good, y’all! It is the very definition of a “sometimes food,” as heavily processed and salty as it is, but fried up with rice or noodles and wrapped in rice and seaweed as a Spam musubi, it is tastier than you would believe. The Spam lovers know what’s up, and the squeamish among you will just have to take my word for it. This Spam fried rice didn’t have anything else in it (no eggs or vegetables), but just Spam and fried rice were great by themselves.

But wait, there’s more! That old Hawaiian restaurant in Oviedo introduced me to saimin, a Hawaiian noodle soup similar to Japanese ramen, but with Spam. Saimin soup with Spam is on the menu here at Moa Kai, but we’re still in August, and I couldn’t conceive of ordering soup. But I still had to try some form of saimin, so I got the local style stir-fried saimin noodles with char siu (Chinese-style barbecue pork with a slight sweetness that you may know and love from Kai Kai or Tasty Wok), Spam, sliced kamaboko (cured surimi, similar to the fish cakes in ramen), scrambled eggs, carrots, and scallions, seasoned with shoyu and dashi, a Japanese cooking stock flavored with fish and kelp.
I’m going to enjoy this tomorrow, but I couldn’t resist a few bites while it was still fresh and hot, and it was on point. It reminded me of a Hawaiian version of lo mein (but better) or Filipino pancit bihon. The char siu pork was sweet and tender, and the Spam was sliced into tiny cubes and perfected by the stir-fry process. You could enjoy these local style stir-fried saimin any day of the week, not just on stir-Friday.

My wife had requested an açaí bowl for a bit of a dessert tonight and breakfast tomorrow. This was a huge helping of açaí sorbet blended and topped with fresh strawberries, blueberries, pineapple, and kiwi, shredded coconut, peanut butter, and granola. Knowing it was sorbet, I brought a cooler in the car with a couple of reusable fake-ice blocks to keep it cold on the drive home, but it still got a little melty. The tiny taste I had when she had enough for the night was soooo nice and refreshing, though.

I had never even heard of açaí until a few years ago, when everyone started touting its benefits as a healthy “superfood.” I can’t speak on that, but the dark purple sorbet made from the açaí berries is a nice blend of sweet and tart, especially when mixed with other, sweeter fruits.

And finally, we were both curious about the ube haupia pie, so I guess that makes us pie-curious. I couldn’t resist ordering a piece for us to share. Haupia is coconut pudding, a popular Hawaiian dessert made from coconut milk, sugar, cornstarch, and water, and it is surprisingly jiggly and bouncy like Jell-O. Poke Hana serves haupia in crispy fried spring rolls, which are terrific, but this was different. Moa Kai serves their haupia in pie form with a macadamia nut-graham cracker crust (superb) with a layer of creamy ube pudding in between. Ube is a purple yam with a vanilla-like flavor, common in Filipino and Vietnamese desserts and sweet drinks, and it is as tasty as it is beautiful. Someone call Yam Grier and send me to Yamsterdam, because these were some sweet-ass yams under that haupia, with more bounce to the ounce.

Folks, I am thrilled to report that Orlando has another winner. We first heard earlier this year that Moa Kai Hawaiian Diner was coming, and months passed with no updates. The menu surfaced online back in April, and it all sounded so good, I hoped plans wouldn’t change, since some announced restaurants never see the light of day. It was so worth the wait, and all the time and effort and money they put into it are paying off. You can see we tried many things so I could write a worthy review and share as much information as possible. Yeah, that’s the ticket. The diner setting is going to be a fun, welcoming atmosphere for dining in, and the location, right in our Mills 50 district with so many other fantastic restaurants nearby, will hopefully help keep them busy and garner them the success they deserve. I don’t know if I’ll ever make it to beautiful Hawaii, but at least we can all have a taste of it right here in Orlando. Whether you dine in or order takeout like I did tonight, look for Olivia, who might be behind the bar. She is awesome, and even in the brief time I waited for my takeout order at the bar, she made me feel like a valued customer, patiently answered any questions I had, asked if I needed anything, and represented the restaurant so well.

Finka Table & Tap (Miami)

Finka Table & Tap (https://www.finkarestaurant.com/) is a Cuban-Peruvian-Korean fusion gastropub in Miami. If that sounds too good to be true, trust me — it’s real, and it’s spectacular. My best foodie friend took me there on my a recent trip to visit him and my family down in Miami. It is one of his favorite restaurants in the city, and he knew I would dig it too.

Finka is probably considered to be off the beaten path in Miami, far from the tony and trendy areas like Wynwood, Brickell, South Beach, and Coral Gables, but tucked away in the West Kendall suburbs. But just like another kick-ass Miami restaurant my friend brought me to, the award-winning, Cuban-inspired barbecue paradise Smoke & Dough, which is only five minutes away, Finka is worth a trip to Kendall to discover and experience for yourself.

It has been a while since our visit, so I didn’t remember what impressive-looking cocktail my friend ordered, but he identified it as a mai tai, one of his favorite drinks. He said it was a particularly good one, too, since Finka uses orgeat syrup.

It was your typical sweltering Miami summer day, and I have become a true lemonade connoisseur. Finka’s lemonade hit the spot.

Finka serve croquetas de jamon from the iconic Islas Canarias Cuban restaurant in West Kendall, and they are the absolute best croquetas anywhere in Miami. If you don’t believe me, my best foodie friend reviews Cuban cuisine and especially croquetas all over the city in his Croqueta Diaries, and he agrees. I admire his focus, and he is an excellent food writer. He’s brought me to the Islas Canarias ventanita before, to try croquetas straight from the source, but it felt like a bonus to be able to order them at Finka. They are never burnt or greasy — just fried to golden-brown perfection, smoky, creamy, and rich. A squirt from the lime wedge brought a nice acidic tang to cut the savory richness.

We set to work sharing those as well as the malanga nachos, crispy malanga (taro root) chips smothered with ribeye picadillo, a three-cheese sauce, maduros (we both love sweet fried plantains), pink pickled onions, leche de tigre sour cream, Fresno peppers, and scallions. It was a fusion feast.
By the way, leche de tigre is the spicy marinating liquid left over from marinating ceviche, so don’t worry — no real tigers were milked for this sour cream. Can you imagine?

I don’t think this is on the menu anymore, but my friend ordered the gochujang noodles, a dish with spicy sweet potato noodles, shrimp, snow peas, bok choy, squash, carrots, and mushrooms. I didn’t try it (I avoid mushrooms), but he seemed to like it.

I got “dak-galbi”-style chicken fried rice, with queso frito (fried cheese!), pineapples, red peppers, seasonal veggies, maduros, sesame seeds, spicy gochujang sauce (which I have become a huge fan of), and pickled cabbage. It was hard to choose, with so many interesting dishes on the menu, but this seemed to exemplify Finka’s commitment to fusion cuisine, while a few other things seemed a little more “normal.”

I know tourists, hipsters, and bon vivants probably avoid Kendall for their grand nights out in Miami, but there are more top-notch, destination-worthy restaurants there than when I left that area for good and moved to Orlando, at the end of 2004. My best foodie friend and I grew up in Kendall. We survived Kendall. Whether you’re a Miami local or just passing through for a good time, if not a long time, you could do a hell of a lot worse than venturing into West Kendall for a memorable fusion feast at Finka. Maybe plan accordingly and hit Finka and the outstanding Smoke & Dough on the same trip — possibly dinner at one place and takeout for lunch the next day from the other!

Otto’s High Dive

Otto’s High Dive (https://www.ottoshd.com/) opened over a year ago in what I consider Orlando’s best foodie neighborhood, The Milk District. The “neighborhood rum bar” quickly earned a Michelin Bib Gourmand award for “good quality, good value cooking.” It is only open for dinner Tuesday through Saturday, but opens at 11 AM for brunch on Sundays (and is closed Mondays). Because Otto’s serves oysters and other raw seafood plus Cuban food, I had been wanting to try it ever since it opened, but finally made it in there with my wife on a recent Sunday afternoon. Neither of us drink, so we skipped the vast selection of rums and beautiful cocktails, but they looked really great, and I’m sure they were. But we arrived hungry and came to play.

Unfortunately for us, we were seated at one of the tiniest two-top tables I’ve ever seen in a restaurant. Even though we ordered a lot of food, it became a constant balancing act and rearranging game to make everything fit on the tiny table, to the point where plates were perched precariously as I tried to consolidate and stack everything I could. It should have been a relaxing and fun lunch, but the space didn’t really allow for that.

My wife ordered a Coke, and it was cool that they brought an icy-cold bottle of Mexican Coke (made with real sugar rather than high fructose corn syrup) and a glass full of crystal-clear ice cubes with lime wedges.

We started out with the ceviche, with cubes of raw yellowfin tuna, avocado, watermelon, mustard seeds, basil-chili oil, a splash of mezcal, and “leche de tigre.” Don’t worry, it isn’t real tiger’s milk (who would dare to milk a tiger?), but the citrus-based Peruvian marinade that “cooks” the raw fish in ceviche. It usually includes lime juice, onion, different chile peppers, salt, and pepper.

This was the crab salad: beautiful fresh crabmeat, chilled and mixed with avocado, pineapple, and lime, and served with long, thin, crispy plantain chips for spreading and/or dipping.

It was a surprisingly generous portion:

This was the bread platter with slices of Cuban bread (not toasted or grilled or anything) and one little plantain muffin. It was supposed to come with a third thing, but they said they were out of it, so they just left it off. Spreads include whipped, salted butter and guava spread. and I’m sorry I don’t remember the third. Neither of us would bother getting this again.

I was perfectly happy with all the seafood and snacks, but the main reason we finally went to Otto’s was because they serve a 14-ounce chargrilled Prime ribeye steak with a spiced coffee rub, and that sounded amazing to my wife. She ordered it rare, like both of us always order our steaks, and it came out… very much NOT rare. Neither of us like to be “those people” in a restaurant, but it was an expensive steak, so we politely asked to send it back because it wasn’t rare.

At that point, the chef came out of the kitchen and told us that they use a sous vide machine to cook the ribeye, so it should have been rare, but trust me, it wasn’t, and we told him as much. Then he offered to cook the skirt steak rare with the coffee rub so it could take on the flavors she was looking for, since I guess they don’t sous vide that cut. My wife agreed, and she got this huge and lovely coffee-rubbed skirt steak with tostones, white rice, and excellent black beans, plus some pickled onions sliced paper-thin on top that I happily ate.

I didn’t get a good picture of the interior of the skirt steak until we heated up the leftovers at home, but that’s how we like our steaks to look inside.
Sadly, my wife still would have preferred the ribeye done to her satisfaction. That whole exchange shook us both, and even though we didn’t feel great about sending the ribeye back in the first place, a restaurant charging those prices, with a damn Michelin Bib Gourmand award, maybe should not put polite customers on the defensive like that.

This was rich duck fat bordelaise, garlicky chimichurri, and red pepper sofrito that came with the skirt steak. All three were delicious, especially with the Cuban bread.

Being a glutton (as well as a glutton for punishment, apparently), I ordered a side of broccolini, one of my favorite vegetables, which was the seasonal vegetable during our visit. It was charred and topped with a romesco sauce that was really good.

I don’t think Otto’s High Dive has its dessert menu online, so I snapped a photo of it:

We decided on the toasted coconut rum cake, brown butter cake served with coconut lime curd. It was soaked with rum and set ablaze, which is always fun. It was delicious, and we chose wisely here, but I remain curious about the Florida orange tres leches too.

And this was a quesito that I hastily added on. It was a perfectly fine little pastry, but I admit I’ve had better at places like Zaza and Vicky Bakery.

So as if it wasn’t already painfully obvious, The Saboscrivner knows how to party. The food was good to great, but I admit it wasn’t the best time, and I don’t think I’d go back. Maybe Otto’s High Dive would be more fun and less stressful if you’re drinking. Then you might not care if all the plates don’t fit on your table, your steak is overcooked, and the chef gets big mad for politely, diplomatically standing up for yourself. But the place is a big hit, so try it for yourself and see what you think! Or don’t.

The Moderne

I guess I haven’t published a new review in about a month, since work has been keeping me so busy. Working from home, I also haven’t been able to go out to eat quite as often, which means I’m cooking more and saving money (yet not losing any weight). But this review is long overdue, from a date night about a month ago at one of the prettiest, swankiest, sexiest restaurant/bar/lounges in Orlando, The Moderne (https://www.themodernebar.com/) in the foodie dream district of Mills 50. I’m sure a lot of my regular readers have already been here, but this was our first visit to The Moderne. I had been wanting to try it for a while, since it features an eclectic menu of small plates — mostly pan-Asian dishes, but some include other international influences, ranging from Italian to Peruvian.

This was my wife’s beautiful mojito mocktail, served with a dehydrated lime slice as a garnish. I tried a sip, and it was delicious. The Moderne features an enticing cocktail menu, but we were both happy to see a few mocktail options for non-drinkers like us. I guess you could call this one a “no”-jito. My wife reminded me to mention that she first asked for a simple Shirley Temple, but the gorgeous, well-stocked bar did not have any grenadine syrup, something we both thought was odd at the time.

Our order of duck wontons came out first. These hand-folded wonton wrappers were stuffed with shredded duck seasoned with Chinese five-spice powder and fried until crispy. They were served with chili oil peanut sauce. We both wished they had been served with more duck inside, even though they tasted good and were surprisingly not that oily.

This beautiful dish was the tuna kobachi, with spicy cubed tuna, avocado, Japanese-style marinated cucumbers, scallion, red tobiko, micro cilantro, and a dish of ponzu sauce for dippin’ and dunkin’. I loved it so much. I could eat this every day of my life and never get tired of it, although I’d hate to think of what my mercury levels would be. It was my favorite dish that we tried, a perfect 10/10.

Next came our chashu quesadillas, which were plated beautifully. Quesadillas are the easiest thing to make at home, but my homemade ones never feature chashu pork, (like the kind of pork you get in a bowl of “real” (not instant) ramen), shredded cheddar and mozzarella cheeses, Japanese Kewpie mayo, chili amarillo sauce, and pickled onions. Well, mine would have the cheeses and Barbie Dream House-pink pickled onions, but that’s where the similarities begin and end.

This was another hit with both of us: yellowtail (hamachi) ceviche, with cubes of cool, refreshing yellowtail in mango wasabi lime sauce, diced onion, serrano, red tobiko, micro cilantro, all encased in perfectly thin, crispy, delicate spheres of pani puri, the Indian street food classic (see my Bombay Street Kitchen review for authentic pani puri). It was a gorgeous fusion experience that dazzled all of our senses.

My wife chose these miso cream noodles, which sounded like something she would love. The dish featured thin pasta (like angel hair or vermicelli), that chashu pork again, mushrooms, miso, fried garlic, toasted bread crumbs, parmesan cheese, and scallions. She admitted not really being into it and said it was both very rich and on the bland side — an interesting dichotomy, kind of like fettuccine alfredo from the Olive Garden (although this definitely had more flavor than that)! She picked at it and brought most of it home, where I happily finished it after picking the mushrooms out. I’m a pretty tolerant guy, but I have this unfortunate intolerance to mushrooms, and chefs freakin’ love throwing them into things.

I chose a different noodle dish for myself that seemed like another fragrant fusion feast: seafood pappardelle, with pappardelle pasta (wide, flat noodles that are wider than fettuccine), shrimp, tamarind Nikkei sauce (Nikkei being a Peruvian-Japanese fusion due to all the Japanese immigrants in Peru), carrots, red peppers, onions, peanuts, and a cilantro-heavy “Asian herb salad.” It was okay. The sauce was a little sweet and tangy, not as spicy as I had hoped, and very thin. I thought it was odd that the dish was called “seafood pappardelle” when the only seafood in it was shrimp. This was a last-minute choice when the server was already taking our orders, but I think I would have enjoyed one of the other noodle dishes more. Oh well, you live and you learn!

So that was our first experience at The Moderne. I liked it and would go back, but my wife admitted it was not one of her favorite restaurants. Oh well, people have different tastes and like different things — that is no surprise. My favorites were the two dishes with raw fish, which is usually one of my favorite things to eat. (This also explains why The Moderne’s neighbor a few doors down, Poke Hana, remains one of my favorite restaurants in all of Orlando all these years later.) I might get those again, or other raw fish options, and I would definitely try a different noodle dish on a second visit. Plus, after dinner at The Moderne, you can go next door and have some of Orlando’s finest ice cream at Sampaguita, which is exactly what we did on this date night!

Smoke & Donuts BBQ

Not to be confused with the similarly named Smoke & Dough in Miami, Orlando’s Smoke & Donuts (https://www.smokeanddonuts.com/) is a relatively new restaurant that started serving excellent barbecue and beautiful, festive cake doughnuts just over a year ago, right in one of the best foodie neighborhoods in the city, the Milk District.

My wife and I recently had our first meal at Smoke & Donuts, and me being me, I made sure we could sample as many things from their eclectic menu as possible. The restaurant is open from 11 AM to 9 PM on weekdays, but on weekends, it opens at 9 AM for a brunch menu in addition to the full regular menu. We figured that would give us even more options to choose from, especially with my weird work hours that prevent us from going out to eat during the week. Luckily, there was plenty of parking and no wait shortly after 11 AM on a Saturday.

Once you arrive, you take a paper menu to study as you walk down a line where you can see those dazzling, decadent doughnuts on display, then the stations where the staff assembles barbecue bowls, sandwiches, and “boards” (really metal trays). My wife sat down at an open table while I took the walk toward an extremely patient woman who took our large order at the end of the line. It’s a familiar setup — you pay at the register, take a number, and then someone delivers your food to your table.

Before I reveal everything we ordered, here are the sauces diners will be able to choose from, since sauces are such an important part of the barbecue experience. They are all in squeeze bottles over by the self-serve soda fountain, and there are plenty of tiny plastic cups with lids to fill with the six sumptuous sauces. Over here you have toasted guajillo pepper, KC (Kansas City) sweet, spicy vinegar (it’s a North Carolina thing), and a marvelously thick hot sauce with visible spicy pepper seeds and a touch of sweetness.

Next to them, kept on ice, are Lowcountry SC (South Carolina) mustard sauce (kind of a creamy, herby, tangy mustard, not like bright yellow mustard or overly sweet honey mustard at all) and AL (Alabama) white barbecue sauce, which is creamy, tangy, and sweet. You KNOW I tried them all!

Here’s my sauce lineup. Before our food even arrived, as I was assembling our sauces, they brought us each a sample of a perfect, delicately seasoned, crunchy pork rind, which we both liked. Pork rinds can be heavenly or a pointless waste of calories, and the seasoning usually makes all the difference. But this one was very light, which was also nice.

My wife ordered a blueberry “MOCK-jito,” a delightful mocktail with fresh mint, lime, and fresh muddled blueberries. She said it was so refreshing, and it was one of the highlights of this epic brunch. I am so glad to see more restaurants offering interesting mocktails made with the same love and care as their alcoholic cocktails. Thank you, Smoke & Donuts!

It wasn’t long before our meals were walked out to the table. My wife and I each chose a Pit Sampler board, which comes with a choice of three meats and either one side and a piece of cornbread or a glazed doughnut (one of the more basic doughnuts, not the fancier ones). She chose pork belly (on the left; smoked and prepared in a sous vide water bath), pulled smoked chicken slathered in the Alabama white barbecue sauce, and sliced brisket for her meats. When I was given a choice of ordering her brisket lean or marbled, I chose marbled, which we both prefer. With steak, brisket, or pastrami, when in doubt, go for the marbling!

Instead of a side, she opted for a cinnamon sugar cake doughnut. Those pink strips are pickled red onions, something I love a lot (and make myself at home), but she has no interest in onions at all, or anything pickled. Needless to say, I got them for myself, along with the rest of the house-made pickles and pickled onions in the top right corner of her tray.

For my Pit Sampler board, I purposely chose three different things, knowing we would offer each other samples of ours anyway. I got chopped brisket (doused in TG sauce, the toasted guajillo pepper sauce), chorizo sausage, and St. Louis ribs (rubbed in “red chile and brown sugar slather”).
I chose baked beans for my side (see above), which included Kansas City sweet barbecue sauce, caramelized onions, sorghum, and stout. And you can see my cornbread up there too. But wanting us both to have a chance to try more sides, I also ordered a side sampler with three additional sides:

French fries, a necessity for dipping in the six different sauces:

Crunchy cucumber and cabbage slaw, shredded and tossed in a sherry and rice wine vinaigrette. I didn’t even try this until later, when we got home with multiple boxes of leftovers, but I liked it a lot. What a gourmet, nontraditional take on cole slaw. It was a bit dry, even with the vinaigrette, but a little Alabama white sauce perked it up.

Rich macaroni and cheese, featuring cheddar, Swiss, Chihuahua, and cotija cheeses and a little lager. This is definitely one of the best versions of mac and cheese in Orlando, and my far-and-away favorite of all the sides we sampled.

Here’s a close-up of my chopped brisket, which was good, although I think I would definitely opt for the sliced, marbled brisket in the future:

I had no idea how many ribs came in the sampler, but I have to be honest, I only expected one rib (making me think of Chris Rock in I’m Gonna Git You, Sucka, a movie I made my wife watch for the first time recently, still as funny as it was when it came out in 1988). Imagine my surprise when the guy delivered the trays to our table, and there were three ribs, although he told me he accidentally gave me an extra one. So normally you would get two in the Pit Sampler, and even that would have been great. The ribs were my favorite of the three meats I ordered, by far. They were so tender and smoky and sweet and spicy, easy to pull off the bone, but not exactly “falling off the bone” (barbecue mavens try to avoid that texture).

And from the brunch menu, my wife really wanted to try the biscuits that came with a trio of different flavors of soft, spreadable butter. It looks like they change these flavors all the time, but today we got mango, cilantro-jalapeño, and strawberry-basil butters. My wife really loved the two fruity ones, and I liked all three. The biscuits weren’t huge, but we also shared my cornbread and still had plenty of these rich, creamy, velvety butters left to bring home in the tiny plastic sauce cups. Thank goodness for the lids!

We were as interested in those stunning doughnuts as we were in the barbecue, so we ordered more to take home and parcel out over the next few days. On the left is a blonde blueberry doughnut we intended to share, with vanilla glaze, oat streusel, blueberry compote, and a chewy, buttery blueberry swirl blondie (the triangle “hat” on top, definitely a fascinator). In the middle is a red velvet doughnut my wife chose, with chocolate glaze, red velvet fudge, and a lightly crispy meringue on top, like a little beret sitting at a jaunty angle. On the right is a passion petal dancer, the most butch-sounding dessert name ever. I chose that one as soon as I saw it includes passion fruit cremeaux (I don’t even know how to pronounce that), lemon pavlova, and a dehydrated strawberry.

And this was one last doughnut for me, back at home: the key lime doughnut, with candied lemonade glaze, ginger snap streusel, key lime pavlova, and meringue. Good grief, this was so good. All the doughnuts from Smoke & Donuts BBQ are cake doughnuts, so they are really dense, heavy, and on the drier side, but not crumbly. If you’re craving the light airiness of yeasty Krispy Kreme doughnuts, then go to Krispy Kreme. But you’ll miss out on these lovely, luxurious, cakey creations.

We were lucky enough to meet Smoke & Donuts’ chef-owner Ian Russell, a graduate of the only CIA that makes the world a better place, the Culinary Institute of America. He worked as an actor (appearing in at least one local production with my wife when they were both a lot younger!) and some other interesting careers before founding Smoke & Donuts as a food truck. After building a reputation there, he then moved into the current space, directly next door to one of Orlando’s most famous and beloved restaurants, Se7en Bites. I was impressed that Chef Russell went around from table to table, introducing himself and asking his guests how everything was, and that’s when my wife recognized him from when they were in Cyrano together. Then the lady who had so patiently taken my large order introduced herself as his mother, and she stopped by to check up on us and kvell about her successful son.

I would be proud too. Chef Russell and his entire staff (including his mom) were wonderful. We felt very welcome and had a terrific brunch/early lunch that ended up being the only meal we needed for the rest of the day, with plenty of leftovers for the next couple of days. The ribs and mac and cheese were definitely my favorites of everything we tried, but I would return just for a big ol’ order of fries so I could use them as sauce delivery devices, the sauces were that good. People are intense (and intensely loyal) when it comes to barbecue. Orlando is lucky to have some good options (along with Briskets in Oviedo and Smokemade opening a permanent location soon), and Smoke & Donuts is definitely among the best. The Milk District has another winner, and since they have lasted over a year in this location, I’m sure they aren’t going anywhere. Come try them when you’re craving meat and sauce, and they even offer smoky jackfruit for vegetarians!

Chain Reactions: Superica

Superica (https://superica.com/) is an upscale Tex-Mex restaurant chain with twelve locations around the U.S., founded by chef and restauranteur Ford Fry. It opened its first Florida location in Winter Park last fall. I ate there for the first time in late January, with my wife and in-laws. The in-laws are sometimes hesitant to try new restaurants, but the lure of good Mexican or Tex-Mex food got them on board.

Back in January, Superica was offering a menu of six non-alcoholic drinks for “dry January,” although I don’t see why they can’t continue to offer them all year. My wife ordered the drink on the left, which tasted a bit like a cross between a margarita and a mojito. (It was also a whoppin’ $10, with no booze.) I ordered the “agua fresca del dia” on the right (for only $4), which was surprisingly sour and grapefruity. As usual, we shared sips of each other’s drinks, but this time we both liked each other’s drink better, so we traded.

Like any good Mexican or Tex-Mex restaurant, Superica brought fresh-fried tortilla chips to the table. These were outstanding chips — almost paper-thin, crispy, salty, and clearly very fresh, but not greasy at all. They were a huge hit at our table. I also loved the smoky red salsa on the right, which had a surprising level of heat for a table salsa (but still probably “medium” heat). My wife has zero interest in tomato salsas, but she dabbed at the green tomatillo-based salsa, which had a little too much heat for her.

My father-in-law ordered one of his favorite dishes at any Tex-Mex restaurant, a chile relleno. This crispy, batter-dipped and fried poblano pepper came smothered with red sauce and cheese and then baked. Inside, it was stuffed with Chihuahua cheese, corn, and mushrooms, which would have been a deal-breaker for me, but he seemed to love it.

My mother-in-law ordered enchiladas, but she is going through a phase where she doesn’t want any sauce or even cheese on things. I didn’t bother to take a picture, since they looked very plain, bland, and dry, and they probably were.

My wife got an order of three tacos de pescado, fried catfish tacos in corn tortillas that came topped with Mexican crema, cabbage slaw, and pink pickled onions. She was kind enough to have me scrape off the onions and slaw, because I always like that stuff, and she wants nothing to do with it. The “street style” tacos at Superica come with a side order of charro beans.She gave me one of her catfish tacos, and it was delicious. Actually, I thought it was better than any of the tacos I got.

It was our very sweet server Haley’s first day, so I was worried about stumping her when I asked if you could mix and match the different street style tacos. But she very kindly informed me that yes, I could do that — I wouldn’t be limited to three of the same kind. So I got three completely different street style tacos:

One taco de barbacoa (top), with slow-cooked brisket, pasilla Oaxaca, avocado, onions, and cilantro.
One taco al pastor (center), with crispy pork belly, achiote, grilled pineapple, and pico de gallo.
One taco de camarones (bottom), with Gulf shrimp, “scampi butter,” cabbage slaw, morita chile mayo, and what the website menu referred to as “cheesy tortillas.” I don’t remember if the tortilla was grilled to form a cheese crust, but maybe it was.

Here’s another view of my three tacos. Were they pretty? Yes. Were they tasty? Sure. Were they expensive? Absolutely.

And speaking of dough, this was our shared dessert order of bunuelos, two discs of fried dough drizzled with honey, rather than the traditional cinnamon sugar. My mother-in-law wanted sopapillas, and this was the closest thing on the menu.

And that’s why I’m telling you that Superica is a nice restaurant to go to with your in-laws, but there are a lot better AND cheaper Mexican and even Tex-Mex restaurants throughout Orlando, from hipster taquerias to legit dives, shacks, trailers, and trucks serving food that is just as good (or better), just as authentic (or moreso), where you can get a lot more tortillas for a lot less dough.

We didn’t have a bad time or bad food at Superica, don’t get me wrong. The decor is really nice, and it has a festive atmosphere as well as a second-story dining level, in case you want an elevated view of a suburban/commercial stretch of State Road 17-92. But as cynical as I am in real life, I try to avoid it on this blog. Even though I might not rush back to Superica, I sure am glad I tried it, and YOU, dear reader, might just love it… especially if you are hanging out with your parents or in-laws.