Desserts – Page 3 – The Saboscrivner

M’ama Napoli Italian Bakery & Deli

M’ama Napoli Italian Bakery & Deli (https://www.instagram.com/mamanapoliwinterpark/) is a new business that opened this past summer in Winter Park, just south of Fairbanks Avenue on State Road 17-92. It is a cute café with delicious coffee, pastries, snacks, sandwiches, rustic-looking pizzas, and shelves laden with Italian groceries. There are a few booths inside for lingering over a cappuccino and any number of Italian delicacies.

You can see some of their premade panini sandwiches above the deli meats: the Vesuvio, Procida, Ischia, and Capri. If you right-click on the photo below and open it in a new tab, you can probably even make out the ingredients listed for each.

This glass case includes fresh cannoli, tarts, macarons, and cake slices.

Here are gorgeous pistachio, Nutella, apricot, and almond croissants.

Bombolone are like Italian doughnuts, and these all had different fillings: Bavarian cream, apricot, Nutella, and pistachio cream (which seems to be becoming a trendy dessert ingredient).

And here are flaky, shell-shaped sfogliatella pastries, with a light, crispy texture and a smooth cream filling with the slightest hint of lemon.

M’ama Napoli has several shelves of imported Italian groceries, including some nice-looking fruit preserves, pickled peppers, and tomato sauces.

For the first order I ever brought home, I selected some cream-filled conchiglia puff pastries and a croissant filled with almond paste (marzipan) for my wife who loves almond-flavored anything. While I still give the edge to Benjamin French Bakery in Thornton Park for the best croissants in Orlando, my wife and I enjoyed all these pastries.

I also got an incredible sandwich on freshly baked, fluffy focaccia bread, the Toto. I’m sure it wasn’t named for the yacht rock-adjacent band that featured David Paich, Steve Lukather, and the Porcaro brothers, but it was full of paper-thin slices of prosciutto, fresh mozzarella, arugula, tomatoes, and shaved parmigiano cheese. I loved it. It was huge, too!

Here is a better photo of the Toto sandwich from our second visit. My wife doesn’t share my obsession with sandwiches, but she likes good bread, prosciutto, fresh mozz, and arugula — pretty much everything but the tomatoes — so she had most of this one.

That time, I tried the Maradona sandwich, with salami, fresh mozzarella, and arugula. The salami was really high-quality, but since I ate this sandwich at home, I plussed it up with the tomatoes from my wife’s Toto sandwich, some hot cherry peppers, and balsamic glaze.

And this was a special sandwich that was only available that day, with prosciutto, fresh mozzarella, shaved parmesan cheese, and some kind of creamy sauce that gave it a bit of a funky flavor, but not unpleasant. It was an umami bomb, though!
I would probably skip this one in the future, just because the Toto is so great, and there are lots of other sandwich options too — not just on focaccia, but pressed paninis as well. Maybe I’ll try a focaccia sandwich with mortadella next time, which is like very posh bologna that sometimes contains pistachios.

There are only a few parking spaces behind the building, off busy State Road 17-92, but I’ve had decent parking karma on my two visits to M’ama Napoli so far (which is more than I can say for many of Orlando’s most popular dining districts). Check it out, and I’m sure you won’t be disappointed, especially if you get the Toto or one of the other focaccia sandwiches!

Sarge’s Delicatessen and Diner (New York)

I recently took my wife on a whirlwind trip to New York City to celebrate our 15th anniversary. Before that, we had gone there for our 10th anniversary back in 2019, where I reviewed six restaurants, and before that, we were last there for our honeymoon in 2009.

We made the most of this recent trip — we saw two shows together, and while she saw a third, I made off to attend New York Comic Con, where I got comics signed by beloved writers and artists and posed for a photo with my favorite actress, Carla Gugino. Food-wise, we enjoyed a fancy anniversary meal, visited old favorites Ess-A-Bagel and Junior’s, and I took a trip to the Bronx to visit several iconic Italian delis along Arthur Avenue (which will be the subject of a future Saboscrivner ‘sclusive).

As great as my Arthur Avenue adventure was (spoiler alert!), my single favorite meal on this latest NYC trip was Sarge’s Delicatessen and Diner (https://sargesdeli.com/), and not just because I was back with my wife after a day apart from her, mostly spent waiting in long lines with fellow nerds. Sarge’s is located in Manhattan’s Murray Hill neighborhood and first opened in 1964 — not as ancient as Katz’s Delicatessen, but still an impressive run. You will see why shortly.

I should note that on past trips, we had always gone to the historic Katz’s, a Lower East Side landmark and tourist trap known for its legendary pastrami (and legendary chaos). But since we’ve been more than once, and since I’ve had equally fine pastrami at Langer’s Delicatessen in Los Angeles and The Pastrami Project right here in Orlando since our last Katz’s visit, I wanted us to have a new New York deli experience. People always say that the pastrami at Sarge’s may not be quite as good as Katz’s (maybe an 8 or 9 instead of a perfect 10), but the rye bread is better (it wouldn’t take much), the menu is larger, and the entire experience is a lot more pleasant and relaxing, with booths(!) and table service(!) and no long lines. It sounded amazing, so off we went, reunited after spending our longest day in New York doing our own things.

We were seated right away by a lovely and patient server (try finding one of those at Katz’s!), and there were no long lines to get in nor any weird rituals with tickets. My wife started the meal with a magnificent chocolate milkshake, while I opted for a cool, refreshing vanilla egg cream (no doubt made with Fox’s U-Bet vanilla syrup, which I always keep on hand back home). I had just walked from the Jacob Javits Convention Center to the theater district to meet her as her show let out, so I probably would have been better off with delicious New York City tap water, but I was caught up in the moment.
For those of you who never read my reviews, an egg cream contains neither eggs nor cream. It is made with seltzer water, milk, and a flavored syrup — traditionally Fox’s U-Bet chocolate syrup, but I also love egg creams made with Fox’s U-Bet vanilla and coffee syrups. As a result, they are more like a soda than a thick, heavy milkshake. Sometimes I even enjoy one at the end of a heavy meal to aid with digestion, but tonight I opened with the egg cream.

Like any good deli, Sarge’s quickly brought out free plates of regular and half-sour pickles and fresh, cool, crunchy cole slaw. I devoured the cole slaw and had one of each kind of pickle, and they were all terrific, especially as the first real food I had eaten all day.

We were blessed with blissfully cool October weather on our trip, so my wife got one of her favorite Ashkenazi Jewish comfort foods: matzoh ball soup. It was a huge bowl with one huge matzoh ball in the center, but no visible pieces of chicken, no vegetable, no noodles, just the ball. She said it was amazing soup, and after trying a spoonful of broth, I concurred.

She ordered half a pastrami sandwich with her soup, and she loved it as well. As you can see, Sarge’s serves huge, overstuffed deli sandwiches, but the main difference between Sarge’s and Katz’s pastrami sandwich is that Katz’s hand-slices the pastrami, resulting in thicker slices, while Sarge’s uses a machine, ending up with the much thinner, uniform slices you see here.

Whenever I visit a deli, whether it’s Jewish or Italian, I always try to sample as many different house specialties as I can, especially when I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to make it back. I certainly hope to return to Sarge’s one day, but that didn’t stop me from ordering a Custom Combo sandwich with three different meats: the excellent pastrami (on top), its underrated cousin corned beef (in the middle), which was equally great, and rolled beef (the darker meat on the bottom), a mysterious, mythical meat I had only ever heard of, but never seen available anywhere else. For those inquiring, I made sure to deconstruct the sandwich to taste and truly appreciate each meat separately. So what is rolled beef? I wasn’t entirely sure, either before or after eating this heckin’ chonker of a sandwich, so of course I did some research and found a Tablet article about the history of rolled beef. It is cured and smoked beef navel (similar to pastrami in that regard), but less fatty, less peppery, usually served cold, and traditionally a cheaper option at delis. It was great, but I still prefer the perfection of pastrami in the pantheon of salted, cured meats.

And me being me, I saw onion rings on a menu and had to order them. I always try onion rings wherever I am, and I review them in a recurring segment on this blog called RING THE ALARM! Well, folks, I didn’t know exactly what to expect, but our server turned every head in the dining room when she walked out this titanic, tremendous tower, this massive, monumental mountain of gorgeous, golden-brown batter-dipped onion rings. It was almost too beautiful to eat. Almost.
Dear readers, you stalwart Saboscrivnerinos, I can say without hesitation that these were the absolute finest, worthiest, all-time best onion rings I’ve ever had in my life. They narrowly beat another New York deli landmark, the aforementioned Junior’s, which previously held the prize with their similar style of onion rings. These are crispy on the outside (not quite crunchy), and almost cakey on the inside — kind of like fluffy funnel cakes, but savory instead of sweet. I’ve only ever encountered this style of onion rings at iconic Jewish delis, and it is definitely my favorite.

So that was our first-ever trip to Sarge’s Delicatessen and Diner, but hopefully not our last. There are over 200 items to choose from on that vast and voluminous menu, and I doubt any of them would disappoint. In addition to the deli sandwiches they are probably best known for, Sarge’s offers the usual smoked fish you would hope for from a good appetizing store (nova salmon, salty belly lox, smoked whitefish, and even fancy smoked sturgeon and sable, plus multiple varieties of herring), a full breakfast menu, hot dogs and burgers, all kinds of diner classics, and even beer, wine, and liquor. If you’re looking for comfort food in Manhattan and want to enjoy it in actual comfort, as opposed to the tumult of Katz’s, Sarge’s is the place for you. Tell ’em The Saboscrivner sent ya… and they’ll have no idea what you’re taking about!

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 Taproom at Dubsdread

I moved to Orlando almost 20 years ago, the day after Thanksgiving in 2004, so I feel a bit like a local. I like to think I know the best places to eat, even though there are always new hotspots and a handful of old classics I have yet to visit. One of them, one of the oldest and most classic Orlando restaurants of all, is The Taproom at Dubsdread (https://taproomatdubsdread.com/), the 100-year-old restaurant at Dubsdread Country Club, nestled between Winter Park and downtown Orlando. I had always heard great things about the food, but I avoided it for the better part of my two decades here, despite loving old, historic restaurants. In a city that isn’t known for its history, you’d think I would have checked it out long before now, but the whole “country club” thing kept me away.

I fully admit to being a bit of a class warrior, taking pride in my middle class origins and silently (or sometimes not so silently) judging and resenting the wealthy. Growing up listening to punk and hip hop and watching the Marx Brothers, the Three Stooges, and “slobs versus snobs” comedies like Trading Places, Caddyshack, and Animal House probably had a lot to do with that. My parents were even more influential on my class consciousness — two career public school teachers who lived simply, refused to spend beyond their means, felt like they had nothing to prove to anyone, and rarely treated themselves to anything. To me, a restaurant at a country club felt like another world I probably wouldn’t be welcome in (and that my parents would probably disapprove of anyway), so I rejected it before it could possibly reject me. I spent all my time in Orlando avoiding the beloved landmark Taproom at Dubsdread until a work colleague and friend who I think the world of invited me to lunch there. I figured this would be my chance to finally check it out and write an unbiased review for my blog. As the guest of a classy, professional woman, I would be less likely to get into trouble with a snooty maitre d’, a judgmental valet, a surly golfer, or a society matron who resembled Margaret Dumont.

And it was a perfectly nice restaurant, much warmer and more welcoming than I expected. If anything, it was a lot less pretentious and highbrow than Hillstone or Seasons 52, those upscale chains. They didn’t even have valet parking, and the hostess and server were really nice.

My colleague ordered the fresh apple and bacon grilled cheese sandwich, which came with Tillamook cheddar, Emmenthaler Swiss, almonds, and fig preserves, plus a side order of fries. It looked really nice, and it inspired me to invite her to the incredible La Femme Du Fromage later on, since I already knew she liked fancy grilled cheese sandwiches.

We must have met for lunch on a Wednesday, since that is the day they offer a chilled lobster and shrimp roll sandwich as a lunch special. I always appreciate a good lobster roll. I had the best one ever twelve years ago at Neptune Oyster in Boston’s North End neighborhood, and I’ve been chasing that high ever since. This one didn’t quite reach those euphoric heights, but it was still really nice and refreshing, served on the traditional split-top bun and served with a side of onion rings — the “good kind,” as far as I’m concerned, with their golden beer battered exterior. So RING THE ALARM, constant readers — you can get a side order of really good onion rings at a country club restaurant, and for only $4! They’re on the menu and everything; I wasn’t like that rube in the commercial who said “Would ya please pass the jelly?”, embarrassing himself at a fancy dinner party, asking Chef for something lowbrow that they normally wouldn’t serve. Great lunch, great company, great restaurant. I thought even my in-laws might like it, and they don’t like most places.

I returned to the Taproom at Dubsdread more recently during Magical Dining Month, when many Orlando restaurants offer a reasonably priced prix fixe menu with a few different appetizer, entrée, and dessert choices to mix and match, where a portion of the final bill goes to help local charities. This time I went for dinner with two very cool friends, a truly glamorous couple who share my love of good food, but we hadn’t had a chance to get together in years. They were great company, as always, and even challenged me to take better food photos than I usually take. We’ll see if their coaching and constructive criticism helped here — you tell me, stalwart Saboscrivnerinos!

We started with bread for the table, which I didn’t know about when I met my colleague for lunch, but now I know… and knowing is half the battle. The bread was like ciabatta, and the butter was whipped for easy spreading, which I always appreciate. Nobody likes frozen butter that can’t be spread!
Being true foodies, we shared everything throughout this magical meal.

These were buffalo shrimp (not mine), served with some celery sticks. I forgot if the dip was bleu cheese or ranch, but the shrimp were nice, with a slightly crunchy exterior and that mild acidity you get from buffalo sauce.

These were Italian meatballs (also not mine), but the owner was very generous and willing to share. I would have been happy to have meatballs like this over a bowl of pasta or in a sub, and I liked that the tomato sauce was chunky and not watery.

I ordered house-made potato chips topped with crumbled bleu cheese, scallions, and balsamic glaze, a delicious dish that was perfect for sharing. The chips were crunchy, not limp, overly greasy, or even overly salty. Of course, balsamic glaze makes everything better, and I’ve really gotten into bleu cheese lately.

For our entrees, someone ordered a bone-in pork chop that looked good:

And two of us, myself included, ordered prime rib. I like my steaks and prime rib RARE, and I was thrilled that the Taproom at Dubsdread took me seriously. Too many places blast a beautiful piece of meat far beyond rare because they don’t believe us and think we’ll send it back for being underdone. Nope, this is how I like it, especially with lots of creamy horseradish sauce for dipping — the more fiery and sinus-clearing, the better. The mashed potatoes scooped beneath were pretty nondescript. They could have used sour cream and/or cream cheese, bits of the potato skin, onions, or something else to liven them up, but sliding them around in the meat drippings helped resuscitate them a little.

The late, great Russell Jones, aka Big Baby Jesus, aka Dirt McGirt, aka Ol’ Dirty Bastard, famously warbled, “Oh baby, I like it RAAAAAAW!” Well, this prime rib was rare rather than raw, and oh baby, that’s how I like it.

It was time for dessert! I did not order this brownie sundae, with a scoop of vanilla ice cream, hot fudge, and whipped cream served over a warm brownie, but it looked really good. How can you go wrong with something like this?

Two of us opted for the key lime pie, which is always one of my favorite desserts, and the Taproom makes an excellent version. The very smooth, shiny topping was more tart than the rest of the creamy filling below, and I loved it. I go nuts for citrus desserts that are sweet and creamy but also tart, and too often, bakers are afraid to go tart enough.

So I would definitely recommend the Taproom at Dubsdread for a nice lunch or dinner, whether you’re some kind of jet-setting big shot with a sweater tied around your neck or an anti-establishment outsider who wants to subvert every dominant paradigm you’ve ever encountered. I’m glad I finally realized that a country club restaurant could be perfectly pleasant, without running into unpleasant stock characters from old-timey slapstick flicks or ’80s comedies from boomer filmmakers. And enjoying two meals with friends didn’t make me part of any System, so I still feel like the cool(?), nonconformist iconoclast I will always be.

Dough Boyz Pizzeria

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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!

The Town House Restaurant

The Town House Restaurant (https://www.oviedotownhouse.com/), a friendly neighborhood diner in every sense of the word, has been slinging breakfast, lunch, and dinner in Oviedo since the 1950s, with a heaping helping of Southern hospitality accompanying each order of fresh, hearty comfort food from its kitchen. I went there for the first time in November to meet a friend for breakfast, brought food home for my wife, and then brought her back to dine with me a few weeks later. I tried to document everything that we ordered on those visits to paint a homey, welcoming picture of this beloved family restaurant.

Now that I can’t ever meet friends for lunch or dinner during the work week, my friend was patient and kind enough to join me for breakfast. She ordered a breakfast platter that came with eggs (she went with scrambled) and sausage (which she chose over bacon or ham). You can’t go wrong with American classics like these!

Or “French” classics, for that matter. I didn’t try the Town House’s version of French toast, but the menu described it as “fluffy, custard-dipped Texas toast,” and I don’t see how you can go wrong with that:

She then chose home fries instead of the alternative of grits, and I made a mental note of how great they looked, especially topped with melted cheddar cheese and sautéed onions and green bell peppers.

I’m a weirdo who always has to see if the lunch and dinner menu is available at breakfast time, and the Town House Restaurant allows you to choose from either. They said only a few lunch and dinner options might not be ready — most likely the dinner specials like steaks and grilled salmon.

I had a hard time saying no to an order of fried mozzarella sticks at 10 AM. These were really good — battered rather than breaded — and I got two sticks stuck together, which I have never encountered before. I took it as a good luck sign. Don’t worry, I shared with my friend!

There was so many things I wanted to try between the two menus, that I ended up splitting the difference and ordering Zephy’s Big Mouth breakfast sandwich off the lunch menu. I love a good breakfast sandwich, and this one included a thick slice of sweet Virginia ham, two over-hard eggs (my current preference for eggs after a literal lifetime of ordering them scrambled), and pepper jack cheese on grilled Texas toast, a wonderful and underrated bread for sandwiches, especially warm, melty, comforting sandwiches like this. I asked for mustard, because I always like mustard with ham and eggs, and of course it was typical yellow mustard to brighten things up.

I asked if I could choose from lunch sides instead of the listed options of grits and home fries, and our very patient server told me to go ahead. Then she called me “hon,” or perhaps “sugar,” as diner waitresses are wont to do. I chose macaroni and cheese, a premium side, which was a little on the bland side but still pleasantly chewy and gooey.

Our breakfast was so nice, I texted my wife and told her to check the menu online and place an order with me. She did not surprise me at all by requesting fried catfish, one of her favorite dishes to order at any restaurant. It was still warm and crispy by the time I got it home, and here it is with her premium side of fried okra (and cocktail and tartar sauce for dipping).

Since her fried catfish entree came with two sides, she told me to go ahead and choose another one for myself. I decided to try the Town House’s version of potato salad, which I enjoyed later that day at home. I’ve had more exciting potato salad recently, but even average potato salad can still hit the spot. I definitely hit it with some pepper back at home!

But my wife did want the sweet tater tots, made with sweet potato, as one would expect. This is an appetizer portion, and they came with a little ramekin of powdered sugar to shake onto them once I got them home. Neither of us noticed the sweet tater tots were also available as a side order, so I could have brought her a smaller portion of those and gone without the potato salad, but oh well. These tots also stayed warm and crispy on my short drive from Oviedo back to Casselberry.

By the way, I was going out of town the day after this breakfast, which is why I was ordering a lot of food for my wife. She also asked for the red velvet bundt cake from the dessert menu, and here is a really bad photo of it. It was baked fresh, and it took a while because they were making a new batch of the cream cheese icing (served in those ramekins on the side). She loves red velvet cake, whereas I am not a big fan, so I didn’t even try it. But you can’t go wrong with cream cheese icing, especially when it’s fresh!

Like I said, I returned a few weeks later for breakfast on a Friday, this time with my wife. She once again ordered the fried catfish and liked it even more this time. On her first visit to the actual Town House Restaurant, she chose a side of grits.

And for her second side, she went with a Greek salad. We both liked that they were liberal with the feta cheese, and she gave me her pepperoncini pepper and the scoop of potato salad at 1:00. (As far as I can tell, putting a scoop of potato salad on a Greek salad is unique to Florida Greek restaurants, especially diners. I am always happy to find it in my Greek salads.)

The fried catfish also came with a huge biscuit, which I simply forgot to photograph last time, but here it is now:

Because I am an altacocker (an old man, years before my time), I chose the baby beef liver and onions special, because I always love to eat liver in any form. It was nice and tender and a little gamey, served smothered in gravy. After trying it, I would opt for the gravy on the side next time, because I actually like ketchup and hot sauce with my liver and onions more. For my two sides, I got the home fries with onions and peppers like my friend got on my first visit to the restaurant, as well as cool, creamy, crispy cole slaw that was nice to balance out the salty richness of everything else on the huge plate.

Here’s a close-up of the home fries, which I would definitely recommend to any Town House visitors.

So that’s Oviedo’s iconic Town House Restaurant! They offer so many different things here, including burgers and gyros, but I probably wouldn’t order a burger at a down-home diner like this, and I still have a very strong opinion about the absolute best gyro in the Orlando area (Mediterranean Deli, my friend). This gyro might be awesome, and maybe one day I’ll give it a chance. But there is so much to choose from, and they even offer prime rib a couple of nights every month. Maybe I’ll time my next visit to try that, because I really love rare prime rib with lots of creamy horseradish. Basically, you can’t go wrong at the Town House, hon.

Summer House on the Lake

My latest review is of one of the newest restaurants to open at Disney Springs, the part of Walt Disney World devoted to shopping and dining, where you don’t have to pay a hefty admission fee or even pay for parking. We end up out there a couple times a year, often to meet visiting friends, but this trip was just a daytime date with Dr. Professor Ma’am, my beautiful and brilliant better half.

I had told her about the mid-December opening of Summer House on the Lake (https://www.summerhouserestaurants.com/disney-springs/), part of a restaurant chain that boasts “California-style cuisine and breezy beach vibes.” It also sounds like the title of a horror movie, if you ask me — at one point I referred to it as Last House on the Left. My wife’s graduate school was based in Santa Barbara, and she relished her occasional trips out there, just as I’m slowly falling in love with Los Angeles, after two visits to my new employer out there. She loves the emphasis on fresh ingredients and lighter dishes in Southern California dining, so it sounded like a restaurant made just for her. It is owned by a corporate restaurant group called “Lettuce Entertain You,” so even though I was skeptical, I always appreciate a pun.

I believe we arrived for lunch on the third day Summer House on the Lake was open. It was a huge space (I believe in the old Bongo’s location, and yes, right on a manmade lake at Disney Springs), and the dining room was full of light wood and natural light. It looked like any number of hotel lobby restaurants to me, but I can definitely see the California influence, sure!

The menu features small plates, sandwiches, tacos, and salads, as well as pastas, pizzas, and a burger, but it didn’t strike me as the kind of place to order pasta, pizza, or burgers. It also highlights an in-house bakery with plenty of cookies to choose from, lots of cocktails, and a “signature Rosé Cart.” This confirmed my suspicion that Summer House on the Lake is the kind of restaurant my beloved Uncle Jerry once referred to as a “chick place,” meaning the kind of restaurant women are the most likely to love. (He was referring to the chain restaurant Mimi’s Cafe at the time. If you know, you know.) Seated at our booth, I improvised a bit of comedy about a bunch of bros wanting to hit up Summer House on the Lake to watch the game, pound some beers, demolish some nachos and wings, and hit on moms who are “being so bad” by quaffing rosé and nibbling cookies, and my wife continued to put up with me.

Anyway, we started with ahi tuna and watermelon tostadas, which came with Hass avocado and Thai chili on crisp corn tortillas. We got a plate of five, and while they were beautiful and delicious, with the slightest bit of heat, I did not detect any watermelon anywhere.

I am a sucker for raw tuna in sushi and poke, and they were pretty generous with the tuna on these tiny tostadas. i could have eaten about twenty of these myself, easily and happily. They were my favorite thing we had at Summer House on the Lake, and I would definitely recommend them to fellow raw fish fans.

For her main course, my wife ordered a Costa Mesa salad, with queso fresco, corn, pico de gallo, avocado, quinoa, and crispy tortilla strips. She asked for dressing on the side, and while they brought her chipotle crema in a little ramekin, we were confused if the other ramekin of dressing was the lime vinaigrette from her salad or the herb vinaigrette that was supposed to come with my salad. (More on this in a bit.)
She opted to add seared ahi tuna to her salad as a protein, I guess to stick with the tuna theme of our lunch. You can see they served her a beautifully seared slab of ahi, with a gorgeous pinkish-purple center. Other protein options, all available for an upcharge, are grilled or crispy chicken, salmon (unfortunately cooked, rather than sushi-grade raw), and steak.

I figured that as long as I was at a “chick place,” I might as well get a salad too, which is a rarity for me at a restaurant. I do make and eat salads quite often at home, believe it or not! But after chuckling at the house salad called “a nice house salad” on the menu, I chose the Buena Vista Cobb salad for myself, with avocado, egg, corn, cucumber, tomato, bacon, blue cheese, and herb vinaigrette (that might have been in that ramekin on the side, or might have been completely absent). I always forget that Cobb salads are full of delicious things I like. I would make them at home, except I never have bacon or blue cheese on hand.
This was actually quite good, and the eggs were a lovely soft-boiled consistency I have tried to duplicate at home over the past two weeks. I think boiling for eight minutes produces creamy, glistening yolks like this.

After we were so good with our salads, it was time to be so bad with dessert. My wife ordered this seven-layer chocolate cake with vanilla chantilly cream. I wasn’t terribly interested in it, so I didn’t even try a bit. She said it was just okay.

After we paid our check and left, we discovered the cookie bar in the front of the restaurant, with huge cookies on display behind a glass counter. If you have tried the cookies from Gideon’s Bakehouse in Orlando’s East End Market or at Disney Springs, these are along the same lines — huge, decadent, chewy (a little under-baked, which I prefer to over-baked), and ridiculously rich. We got three cookies to go, which we enjoyed at home later. According to her, they were better than the chocolate cake, but so rich and heavy that they were almost too much.

My wife chose a chocolate chip cookie topped with chunks of their brown butter crispy rice treat, which are essentially posh Rice Krispies treats. They also sell the treats separately, but didn’t have any when we were there. It was good, because how could this not be good?

She also chose this fudge bomb cookie, a moist and chewy sugar cookie topped with thick, rich, fudgy frosting. I ended up eating most of this later, because she didn’t like it as much as she expected to. It reminded me a bit of a classic New York black and white cookie, only the cookie was more buttery and less “cakey,” without that slight lemony flavor, and the frosting was softer and lacking that glossy shine. If we return, we would try different cookies next time.

But on a rare occasion when I chose a dessert for myself, the lemon cookie did not disappoint. My wife lacks my obsession with citrusy desserts, but this had a nice, bright flavor and a slightly tart tang to balance the buttery richness and the sticky sweetness of the glaze. Like the other cookies, it came close to being too much, but I liked it much more than the other two. It tasted like a perfect summery confection, perfect for a summer house on a lake. But at the end of the day, I would sooner choose cookies from Heartsong Cookies, baked by the delightful Kathy Paiva, than any of these.

I also don’t know when and if we will return to Summer House on the Lake. Over my 19 years in Orlando, I’ve eaten at most of the restaurants at Disney Springs and certainly had good meals, but nothing ever bowls me over, knocks me out, leaves me raving and craving more there. I’m glad we tried a new restaurant, and I absolutely recommend Summer House at the Lake, especially to my female readers in search of a “chick place.” That said, whenever my wife and I end up at Disney Springs again for a concert at the House of Blues or meeting out-of-town friends, we would probably try something new next time.

Palm Avenue Deli (Sarasota)

Back in November, I took my wife to Naples, Florida, to visit a friend who had traveled in from Maine. Naples is almost four hours south of Orlando, but it’s a hell of a lot closer than Maine, so we divided up the long drive by stopping for lunch in Sarasota. I’ve never been to Sarasota in my life, so of course I did my research, and I decided to stop at a New York-style delicatessen restaurant that had a great-looking menu and enthusiastic reviews: the Palm Avenue Deli (https://palmavenuedeli.com/) in downtown Sarasota. It was fabulous. I’m so glad we chose to go there, and I wish I had opportunities to return.

When we arrived in the middle of the day on a Friday, I gushed about this being our first time, how we were passing through town from Orlando, and how excited I was to visit after reading their menu online. Our lovely hostess and steadfast server must have thought they had a real live one here, but they had no idea just how much food we would order, or how much fun we were about to have.

We were seated near the open kitchen, and I was so tickled to see this old library card catalog behind our table, repurposed to add some flair to the dining room. You can’t see it here, but each of the card catalog drawers was labeled for some kind of Jewish deli fare, like Bagels, Brisket, Chopped Liver, Corned Beef, and so forth. You get the gist. I’m a librarian, so I really knew we had made a great decision for lunch.

The lunch menu literally offered a dish called “Pickles for a Nickel,” and they weren’t joking. We actually got a couple of sour kosher dill pickles and a dish of cool, creamy, crunchy cole slaw for five cents, cinco centavos, whatever you want to call it. For that alone, I would have to recommend Palm Avenue Deli, because where else can you get ANYTHING for a nickel, with or without a picture of a bumblebee on it? Anyway, this is the cole slaw:

My wife and I both ordered egg creams, those fizzy, creamy concoctions from old-timey New York City soda fountains. A place like this would certainly make them the right way, with Fox’s U-Bet syrups (which I have reviewed before), milk, and seltzer water, creating sweet and refreshing foamy drinks that contain neither eggs nor cream. My wife got the classic chocolate egg cream, and I opted for a coffee egg cream, since I haven’t found coffee Fox’s U-Bet around Orlando in a long time.

We shared an order of excellent potato latkes, fried to golden-brown perfection and savory with onions and black pepper. How do you like your latkes? My wife likes applesauce with them, while I prefer sour cream. But the ultimate question is, “Why not both?” At Palm Avenue Deli, you don’t even have to choose.

My wife is a sucker for the Ashkenazi Jewish dish kasha varnishkes, which is kasha (buckwheat groats, toasted and then boiled until they are soft and tender) served with al dente bowtie noodles. I’ve never had a strong opinion on the dish one way or another, until now. Palm Avenue Deli went hard with caramelized onions, and let me tell you, that made all the difference. I get it now. Those caramelized onions added savory flavor as well as sweetness and brought this carb-fest to life (to life, l’chayim!).

She also ordered a smoked fish platter with sablefish, cream cheese, butter, and a toasted everything bagel. The sliced onions, tomatoes, and cucumbers come standard on almost any deli or appetizing store’s smoked fish platter, along with salty capers and fresh dill.

Close-up on the sliced sablefish. Also known as Alaskan black cod, it is a rich, buttery fish that is rubbed with spices and then smoked. If you’ve ever had nova, lox, or gravlax (different kinds of smoked salmon), you know how delicious those are, especially offset against creamy, tangy cream cheese and some fresh vegetables on a good bagel or bialy. Is your mouth watering yet? Well, think about how tasty nova salmon is, and sablefish is somehow even better. Many years ago, I introduced my wife to its glory at our beloved Ess-A-Bagel in Midtown Manhattan, and now she is a member of the Sable Squad with me.

I ordered a classic sandwich that is a great benchmark to gauge any deli: a combo sandwich with sliced pastrami and corned beef on rye bread with caraway seeds. It was excellent quality. I’ve certainly had more ridiculously overstuffed deli sandwiches, but I can’t complain about the quality or the flavors of this one. I still prefer pastrami to corned beef, and I still prefer my pastrami hand-sliced (like at Katz’s in the Lower East Side, Langer’s in Los Angeles, and The Pastrami Project here in Orlando), but I can’t take anything away from this lovely sandwich. The rye bread here at Palm Avenue Deli was certainly better than Katz’s, and the meal was so much more leisurely and relaxing, as opposed to Katz’s chaotic atmosphere.

I opted for a side of potato salad with my sandwich, since I already got to sample the cole slaw in my “Pickles for a Nickel.” For sharp-eyed Saboscrivnerinos who are eagerly awaiting my next set of Cutting the Mustard reviews, I was thrilled to try a new (to me) mustard here: Sy Ginsberg’s New York Style Deli Mustard. It was perfectly good — very similar to Gulden’s, but not as good as Ba-Tampte, which is pretty much my go-to deli-style mustard.

As long as we were tearing things up at this deli and just passing through town, I figured “Why not try the chopped liver too?” I was able to order a bissel of chopped liver — just a small side portion to taste it. It was very rich, thick, and savory, with a pleasant consistency — smooth with some little chunks for texture. I’m very glad I tried it, because chopped liver is a decadent treat that even a lot of delis don’t serve that regularly anymore (at least not here in Central Florida). I wish they had served it with some extra rye bread and caramelized onions, but I could say that about almost anything.

My wife feels as strongly about desserts as I do about delis, although she has definitely come around to appreciating delis like I do. She saw flourless chocolate cake on the menu and made sure to save some room for it. It came with a glistening dark chocolate glaze, a scoop of vanilla ice cream, a puff of fresh whipped cream (not the canned stuff), and fresh diced strawberries, and she loved it.

I did not intend to order dessert at all, but I might have made a comment like “Mmmmm, blueberry cheesecake.” Much to my surprise, our very friendly server brought out a slice of blueberry cheesecake on the house, which we neither needed nor requested, but I certainly welcomed it enthusiastically. It was “New York style” cheesecake — rich, thick, dense, and a little bit tangy — more like the legendary Junior’s than the familiar Factory, but made in-house. What a delightfully unexpected end to this epic road trip lunch!

Even the restrooms had character and style. The men’s room had a framed photo of Marilyn Monroe and Andy Warhol-inspired Elvis wallpaper. My wife reported the ladies’ room had an Elvis photo and Marilyn wallpaper. Who were you expecting — Joan Rivers and Jackie Mason?

So I says to my wife, I says, “I wish this place was in Orlando, because we would be regulars for sure.” She agreed. Sadly, Sarasota is nowhere near home, and I can’t imagine returning anytime soon, as good as our Palm Avenue Deli experience was. It’s amazing that this small city on Florida’s Gulf Coast can support three Jewish delis (Palm Avenue, the Meshugana Deli, and the newly opened Wolfie’s), which is definitely more than we have here in our progressive and cosmopolitan City Beautiful. I have some strong opinions about dangerous and disquieting things happening elsewhere in Sarasota, but a food blog is no place to get into that kind of editorializing. That said, for our first visit ever and probably our only one for the foreseeable future, I could not have chosen a better restaurant for our own meal in town. If you’re anywhere close, drive into clean, welcoming downtown Sarasota, park in the nearby garage to avoid having to parallel park along the busy streets, and check it out. You won’t be sorry. You can tell them I sent you, but even though I ordered half the menu, they probably won’t know who you’re talking about.

Briskets BBQ Shack & Grill

Briskets BBQ Shack & Grill (https://www.brisketsbbq.com/) is a literal shack in quiet Oviedo, Florida, slightly off the beaten path but well worth the schlep. I met some of the nicest, sweetest people — a true family operation — serving some of the best barbecue I’ve ever had in the Orlando area.
Needless to say, just discovering a new barbecue joint is pretty exciting, especially since I work odd hours now and rarely get out to eat during the work week. Briskets opens at 10 AM, and since I don’t start work until noon (the joys of working on Pacific time), I made sure to be there right when it opened to bring home plenty of delicious takeout. My wife and I got several meals out of this barbecue bounty from Briskets.

You order inside the small shack, where you can see everything ready to be portioned and served. Briskets serves two kinds of house-made smoked sausages, wrapped in natural casings for that perfect snappiness that causes momentary happiness. Did I try them both? Have you ever read this food blog before? What do YOU think?!?!

Sides are on display: elbow macaroni in the front left with creamy smoked cheddar cheese sauce behind it for mac and cheese, green beans topped with crumbled bacon in the back right, and in front of that, awe-inspiring cornbread casserole. (More on these soon enough.)

Here we have smoked corn and the best baked beans I’ve ever had in the back (more on dem beans in a bit), and something else next to sweet potato casserole in the front right — possibly loaded mashed potatoes topped with cheese and bacon? I did not try that one, so apologies.

These are savory brisket and cheese hand pies, with a nice, flaky crust. Of course I had to try one! I don’t have a picture of it cut open, but it was really good, like everything else from Briskets. They also offer pulled pork hand pies sometimes, but not on the day I visited. I would have preferred that, because pulled pork was one of the only meats I did not bring home, but the brisket pie was excellent. (I didn’t detect any cheese inside the pie with the shredded brisket, but it came with an additional ramekin of the smoked cheddar cheese sauce for dippin’, so maybe that’s where the cheese comes in.)

This was the highlight, the glorious beef rib, something my wife and I have both craved for far too long. Charismatic barbecue boss Chuck Cobb blessed Central Florida with Git-N-Messy BBQ before passing away in early 2022. In in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, back in the spring and summer of 2020, when Chuck served his barbecue out of a convenience store in Winter Park, I brought home many flawless beef ribs that each lasted us multiple meals. They were one of the only highlights of those weeks and months of isolation, fear, and uncertainty. Finding out Briskets served wonderful beef ribs of their own was my main impetus for visiting it in the first place. There is so much meat, you won’t believe it if you’ve never had one. If you’ve had “kinda big” pork spareribs, forget it. Those don’t even compare. While this is not the cheapest item on Briskets’ menu, one rib is more than enough for a meal, even for Chris Rock in I’m Gonna Git You, Sucka. The beef is so tender and juicy with lots of marbling from fat and a nice outer bark made from rubbed spices, and the rib easily pulls off the Brobdingnagian, brontosaurus-sized bone in one piece. Briskets serves their beef rib with whole smoked jalapeño peppers and a mound of really good bread and butter pickle slices, all atop three slices of white bread that soaked in all those juices and flavors. We both loved this beef rib, and I loved everything else that came with it.

Beyond that, I selected a Texas three-meat plate, which came in those great plastic containers that are dishwasher-safe and microwave-safe, with a clear lid that snaps on. I wish more restaurants would use those.

For our meats, I selected brisket (you have to try the namesake meat!), pork spareribs (excellent in their own right, just don’t expect them to equal the beef rib in size), and the smoked sausage. I mentioned there were two kinds of smoked sausage on the day I went: Texas beef sausage and jalapeño cheddar sausage. I would have had a hard time choosing, but they were kind enough to let me try both together as one of my meat choices! Of course, both were excellent, and that snappy bite you get from the natural casing really elevates them above and beyond most other sausages.The brisket also had some nice marbling — not too lean nor too fatty — and was very tender and packed with flavor from smoking it low and slow. The pork spareribs had a slight sweetness from the sticky glaze to counterbalance their salty smokiness. Every single one of the meats amazed and astonished, but that’s not all! The Texas three-meat platter came with two sides, and because this was my first visit, I brought home a couple of others, too.

Here is the macaroni and cheese. The smoked cheese sauce ladled on right before packing it up in the to-go container really sets it apart. I think adding something else to it might put it over the top, like diced pimentos or other peppers for some acidity to balance out the smoky richness, or a seasoned bread crumb topping for a bit of crunch with all that silky smoothness.

I loved the creamy potato salad, which had a slight crunch from bits of celery(?) and tanginess from yellow mustard. Yes, this was a Southern-style potato salad, and it was damn fine. My constant readers, the stalwart Saboscrivnerinos, may be noticing that I try to sample potato salad and macaroni salad wherever they are available, and this one did not disappoint.

These are Bob’s country beans, and they were the most perfect, most glorious, and most beautiful barbecue baked beans I’ve ever had in my life. Just from one glance, you can see they aren’t your typical brown baked beans, swimming in a sweet, sticky sauce. There are multiple varieties of beans at play here, and my wife and I could not identify all the different shapes, colors, and sizes. I took to Facebook to ask what kinds of beans were included, and someone from Briskets (Bob himself?) told me “it took oh maybe half my life to figure that particular recipe out I’m not too quick to share it if that makes sense. I’ve had a lot of people make a lot of guesses of what’s in there and none have gotten it yet.” I get it, and I appreciate that. Unless you are Penn and Teller, most magicians don’t reveal how their tricks work either, and I am perfectly happy to be caught up in the mystery of it all.

I chose this sweet potato casserole for my wife specifically, although I ended up eating most of it after she first tried some. (She doesn’t dig on leftovers quite as much as I do.) It was your typical Thanksgiving style — very rich and sweet from butter, brown sugar, and pecans, but no marshmallow topping here.

And this was the magnificent cornbread casserole, which was topped with a drizzle of honey. It was sweet — not savory at all — to the point of it practically being a dessert, and so rich and satisfying. This was a huge hit with both of us.

I also had to get some banana pudding for us to share back at home. It was creamy and cool and refreshing, and I strongly recommend it. Banana pudding goes so well with barbecue, Nashville hot chicken (it might have saved my tongue at the legendary Hattie B’s in Nashville), and so many other Southern meals. This one was no exception.

While I have every intention of returning to Briskets BBQ Shack & Grill and becoming a regular, I feel like I definitely tried enough menu items on my first visit to write a comprehensive review. This is still a new business (and did I mention it’s a small, family-owned business?), and I want word of mouth to echo from computers and phones, resonate from the rooftops, and spread throughout the Orlando area. We are two weeks out from Christmas, and Briskets is even offering a special Christmas menu for feeding huge parties. In the cooler months ahead, you may want to trek out to Oviedo and enjoy your food al fresco, at those picnic tables they provide, before the humidity becomes unbearable (in March). But Floridians love good barbecue year-round — I know I do — and at this moment, I can’t think of any better barbecue around here. Trust me, you need to discover this place for yourselves before everyone else in town does, because long lines of loyal customers are inevitable. Why not join me in becoming a loyal customer before the lines get out of hand? You won’t regret it!