Eastern European – The Saboscrivner

Cafe De Wan

Cafe De Wan (https://www.instagram.com/cafedewan_/) is a brand-new Turkish restaurant that just opened a few weeks ago in Casselberry. My wife and I love Turkish food, and we are still sad about Beyti Mediterranean Grill closing during the pandemic, only a year or so after it opened in our neighborhood. We really like Sourdough Bread House, another Turkish cafe in Casselberry, but Cafe De Wan is even closer, with more savory dishes on its menu. But like Sourdough Bread House, just five minutes north on Semoran Boulevard, Cafe De Wan serves an awe-inspiring Turkish breakfast feast.

We started with a spinach and onion borek (left), a flaky pastry filled with seasoned, sauteed (what else?) spinach and onions. On the right is a “Turkish pastry” that was very dense and barely sweet. These arrived at our table sliced up. They were sold separately (not part of the Turkish breakfast), but we were happy to have them, due to so many spreads and dips that were about to arrive.

The Turkish breakfast “plate” (which actually includes many plates) comes with a pot of steaming hot black tea. I am not a big tea drinker, but this was delicious, especially after adding a few sugar cubes and waiting for it to cool. I surprised myself by how much I enjoyed this tea.

Well, here we go! We first received a wooden platter with walnuts, almonds, golden raisins, grapes, orange slices, very nice green and black olives (both kinds had pits), English cucumbers, grape tomatoes, and mixed greens topped with three different kinds of cheese. The top dishes were fig jam, creamy tahini with pekmez, or grape molasses, swirled into it (not date syrup, as I originally thought), and what I thought was ajvar, a thick dip of roasted red peppers blended with garlic and olive oil, topped with a walnut. (Ajvar wasn’t listed elsewhere on the menu, but I’ve had it in jars a few times, and this was more like ajvar than any version of ezme, a spicy Turkish salsa, that I’ve ever tried.) I devoured the fig jam and ajvar, and my wife was crazy for the tahini with pekmez. A reader informed me that the combination is like Turkish peanut butter and jelly, which makes all the sense in the world. At the bottom, there was Nutella, that chocolatey hazelnut spread that is beloved around the world, and thick honey with decadent clotted cream in it.

The Turkish breakfast plate came with two pieces of this fantastic Turkish bread, which we both liked more than the Turkish pastry above. It was so fluffy!

This plate was menemen, a dish of scrambled eggs mixed with sauteed peppers and tomatoes and topped with a bit of cheese. I devoured the menemen since my wife didn’t want anything to do with it, so that worked out.

The Turkish breakfast plate came with yet another plate with a plain egg, fried over easy with a runny yolk. She ate that egg, and I did not get a picture of it, but I’m sure you are envisioning it in your head right now. This was so much food for $25, but we weren’t even done!

Just like I have go-to dishes that I will order anywhere (Italian subs, onion rings, chili, macaroni salad), my wife is like that with baba ghanoush, the Middle Eastern dip of roasted eggplant blended with tahini, olive oil, and garlic. We were disappointed by another new restaurant’s baba ghanoush recently, one that tasted like straight-up tahini, lacking that smoky flavor that comes from roasting the eggplants, so we were hoping for the best with Cafe De Wan’s version. It was stupendous, and the smoky flavor came through first and foremost. That’s another cured black olive on top.

The baba ghanoush came with yet another type of bread for dipping, this time pretty standard (store-bought?) soft pita bread wedges. I left most of the baba ghanoush for my wife, the true aficionado, but I used the pita for dipping in everything else on the table.

This was the lahmacun combo, one of my favorite dishes at any Turkish restaurant, which I order everywhere and have even made from scratch at home. It looks like a pizza without cheese, but it is a flatbread topped with seasoned ground lamb, onions, tomatoes, peppers, herbs, and spices, baked until crispy. Instead of cutting it into slices, you essentially put a salad on top of it (usually sliced tomatoes, onions, and flat-leaf parsley), squeeze on some lemon juice, and roll it up to eat like a wrap. It is so good, and this was one of the better lahmacuns I’ve tried anywhere. It was definitely the crispiest and thinnest!

This was the “dip sauce” that came with the lahmacun combo. It was kind of like toum, a creamy, garlicky dip with the consistency of hummus. It was great, especially with so many things to dip into it!

In addition to the pot of tea that came with the Turkish breakfast plate(s), my wife ordered a drink called the Crimson Bloom, a combination of hibiscus, cranberry, and clove. She always likes jamaica (hibiscus) aguas frescas at Mexican restaurants, so this was a big hit with her. It also sounds like a superhero, or possibly a villain. The white drink is homemade ayran, a yogurt drink similar to Indian lassi, but this was tangy and sour, rather than sweet like lassi. I would not have ordered it, but it came with the lahmacun combo, which was a pleasant surprise. I wasn’t really into it, but my wife enjoyed it, so that worked out well. Next time (and there absolutely will be a next time), I’ll try Cafe De Wan’s mint lemonade. It is the same price as the ayran ($3.99), so I wonder if they would consider substituting it in the future. I would definitely get that lahmacun combo again!

It is my pleasure to welcome Cafe De Wan to our neighborhood. It doesn’t offer all the savory Turkish entrees you would find on the menu at Istanbul Grill or Bosphorous, but it has more of a cafe atmosphere, for lighter meals. That luxurious Turkish breakfast plate (which deserves to be called a feast or a smorgasbord, considering how many individual plates are involved) is a perfect thing for two people on a date to share, and they offer it all day, not just during breakfast hours. Yes, I asked. I am familiar with the concept of “girl dinner” — eating little bits of this and that, and that’s how I eat many of my meals at home, usually standing up in my kitchen so I’m not away from work for too long. If you like “girl dinner,” you’ll go gaga for the Turkish breakfast plate. My only concern (and it is a small one) is that they didn’t have any of the small plastic ramekin-style containers with lids to take home small amounts of different things, but that’s okay. They had larger containers, and we made do.

Believe me, my wife and I got at least four full meals out of everything we ordered, and you may have already noticed that I eat a lot. (I’m going to try to eat less and eat healthier in 2026, though, so wish me luck! I’m gonna need it.) Please give Cafe De Wan a try, because it deserves our support. Unique restaurants like this don’t always thrive or even survive in Casselberry, and I really enjoyed it, so please help them become a dining destination!

The New York Adventure Part 2: Veselka

On our first evening in New York City in ten years, we absolutely had to make a pilgrimage to The Strand, the four-floor bookstore that puts most other bookstores to shame. We went there on our honeymoon back in 2009, and it seemed even larger this time, with a better selection. After browsing for a while, marveling (no pun intended) at how their graphic novel selection had grown over the last decade, and buying my wife some books, I knew where we had to go for dinner. After a Lyft ride we unexpectedly shared with another commuter (who seemed as surprised as we did), we ended up where we were supposed to be:

Veselka (https://www.veselka.com/), the 65-year-old Ukrainian restaurant I’ve wanted to visit since Louis C.K. took his TV daughters there for a late-night breakfast in the first season of Louie, before we knew what we now know about Louis C.K.. It was also one of Anthony Bourdain’s stops in his heartbreaking final episode of Parts Unknown, set in the East Village and Lower East Side. It’s a counterculture hangout favored by local luminaries and celebrities for many decades, a place that radiates cool without trying to be cool at all.

Veselka is an East Village institution, a diner that opened in 1954 and has been open 24 hours a day, seven days a week since 1990. The menu boasts American breakfast, lunch, and dinner classics as well as traditional Ukrainian specialties, which I figured I would stick to. They also serve beer and wine. Here are some of the specials of the week:

My wife and I both love pierogies, and Veselka is pierogi paradise. You can get them boiled or fried, and we opted for fried. They have several varieties, so we went for a platter of four different ones: meat, potato, cheese, and truffle and mushroom (that one was all her). Each one was better than the last, but I think we agreed the cheese one was the best, with a subtly sweet, creamy, farmer’s cheese filling. The pierogies came garnished with applesauce, sour cream, and my beloved caramelized onions. We didn’t expect that they would be crispy and bubbly on the outside, like old-school McDonald’s fried apple pies, since most pierogies I’ve had are sauteed in a pan with butter. These were better than either of us could have imagined!

My wife ordered chicken schnitzel, a breaded chicken breast cutlet that came with two sides. She went safe, with fries and egg noodles, although it was a little disappointing the egg noodles didn’t come with butter. They were just plain!

I had a hard time deciding, but since a lot of the Ukrainian specialties included mushrooms, I ultimately chose bigos, a hearty Eastern European dish I first tried many years ago at Hubert’s Polish Kitchen, a restaurant at the North Market in Columbus, Ohio, when there was snow on the ground. It’s a salty, sweet, and sour sauerkraut-based stew that also includes kielbasa sausage, roast pork, and onions, and it is absolutely delicious, even in May. I should learn to make this at home, I like it so much.

One of my sides was really creamy potato salad, loaded with dill and carrots, that worked well cutting the richness and saltiness of the bigos stew.

And because I know my wife always loves it, I also ordered kasha, roasted and boiled buckwheat (O-TAY!), a traditional Jewish side dish often served with bowtie pasta (kasha varnishkes). My mom used to make it a lot, when we were kids. I think kasha is just okay, but my wife seemed to like Veselka’s version a lot. We had no idea how huge the portions would be, so we had to help each other with all of this food.

My wife wasn’t blown away by her honey mint ginger iced tea. It sounded refreshing, but it had a fierce gingery bite.

I, on the other hand, loved my vanilla egg cream, a sweet drink that contains neither eggs nor cream. The chocolate egg cream, the much more common variety, is a classic old-timey Jewish New York beverage, made by stirring together seltzer, milk, and Fox’s U-Bet chocolate syrup. Accept no substitutes. Florida followers, you can find Fox’s U-Bet at most Publix stores, and it’s far superior to any other commercial chocolate syrups. We always keep a bottle in the fridge for occasional egg creams. They are like a dessert that also helps with digestion! (Altacocker alert!) But I had never even seen a vanilla egg cream before, and I’m glad I went for it. I love vanilla-flavored anything, but the kitchen is the only room I like things to be vanilla in, if you know what I’m sayin’.

And for dessert, we shared fresh blueberry pierogies, drizzled with sour cream. These weren’t the crispy fried pierogies from earlier in our meal, and we were a little surprised they contained actual whole blueberries, lightly warmed during the cooking process, rather than blueberry compote or preserves that we expected. They were tasty, but I might have preferred the crispy fried exterior and sweeter blueberry compote filling.

If I lived in the East Village, I would probably be a regular at Veselka. This was our first experience with any Ukrainian food, although I sure love Polish food and miss Polonia, the Polish restaurant that used to operate near my old apartment in Longwood (one of Orlando’s countless suburbs). But most importantly, I love all the history and atmosphere at these classic New York eateries, the places that have been around for decades and stay open late. They are primo people-watching spots, and you can tell multiple generations have shared delicious meals and happy memories there, and they’ve also survived some shit there. Very few restaurants in the Orlando area have been around this long, but whenever a place lasts this many decades, you know they’re doing a lot right. Veselka definitely is.