Hot dogs – The Saboscrivner

Primrose Lanes

This may be the most predictable review I have written for The Saboscrivner food blog in a long time, probably because this particular restaurant is the talk of the town right now. Orlando-based foodie social media has gone gaga (or gone to the dogs, if you will) discussing, debating, and deconstructing the $15 hot dog from Primrose Lanes (https://www.primroselanes.com/), the new restaurant and bar from former Luke’s Kitchen and Bar Executive Chef Jason Campbell. I will say that if you haven’t heard about this hot dog, then congratulations — you haven’t been spending much time online, and that is laudable. But if you are familiar with Orlando’s latest obsession, sometimes things that get a lot of hype have earned it and deserve it, and this fabulous, fantastic, first-class, fine freakin’ frankfurter definitely lives up to the hype, hoopla, hubbub, and hysteria.

But Primrose Lanes is not just some hot dog hut. It used to be the bowling alley Colonial Lanes, founded in 1959. It was sold and set to become yet another self-storage facility, and the owners even started ripping apart the bowling lanes. Then the Team Market Group bought the building, refurbished the eight remaining lanes, and worked with Chef Campbell to create a dining and drinking destination far beyond what you would expect from “bowling alley food.” Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed the pastrami sandwich and house-made potato chips at Brooklyn South Bar at Aloma Bowl, but this is a legit gastropub — a true culinary experience that is far better than anything you’re envisioning. It may not be the cheapest meal in Orlando (although plenty are way more expensive), but as someone who seeks out bargains and hates feeling ripped off, you will definitely get what you pay for at Primrose Lanes, and you’ll leave the restaurant feeling like you just bowled a perfect game.

On my first visit to Primrose Lanes, I went alone and sat on a high-top stool along a beautiful polished wood countertop. I believe a lot of the wood in the restaurant was salvaged from the 24 original bowling lanes that had been destroyed. The restaurant and bar area is a beautiful space, both modern and retro at the same time, with a big glass window overlooking the eight bowling lanes.

I started out with the “Funyun” fried onions, because I review onion rings wherever I find them on menus with a special notice longtime readers know as “RING THE ALARM!” Of course I’m more about the concept of fried onions than the classic ring shape, so I am not a stickler for literal onion rings every time. These fried onions were unlike any other fried onions I’ve ever had, with thin stems serving as handles to hoist the thick, rounded bulbs and dip them into creamy comeback sauce. For a guy who eats a lot of chips and other salty snacks (and reviews them in my recurring Tight Chips features right here on this blog), I almost never eat Funyuns, those vaguely onion-flavored corn snacks, but they made a very interesting coating for these very real onions.

The O.K.C. smashburger was a magnificent double-decker monster, extremely juicy despite the two patties being smashed flat on the flattop grill (hence the name). I always liked thicc burgers (R.I.P. Fuddruckers) and bemoaned the smashburger trend, worried that everyone would be serving dried-out, overpriced hockey pucks. But smashburgers like this one have won me over and give me hope for the future.

This O.K.C. smashburger was dressed with American cheese (still the best burger cheese), mayo, thin slices of delicious house-made pickles, and lots and lots of thin strands of fried onions, which really make a burger for me. Dating back to the Great Depression, Oklahoma-style burger patties are pressed into super-thin strips or slices of onion, which then cook in the heat and the meat juices. It was served on a brioche kaiser roll baked by the Olde Hearth Bread Company, which provides baked goods (no baked bads, ever) to many of the best restaurants in the Orlando area. Even without ketchup, it was a winning burger through and through.

And what about this bougie $15 hot dog? Well, like I said, it surpasses the hype, and anyone who has tried it will probably agree. I rarely order hot dogs when I’m out on the town, because you can pay $7 or $8 for a pack of good-quality Sabretts or all-beef Boar’s Head dogs in the natural casing, so why would you pay that for a single hot dog? But I’m glad I recently treated myself to the brilliant Detroit coney dog at SoDough Square, and I thought I had discovered the best hot dog in Orlando then. It is great, no doubt about it, but Chef Campbell’s hot dog is a triumphant treasure in every possible way.

It is house-made, and I don’t know who else around here goes to the significant effort of making their own hot dogs. It has such a fantastic snap, the way the best hot dogs and sausages do, and I had to close my eyes to savor every bite. In a recent article by Orlando Sentinel food writer (and mah friend) Amy Drew Thompson, Chef Campbell said the hot dogs are made with “Certified Angus. Ribeye, short rib, brisket and chuck in a lamb casing,” and then smoked. That lamb casing is what gives it the satisfying snap, and if you don’t know what I’m talking about, then you need to treat yourself to a higher standard of hot dogs, my dudes. The tangy, zingy relish is house-made too, but I don’t know if the buttery grilled bun is from Olde Hearth Bread Company or baked in-house. The pickle spear next to the burger and the hot dog were delicious too, much to nobody’s surprise. I have no doubt they were also made in-house by Chef Campbell and his team.

Oh yeah, I had heard you could get it topped with smoked trout caviar for an extra $5, and I said “Yes, let’s do that thing.” It added an extra level of decadence to the best hot dog ever (to say nothing of additional salt and smokiness), and I have no regrets. Hey, I’m eating at home more than ever now that I have a remote job, and this was my first trip out of the house in several days, so I felt like living large! WHAT?

Anyway, when I picked up my wife a little later after enjoying that epic meal, she was really hungry and wanted to go to one of her favorite spots for chicken tenders. I was raving about the meal I had enjoyed earlier, and I told her Primrose Lanes had chicken tenders too, as well as a Shirley Temple made with house-made grenadine syrup. I thought for sure she would say “Let’s try it some other time,” but instead she said “That sounds really great, and we’re close, and I’m hungry. Would you mind going back the same day?” And I said “Hell yeah, girl,” and back I went, fewer than two hours later!

She loves Shirley Temples, so she ordered that, and I ordered a lemonade that was nice and cold and tart and refreshing, and not too sweet. She said her Shirley wasn’t as sweet as most, which probably use all kinds of artificially flavored grenadine syrups, possibly bolstered with high fructose corn syrup. She said it was almost “savory,” but I tried a sip and can tell you it wasn’t necessarily savory, but definitely not cloyingly candy-sweet like most. It was also garnished with a dark cherry that definitely wasn’t a bright red maraschino, but maybe an amarena or Luxardo cherry.

She ordered the chicken tendies [sp], which came out darker than either of us expected. I asked if they were burned, and our lovely, patient server Claire, who took care of me on both back to back visits, said they all look like that. The tendies (I still can’t get used to that) came with a ranch dip seasoned with dill and “sha’bang sauce” that was thick and spicy — not exactly buffalo or sriracha, but they could have been involved — with tiny bits of sliced orange in it.

We also shared hash brown bites, perfect potato cubes that were crispy on the outside and soft and yielding inside, dressed with garlic crema and topped with more of that smoked trout caviar. These would be a terrific appetizer to order with any meal, unless you are a vegetarian, and then they could easily hold the trout roe for you. They reminded me of LEGO blocks, the way they were stacked so nicely.

One of the biggest hits of my wife’s first visit to Primrose Lanes and my second was the tuna tartare (her choice), a refreshing portion of diced raw tuna with avocado, spicy mayo, lightly pickled cucumber slices (so good!), sprinkled with regular and black sesame seeds and accompanied by what had to be fried Saltine crackers.

This dish knocked my wife’s socks off. Every ingredient, every taste, every texture worked in perfect harmony. It was my favorite part of my second visit, after all the heavy stuff I ate not that much earlier in the day. It was so cool and creamy and crispy and piquant, especially since I love spicy tuna rolls and poke bowls so much. She was in love with the fried Saltines, which had some kind of mysterious seasoning on them too, and I couldn’t believe nobody else had ever done that before.

And because my wife loves soft serve ice cream, she ordered vanilla soft serve for dessert (because they were out of chocolate) and got it topped with fudge sauce. While I thought the smashburger, the hot dog, and the tuna tartare could not be beat, this was her overall favorite. She looked pensive after the first bite, engrossed in thought, consumed as she consumed it. Her eyes rolled back in her head. She said she had never had soft serve ice cream this good; nothing else had ever come close. She used the word “orgasmic.” Ladies and gentlemen, you heard it here first.

I could usually do without soft serve ice cream — it tends to be kind of bland and tasteless for me, and rarely tastes like vanilla so much as some kind of plain whiteness. But upon her urging, I tried it, and it was as inspired as the rest of the food on this menu, so far above and beyond what most people might expect, so much better than it even needed to be.

This is the exact kind of restaurant I love to review on my blog. There are countless restaurants where you can get a decent-to-good meal, and if you pay enough money, you’re bound to get something above-average. But I especially love finding good or great food where you don’t expect it, whether it’s a nondescript food truck or trailer or a restaurant inside a place where you wouldn’t go looking for one, and especially wouldn’t dream of finding a good one. I’d say an excellent restaurant in a bowling alley counts for that, even though Primrose Lanes is more of a restaurant and bar with eight really cool bowling lanes than a bowling alley with that serves food.

I don’t mind admitting that I’m a pretty rotten bowler. Because I suck so much, I don’t particularly enjoy bowling, so I don’t do it, and that means I never improve. But if you ever go out for a trivia night with me, you will see me kick all kinds of ass and be impressed, then maybe a little scared, then annoyed, then bored, and then probably round the corner to impressed all over again. And if you ever join me for karaoke, you will find that I am not a particularly good singer, but I will do my damn best and cheer like crazy for my friends who are doing their damn best along with me. Unfortunately, I have yet to find ridiculously elevated food like this at any local trivia or karaoke spots, nor do I have many friends who are ever up for that kind of thing.

The good news about Primrose Lanes is that you don’t have to bowl at all. Plenty of people go just for the food, and you can too. But if you like to eat and bowl, then my stalwart Saboscrivnerinos, this needs to be your next night out with the ladies or the fellas, or your next hot date. Everyone will love it. But if you’re trying to corral 15 or 20 small kids for a bowling birthday party, I would advise against schlepping the little dudes to Primrose Lanes. Children are certainly welcome, but I’d say it is more of a place for adults to have fun. And as a non-kid-haver who ate there twice in one day, adults will likely have more fun there without kids… unless your kids are really cool.

SoDough Square

I recently visited SoDough Square (https://sodoughsquare.com/), a new pizzeria that opened in 2022, for the first time. It was so good, I returned a week later, with a friend and co-worker, and it was just as good on that second visit. The original location for SoDough Square is at 419 Michigan Street, Orlando, Florida, 32806, directly next door and sharing a dining room with one of owner Rob Bair’s other restaurants, Tin & Taco, which I reviewed in early 2019. There are a few Tin & Taco locations around Orlando, and just this past week, a second SoDough Square location opened at 223 Fairbanks Avenue, Winter Park, Florida, 32789, directly next door to another Tin & Taco. Go Rob!

SoDough Square is unique in Orlando because it serves Detroit-style pizza, a unique pizza style that I had never seen in Florida before. These are rectangular pizzas cooked in steel pans, then cut into four or eight slices, depending on whether you order a small or a large. The slices crisp up from cooking in the pans, and the toppings go all the way out to the edge, which I appreciate. Lots of upscale, pricey hipster pizzas seem to be half crust these days, and that just seems like wasted real estate to me. SoDough Square proofs its own dough (fermented for over 24 hours), makes its own tomato sauce, and shreds its own brick cheese blend, which forms a crispy, caramelized crust around the outer edges of the rectangular slices, called “frico.” This results in a thicc slice of pizza, similar to the Sicilian style I love so much, but not nearly as heavy, bready, and casserole-like as Chicago-style deep dish. I’m a convert. I love it! If you have read this far, you probably will too.

At SoDough Square, you place your order on one of two touchscreen monitors and then wait. I was bringing home the pizza to share with my wife, but while I was there, I enjoyed a Detroit coney dog ($5.99), topped with a savory, beanless chili sauce, chopped onions, and yellow mustard. I rarely order hot dogs when I’m out of the house, since I can usually buy a pack of high-quality dogs for the price of one or two from a restaurant, but I will make exceptions anytime I’m near my beloved Arbetter’s in Miami, a Skyline Chili location, and now for the coney dog at SoDough Square. I love trying anyone’s different versions of chili, and if it comes in chili dog form, all the better.
It’s a magnificent combination of flavors and textures. The all-beef dog has a great snappiness from its natural casing, the chili was excellent (far more of a crowd-pleaser than Skyline’s polarizing Cincinnati-style chili that I nevertheless like), and you got a pleasant crunch from the onions. As much as I love mustard (which is a lot), I usually don’t partake in plain yellow mustard, but it brought a necessary acidic brightness to this perfect coney dog that a spicy brown or horseradishy deli mustard would not have been able to duplicate.

That soda pictured above is called Rock & Rye, from Detroit’s beloved Faygo brand, a favorite of Juggalos everywhere. I had no idea what it would taste like, but it reminded me of Big Red soda from Texas, if you’ve ever tried that one, or Barq’s Red Creme soda (a New Orleans classic that is impossible to find in Orlando). Vaguely like cream soda, maybe a bit like cotton candy or bubble gum. More about Faygo later, I promise.

Several of the specialty pizzas sounded good, but the one I’ve been hearing the most raves about and seeing the most tantalizing photos of was the Detroit Rob City ($15.99 for a small or $29.99 for a large), so I ordered a large to bring home. This absolute unit is topped with Detroit red sauce, SoDough’s brick cheese blend, whipped ricotta cheese, pinched sausage (I admit it, I laughed), Ezzo cup pepperoni, Mike’s hot honey, and fresh basil. WOW, what a combination. This was one of the best things I’ve eaten in quite a while. Everything comes together perfectly on this pizza!
The creaminess of the ricotta works so well cutting the saltiness of the sausage and pepperoni and the surprising spiciness of the hot honey. (As a semi-related aside, I bought a different hot honey at Aldi, one of their private label brands that is half the price of Mike’s, but it barely has any heat at all.) And I absolutely love fresh basil on any pizza, which works miracles when combined with the tomato sauce. This is food of the gods, folks.

I also couldn’t resist trying the T&T ($15.99 for a small or $28.99 for a large) for myself, but I knew my wife wouldn’t be into a pizza topped with shredded lettuce, diced tomatoes, sour cream, and crushed Doritos, so I just ordered a small. The tribute to Rob Bair’s Tin & Taco restaurants worked for me, and I was stone-cold sober when I enjoyed it back at home!

I also ordered a small garlic cheese bread for us to share ($8.99 for a small or $16.99 for a large), and it was awesome too. It is made from the same pizza dough, but topped with garlic parmesan sauce, the same brick cheese blend, grated cheese, and fresh basil, with a small dipping cup of the house-made red sauce on the side. Don’t sleep on this when you go! My wife liked it even more than the pizza, which I expected, since she doesn’t like tomato-based sauces as much as I do.

On my second visit with my friend and colleague, who loves pizza as much as I do and hot dogs even more than I do, I ordered us two coney dogs so we could each have one, and we split a small Enforcer pizza ($14.99 for a small or $27.99 for a large), with the same Detroit red sauce and brick cheese blend, pinched sausage, Ezzo cup pepperoni, applewood smoked bacon, pecorino romano cheese, and fresh basil. Very similar to the Detroit Rob City, but personally, I would rather have the ricotta and hot honey than the bacon. Here is my last slice of the Enforcer:

I also got three different Faygo sodas they didn’t have on my first visit. I drank the pineapple orange with my meal, chugged most of the root beer on my way home because it was such a stupidly hot Friday afternoon, and saved the grape for my wife, who said it smelled and tasted like grape bubble gum. (I didn’t taste it, but I thought it smelled just like a grape-flavored candy from the ’80s called Bonkers.) My friend tried the Faygo diet cola, by the way.
I’ve had better sodas, and definitely better root beers, but I’m always happy and excited to taste anything new. All three of the Faygo flavors I tried were pretty artificial-tasting, even by soda standards. But they are $2.49 each, and I don’t think you can buy them anywhere else locally, so why not try something new and different?

My friend and I then walked to John and John’s – A Pizza Shop, conveniently located mere moments away, although the sweat was pouring off my shaved head by the time we walked in there. He had never tried John and John’s either, and I figured I would keep blowing his mind by introducing him to another favorite of mine — my choice for the best New York-style pizza in Orlando. Needless to say, he loved it too, especially the gyro-inspired Mediterranean Blue slice, named for the Greek restaurant that was the previous tenant of John and John’s space. After that, we parted ways, and I went back to SoDough Square to order another cheesy garlic bread to bring home for my wife, since I try to be a mensch.

I admit that the Michigan Avenue location of SoDough Square is a hike from home, so I was overjoyed when I heard about the second location opening on Fairbanks, near Rollins College in Winter Park. But I will warn you right now, stalwart Saboscrivnerinos — the new Winter Park location does not have the coney dogs, so just keep that in mind. That’s a shame, because I can’t envision going there and not getting one of those dogs as a pre-pizza appetizer. But no matter which location you visit, you are going to be treated to some of the best pizza in Orlando, from Detroit with love.

Have you been to SoDough yet? Which pizzas are your favorites, and are you in love with the coney dogs as much as I am? What is the deal with Faygo? Is it something you had to grow up with? Hopefully I haven’t incurred the wrath of the Juggalos over that, but it won’t be my first time, and I doubt it will be the last.

Arbetter’s Hot Dogs (Miami)

Of all the restaurants I’ve written reviews for, I’ve been going to Arbetter’s Hot Dogs (https://www.arbetterhotdogs.com/index.html) the longest, ever since I was a little kid in the ’80s. It’s an institution in Miami’s Westchester neighborhood, not far from where I grew up in Kendall, where my parents and brother still live. The bright yellow building on Bird Road (SW 40th Street), just west of Galloway Road (SW 87th Avenue), has been serving up Miami’s most iconic hot dogs since 1972, after first opening in 1960 in a different location. It has survived everything, from recessions to fickle foodie trends, keeping its prices low and its aesthetics simple and old-school. It reminds me of Orlando’s beloved Beefy King that way, another culinary time capsule from a bygone era that continues to survive and thrive because it never changed what people love about it.

Even though my dad wouldn’t ever consider himself a foodie, he introduced me to all of his favorite Chinese restaurants and Jewish delis in Miami in the ’80s and ’90s, starting me on my lifelong quest to discover all the best food and tell people about it, whether they asked or not. He would also take me to Arbetter’s, usually after trips to A&M Comics and Books, another Bird Road landmark that still survives today, the second-oldest comic book store in the country. These jaunts fueled my lifelong loves of comic books and reading in general (and also hot dogs).

It had been far too long since I returned to this legendary hot dog spot for a taste of my youth, so it was fitting I made it back to finally write a review in 2022, its 50th anniversary in the Bird Road location. That’s an incredible feat for any restaurant, especially in expensive, clout-chasing Miami.

Prices have gone up since the mid-’90s, the last time I was a permanent resident of Miami, but not as much as you would think:

I ordered two hot dogs, even though I could have easily eaten several more. As Lake Street Dive sang (but surely not referring to hot dogs), they go down smooth. On the left, behold Arbetter’s West Virginia dog ($3.99, a bargain at twice the price), topped with yellow mustard, onions, creamy cole slaw, and their delicious house-made chili (with no beans ever). What a combination, between the crunch of the cabbage and onions versus the softness of the dog and the bun, the acidity of the chili and the pungence of the mustard versus the creamy coolness of the slaw. On the right you see a traditional dog with mustard and sauerkraut ($2.99), the “control” in this little experiment. The dogs are simple, and so are the plain buns.
Since my last visit, back in 2015, Arbetter’s started selling grilled, all-beef, natural casing Sabrett hot dogs for slightly more money, which are high-quality dogs that I love and recommend. But visiting the place I grew up and this particularly nostalgic restaurant, I had to go with the old-school boiled dogs, which are softer and smokier than the Sabretts, but not as salty or garlicky. They tasted just as good as I remembered, and they went down soooo smooth.

Arbetter’s has always had awesome fries (currently $3.69), made even better by getting them topped with chili and molten melted cheese ($4.99). Instead of getting fries on my July 2022 visit, I opted for the onion rings instead ($3.69), because as my constant readers know, I will ALWAYS opt for onion rings and review them on this blog in a little feature I like to call RING THE ALARM! These were great onion rings — breaded rather than battered, not too thick or too thin, not too greasy, not ripping out of the breading. I definitely rank them as “the good kind” of onion rings. I dipped them in a ridiculous mound of ketchup, but in retrospect, I failed my readers and also myself by not getting them topped with chili and cheese (which would have also been $4.99, just like the fries).

Finally writing this review a few months after my meal at Arbetter’s, I’m feeling that nostalgia again and wishing I could get some right now. I’ll almost certainly pick up a pack of hot dogs when I finally leave the house today, and I already have buns, a jar of Silver Floss kraut, and a multifarious multitude of mustards, plus some ground chuck defrosting in the fridge and a block of habanero cheddar begging to be shredded — everything I need for some chili cheese dogs and classic hot dogs of my own. But it won’t be the same, not without that old yellow building with the same old faded posters and signs, the sense of community, and the memories of my youth.

I always felt like a stranger at home, growing up in Miami. I have a good family and wonderful friends I’m still in touch with, but now I enjoy my rare visits to the city a lot more than I ever liked living there. The food is a major aspect of why I appreciate Miami so much more now, and why I feel pride for my hometown that I never felt back in the day. Even though Arbetter’s Hot Dogs isn’t fancy or glamorous, it’s an icon, an institution, and a survivor. It still brings people together, over 50 years later, and makes them feel good, feel special, feel home. And if that isn’t a microcosm for Miami, I don’t know what is.

CLOSED: Chicago Dog & Co

EDITOR’S NOTE: Chicago Dog & Co. permanently closed on October 8, 2023.

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As much as I love food and restaurants and cooking, I’ve never worked a day in the food service or hospitality industries. For me, eating, cooking, and even grocery shopping are necessities I’ve turned into hobbies. We have to eat to survive, so I do what I can to make the experiences enjoyable, but I’ve never had to work at it. As a result, I have nothing but admiration and awe for everyone who works in restaurants. It’s a hard, hot, and dangerous job, and too many people take it for granted when we get delicious food we didn’t have to make ourselves. Even I have been guilty of this in the past, but I have so much appreciation, and I always try to show it, including by writing this food blog. I hope it comes across in my words, as I try to boost the signal for local restaurants here.

This past week my wife and I binge-watched a new show called The Bear, which consists of eight half-hour episodes streaming on Hulu. The Bear is about Carmy, a world-renowned chef who returns to his family’s divey restaurant in Chicago after his brother commits suicide and leaves Carmy the restaurant in his will. Most of the show takes place inside the restaurant’s cramped, chaotic kitchen, and the writing, acting, directing, and editing work in perfect tandem to create a feeling of unhinged uneasiness — a “sense of urgency,” as Carmy calls it. All the restaurant people I know who have been watching it say they get the details almost too perfect, to the point where it is too real, too uncomfortable to enjoy. But it’s really good, so you should watch it if you’re looking for a new show you can knock out in a weekend.

Anyway, the main specialty of Carmy’s family restaurant is a real Chicago classic: Italian beef sandwiches. We watch them preparing hundreds of “beefs,” and before the end of the intense first episode, I was craving one here in Orlando. The Chicago/Italian beef isn’t as ubiquitous a sandwich as the Philly cheesesteak, but there are a few places around town to find them. My favorite local food writer, a woman who serves as a constant inspiration to me, who I am honored to think of as a friend (albeit one I have yet to meet in real life), Amy Drew Thompson of the Orlando Sentinel, wrote a guide to Italian beef sandwiches in Orlando earlier this year, which pointed me to the subject of my latest restaurant review.

Chicago Dog & Co (https://www.chicagodogandco.com/) is located in Altamonte Springs, Florida, west of I-4, close to where Altamonte starts blending into Apopka. Sandra (a practicing attorney!) and Monica, two Chicago-born sisters raised in Central Florida, opened the restaurant just over a year ago, in April 2021, and they have been going strong ever since. Open every day except Monday, Chicago Dog & Co has covered outdoor seating, but no indoor seating. You walk up to order at a window, and they call your name when your order is ready. They specialize in Vienna Beef hot dogs on steamed poppy seed buns, and you can get them with a number of toppings, including the Chicago way, “dragging it through the garden,” with yellow mustard, diced onion, sliced tomato, neon green relish, a pickle spear, “sport” peppers, and celery salt.

But as much as I enjoy a good hot dog, I’m more of a devotee of a garlicky New York-style dog, as typified by Sabrett, Nathan’s, and Boar’s Head, topped with spicy mustard and sauerkraut. I have no doubt the Vienna Beef hot dogs are bringing back happy Chicago memories for thousands of Central Floridians, but I went there for a different reason: to get my post-Bear Italian beef fix. And did I ever!

This was the Italian beef ($8) I brought home for myself, the tender sliced beef topped with sweet peppers and spicy giardiniera vegetables, a blend of carrots, onions, and green peppers. (The more traditional Chicago version has carrots, celery, and cauliflower!) It is served on a soft Gonnella roll, either dry (no au jus, or au jus served on the side), wet (au jus poured over the sandwich), or dipped (the entire sandwich, roll and all, dipped in au jus to create a real fork-and-knife experience). Since I was bringing it home, I opened for au jus on the side. I thought it was really good, and better once I poured the jus over the meat and bread. The actual beef in an Italian beef isn’t super-moist or fatty, so the jus helps lubricate the sandwich, in the best possible way. It was definitely a WAS (wet-ass sandwich) by the time I was through, and it definitely fulfilled my Italian beef craving.

Knowing my wife the way I do, she isn’t into toppings, condiments, sauces, or even sandwiches all that much, so I ordered her a plain beef ($8) with jus on the side, and also giardiniera on the side (since I knew I would get to eat hers). Here’s the unadorned, unadulterated beef:

Since they serve chili dogs and I love chili, I asked if I could try a little side order of chili, and they were kind enough to fill a small cup for me. Here it is with the side of spicy giardiniera.

In addition to the dogs and beefs, Chicago Dog & Co also serves burgers. I haven’t had a tasty burger in quite a while, so I couldn’t resist this double smash ($6) — a very reasonable price for two beef patties smashed thin with sautéed onions and melty American cheese on a soft bun. The bun got steamed in the aluminum foil wrap on my 20-minute drive home, but I imagine it would be a lot less wrinkly if you enjoy yours at the restaurant.The burger had a great “fresh off the grill” taste, and I’m a sucker for American cheese and sautéed or grilled onions on my burger. I added a bit of the chili once I ate about half of it at home, but it didn’t need any other adornments to improve it.

Finally, I brought home an Iltaco Pizza Puff ($4) for my wife to try. These things are awesome — another Chicago snack that is like the best Hot Pocket you’ve ever had, or more like a small, flat, pizza-filled chimichanga or empanada.

The crispy, bubbly, fried shell is like a flour tortilla — hence the chimichanga comparison — and it is stuffed with tomato sauce, melty mozzarella cheese, and sausage or pepperoni. I love these things. My wife wasn’t interested in trying it, so I ate both halves myself.

So if you also watched The Bear and have been asking “Where’s the beef?” ever since, Chicago Dog & Co is the place for you. Since I started this blog in 2018, I’ve tried (and reviewed) two other Italian beef sandwiches in and around Orlando: Rosati’s Pizza (a Chicago chain) in Winter Park, and Christo’s, the diner in Sanford. There are one or two other options I’m aware of, thanks in part to Amy Drew Thompson and the good people of The Orlando Foodie Forum presented by Tasty Chomps!, but as you might have realized by now, they aren’t nearly as easy to find around here as other sandwiches. I’m happy I had time on a lazy Sunday to finally check out a new(ish) local restaurant owned by two women who deserve our community’s support. Hopefully their kitchen is a lot more copacetic than the one in the show! But if you go for a beef or even a Chicago hot dog, don’t forget that Pizza Puff too — trust me on that. That thing is magical.

CLOSED: Uncle Dendog’s

UPDATE: Sadly, Denni Cha, the chef-owner of Uncle Dendog’s, moved his family to Austin, Texas, in 2022, so Uncle Dendog’s is no more. Orlando’s loss is definitely Austin’s gain.

Ever since I was a little kid, I’ve been obsessed with comic books, to the point of making it a serious field of academic study. Heck, this food blog is even inspired by a comic book series called Chew. (Check the page heading, in case you’ve never glanced at it before.) But as much as I love the characters, I focus the most on the creators who write and draw them, and I can always identify their unique, defining styles. For example, the legendary Jack Kirby (co-creator of most of the Marvel characters you would recognize) specialized in burly, square-jawed heroes and imposing alien technology surrounded by crackling energy. Jim Lee‘s human figures look like flawless gods and goddesses. Arthur Adams draws huge monsters and super-cute women, always with extraordinary attention to detail. Kevin Maguire and Steve Lieber are masters of expressive faces, who can convey so much emotion — and especially humor — with just a look.

Where am I going with this? Well, as a self-proclaimed food writer, I don’t pretend to be the expert on food that I am on comics, but I feel like I’m at a point where I recognize the signature styles and flourishes of some of the talented chefs who prepare the food I love so much. I can always identify the best comic creators by their written voices and artwork, whether they work on a mainstream superhero comic, a crime graphic novel for “mature readers,” or a deeply personal, autobiographical, self-published story, and some chefs stand out to me the same way, even when they transcend cuisines.

Orlando is home to some real innovators and creative dynamos who have built a strong culinary culture here, and one of my favorite local chefs is Denni Cha. He has been cooking since he was nine years old, ever since his grandmother taught him to cook in the kitchen of her Korean restaurant. I first discovered his food in the summer of 2020, when he ran a Japanese pop-up called Itamae Densho out of The Local Butcher, the Winter Park meat market that also hosts previous Saboscrivner review subject Swine & Sons and Da Kine Poke. I reviewed the gorgeous, almost otherworldly looking chirashi bowls I brought home from Itamae Densho — maybe the most beautiful things I saw in 2020, an otherwise ugly and stressful year. They were like little landscapes in a bowl — multiple kinds of fresh fish and vegetables over rice, even adorned with edible flowers and ziggurats of fractal romanesco jutting past gleaming orbs of salmon roe.

Unfortunately, Itamae Densho is no more, but Chef Denni is back with his latest venture, something far removed from chirashi bowls but still totally in character and on brand: Uncle Dendog’s (https://www.instagram.com/uncle.dendogs/), a food truck (really a trailer) that specializes in Korean corn dogs and other street foods with a foreign, fusiony focus. Follow his Instagram page to see where he’s going to turn up next!

I was the first person to arrive at Uncle Dendog’s this past Friday night, set up outside Orlando Brewing, the brewery and taproom south and west of downtown Orlando. Not being a drinker, I had never been there before, so I didn’t know how busy it would get later or how the parking situation would be. But I do prefer to grab my food on the early side, especially since I was bringing it home after work.

I have taken the liberty of posting photos of the menu, although it may change from week to week or even night to night. I knew I had to try one of Uncle Dendog’s signature K-Dawgs, so it was just a question of choosing which one.
But I knew he had a new special, just weeks after opening for the first time, and that was what drew me out on this rainy evening.

This was it: “Not-So Native Fry Bread Tacos.” For many years, I’ve heard and read about Navajo-style tacos, a Southwestern delicacy of meat, cheese, peppers, corn, beans, sauces, and more, served on crispy, pillowy, salty, greasy fry bread, a traditional staple food of Native Americans throughout the American Southwest.

Fry bread may be delicious, but it has a fraught, controversial history in Navajo culture due to the lasting effects of colonialism, when the U.S. government gave the Navajo people flour, sugar, salt, and lard as they were forced to relocate onto desolate, dusty reservations where they could no longer grow traditional, healthy crops like corn, beans, and squash. There is a schism within the Native American community, and even among Native American chefs, about whether fry bread is an unhealthy, lasting symbol of oppression or a tasty treat born out of resistance and resilience. It is absolutely not my place to decide or judge which side is right, but I can say a few non-controversial things with certainty, though:
1.) Chef Denni Cha is of Native American (and Korean) descent,
2.) He told me a while back that he planned to offer fry bread tacos as a tribute to his Native American heritage, so I’ve been looking forward to them ever since, and
3.) They were one of the best things I’ve ever eaten. Yes, in my LIFE.

But first things first: I asked Chef Denni’s lovely wife and partner, Monica, which K-Dawg (Korean corn dog) she recommended, and she told me to go with the Korean in Bogota ($10), a massive meat treat with the lightest, crispiest batter coating a perfect, smoky, salty sausage. Korean corn dogs are definitely Internet- and Instagram-trendy right now because of how photogenic and eye-catching they are, and this one was no exception. It was a true fusion: an all-beef Nathan’s hot dog lovingly skewered, dipped in a special batter, and fried until it is crispy outside and lusciously soft inside — an archetypal Korean corn dog even if I had ordered it plain. But Colombian hot dogs and hamburgers are famous for being served with lots of condiments and toppings, so this was a tribute to those — hence “Korean in Bogota.” More fusion. More loving, respectful tribute. Just like in comic books, this was a legit crossover.
As the menu said, the corn dog is topped with shiso-cilantro garlic aioli, salsa rosada, pineapple salsa, and crunchy potato sticks, and sprinkled with sugar, for a variety of colors, flavors, and textures — salty, crunchy, spicy, creamy, fruity, greasy, soft, cool, sweet, hot. (When I asked about the sugar, Denni said “Korean Hotdogs usually get heavily dusted in sugar. We do so much else with them that we just lightly sprinkle it.”) Anyway, I’m glad I took this home and ate it over a table, because it would have been really messy eating standing up at the brewery or in the parking lot outside.

Next up, I brought home an order of lightly breaded wings ($9). My wife loves wings, but as much as I appreciate sauces and condiments, she isn’t big on them, so I got these plain with her in mind. The order came with six huge wings in crispy golden-brown batter, and they were really good. The battered exterior was still crunchy and warm by the time I got home. I asked, and this batter for the wings is different from the batter he uses for the corn dogs and fry bread.

If you want something a little more exciting than plain wings, the other alternative is to get them tossed in a sweet, sticky kimchi sauce. When Chef Denni kindly asked if I wanted a little ramekin of the sauce on the side, I said YES, which is what you say if someone asks if you are a god, or if you want some sauce on the side. That sauce was so good, we poured it over the four and a half wings we hadn’t eaten yet, and it made them even better. Even after saucing, they stayed crunchy and never got soggy, even after reheating some leftover wings in the toaster oven the next day!
I don’t have a lot of experience eating kimchi, which is weird, because I love pickled vegetables, I’ll eat sauerkraut straight out of the jar or can, and I regularly cook braised cabbage at home. I need to develop my taste for kimchi, just like I did for pickles. But this sweet kimchi sauce made these fine wings even finer.

I saved the best for last, which speaks volumes, considering how great the corn dog and the wings were. I ordered two of the Not-So Native fry bread tacos ($10 each), one for each of us. They came in the same box and looked like the stuff that dreams are made of. Topped with braised beef, beer cheese, cilantro-garlic aioli, salsa, corn, black beans, and more potato sticks, they were another amazing, astonishing amalgam of fantastic, fabulous flavors and terrific, tantalizing textures. But what really took these from tasty street food to next-level works of art was the fry bread itself.
Chef Denni was very forthcoming when I asked him about the fry bread later on. He uses the same batter he uses for the K-Dawgz (corn dogs), only he lets it proof longer, for a total of 48 hours, to get to the right consistency for his fry bread. My wife described the texture of being like a really good, really thick “old-fashioned” doughnut (those wrinkly glazed ones, sometimes called sour cream cake doughnuts), only crispy on the outside. Denni agreed, saying he has compared them to “savory doughnuts” before, but more airy and fluffy. I swear, you’ve never had tacos like this before, and I’m 100% sure nobody else in Orlando is making these. The closest thing I could compare them to are sopes, but they are way better than any sopes my wife and I have ever tried. I can’t imagine anyone not liking these, unless you keep kosher (in which case, ask to hold the warm, gooey beer cheese) or are a vegetarian (in which case, ask to hold the delicious, tender, savory braised beef). Heck, even going to town on some plain fry bread would be a treat, maybe with some hot honey squirted on it like the best sopapilla ever. But don’t miss these Not-So Native tacos!

And here’s a mediocre photo of Uncle Dendog himself, Denni Cha, hard at work in the trailer, packing up my takeout order in his panda sushi apron. He actually took a moment to pose for me, but I said “Thank you!” like a boob before actually taking the picture, so he moved, and this is what I got — totally my fault. I’m sorry, Chef.

So what does this have to do with the comic book artists? Well, I told you I’m starting to identify local chefs from their styles, just like the artists I’ve admired for decades. And after having Chef Denni’s chirashi bowls at Itamae Densho and now his Colombian-inspired Korean corn dogs and Native American fry bread tacos, I think the common element that identifies and unifies his style as a chef is the sheer beauty of it. His serving dishes are the canvases of an iconoclastic visionary artist, whether they’re bowls with a base of rice or takeout boxes with paper trays inside. And he builds these mixed-media structures, assembling them from diverse, colorful, fresh, dazzling ingredients that you might not even think belong together, but that’s only because we don’t think like he does. Especially here in Uncle Dendog’s trailer/studio, he’s creating cross-cultural culinary mashups and remixes — appropriate, because he is also a musician — and elevating humble, familiar street food to eye-catching, awe-inspiring fine art. You’ll know it when you see it, because you won’t forget it… especially once you taste it.

Thirsty Gator

Thirsty Gator (http://thirstygator.net/) is a great dive bar and casual restaurant located on a lonely stretch of Goldenrod Road between University Drive and East Colonial Drive. The address plants it firmly in Winter Park, but the surrounding area doesn’t look or feel like Winter Park. To be completely honest, entering the bar feels like you’ve entered a portal that transports you to the Southern college town of Gainesville, Florida, two hours north of Orlando. It doesn’t even matter when you knew Gainesville best — it will feel like Gainesville from “back in the day,” whenever that day was for you.

As if the name wasn’t a dead giveaway, Thirsty Gator is a Florida Gators-themed bar, so I’m sure it is a hot destination when Gator games are on or when University of Florida alumni in Orlando are feeling particularly nostalgic. I have a few degrees from UF, but as I get older, I rarely feel that nostalgia for “bright college days, oh carefree days that fly” anymore. I had some of the best and worst times of my life during my seven years as a UF student, but I met a lot of amazing friends there, and I’m so honored to know them and so proud of what they have all become. Also, I fully realize I am able to lead the life I live now — educated, gainfully employed, happily married — because of what I accomplished back then, so in the end, it all worked out. I never thought I’d feel more content and fulfilled in my 40s than I did in my late teens and 20s, but here I am. Aw heck, when I was in my 20s, there were times I honestly didn’t think I would even make it to my 40s, but here I am, doing better than pretty much anyone expected, myself included. Stalwart Saboscrivnerinos, it really does get better. I’m living proof of that.

But enough about an old man’s reflections of times past. On to the food!

I brought home an order of ten mild wings ($15):

And an order of ten garlic wings ($15):
These are some of my favorite wings in Orlando. I’ve written before about how I dislike typical sports bar wings that are tiny, greasy, crunchy, and dry. These are the exact opposite — decent-sized wings that are tender, moist, juicy, incredibly well-seasoned, and barely greasy at all because they are baked, not fried. I probably would have preferred them hot, but then my wife couldn’t enjoy them at all, and we always endeavor to share. Thirsty Gator may be known for its seafood, but don’t sleep on these wings! Seriously, they have to be near the top of the Top Five in Orlando.

My wife and I can never refuse the allure of a soft pretzel. This one was $3.25, and it was pretty large, soft, and buttery. It wasn’t as flaky and perfect as an Auntie Anne’s soft pretzel (the only thing I like going to malls for anymore), but still hit the spot. That is yellow mustard in the little plastic cup, not butter!

I can never resist garlic rolls or garlic bread either, and this garlic bread was $3.25. You get four pieces that are similar to the frozen loaves of Cole’s garlic bread I enjoy a little bit too much. They had softened by the time I got everything home, but they had plenty of garlic, butter, and herbs on them. You just can’t go wrong with garlic bread.

And the main reason I got takeout from Thirsty Gator, rock shrimp (market price; currently $21.95 per pound). This delectable denizen of the deep rarely appears on any restaurant menus, and this is the one restaurant I know of in Orlando that specializes in the little crustaceans. These are peel-and-eat rock shrimp, and their shells are slightly harder to pierce, penetrate, and peel than the typical shrimp we all know and love. So they’re more work, but totally worth it.

This is what one of the rock shrimp looks like peeled. The meat is succulent and sweet, and my wife and I agree they taste more like lobster than shrimp.
Funny enough, one of our featured songs at our wedding was “Rock Lobster” by the B-52s. If you’ve ever had spiny lobster, AKA langoustine or langostino, those guys are the real-life rock lobsters, and I honestly think they taste more like regular shrimp than lobster.

These are a real treat, and since each one is a bit of a hassle to peel, you never take these for granted. The peeling process may not be appealing, but you never eat rock shrimp without appreciating each sweet, tender morsel. As a result, we took our time making our way through the pound we got. They are served warm, but we also enjoyed them chilled out of the fridge the next day.

Aside from the rock shrimp and the wings, the other big food specialty at Thirsty Gator is the fresh raw oysters, but those aren’t great takeout food. I’ve made no secret of my great love of oysters, so I’ll just have to go back another time to enjoy them in person. Whether you love the Gators, hate them, or just fear them as so many do, there is so much to love at Thirsty Gator.

AdventHealth: 30 Days of Hospital Dining

Wait a minute… is The Saboscrivner really going to review the food at AdventHealth, Orlando’s largest chain of hospitals? Yes, but I have a good reason. My wife had a major surgery in May that necessitated spending nine days in AdventHealth Orlando, followed by another three weeks in AdventHealth Winter Park. It was heavy and scary stuff, and I didn’t want her to go it alone. I am so grateful that my employer allowed me to take a leave of absence from work, and that both hospitals allowed me to move in with her and spend every post-surgical moment at her side. (Both of us are fully vaccinated.) So we both lived in hospitals for 30 days — from May 11th through June 10th — and that meant eating a lot of hospital meals. This massive review may prove useful if any of my readers, or any of their family or friends, are ever hospitalized in an AdventHealth facility, or even if you end up visiting anyone there. But I hope you all stay healthy and safe and never have to come here, unless it’s for a positive reason, like having a baby or getting a cool prosthetic or something.

AdventHealth is a faith-based nonprofit that claims to have “nearly 50 hospital campuses and hundreds of care sites in diverse markets throughout nine states” (see https://www.adventhealth.com/who-we-are). Despite the health care company’s strong Christian values and mission, everyone is welcome and included — staff, patients, and visitors alike. I can say with confidence that the doctors, nurses, and therapists took exceptional care of my wife, when she needed it the most.

Now onto the food! Both hospitals have cafeterias for the staff and visitors, and there is some surprisingly good food to be had there. It tends to be more flavorful than the food served to the patients in their rooms, which tends to be blander, with less salt and fewer herbs, spices, and strong flavors. The much larger AdventHealth Orlando has a much larger cafeteria, the Welch Cafe, which puts out the most options at lunchtime, the busiest time, and far fewer things to choose from in the evening. There is an Italian station that has pizza, pasta, and rotating specials, a sandwich station where you can get a custom-made sandwich, a salad bar, a fresh sushi station, lots of pre-packaged “grab and go” options, sweets, and a lot more. With some options, there is a price per pound and you pay whatever your meal weighs, and others have fixed prices.

I should also note that AdventHealth, founded by Seventh Day Adventists, used to only serve vegetarian food, and only in recent years started serving meat. They do not serve any pork at all, though — not in the cafeterias or the in-room meals for patients, and not even at the Wendy’s across the street from AdventHealth Orlando. So you’ll see a lot of beef and/or turkey substitutions for pork products, and at least one of them ended up being really good.

My wife was in AdventHealth Orlando for a total of nine days, so I ate in the Welch Cafe a few times. Here are some of the highlights:

BWAAAAAAH! BWAH BWAH BWAAAAAAH!
RING THE ALARM! I had surprisingly great onion rings with my very first meal at the Welch Cafe, sleep-deprived and full of fear after delivering my wife to the hospital at 5 AM to be prepped for surgery. After waiting for hours outside the surgical wing, I figured I might as well keep up my strength and eat something that tasted good. These onion rings ($1.75, priced out at $7.29 per pound from the burger bar) were better than many others I’ve had around Orlando, believe it or not.

For me, pasta is comfort food, so I indulged three times with different types of penne pasta in red sauces. This first one, which I ate on Day One while my wife was under the knife, was kind of like penne in an alfredo sauce, but I also asked for a warm blanket of marinara over the top. I seem to recall some pieces of tender chicken in there too. I was worried sick about her and felt guilty eating, but I knew I would have passed out or succumbed to a stress migraine if I didn’t have something substantial.

On two subsequent Welch Cafe visits, I got different versions of baked penne with ground beef ($4.29), both of which hit the spot. You can’t go wrong with hearty baked pasta dishes like this:

This was a pre-made meatball sub (a very reasonable $4.99) that was much better than I expected.

At least during the busiest hours in the middle of the day, you can get a custom sandwich made at the deli counter. The one time I indulged, I opted for pastrami on a sub roll (a little over $7), with creamy horseradish sauce, lettuce, tomato, onions, banana peppers, and jalapeño peppers, and the nice lady even pressed it on the grill (note the grill marks in the sub roll). It wasn’t any kind of ideal pastrami sandwich like Katz’s Deli in NYC or Orlando’s own Pastrami Project, but it was savory and spicy and messy in the best possible way. That blend of flavors and textures provided a much-needed brief reprieve from the stress of that particular day at the hospital. And as far as I’m concerned, that is the main goal of pretty much any sandwich.

Yes, there is sushi available in the Welch Cafe, and yes, I had to try it. There was a sushi chef making it fresh every day, at least around lunchtime, and then they would remain in the “grab and go” cooler for the dinner crowd.

It was pretty much on par with grocery store sushi, and I figured if it gave me any problems, I was already in a hospital. This was the sushi sampler platter I chose. It looked pretty, and eating it felt luxurious, like I didn’t even deserve to be enjoying something this nice while my wife was resting and healing several floors above me.

The sampler ($10.89) included some tuna and salmon nigiri, some California rolls wrapped in tuna and salmon, and a volcano roll topped with crispy rice, spicy mayo, and eel sauce. Like I said, it was fresh, and it was luxurious. I haven’t had any sushi since then, but just looking at this picture, I’d get something similar again without trepidation.

The Welch Cafeteria even had desserts! I had to try the tres leches ($2.49), and it was perfectly fine, if not up to the standard of Miami’s legendary Cuban restaurant Versailles:

At one point, I brought this cookies and cream cheesecake (probably also around $2.49) back up to our room to share. It was also fine, but I think my wife would have enjoyed it more under almost any other circumstances:

After nine days there immediately after her surgery, she was transferred to the inpatient rehabilitation unit in AdventHealth Winter Park for almost three weeks of intensive physical and occupational therapy. It is a much smaller hospital, with a commensurately smaller cafeteria in the basement. The onion rings definitely aren’t as good there — kind of soggy — but on this day, the special was a surprisingly spicy and tender beef dish that was probably braised, or maybe even cooked in a slow cooker or a pressure cooker. I liked it quite a bit. My wife didn’t want anything to do with it.

I always crave hot dogs around summer holidays, and usually buy a pack around those times of year to cook at home. We spent Memorial Day in the hospital, so I grabbed this simple all-beef hot dog ($2.79) from the basement cafeteria that day. It tasted a lot like a Costco hot dog, but not as cheap, as big, or quite as good. With packets of yellow mustard and relish, it transported me away for a few brief bites to an imagined backyard cookout with friends, before I found myself back at my wife’s hospital bedside.

On one of the last days before she was discharged, the cafeteria offered a gyro as a daily special ($4.79). I have a hard time turning down gyros anywhere, so I had to try it. The processed, seasoned, sliced gyro meat (usually a blend of beef and lamb) was topped with shredded lettuce and sliced tomatoes, served with a tiny cup of creamy, tart tzatziki sauce, and served on a warm flatbread-style pita, it was comfort food. Nowhere near as good as Orlando’s best gyro at Mediterranean Deli, but still better than many of the other meals I had eaten over this past month. These onion rings ($2.69) were slightly better than that first bunch, too.

But the highlight of this cafeteria was the customizable 6″ personal pizzas for $3.99, made to order with the ingredients of your choice, and then baked in a tiny, powerful oven and presented to you two or three minutes later. These were better than they had any right to be from a basement hospital cafeteria! (Technically, they were underground pizzas, but a fella named Brad has built his brand around that moniker.)

I went all out with beef sausage, turkey ham, turkey pepperoni, red onion, jalapeño peppers on my pizza. When it came out of the oven, the gentleman brushed the crust with garlic butter, and upon my request, drizzled it with balsamic glaze. It was a damn fine pizza, I have to admit.

I brought a couple of those basement (not underground!) pizzas back for my wife, who preferred them to most of the daily trays from Nutritional Services. Longtime Saboscrivner scholars may remember she isn’t into tomatoey sauces, so I would order her pizzas to be brushed with a garlic butter base, and then I’d request beef sausage and mushrooms on them for her.

So that’s what hospital staff and visitors can eat, but what about patients in their rooms? Well, Nutritional Services delivers three meals a day to patients, and they offer a surprising amount of choices. I tried to figure out a pattern for weeks, and then in our final week, they brought us the actual menu, which I have photographed here. (Right-click and open them in new tabs for larger images.)

If someone from Nutritional Services manages to catch a patient in her room (between physical and occupational therapy appointments, in my wife’s case), they will take her order for all three meals for the next day, entering her choices on a tablet. If not, the patient will just get whatever the daily specials are. Since my wife really has to be in the mood for specific foods even when she isn’t distracted by chronic pain, post-surgical pain, and new pain from grueling therapy, I ended up helping her eat a lot of meals she wasn’t in the mood for and didn’t want anything to do with. Also, I obsessively saved condiment and seasoning packets in our room, much like I imagine prisoners doing to make prison food more tolerable.

Do yourself a favor — if you are admitted as a patient at AdventHealth, ask Nutritional Services for a printed menu, so you can see what all the options are at all times, since they don’t always tell you every single thing you can choose from. That way, you can also be more prepared when they come to your room to take your order.

These beef sausages, one of the Nutritional Services option for patients’ in-room breakfasts, are the same ones you can get sliced on your cafeteria pizzas. They might not look very appetizing, but I really liked these, and even my wife embraced the greatness of the beef sausage by the end of her stay. They were very savory, with a different texture than standard pork breakfast sausage, not as greasy, and not nearly as heavy with sage either. I would order these in my beloved Waffle House or at another breakfast joint if they were available, or even buy them at the store to make at home.

Sliced brisket with chimichurri sauce, always served with a soft corn souffle (I amused myself by calling it “corn pone,” a term that cracks me up for no real reason) and green beans. I make much better green beans, but I actually liked this quite a bit, and even my wife did too.

Chicken tenders. A little bland and way too small to satisfy, but perfectly adequate, especially with some Ken’s honey mustard dressing as a dip.

Macaroni and cheese and baked sweet plantains. My two favorite sides with any lunch or dinner orders. I would always try to remind her to order them for me, or request to substitute them instead of boring sides like the plain white rice pictured above. The mac and cheese was similar to what you would get at a lot of barbecue joints and Southern “meat and three”-style diners or cafeterias. Of course I’ve had better, because this is a hospital, but I’ve had much worse. These came with an eggy “spinach patty” that my wife kinda sorta liked, but it didn’t do much for me.

A cheeseburger that had that Burger King flame-broiled taste. It was a little dry and not terribly juicy, but I appreciated having the general flavors and textures of a cheeseburger for the first time in a month.

My wife also ordered several vegetarian Beyond burgers as alternatives to the daily specials, which meant I ended up finishing several Beyond burgers throughout our stay. We both used to like those, but I think we burned ourselves out on them for all time.

Lasagna rollatini, with ricotta cheese inside. Like I said, my wife famously doesn’t like tomatoey sauces, but we quickly learned these are too dry and pretty bland with sauce served on the side, or not at all. At least I thought they were definitely better with the sauce on them. With just a few days left in her stay, we learned from the brochure that she could have been requesting the lasagna roll-ups with pesto sauce all along, but we never got to try that.

Chipotle chicken breast, served with yellow rice and “fajita vegetables.” The chicken was always dry, but it had a little bit of heat, and I would eat it because she never wanted anything to do with it.

Mojo cod, served with white rice, black beans, a whole wheat roll, and more of those plantains. Not her thing at all. Not really mine either (but for the plantains), but I always ate it until I convinced her to request other stuff on mojo cod days.

In those final days, once we had the Nutritional Services menu and knew there were other options to choose from, my wife ordered me sandwiches with soups, while she drank Ensures and ate snacks I brought to the room from Trader Joe’s. She knows how much I love sandwiches.

A cold roast beef sandwich on marble rye with three-bean chili. I liked both, especially adding a bit of mustard to the sandwich. The chili reminded me of a vegetarian version of Wendy’s chili, so not the worst thing in the world. It also provided amusement for both of us later.

A cold turkey and havarti sandwich on marble rye, improved by yellow mustard and mayo, with chicken noodle soup (never my favorite soup):

I didn’t remember to photograph all the meals, but these were a few that (unfortunately) showed up more than once:

Sliced turkey with cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, and steamed carrots. She couldn’t even deal with the smell of this one, but I thought it was okay. I do stand by the controversial take that the traditional Thanksgiving dinner is bland and boring AF.

Bruschetta chicken breast (dry), covered with diced tomatoes, and served with unsauced penne pasta, underdone brussels sprouts, and splashed with balsamic vinegar. This could have been a much better dish than it was. I make pretty good brussels sprouts at home by oven-roasting them, and the few times I had this meal, it inspired me to improve my brussels sprouts game even more.

Spaghetti and meat sauce with broccoli. I ate it every time because she wouldn’t, and I can’t abide by wasting food. I love spaghetti and meat sauce. I couldn’t bring myself to love this spaghetti and meat sauce.

Pot roast. Just like a lot of people’s pot roast, you can chew it forever and nothing happens. It made me want to experiment with pot roast when we got home, to try marinating and braising and using ingredients like bold Italian vinaigrettes and jars of spicy pickled giardinera vegetables.

Nutritional Services also offered desserts and snacks. None of the baked goods were great, but I rekindled my lifelong love of orange sherbet, and now I feel the need to buy some to keep in the freezer at all times. (No, Megan Draper, it does not smell or taste like perfume!) And I taught my wife the joy of using graham crackers to scoop up vanilla pudding.

So that’s pretty much it. I also brought in takeout for us a few times, but for 30 days, we lived in these two AdventHealth hospitals and mostly ate hospital food. Some things were surprisingly good, or at least better than you would expect. Others were much, much worse. I’m glad that she was discharged just over a week ago, and now I’m able to go grocery shopping again, to cook for us again, and to take my wife out to eat wherever we want again. I sincerely hope you stalwart Saboscrivnerinos never have to spend this much time in the hospital, so you never have to try most of these meals for yourselves, but I also hoped this would be an interesting look at some of Orlando and Winter Park’s most “exclusive” dining.

Francisco’s Taco Madness

I think we can all agree that 2020 is one of the worst years ever, but on a personal level, I had a pretty rotten 2017 too. That summer, I was hospitalized with the worst pain of my life that turned out to be kidney stones (thanks for nothing, keto diet!). Then two weeks later I got what was probably the second-worst pain of my life, which turned out to be pneumonia, which I almost certainly caught in the hospital the first time. I missed two weeks of work recovering, and it all really shook me up and made me realize I’m getting old, and things are going to keep breaking. (And back then, even after that one-two punch, I didn’t know the half of it!)

Toward the end of those two weeks, I was out running errands, feeling sorry for myself, and also feeling hungry. What else is new, am I right? Driving down State Road 17-92, I passed the Lowe’s home improvement store and saw a familiar white trailer with a red and white striped awning, a sight I had seen countless times over the years. But this day, I was curious enough to stop, and I had all the time in the world to linger. It smelled so good, and as I perused the handwritten menu, I knew I had chosen wisely. The Mexican food was some of the best I’d ever tasted, and it was incredibly cheap and so satisfying. It helped lift me out of a deep existential depression, and made me feel physically better, too. This was a real treasure, and I felt like I had discovered it, despite them always being busy and having long lines.

I would later learn that taco trailer was called Francisco’s Taco Madness (https://www.facebook.com/Franciscos-Taco-Madness-Pinedo-rental-173063512788695/), and it became one of my favorite sights to see in Casselberry, whenever I drove by the Fern Park Lowe’s on State Road 17-92, just south of Semoran Boulevard. You have to follow their Facebook page to know when they’re going to be serving, but it’s usually between Wednesday and Saturday, afternoons only, usually just between 1 PM and 6 PM. I’ve been back many times over the last few years, but Saturdays are typically my only opportunity to visit. And since the lines really do get long, my recommendation is to be there close to the beginning, when they’re still putting up that striped awning.

Most recently, after a few weeks of being shut down, Francisco’s Taco Madness announced their triumphant return starting this past Tuesday, June 30th. They wouldn’t be at Lowe’s anymore, but at a new location literally two minutes away:

Anderson Motors – Good Cars 4 Good People
704 Prairie Lake Dr.
Fern Park, FL 32730

They are also asking diners to text their pickup orders to 407.865.4697, to cut down on crowds and help with social distancing. NOW’S YOUR CHANCE, PEOPLE!

Here is the menu:

I ordered my wife her favorite: two carne asada tacos, with cilantro, guacamole, and a splash of hot sauce, hold the onions ($2 each):

I got myself one chorizo taco with all of that, plus onions ($2):

Here are some lovely tacos from an earlier visit:

And I got my favorite burrito in all of Orlando, Francisco’s al pastor burrito ($8). It is huge and perfect in every way, the archetypal burrito of your dreams and mine:

It is so good that I included it in my list of Top Five Dishes of 2017, published in the Orlando Weekly‘s end of the year issue.

Here’s a cross-section so you can see the deliciousness wrapped inside that grilled 12″ flour tortilla: the perfectly marinated and slightly sweet al pastor pork, rice, beans, cheese, onions, peppers, guacamole, and a piquant sauce. It’s truly unparalleled.

This time I treated myself to a fresh-squeezed lemonade (something I have a hard time turning down), and I got the large for $4, which just comes in a styrofoam cup. It was really refreshing, especially after waiting outside in the early summer heat for my order to come up — probably the longest sustained period I’ve been outdoors since the quarantine started in March. They also offer regular canned sodas and bottled Jarritos Mexican sodas, made with cane sugar, which I love and recommend.

You can see that Francisco’s Taco Madness also offers quesadillas (which my wife loves), hamburgers, hot dogs, a kielbasa sausage sandwich, a barbecue pulled pork sandwich, a Philly cheesesteak, and even chicken salad. I’ve been tempted in the past by the kielbasa, which I’m imagining comes on a nice, lightly-griddled roll and covered with onions and peppers, but I always return to that al pastor burrito and one or more tacos.

Orlando is lucky to have so many outstanding Mexican options, especially for tacos. I’ve already reviewed my other favorites, which I think are synonymous with the best in town (Tortas El Rey, Hunger Street Tacos, MX Taco), but no list of my favorites or the best would be complete without Francisco’s Taco Madness. If you’re also driving through Fern Park and see that red and white striped awning over their white decorated trailer, stop whatever you’re doing, pull into Anderson Motors – Good Cars 4 Good People, and text your order to 407.865.4697. You will be so happy you did, and you’ll wonder what took you so long.

Tako Cheena

My wife and I have always been huge fans of Tako Cheena (http://mytakocheena.com/), the creative and bohemian Asian-Latin fusion restaurant on Mills Avenue, north of Colonial, in one of Orlando’s finest foodie neighborhoods, Mills 50. It used to be in a tiny space in a little strip plaza on Mills, with very few parking spaces in front, to the point where we’d often have to circle the block six or ten or twenty times, or more realistically, time our visits for when the place was just opening up. There was a somewhat steep step up that limited the accessibility for my walker-wielding wife, and a tiny, cramped dining room that further limited her mobility inside once I helped hoist her up. The food was always delicious, but it wasn’t the most comfortable surroundings, despite the hip, colorful, artsy decor.

Well, I was recently craving Tako Cheena after a rough week, and to my great joy, they recently moved into a larger building mere steps from their old location. And it has an actual parking lot, plus a spacious outdoor patio. I was just picking up takeout from an outside-facing window, so I didn’t linger or even peek inside to look at indoor seating. However, the new location already looks so much more comfortable and accessible, and that is like a dream come true for us.

The covered patio overlooks Mills Avenue, and you can see it is steps away from the original location:

Since the menu on the website doesn’t have most of their newer menu additions of the last few years, or any prices, this was the best shot I could get of the posted menu. A past favorite, Mary’s Greek Lil Lamb (a gyro in taco form) has never been on their old menu on the website, so I didn’t even think to order one this time, but I was glad to see it has been added to the new menu. The pernil asado, slow-roasted, marinated pork, is pretty darn great too, but I didn’t order that either on my most recent visit.

Since I haven’t even been here since I started this blog two years ago, I ordered a bunch of our old favorites. I got us each a panko-crusted cod “tako” ($4.50), with spicy mayo, shredded cabbage, and scallions on a soft flour tortilla. This was the first time they asked me if I wanted flour or corn tortillas, but they could have started giving customers that choice at any point in the last two or three years. These are my favorite fish tacos in Orlando, and I was sad to learn they were out of the usual sweet and sour onion sauce that goes on them, but they were still delicious. My wife, who always used to love these, thought hers was too spicy, so I ended up eating most of hers too. I love spicy mayo on anything, so they were perfect for me, as usual.

Miami kid that I am, I have a hard time turning down empanadas, those crispy-fried half moon-shaped pastries stuffed with a variety of savory or sometimes sweet fillings, sealed with a crimped edge. Different cultures make different empanadas, but I always prefer a deep-fried, crispy flour pastry shell, and those are the ones they make here. Tako Cheena always offers different beef, chicken, and vegan empanadas of the day ($3.25 each), always rotating creative fusion ingredients in each one. I asked what the beef empanada of the day was, and this one had seasoned ground beef like picadillo with mashed potatoes and sweet plantains. Yes please! I could have easily eaten two of more of those crispy fried pastries, especially since sweet plantains are a top ten favorite food for me, but I stuck to one.

The empanadas come with a very small plastic dipping cup of salsa. When I placed my phone order, the guy asked if I wanted sweet or spicy. I asked if I could try both, and he said yes. Well, my bill had a “GG” next to the empanada at no charge, and an “HJ” that I was charged 50 cents for, so that’s how I learned additional salsas come at a cost. I don’t mind, because I always love trying new salsas. I could be wrong, but looking at Tako Cheena’s website and the menu above, I’m guessing the “GG” refers to ginger guava salsa, and the “HJ” is probably habanero jackfruit salsa, even though they list it as “jackfruit habanero.”

The website advertises “BURRITOS THE SIZE OF BABY’S [sic] ARMS,” and they aren’t exaggerating. I ordered the Korean burrito ($10.75), stuffed to almost bursting with sweet and savory marinated beef bulgogi, kimchi fried rice with mixed vegetables, crema, sriracha, ginger scallion oil, and cilantro. It was a really interesting blend of flavors and textures wrapped in that huge, straining flour tortilla, which is one reason I prefer burritos to tacos. (GASP!) It’s so huge, I saved half for the next day, and even the half is a generous portion. That isn’t something I normally order at Tako Cheena, but I wanted to present more of a variety of options for my baker’s dozens of readers.

Look at how much room it takes up on our now-familiar green plates!

Here’s a shot with burrito and empanada interiors:

Another one of our long-time favorites isn’t listed on the menu on the website, but Tako Cheena has incredible arepas, sweet corn patties stuffed with a variety of ingredients. Our favorite is the four-cheese arepa ($7.50) with a big fried cheese patty, topped with pickled shredded carrots and other vegetables (maybe jicama or daikon radish? Although it looks similar to Filipino atchara, or pickled papaya salad), and spicy mayo.

Picking a favorite item on the whole menu feels like being forced to pick a favorite child, for those who have more than one child, but this arepa might be it:

Cross-section. I should note that the cheese is lightly fried on its exterior, but not battered or breaded like my beloved mozzarella sticks. It’s more like halloumi cheese that way, with a similar texture.

One thing you probably noticed by now, that I definitely appreciated, was how they packed all our takeout food either wrapped in foil wrappers or placed in cardboard boxes. It was nice to see some eco-friendly alternatives to styrofoam.

Even though some restaurants are reopening for dining in, my wife and I are in no hurry to start doing that again anytime soon. But now that Tako Cheena has a parking lot of its own and that convenient walk-up window, I’ll probably order more takeout from them in the weeks and months to come. I’m glad an old favorite is more accessible than ever before, and as good as ever.

Chain Reactions: Skyline Chili (Fort Lauderdale)

Skyline Chili (https://www.skylinechili.com/) is a chain restaurant started by Greek immigrant Nicholas Lambrinides in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1949. Cincinnati chili is very different from any other kind of chili you’ve tried before. There are no beans in it, it’s not spicy, and it’s a relatively thin meat sauce with finely ground beef — not thick or chunky. In addition to ground beef, it contains tomato paste, tomato sauce, onions, garlic, cider vinegar, and cumin, which sounds normal enough so far. But HOLD ONTO YOUR HATS, because Cincinnati chili ain’t Cincinnati chili without cinnamon, cloves, allspice, Worcestershire sauce, and maybe a bit of unsweetened baker’s chocolate, if you wanna get nuts. YOU WANNA GET NUTS? COME ON! LET’S GET NUTS!

At Skyline and its Midwestern rivals like Gold Star Chili, you can order chili by the bowl, topping a hot dog (Skyline calls them Coneys), or served in a “3-Way” (spaghetti, chili, and bright orange, finely shredded cheddar cheese), a “4-Way” (a 3-Way topped with onions or beans), or a “5-Way” (a 3-Way topped with onions and beans). I find the names hilariously ironic, because most people wouldn’t fare very well in a 3-way after eating a 3-Way, at least not for long. And don’t even bother trying any kind of way after a 5-Way!

Good thing I never bothered to monetize this blog, because I’ll probably lose multiple subscribers after this review, and we all know I don’t have that many to begin with.

Anyway, there are a few Skyline locations in Florida, but none here in Orlando. I’ve eaten at the one in Naples and two in South Florida (Sunrise and the one I’m reviewing here, in Fort Lauderdale), and there are others in Clearwater, Bradenton, and Fort Myers. All the others are in Ohio, Kentucky, and Indiana. Come on, Skyline! Orlando gets tourists from all around the world, including the Midwest. Send your 3-Ways our way!

I drove down to South Florida at the beginning of March, shortly before COVID-19 became a serious concern, to visit my family and best friend in Miami for the first time in far too long. I also had the sad experience of attending a friend’s funeral in Fort Lauderdale on my way down. By the time it ended, I needed to center myself before driving the last hour down to my parents’ house in Kendall, a Miami suburb. I was running on empty — emotionally drained, hungry, and craving comfort food. And what did I discover mere minutes from the service? A rare Skyline Chili sighting. Of course I had to stop, since I haven’t been to one in many years.

You know what’s interesting? Cincinnati’s chili restaurants like Skyline and Gold Star are usually referred to as “chili parlors” up there. These days, not a lot happens in parlors. You hear about parlor games and parlor tricks, but there’s an old-timey connotation to those. Of course there are ice cream parlors, but that’s pretty much it for food. And then there are funeral parlors, so don’t think I missed the significance of going from a funeral straight to a chili parlor.

This location (the Skyline Chili parlor, I should clarify) was set up like a diner, with regular tables, but also a counter with a row of stools facing the open kitchen. I always like to sit at the counter when it’s an option and I’m alone, so I parked on a stool and ordered a cheese Coney (Skyline’s small, chili and cheese-covered hot dogs) as an appetizer. It took less than a minute for the Coney to be served in front of me — a tiny hot dog on a soft, steamed bun with a squirt of yellow mustard, topped with the hearty chili, diced raw onions, and a mountain of almost neon orange shredded cheddar.

My kind and thoughtful waitress was thoughtful enough to offer me a disposable plastic bib. This was a godsend, considering I was still wearing my good black suit, white dress shirt, and skinny black tie from the funeral I had just come from. I was really worried about how I was going to get out of this restaurant without dripping, splashing, or splattering myself, and the bib greatly improved my chances of avoiding besmirchment.

Anyway, the cheese Coney was glorious. Everything my mind and mouth needed, even if my body might possibly regret it later. I could have put away a half-dozen of those, but I had another hour to drive before making it to my parents’ house. Don’t worry, though — I wasn’t done yet.

Yes, there was a hot dog under all that:

I couldn’t leave Fort Lauderdale without enjoying a nice 3-Way, and that was when I saw a sign advertising an “extreme” habanero and cheddar cheese blend as an alternative to the classic cheddar, advising curious diners to “turn up the heat.” So I got that, because if you’re going to have a 3-Way, you might as well make it as hot and extreme as possible. Again, moments later, it was in front of me, steaming, melting, fragrant spicy messy tempting.

This makes quite a mess, as you might expect from a 3-Way, but there were so many flavors and textures to enjoy, and the slower you go, the more sticky and melty everything gets. Thank goodness for that bib! But it totally hit the spot — my first Skyline fix in almost a decade, and on an afternoon where I really needed some uplift.

I should note that my entire bill for the cheese Coney, the 3-Way, and a fountain soda was only $12.70, which seems like a bargain at twice the price.

I should note that the Internet abounds with Cincinnati chili recipes. I’ve even tried some of them, and they’re all decent, if not identical to Skyline’s secret recipe. You can’t go wrong with those basic ingredients. Even if the idea of putting a little cinnamon and unsweetened chocolate in your chili sounds weird and wrong, step out of your culinary comfort zone, because you might discover you like it weird and wrong, and that weird and wrong is really so, so right.

You can also find Skyline Chili at some Publix supermarkets in the frozen food case, and I’ve even seen it in cans at Walmart, near the other canned chili like Hormel and Wolf Brand. It’s an acquired taste, and one I’m sure not all my readers will love, but I believe in trying everything once, and often twice… just to be sure. If you find the frozen or canned Skyline, you can even assemble a 3-Way in the comfort and safety of your own home and try it once for yourselves. Just keep The Saboscrivner in your thoughts while you experiment!

In fact, I’ve been cooking at home so much during this quarantine, writing this review inspired me to make my own Cincinnati-style chili with one of the many Skyline “copycat” recipes that are out there. I used a pound of ground chuck AND a pound of ground turkey, canned tomato sauce but no paste, added cinnamon and unsweetened chocolate I ground with my box grater, and even ground my own cloves and allspice berries in a small coffee grinder I use exclusively for spices. I let the chili sit in the fridge for almost two days before trying it, and that allowed me to skim a lot of the orange congealed fat off the top. Then I served it over good quality Flora brand spaghetti with a blend of extra-sharp cheddar and habanero cheddar that I shredded myself, and it was fantastic. It was thicker than Skyline’s, which I appreciated, and also spicier due to adding a little more cayenne pepper than the recipe I found called for, plus the habanero cheddar to turn up the heat and make it extreme. My cheese (Cabot brand) didn’t melt as quickly or as well as Skyline’s cheese, but my spaghetti was more al dente, and the whole concoction tasted great. Since I used two pounds of meat, I’ll be enjoying 3-Ways at home for the next several days.