Latin – The Saboscrivner

Alma Argentina

Alma Argentina (https://linktr.ee/AlmaArgentina) opened in late 2021, but my wife and I recently ate there for the first time. It is located at 3607 Aloma Avenue in Oviedo, tucked between Tuskawilla Road and the entrance to State Road 417. There is also a second, much newer location out in Celebration, but this one is close to home for us. We were heading for the 417, not sure what we wanted for an early dinner, and when I pointed out that it was there, she said Argentinian food sounded good, so I made a immediate U-turn. I’m so glad we made a last-minute, game-time decision to try it, because we both loved everything, and I highly recommend it to all.

I did not even know what to expect, but Alma Argentina is a small, sit-down restaurant with table service. Our server Julieta was extremely friendly and welcoming, and of course I said it was our first time. She came back quickly with fresh bread for the table, which neither of us expected, but it was a delightful surprise. This was outstanding bread! My photo doesn’t do it justice, but it was so soft, with such a nice, yielding, crackly outer crust, and it was served with a wonderful chimichurri for spreading and/or dipping. Chimichurri is one of the best condiments, especially when it is freshly made, as this almost certainly was. The blend of garlic, parsley, olive oil, and vinegar was so bright-tasting, it was an ideal complement to the bread, and to the festival of meats that followed.

Alma Argentina offers multiple flavors of empanadas, and you can mix and match in orders of three, six, or twelve. My wife was interested in the pork empanada, and I wanted to try pretty much all of them, so we settled for three. Imagine my surprise when Julieta asked if we wanted them baked or fried. I asked her what was better, and she didn’t hesitate to say “Fried.” It wasn’t long before she brought out three gorgeous empanadas, fried to perfection.

It was my wife’s idea to try the pork empanada, with slow-cooked pork shoulder, but I ended up eating most of it. With no other ingredients, I wondered if it might be a little dry or boring, but it absolutely wasn’t. The pork was so tender and flavorful!

I figured “When in Argentina, order the Classic Argentinian empanada.” This one came stuffed with seasoned ground beef and chopped onions, peppers, olives, and hard-boiled eggs. Magnificent! It was so juicy, it splattered my favorite guayabera shirt when I took a bite, and I wasn’t even mad. I liked the different textures in this one, but I am generally a fan of adding hard-boiled eggs to things, whether you’re talking about potato salad, chopped liver, or empanadas.

And this was the osso bucco empanada, with more slow-cooked, tender meat, onions, peppers, and what looked like diced carrots and possibly a pea. It was almost like stew in there, so it got pretty messy, but so delicious. These are some of the best empanadas in Orlando, without a doubt. Despite the wet ingredients, the fried pastry shells held up extraordinarily well.

My wife ordered costillas (beef ribs), and she received a large portion with two thick slabs of tender, marbled meat, cross-cut so you got a few short stubs of bone studded in the meat. We were both a little surprised when Julieta asked her how she wanted it cooked, since nobody ever asks how you want ribs cooked. My wife wisely chose medium rare, and it all made sense when they were served in this cross-cut style. It was the perfect temperature. When ribs are sliced this way, the meat easily tears off from around the bone, and it is a very satisfying process to pull the meat off by hand. They reminded me of flanken, an Ashkenazi Jewish dish of braised short ribs cross-cut like this, and you also see them in this style in Korean galbi, just with a sweet marinade.

You can choose a side with the entrees and sandwiches, and she made another wise decision, choosing fries. These are some of my favorite kinds of fries, twice-fried with a crispy, almost batter-like coating. Orlando’s wonderful Brazilian restaurant Mrs. Potato serves very similar fries, and these were on the same level. We shared them, and I was dipping back and forth between ketchup and chimichurri. Even though I can take or leave a lot of fries, these were something special.

Since the bread was so good, and since we were already trying a few different meats between the three empanadas and the beef ribs, I decided to try a choripan sandwich, which came with two different kinds of chorizo sausages. I guess I was hoping for Spanish-style cured chorizo, sliced thin and slightly spicy, similar to salami and pepperoni. Instead, the sandwich on the same delicious fresh bread included two link sausages, both cut the long way. Their shape made it hard to keep them contained in the sandwich, especially with butter lettuce, sliced tomatoes, mayo, and chimichurri adding to things slipping and sliding. This was an extremely messy sandwich to eat, but worth the struggle.

Here’s a look at the inside. Like I said, both sausages were very savory and kind of greasy, but not spicy, and not cured like Spanish chorizo or your typical Italian salumi. Still good, though!

And for a side, I chose potato salad, since I have been on a kick of trying different versions of potato and macaroni salads whenever I find them on menus. It was good, and better once I mixed in the remaining chimichurri that came with our bread, but the fries definitely took the prize.

I feel like a boob — a real boludo — for not trying Alma Argentina sooner, especially since it is so close to where we live. Everything we tried exceeded our expectations, as did the overall experience of dining in. We will definitely add it to our regular rotating restaurant repertoire, especially for takeout. I look forward to working my way through the *19* savory empanada options, and my wife will want to try the three dessert empanadas at some point. She likes steak even more than I do, so I’m sure she will switch it up and try some of the different Argentinian steaks on future visits. Maybe we’ll share the parrillada, a mixed grill platter that comes with flap meat, beef ribs, chorizo, morcilla (blood sausage, which I love, but she wants nothing to do with), sweetbreads, and chinchulines (grilled beef intestines, which are tastier than you would think).

Regardless, if you like meat, don’t do what I did and sleep on Alma Argentina for over two years. It’s a small, family-owned restaurant that is easy to miss if you’re driving by that little segment of Oviedo. Stop in, and you will be wowed by their hospitality and hearty, flavorful food the way we were. ¡Che, buen provecho!

Smoke & Dough (Miami)

I try to visit Miami at least once a year. I always enjoy it a lot more as a visitor than I did growing up down there. On my last trip down in late July, my BFF (best foodie friend) and I went out to two different restaurants, which were both great. But I could not wait any longer to rave about Smoke & Dough (https://smokeanddough.com/), which just this week made the New York Times’ 2023 Restaurant List, “the 50 places in the United States that [its reporters, editors, and critics are] most excited about right now.” It was one of only three Florida restaurants to make the prestigious list, so it is in rarified company.

Smoke & Dough (not to be confused with Smoke & Doughnuts, a new Orlando restaurant I have not yet tried) is located in West Kendall — hardly the “cool, fun, sexy” Miami you are envisioning, but a pretty typical suburban area. However, it is totally worth the drive from wherever you may be staying (or partying) in South Florida. It is a barbecue restaurant first and foremost, but like so many things in Miami, it blends Latin and Caribbean flavors together to set it apart. Owners Harry and Michelle Coleman opened its doors in January 2022, next door to their previous venture, the acclaimed Empanada Harry’s Bakery and Cafe, serving savory empanadas from Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Venezuela, and Peru, as well as gourmet signature empanadas, vegan versions, and sweet ones too. Unfortunately, Empanada Harry’s was closed when we went to Smoke & Dough for dinner, or we would have tried it as well.

But Smoke & Dough was a marvel, a singular restaurant that amazed and astonished in every way, and not just because I had just driven down from Orlando and was starving. We started out with ultimate loaded nachos, topped with smoked pulled pork, avocado-cilantro sauce, pickled red onions, pickled jalapenos, tomatoes, cilantro, salty cotija cheese, and nata, a Brazilian dairy product that is similar to sour cream, but is a little sweeter on top of being creamy and rich. The tortilla chips were freshly fried, and all the ingredients sang in hot harmony, backed up by spicy Latin rhythm. These were easily some of the best nachos I’ve ever eaten in my life.

Next up we shared some cafecito-rubbed brisket. We got three huge, thick slices of USDA Prime Angus brisket, smoked for 15 hours and rubbed with spices blended with Cuban espresso (maybe Cafe Pilon or Cafe Bustelo, the Marvel and DC of Cuban coffee). It was so tender and juicy, with great fat marbling — not too lean or too fatty — and practically melted in my mouth. The Cuban coffee flavor really came through and blended with the rich, smoky meat. If you ever have a chance to try this, or anything like this, like a coffee-rubbed steak, I definitely recommend it. The brisket came with piquant, vinegary chimichurri sauce that it didn’t even need, but it was delicious anyway, as well as more of those pickled red onions and house-made dill pickle slices that were also top-notch.

I ordered a side of platanitos to share, sweet plantains (one of my favorite foods in the world) topped with more cotija cheese and a drizzle of nata. These were even better than they look.

Smoke & Dough only serves its smoked burgers as specials on Friday, and we were lucky enough to go there on a Friday. These are half-pound patties made out of smoked brisket, ground in-house and served on beef tallow-toasted potato buns, accompanied by a choice of fries or cole slaw. We could not refuse! The only question was which burgers should we get?

Well, there were so many things on the menu we wanted to sample, including pork belly and pastrami. Luckily for us, one of the burger specials was an al pastor burger, topped with smoked pork belly, smoked pineapple, smoked gouda cheese, pickled red onion, and chipotle mayo. Those are all things I love on their own, so how could they go wrong combined on top of a smoked burger?

We cut it in half to share, and it was a truly inspired burger. The al pastor pork belly was so rich and luxurious, and the sweet, crunchy pickled onions, sweet and smoky pineapple, and tangy chipotle mayo added so much depth of flavor. Here’s a cross-section:

And here are the fries, which were fine, but better when dipped in the house ancho chile-guava barbecue sauce (which we had to ask for, but you can also buy it by the bottle).

I was thrilled to see a Reuben burger was another option, this one topped with pastrami made from smoked, house-cured brisket, Swiss cheese, thousand island sauce, and sauerkraut. I asked for slaw with mine, to get two kinds of cabbage on one plate (practically a salad at this point!), and to try as many things as possible.

This was another winner — a beautiful burger with all those great Reuben ingredients. Even though corned beef is much more common on a Reuben, I will take pastrami over corned beef pretty much any chance I get when it is an option, and this was top-notch pastrami. It was sliced thin and had plenty of peppery bark and marbled fat. The sourness of the sauerkraut helped break up all the salty richness, and the slaw had a nice vinegary crunch to it.

I wasn’t going to bother with dessert after a meal like that, but my buddy ordered smoked flan (something that would never even occur to me to make, much less order), and it was killer. I usually don’t even care for flan, but this was the best flan I’ve ever eaten, and it did have a light smoky flavor. I ended up a big flan!

If Smoke & Dough was in some trendy part of Miami, like Wynwood or (God help us all) South Beach, it would probably have lines out the door all the time. Instead, on a Friday night in the humble ‘burbs of West Kendall, we only waited 15 minutes for a table. But the legend is growing, even beyond Miami, thanks to making the New York Times’ 2023 Restaurant List, and here’s your friendly neighborhood Saboscrivner, boosting that signal even further (although let’s face it, probably not that much further).

This was one of the best meals I’ve eaten in 2023, and one of the best meals I’ve ever eaten in Miami. That’s high praise either way. Next time you’re hitting the beach or da clubs, take a detour to 4013 SW 152nd Ave (right off Bird Road), a part of Miami you never would have ventured into otherwise. Consider making a reservation first! By the time you finally make it down to Smoke & Dough, you might need it.

Four Flamingos: A Richard Blais Florida Kitchen

Four Flamingos: A Richard Blais Florida Kitchen (https://fourflamingosorlando.com/) is an upscale restaurant at the very upscale Hyatt Regency Grand Cypress Resort hotel near Walt Disney World in Orlando. This is not the kind of restaurant The Saboscrivner and his wife usually dine at, as constant readers can attest. We prefer the hidden gems for affordable everyday meals, not these high-roller, baller, shot-caller spots. It even has a Michelin recommendation! But I offered to take Doctor Professor Ma’am, aka Señora Saboscrivner, somewhere nice to celebrate her birthday earlier this year, and as usual, I sent her a bunch of different menus to choose from.

Four Flamingos is usually only open for dinner, but they happened to have a fancy all-you-can-eat brunch on a Sunday in late February, and it sounded really good to both of us. It was a whopping $92 per person — a huge indulgence for sure, but we live as simply and within our means as possible, so we can indulge like this once in a while with clear consciences. However, if anyone decides to stop reading right here and now, I couldn’t even blame you.

Richard Blais is a big-time celebrity chef, a Top Chef winner, and he was even there on the day of the brunch, helping Chef de Cuisine Shelby Farrell cook (or at least helping direct things in the kitchen) and greeting some guests who were marking out in his presence. We got the latest possible brunch reservation (quite late in the afternoon), which was a lucky break due to what a big deal this was, and I knew we were going to have a memorable experience.

When we entered the busy dining room, there was a singer-guitarist who was quite loud, making it difficult to carry on a conversation. Thankfully, at least he was good. As I get older, even though I still love going to concerts, I find live music at restaurants tends to be oppressively, unpleasantly loud, to the point of detracting from the overall experience.

The brunch menu featured five small plates from the kitchen, and they were all on display as we walked to our table in a glass-enclosed atrium-like dining room. However, each guest could only select two, and they all looked so good. The “Floribbean” influences of Four Flamingos were strong in each of these dishes, featuring flavors that are native to our strange Southern state and its island neighbors in the Caribbean Sea.

The sweet tea short rib was served on a bed of grits, with squash and an orange glaze. I love short ribs, so I ended up selecting this one.

Even though I’m not typically an eggs benedict fan (or a brunch fan in general), I also selected this mangu benny, a Dominican twist on the iconic brunch dish, with mashed plantains, a poached egg, Portuguese-style linguica sausage as a higher-end version of the classic Dominican salami, and datil pepper hollandaise sauce.

My wife wisely chose the SBLT, with swordfish bacon (holy moley, this was incredible), local lettuce and tomato, and peppercorn aioli on grilled Olde Hearth Bakery sourdough bread. She loved it, and she was kind enough to give me the tomato and pink pickled onions, as well as a taste of the smoky swordfish bacon. We both love swordfish as well as any kind of smoked fish. What a brilliant idea this was!

She also chose the guava and goat cheese tart, with chevre (goat cheese) panna cotta, guava jam, and preserved lemon in a flaky little crust. I usually like guava a lot more than she does, but she ended up really loving this one too.

Sadly, neither of us got a chance to try the chicken & the egg, the fifth and final small plate — a Scotch egg made with chicken sausage cradling a soft-boiled egg, served with coconut white barbecue sauce.

Beyond the small plates, there were all kinds of decadently delicious options to choose from, including tiny WiAnno oysters from Cape Cod, venus clams, and house-made cured salmon gravlax, dyed purpley-red with beet juice.

There were also poached, peeled shrimp and cracked stone crab claws, a real delicacy.

Needless to say, I went to town on these paper-thin slices of “Southern Smash” salami, bresaola (air-cured salted beef, kind of like beef prosciutto), and sumptuous duck pastrami.

There were fancy cheeses to choose from, including an olive oil goat cheese in that glass bowl.

I really liked the port wine pate mousse, since my mom introduced me to the wonders of liverwurst when I was a little kid, and I also love Jewish-style chopped liver like crazy. (This was good, but honestly, good chopped liver is so much better!)

I had to photograph this gorgeous antipasto salad with multicolored cauliflower, grape tomatoes, and Brazilian sweety drop peppers. It tasted good too, but there were more exciting things to sample.

Pardon the mediocrity of this photo, but this wagyu beef tenderloin with a chimichurri rub was one of the only letdowns, sitting under the hot lights of this carving station. My wife and I both prefer our steak juicy and rare, and these pre-sliced pieces were all more done than we like, and dryer, too. But realizing this in advance, I only took a couple of small pieces, so I could say I tried it.

Some of the tastiest things I tried were the sauces. Every sauce was magnificent, including the California red barbecue sauce, jalapeño chimichurri, and Richard Blais steak sauce. Each one was better than the last, and they helped add dimension and excitement to the overdone tenderloin.

And this isn’t a monster from a Final Fantasy game at this carving station, but rather a whole marinated and fried black grouper. Grouper is one of our favorite fish, and it is so hard to find on menus in and around Orlando. Usually we have to schlep out to Florida’s western Gulf Coast for buttery, flaky grouper around St. Petersburg and Clearwater, but this guy was pretty great. Unlike the cauliflower salad, this tasted a lot better than it looked.

Anyway, here is my actual sweet tea short rib, which was cooked to tender perfection, soft enough to cut or shred with the side of a fork. For a lifelong Florida Man, I admit that I have never been into grits and probably never will get into them, but these were far better grits than anything else I’ve ever had.

The mangu benny was perfectly fine. I loved the linguica sausage, the perfectly poached egg (a reminder of why I never poach eggs at home), and the datil pepper hollandaise sauce, but the mangu mash was a little bland. Maduros (sweet fried ripe plantains) are one of my favorite things to eat in the entire world, but mangu is one plantain dish I will probably continue to pass on.

And this was the gorgeous SBLT up close, with the swordfish bacon on full display. It was a hit.

Unfortunately, my wife wasn’t feeling fantastic on the day in question, and she was feeling worse and worse throughout the meal (through no fault of the restaurant or the food). After all that anticipation, we left much earlier than we would have liked, and definitely did not get to eat as much or for as long as we hoped. I feel like I performed valiantly, doing what I could to “beat the house,” as I do in any buffet setting, but could have fought harder and gone on longer.

In the end, we paid a hell of a lot of money for some fancy foods that I love — cured meats, oysters, smoked and cured fish, cheese, grouper, interesting sauces — but I don’t think we would return to Four Flamingos for another one of these brunches. Not for that price, at least. My wife agreed. I’m glad we did it, and my only regret was that I didn’t put away more. But there are better values to be had, even if you’re looking for luxury, seeking swankiness, or on an odyssey for opulence. I remember the Sunday jazz brunch at the Boheme restaurant at the Grand Bohemian Hotel had a lot of similar things back in the day, but was cheaper and closer to home for us. I wonder if they’re still doing that. I wonder if I can “beat the house” there like I used to. Stay tuned, stalwart Saboscrivnerinos.

But Four Flamingos recently had another one of these all-you-can-eat brunches for Mother’s Day, and I’m sure they will do more in the future, so be on the lookout. Did anyone attend either this one from late February or the Mother’s Day one? What did you think? What were the high points for you, and were there any low points at all? For those who have eaten dinner there, how would that compare to a brunch like this? Let us know!

Maya Café Lounge & Gallery

Doctor Professor Ma’am and I recently visited Maya Café Lounge & Gallery (https://www.instagram.com/mayacafelounge/), located at 1980 Howell Branch Road, at the edge of where suburban Casselberry blends into Winter Park. The pink building beckons, promising beauty and hope in the midst of suburban sprawl, like a rose stretching sunward, strong and tall, from a crack in a concrete sidewalk. Maya Café opened in December of 2022, so it has been around for six months now, but we only recently learned of its existence — late bloomers for life.

You have to love any restaurant with a handwritten chalkboard sign outside, advertising its specials.

Inside, another chalkboard listed some of the sweet coffee drinks available at the cafe, accompanied by a golden maneki neko (lucky cat).

Those waving cats, ubiquitous at so many Asian restaurants, are supposed to be Japanese bobtails. They are supposed to bring good luck and fortune, but I love cats so much, if I meet any cat at any time, I consider myself lucky. Just to clarify, this adorable maneki neko statue was the only cat I glimpsed at the restaurant.

And yet another chalkboard listed the hot coffee drinks and several other menu items.

We were immediately dazzled and overwhelmed by the stunning surroundings. Maya Café is an eclectic, eccentric, artsy space with strong feminine energy, which makes sense, as it is run by three generations of women. After we sat down and placed our orders with Celeste, we took in the beautiful, unique décor that elevates this family restaurant above others.All these flowers on the fall behind us? Actually three-dimensional, with petals popping off the wall.

Behind this counter, around this woman’s beckoning glance, were song lyrics like “How deep is your love,” “I wish I was special,” and “The winner takes it all.”

On the other side of the dining room we saw a beautiful chandelier made of ropes and hanging light bulbs, a ceiling of leaves, a gorgeous classic Corvette, and lots of art and some clothing for sale.

There is so much to look at here, and it doesn’t feel like those corporate chain restaurants that say “Hey, look at all this crazy crap on the walls!” like Uncle Moe’s Family Feedbag. Everything is one of a kind, and much of it is for sale.

The Corvette actually forms unique booths surrounding glass coffee tables.

I can no longer drink coffee at all, for multiple reasons, but this was my wife’s beautiful iced mochacchino, served in a mason-style jar. She loved how rich and chocolatey it was, and how good the whipped cream on top was.

She ordered the eggplant dip for herself, but it was so much food (especially with all those pita bread wedges), she ended up taking most of it home.

It was nothing like babaganush (which we love so much from Zeytin Turkish Cuisine), but still really good. This eggplant dip contained balsamic glaze, pomegranate seeds, sesame seeds, olives, walnuts, and Greek yogurt (I think), among other things.

I ordered the Maya burger, which I was a little skeptical about, because we were in such an artsy, hipstery, vegetarian-friendly café and not what I think of as a burger joint, but it was such a pleasant surprise. I was blown away from the first bite, and I quickly devoured it after giving some of the patty and the perfectly cooked bacon to my wife to try. I will go out on a limb and say it is one of the best burgers in Orlando, and almost certainly the most underrated and slept-on burger. The patty is a blend of beef and chorizo sausage, and they cooked it to an ideal medium rare — juicy, not smashed flat. It was topped with lettuce, cheese, unobtrusive pickle slices, French’s fried onions (I love these things and eat them as a snack sometimes; they aren’t just for green bean casserole anymore!), and that great bacon, all on a brioche bun.
That Maya burger was a beautiful combination of flavors, textures, and colors, not unlike the Maya Café itself. Perfect in every way.

The burger came with fries that were just okay, but some seasoning or even some more salt would have improved them a lot.

We were all in at that point, so I ordered fried chicken tacos for us to share. We got two in our order, and they came with flour tortillas and street corn dip, which you can also order as a dip of its own.

Close-up of the street corn dip, which included bacon, sour cream, cotija cheese, jalapeños, red onion, garlic, and cilantro. We both thought the chicken tacos were just okay, but the street corn dip was the standout. I would order it separately in the future.

After staring at this glass display case of Argentinian-style empanadas throughout our meal, I couldn’t help but ask about them.

I ended up ordering a beef empanada:

It had seasoned ground beef inside, similar to Cuban picadillo, but less tomatoey. The shell was flaky baked pastry, rather than fried like the Cuban empanadas I grew up eating in Miami (okay, Kendall). I’m very glad I tried it.

This was a guava empanada. I love guava, but my wife usually doesn’t. Still, she was so intrigued by the beautiful, golden pastry crust, she ended up eating most of this one, and she really enjoyed the guava. All I wanted was the tiniest morsel, just so I could say that I also approved. I do.

For dessert, my wife wanted to try a Nutella-filled croissant. I didn’t even think she liked Nutella, but she did that day! I didn’t have any, but it sure looked and smelled good. She took a bite at the restaurant but enjoyed most of it for breakfast the following day.

And after all that food, normally I would never have ordered dessert, but they had lemon pie on the menu, and that is one of my favorite desserts of all time, particularly the version I make — a creamy filling of fresh-squeezed lemon or other citrus juice, swirled into sweetened condensed milk, chilled and set in the fridge, in a buttery, salty-sweet Ritz cracker crust. It’s the perfect summertime dessert, and I am obsessed with it. The version at Maya Café was very similar to mine, except it had a soft, yielding graham cracker crust instead of my saltier Ritz crust — perfect with this pie, as it would have been with key lime pie or cheesecake. It was less tangy than my pie, but it was still wonderful. It was the perfect end to this eclectic, multicultural meal full of surprises and wonders.

We will definitely return to Maya Café Lounge & Gallery, especially because it is so close to home, and so damn cool, and that Maya burger is a modern masterpiece. I want to spread the word and boost the signal to support such a unique, woman-owned business, also because it is in an area people may not venture to. But it’s really not that far out of the way. It is just around the corner from some local favorites like Kai Asian Street Fare and Bagel King, and people drive all the way to those from every corner of Orlando (as well they should). Well, here’s one more stop for your next trip to Casselberry, stalwart Saboscrivnerinos. You heard it here first… or at least you heard it here.

And if that wasn’t enough, there is a super-cool taco trailer right outside Maya Café: La Patrona, run by Celeste’s stepfather. I have every intention of trying that soon as well!

Crocante Restaurant

I’ve been to Crocante Restaurant (https://crocantekitchen.com/) three times now — twice dining in and most recently for takeout — since it opened in late 2022 in the old Fuddruckers location on East Colonial Drive. I have been a Fuddruckers fanboy ever since I was about twelve years old, and I was overjoyed when that franchised location opened near my work back in 2017. Then I was crushed when it closed in 2022, but I hoped whatever opened in its place would be halfway decent.

Well, I am extremely pleased to report that chef/owner Yamuel Bigio’s second Crocante location is far beyond “halfway decent.” It is the best Puerto Rican cuisine I’ve ever had, and it will enrich the neighborhood and the city of Orlando. Since I started composing this review, the original Crocante location in Kissimmee, which was apparently much smaller and more casual, has closed. I get that Chef Bigio might want to focus on this newer, larger space, and anyone who tries it will be able to see the plan paid off.

I went with a friend and co-worker on my first visit, back in December. This friend appreciates good food on the level I do, and I knew we would make wise choices. He ordered carne frita encebollada ($17), fried pork chunks covered with sautéed onions. At the time, it came with two “house sides,” so he chose boiled yuca in mojo sauce and a “specialty side” for a $2.50 upcharge, arroz con gandules, or rice with pigeon peas.

I’ve never seen a restaurant plate its rice so nicely! This deserved another photo from a different angle, along with a special shout-out.

I ordered what I had heard was the best thing on the menu, the porchetta de pernil ($18), also known as pork leg porchetta, slow-roasted with garlic and herbs and served with crispy, crackly skin. I had already seen some diners’ photos of a big, beautiful, thick, round slice of porchetta, but mine came chopped into chunks. I thought nothing of it, because it was one of the best things I had eaten in a long time. In fact, it made my list of Top Ten Tastes of 2022 in Orlando Weekly.For one of my sides, I chose the arroz blanco con habichuelas rosadas, white rice and pink beans, which were awesome. Again, the rice was plated beautifully, and the stewed beans were rich and meaty. I could have made a filling and satisfying meal of just those. They seemed to use short grain rice, which I associate more with sushi than Latin food, and it was so buttery. Latin restaurants always make better rice than whatever I make in my Aroma rice cooker at home. Could butter be the actual secret ingredient? It does make everything better!

For my other side, I chose a “specialty side” for a $2.50 upcharge: ensalada de coditos, or pasta salad. I’m on a kick of trying pasta salad or macaroni salad whenever I find them on menus, and this one did not disappoint. It was a mayonnaise-based macaroni salad with chunks of cheese and ham, a very pleasant surprise. I could have also made a meal of this!

About a month later, I returned to Crocante with another friend, an intrepid diner who is usually the first person I know to try any new restaurant, but this was his first visit. We started out sharing empandillas de bistec encebollado ($9), an order of two steak and onion turnovers. Of course we each ate one, and they were wonderful. Comedian Jim Gaffigan once said there is no such thing as a bad empanada, and I tend to agree, even if this particular menu calls them “empanadillas.” (If that translates to “little empanadas,” they were still a very good size, and delicious.)
I love the attention to detail at Crocante. The creamy, herby dipping sauce was excellent, and even the garnish of arugula was dressed with a tangy vinaigrette, making it a legit side salad.

For this lunch, my friend and I had both figured out that to get the big, beautiful slice of porchetta — tender pork loin and unctuous, melty pork belly with crispy skin — we had to order the somewhat misleadingly named la kan kan rotisserie, also known as the boneless rotisserie pork chop ($34). What I got last time was the chopped porchetta de pernil, but this here, at twice the price, is the real house specialty.
Like most entrees at Crocante at that time, it came with two “house sides,” and my friend chose the same white rice and pink beans I enjoyed so much last time, plus boiled yuca with mojo sauce (and peppers).

I opted for different sides with my la kan kan rotisserie/porchetta, as much as I loved the sides from my first visit. This time I got maduros (sweet fried plantains; one of my favorite foods of all time), and the “specialty side” of arroz con gandules (rice with pigeon peas) that my co-worker raved about last time, for a $2.50 upcharge.

Here are two sauces that our server brought us. The one on the left was a slightly spicy, tangy vinaigrette with chili peppers floating in it, and the one on the right was creamy, a little spicy, and extremely garlicky.

I want to show you these huge rolled porchettas on display in their raw state, before being roasted to tender, juicy perfection:

And here is one with that crispy, crackly skin, just waiting to be sliced and served.

Most recently, I finally ordered morcilla when bringing home a takeout order on St. Patrick’s Day, because I had been wanting to try Crocante’s version of blood sausage. It sounds gross, but I always love sausages and organ meats. It might be offal, but it was far from awful! In fact, it was delicious, with a crispy casing and soft, savory, yielding interior. It was a lot less crumbly and sticky than other versions of morcilla I’ve had before. This was a half-pound portion that didn’t come with any sides, but you can also order it by the pound.

I also brought la kan kan rotisserie home for my wife to finally try, after I’ve spent the last two months raving about it being one of the finest pieces of meat you can eat in Orlando. She loved it, which did not surprise me at all. We have both eaten plenty of dry roast pork from all kinds of restaurants, including other Puerto Rican restaurants’ versions of the “chuleta kan kan” that were fried until they were dried out. We’ve also ordered too many chicharrones that were too crunchy and hard to chew, that made us feel like our teeth were in danger. But this was a masterpiece, even finer than the ones my buddy and I enjoyed dining at Crocante not that long ago. It was still warm and perfect, even after driving it home to Casselberry. And the two of us barely made a dent, so it was just as good the next day. This time, it came with a small corn muffin, that was moist and sweet and delicious — one more pleasant surprise and great little detail from Crocante. I like sweet cornbread, but it is dry and crumbly at a lot of places, including some Southern restaurants and barbecue joints that should know better.

I ordered the arroz con gandules again for my wife to try, since she always likes rice and pigeon peas. We both marveled at how much meat was in it, so vegetarians beware. (Unfortunately, Crocante would not be a fantastic restaurant for vegetarians in general, with how meat-centric it is.)

I also ordered maduros, but when I arrived and saw the printed receipt, I noticed I had been charged $4.50 for them. When they brought me my takeout order, I pointed out that the menu online said that the la kan kan rotisserie came with two sides, not just one. Furthermore, the person I spoke to on the phone didn’t tell me there would be a charge for the second side. They argued and said the new policy is entrees come with one side plus the little corn muffin. Very politely, I said that I looked at the menu on their website when I called it in, and it was the same as it ever was, showing entrees came with two sides. They said they would let the owner know to change the menu on the website, but they did not offer to refund me the $4.50. Dear readers, as much as I love this restaurant and still recommend it, that pissed me off. Not cool, Crocante. $4.50 isn’t a huge amount of money, but it would have been such an easy thing for them to make right. It’s the principle of the thing, and it left a bad taste in my mouth, after all my previous praise. They did not handle that well.

Crocante is five minutes from my work, and the food has been terrific every time. Despite that one annoying lapse, I would still go back because it is the best Puerto Rican restaurant I’ve ever been to. Please check it out for yourself, especially if you like pork and want to try what might be the best pork dish ever. Just remember to order only one side, despite what the menu on the website still says, a whole month after that interaction.

Pig Floyd’s Urban BBQ

Pig Floyd’s Urban BBQ (https://www.pigfloyds.com/) is a beloved, locally owned and operated restaurant in Orlando’s Mills 50 district, filled with some of our best local dining options. A lot of people credit it as being the best barbecue place in the city, despite not being the most traditional barbecue style. Proprietor Thomas Ward has combined Latin, Caribbean, and Asian culinary influences with delicious meats smoked low and slow, and that sets Pig Floyd’s apart from the crowd.

Earlier this year, I met a friend from the Orlando Foodie Forum out there for lunch on a weekend, which was admittedly my first visit to Pig Floyd’s in several years. I was happy to see there was a large, covered outdoor patio, which made me feel more at ease hanging out to eat there.

My friend ordered the banh mi sandwich ($11.99), which comes with a choice of oakwood-smoked pulled pork, tender char-grilled chopped chicken thighs, or deep fried pork belly with “lucky dragon” sauce, pickled vegetables, jalapeño, and garlic ginger aioli on a toasted baguette. It is about double the price of the excellent, traditional banh mi sandwiches available at so many great Vietnamese restaurants in Mills 50 district, but you get what you pay for, since none of those other places are serving meats of this quality.
His banh mi came with a side order of apple fennel slaw that he raved about.

I ordered the Mills 50 sandwich ($12.99), with oakwood-smoked brisket, house-made pimento cheese, caramelized onions, and red peppers served on a hoagie roll. It was a terrific choice, full of ingredients and flavors I love. The side order of sticky-sweet maduros (sweet fried plantains, one of my favorite dishes) was a perfect accompaniment to the rich, heavy sandwich.

Despite getting a sandwich featuring beef brisket, I couldn’t help myself from ordering a pork al pastor taco ($3.99), featuring pulled pork with roasted pineapple, onion, cilantro, and tomatillo sauce. It was so good — even better than it looks below.

I couldn’t believe I had stayed away from Pig Floyd’s for so long. It was even better than I remembered, so I intend to make my next visit a heck of a lot sooner, and to eventually work my way through Thomas Ward’s meat-centric menu.

Grocery Grails: BarbaCuban Sauces

Longtime readers of this humble food blog, the stalwart Saboscrivnerinos, know I am obsessed with condiments and sauces, to the point that I will plan entire meals around certain ones and check grocery stores wherever I am for new condiments I might not be able to find back at home. I occasionally take breaks from restaurant reviews on this blog to occasionally highlight grocery store finds in a recurring feature called Grocery Grails, and that got a spinoff of its own, another recurring feature called Cutting the Mustard, where I review different mustards.

Earlier this year, I was introduced to a whole new line of sauces I’ve never seen for sale before, and I was actually encouraged to review them on my blog. A foodie friend with impeccable taste and a job in marketing gave me the sauces to try. He told me that if I like them, they would be grateful if I reviewed them, but if I don’t like them, I’d be under no obligation. No money changed hands, just a few bottles of sauce. I’ve always taken pride in maintaining the independent status of this food blog, not taking any kind of quid pro quo in exchange for good reviews, and I’m not about to start now. I’m no influencer-for-hire, just a guy who loves to try new foods and tell people what I think of them. As a result, I was stoked to sample some new sauces, free from any conflicts of interest or ethical worries, and even more stoked that they were good enough to feature in a Grocery Grails segment. (In fact, two of them are mustard-based, so this is also an official Cutting the Mustard column!) So here we go!

BarbaCuban sauces (https://barbacuban.com/) are the creation of the BarbaCuban himself, Jose Juarez. Back in 2015, he appeared on the Live with Kelly and Michael show and won the title of “America’s New Grill Star,” a nationwide contest sponsored by the show. The secret to his BarbaCuban Sandwich success was his 455 Sauce, a tangy, creamy blend of three “M”s: mustard, mayo, and mojo criollo, the marinade that brings citrus and garlic flavors to so many Cuban pork and chicken dishes. Now you can buy it, along with all of his other condiments and sauces, on the website.

The BarbaCuban website showed me that 455 Sauce is named after the engine block of Jose’s GTO convertible, which was a mystery to me until just now. But I have been enjoying both the regular and hot 455 Sauces for months now, using them for everything from chicken marinades to dips for fries to the base for chicken salad, cole slaw, and honey mustard salad dressing. As I’ve shown in my previous Cutting the Mustard columns, I consider myself a mustard aficionado and connoisseur, and BarbaCuban 455 Sauces have been a terrific, versatile addition to my condiment collection and my mustard museum.

Here are the ingredients for the hot 455 Sauce. I finished the bottle of the regular version a while back and recycled it already, but I’m sure it is very similar, minus the smoked ghost pepper powder:

Here is the hot 455 Sauce accompanying a platter of chicken salad sandwiches I made on nice, fresh Cuban bread from the legendary Alessi Bakery in Tampa, the subject of my review from last week. I pulled every morsel of meat off one of those gigantic mutant Costco rotisserie chickens and mixed it with chopped cornichons, pepperoncini peppers, and sun-dried tomatoes, raisins, a good bit of hot 455 Sauce (where I would normally use mayo and some other kind of mustard), worcestershire sauce, and pretty much every herb and spice in my spice drawer.

Here’s that hot 455 Sauce again, served with a grilled cheese sandwich with homemade pickled onions on sourdough bread, with chicken sausages on the side. It’s a ridiculously versatile condiment — definitely the spiciest of the six BarbaCuban sauces I sampled, but creamy enough to be a great ingredient and/or dip for anything, in a way most conventional mustards aren’t unless you mix them up with mayo or something like that. Mr. Juarez has already done that mayo-mixing for you!

Ketchup might be the most popular condiment in the United States, but it still has a polarizing reputation. People either like ketchup or hate it. I like it fine, but only for certain applications: burgers, fries, onion rings, and making a glazed crust for meatloaf. I do most of my grocery shopping at Aldi, so I have no problem buying private labels and store brands, but for ketchup, I must admit I’ve always been a Heinz loyalist. Nothing else ever tastes or feels quite right. I’ve been to some restaurants that serve “house-made” ketchups, and I always steel myself for something that tastes like Christmas — chefs going hard with cinnamon and cloves, either too thick or too thin and never quite right.

But anyway, BarbaCuban makes Ram Air Red Zesty Ketchup, and it immediately won me over: a non-Heinz ketchup I have been using exclusively for months. Having these new sauces in my life, and especially this spicy ketchup, has inspired me to order more fries than I ever did before, and to bring them home from restaurants, untouched, just so I could reheat them in my toaster oven and use them as a Ram Air Red Zesty Ketchup delivery system. I also make a legendary meatloaf, so of course I have been brushing it on to form that sweet, tangy, sticky glazed crust. Even if Heinz is the industry standard, this is the disruptor everyone has been waiting for without ever realizing it: a more complex flavor than Heinz with a pleasing amount of heat, but simple enough that it will still enhance all your old favorites without overpowering them.

Here are some Sidewinder fries (maybe my favorite kind of fries) that we brought home from St. Johns River Steak and Seafood earlier this summer, just so I could enjoy them with the Ram Air Red Zesty Ketchup.

These are the ingredients, which include orange, grapefruit, lemon, and lime juices, Spanish olive oil, smoked salt, smoked paprika, and smoked ghost pepper powder. Yowza yowza yowza!

Here are some onion rings and fried avocado nuggets from two different restaurants we visited on a recent trip out of town, which I have yet to review. If you can guess where we got these, I’ll be impressed, and I may have to think of some kind of prize for the sharp-eyed Saboscrivnerino. But as good as they were at their respective restaurants, they were even better heated back up with BarbaCuban condiments:

My absolute favorite of all the BarbaCuban sauces was the 4 Barrel BBQ Sauce (below left). I always love barbecue sauce as a condiment, and not just on barbecued meats. I know Mr. Juarez, the BarbaCuban himself, is a grill-master, but I don’t even own a grill! It’s too damn hot and humid to spend any time outside nine months out of the year, so I know I wouldn’t get my money’s worth. But that didn’t stop me from pouring that 4 Barrel BBQ Sauce on anything and everything over the last couple of months, while trying to make my one bottle last.

It is thinner than a lot of sticky, thick, gloopy commercial barbecue sauces, but so much more complex-tasting. It has the most inspired ingredients I’ve ever seen in a barbecue sauce, including bourbon, Cuban coffee, tamarind extract, worcestershire sauce (bringing some nice umami funk from anchovies), ghost pepper, and guava, mango, pear, pineapple, lemon, and lime juices. All those amazing ingredients and NO high fructose corn syrup? Now that’s what I call barbecue sauce!

The BarbaCuban 4 Barrel Barbecue Sauce is so delicious, you could put this on vanilla ice cream! I didn’t, but I would have if I ever kept vanilla ice cream in the house.

Next up, the BarbaCuban Havana Gold Barbecue Sauce is a combination of the mustard and mayo-based 455 Sauce and the brilliant 4 Barrel Barbecue Sauce. It was sweet, tangy, a little spicy, a little creamy, and so good. While I dipped plenty of things in it (see two photos above), I decided to use it to glaze a bone-in, spiral-sliced ham I bought on sale at Aldi after Easter. I only ever treat myself to whole hams when they are discounted after holidays, which makes me both a good Jew and a bad Jew at the same time! I’m here all week, folks! Tip the veal! Try your waitress!

Here’s the before picture:

Here it is, post-slatherin’ with BarbaCuban Havana Gold BBQ Sauce:

And here it is, hot and sweet and sticky and crackly, right out of the oven. Our home smelled like heaven, and this ham tasted like it too. Since I’m the only one here who eats ham, I froze a lot of it to save for later, specifically for the next time I make Cuban sandwiches at home.

So that is an excellent segue to the last, but definitely not least, the BarbaCuban 90 Miles to Mojo Marinade, Mr. Juarez’s excellent version of mojo criollo, that citrusy, garlicky Cuban marinade so perfect with chicken and pork. I follow a long, involved, labor-intensive Binging With Babish recipe to make my own mojo criollo from scratch when I want to make roast pork for homemade Cuban sandwiches, inspired by the delightful movie Chef. It yields one of the most delicious meals ever, but it’s quite a process. As a result, I’ve tried several store-bought mojo marinades over the decades, and most of them are pretty lousy. In fact, I’ve only ever found two I liked, and this 90 Miles to Mojo Marinade is one of them. Here are the ingredients:

I took this photo today, in fact — oven-roasted chicken thighs, marinated overnight in 90 Miles to Mojo Marinade, and served with seasoned black beans and homemade pickled red onions.

I do a lot of meal prep for the week on Sundays, and these are going to be my work lunches for Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, alongside salads and fruit. They are going to be great. The whole house smells so good! I made sure to save plenty of the 90 Miles to Mojo for the next time I bring home a pork tenderloin to make Cuban sandwiches. Here’s hoping it will save me a ton of money and prep time, compared to making my own scratch mojo criollo. And I already have sliced ham ready to thaw, with that BarbaCuban Havana Gold glaze on it.

Over the last few months, since my friend introduced these sauces to my life, I’ve been keeping my eyes peeled to find them at retail. I shop for groceries at a lot of different stores in and around Orlando, but I have yet to see them at Publix, Aldi, Winn-Dixie, Fresh Market, Sprouts, Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, Target, or Walmart. Right now, my advice is to take the plunge, treat yourself, and order them on the BarbaCuban website: https://barbacuban.com/. If you’ve ever read anything I’ve written about food before, you know I’m a nerd who gets enthusiastic about recommending things I have enjoyed. I wouldn’t tell you to seek these out if I didn’t like them, trust me. I did, so now I’m tellin’ you. Call me a saucy boy if you must, but your meats, your carbs, your friends, and your mouth will thank you if you trust me!

Cafe Tu Tu Tango

Cafe Tu Tu Tango (https://www.cafetututango.com/) is a beautiful restaurant located in the heart of Orlando’s tourist district on International Drive, near Universal Studios and the Orange County Convention Center. I used to take my wife there for special celebratory occasions back when we were dating, mostly between 2006 and 2008. The restaurant is bright and bustling, its red walls strewn with lovely art that is all for sale. There are local artists painting and sculpting all over the restaurant, dancers are often dancing, and tarot card readers will read guests for a small fee. It’s a very bohemian place — maybe too loud to be intimate, but festive, fun, and as romantic as you want it to be. The menu matches the vibe, with small plates featuring fusion foods from around the world, ideal for sharing.

As cool as that all sounds, we fell out of the habit of going, mostly because it is all the way across town. But we had some wonderful meals and memories there, including two strips of photos we had taken in a photo booth, those completely obsolete but fun and beloved novelties of recent times past.

Well, my wife had a birthday coming up, so I asked her where she wanted to go out. It had been a few months since we had dined out anywhere together, and me being me, I sent her a list of good restaurants — some old favorites, some we had yet to go to together, and a few that we loved but hadn’t been to in a long time. She chose Cafe Tu Tu Tango, and we were both excited to return after all these years. I even wore the same shirt and tie I wore in the photo booth photos (because I hate buying new clothes), hoping to get some updated pics and maybe frame them all together.

Best of all, like its sister restaurant Mia’s Italian Kitchen just up the road, Cafe Tu Tu Tango features an all-you-can-eat weekend brunch on Saturdays and Sundays for $28.22 per person. Like Mia’s, it is not a buffet, but you just order whatever you want off the brunch menu (slightly more limited than the regular dinner menu), and as much as you want, for that fixed price. Back in the day, before I was as gainfully employed, those small plates with their pretty presentations and puny portions could really add up. It is a hell of a bargain to go for brunch and be able to go and sample anything and everything, so that’s exactly what we did.

We started with two “non-spirited frescos,” essentially mocktails, since neither of us drink. My wife ordered the $6 Pollock Punch (named for the artist Jackson Pollock, of course), with pineapple, mango, and cranberry juices, passion purée, Coco Lopez cream of coconut, and almond-flavored orgeat syrup, the necessary ingredient in mai tais and so many other tropical drinks. I ordered the $6 Lichtenstein Lemonade*, a delicious-sounding combination of house-made lemonade, muddled cucumber and basil, strawberry purée, and club soda to make it fizz. Funny enough, once we sipped each other’s drinks, we realized we each liked the other one better. The Pollock Punch (left) was too sour for her, while I love sour, and she preferred the fizz in my Lichtenstein Lemonade (right), so we switched them.
*The Lichtenstein Lemonade is named for the pop artist Roy Lichtenstein, who I DESPISE, because he swiped art from underpaid and underappreciated comic book artists, blew their panels up to giant size and got them displayed in galleries, took all the credit, and got rich and famous off their artwork. Screw that guy, but if you want an artist who specializes in Lichtenstein’s mid-century retro pop art style but is a truly iconoclastic original, check out my all-time favorite comic book artist Mike Allred.

Anyway, we went on to order A LOT of food from our sweet and patient server Chelsea, who was absolutely slammed, but had a great attitude and personality. The first thing to come out was the churro waffles (which would normally be $9 if we ordered a la carte) –perfect Belgian waffles with crispy exteriors and fluffy interiors, topped with ‍cinnamon sugar, dulce de leche, vanilla cream, cinnamon whipped cream. There were actually two of these in the order, so we each had one. This was my wife’s first choice, and it was a good one.

I ordered the butter chicken tikka masala (normally $13), a good-sized portion serviced over ‍fluffy basmati rice with pickled red onions, fresh cilantro, roasted corn, and creamy tikka masala sauce. I love Indian food, but my wife is convinced she doesn’t, because most things she has tried have been too spicy for her. I was thrilled that she loved this dish, even more than I did, since she never wants to get Indian food, and now we had a dish we know she likes. The chicken breast meat was very tender, and it wasn’t spicy at all. I tried a little, but was happy to keep it on her side of the table.Since this meal, I have researched butter chicken and chicken tikka masala, two distinct Indian dishes that use similar ingredients, but aren’t the same. We are going to run further tests to see which one my wife actually prefers, since Tu Tu Tango’s “butter chicken tikka masala” may not be the best example of authentic Indian cuisine. It was good, though!

I had never ordered any of the brick oven pan pizzas on our past trips to Cafe Tu Tu Tango, because it always seemed like there were more interesting things to try. But this time I ordered the sausage and peppers pizza (normally $9.25), with Italian sausage, hand-crushed San Marzano tomatoes, garlic, mozzarella, caramelized onions, and roasted red peppers. It was magnificent, and pan pizza usually isn’t even one of the pizza styles I prefer. Perfect crispy edges and a nice, fluffy crust. All the toppings came together beautifully. It was relatively small, like a “personal” pizza, but I always say that if you believe in yourself, any pizza can be a personal pizza.

Next up, my wife ordered the monkey bread (normally $7), a rich, sticky, super-sweet pastry with golden raisins, pecans, dulce de leche sauce, whipped cream, and enough powdered sugar to make it look like it was partying in Miami. Funny enough, the monkey bread ended up being too sweet for her, but I ended up really loving its chewy, sticky texture. It was heavy, and it probably sapped some of my strength and endurance mid-meal, but what a way to go.

I ordered these breakfast tacos (normally $8), with ‍jalapeño jack cheese, huevos rancheros, and crumbled, seasoned beef on two soft corn tortillas. My wife wanted no part of them, but they ended up being among my favorites of the brunch. I really thought the beef was chorizo sausage — it was that kind of savory flavor with just a little spice.

Next up, she ordered the grilled fish tacos (normally $11), with honey-lime escabeche sauce, cotija cheese, crunchy cabbage slaw, and more pink pickled onions on the same soft corn tortillas. We both appreciate good fish tacos, but both agreed the fish was on the “fishy” side. I ended up eating everything except the tortillas, which she wanted for herself. I wouldn’t get these again. Loved the toppings, but the fish — not so much.

Anyone who knows me at all would glance at the menu and predict I would order the Cuban sliders (normally $12), two wee sandwich halves with ‍capicola, genoa salami, pulled pork, pickles, Swiss cheese on pressed bread with a ramekin of the most delicious, vinegary mojo sauce. I’m predictable when it comes to food. I liked these, but the sauce was my favorite part! I thought about how much I might have preferred chilled Italian-style sandwich sliders with the capicola and genoa salami and some pickled vegetables. But don’t get me wrong, I really did enjoy them.

Next, I got the Tango home fries (normally $4), with sautéed red pepper and onion strips, scallions and a house spice blend. These were delicious, but I thought the potatoes could have been crispier. They had a pleasing amount of heat, but not so much that a person who likes things mild wouldn’t enjoy them. I was starting to get full, so I didn’t finish these, and I still feel guilty about that.

My wife ended her meal with one of her favorite dishes of the day, shrimp and grits (normally $12), served with corn relish and scallions. She loves grits, whereas they are not usually my favorite. I didn’t try this, but she ate it with gusto, so it must have been good. I’d say this, the butter chicken tikka masala, and the churro waffle were her favorites.

Next up came the dessert that I thought was going to be my favorite: guava and sweet plantain bread pudding (normally $7), served in a sizzling skillet and topped with Nutella sauce. I wish I had asked them to hold the sauce. Believe it or not, I could take or leave Nutella. Thanks to it, the whole thing ended up tasting like chocolate and muted the flavors of the guava and sweet plantains, two of my favorite things to eat anywhere. I could only eat one of the two pieces, and she wanted nothing to do with it.

Finally, my Southwest Caesar salad arrived (normally $10). It contained ‍romaine lettuce, avocado, crunchy fried tortilla strips, cotija cheese, salsa roja, and chipotle-garlic dressing . I make salads and eat them in my work lunches almost every day, so I rarely order salads at restaurants, but this had a lot of neat-sounding ingredients, and it was included in the fixed price for brunch, so I decided to give it a try. I’m glad I did, but I ate all the interesting stuff off the top and tapped out before I could make it through all the romaine lettuce.

So that was it for brunch, and that was pretty much it for the two of us for the rest of the day. But what a way to go. This has to be one of the best values in Orlando, folks. I crunched the numbers, and these eleven small plates we ordered would add up to $102.25 if we ordered them a la carte. Instead, we paid $56.44 for the both of us (minus our drinks) — almost half that price for the all-you-can-eat brunch deal.

Sadly, Cafe Tu Tu Tango got rid of its photo booth at some point before Chelsea even started working there, as I had feared. In this age of camera phones, selfies, Instagram, and “pics, or it didn’t happen” culture, a photo booth taking up space in a busy restaurant or bar seems like less of a sound and necessary investment, but there’s something about printing out those momentous moments on a little strip of paper to cherish forever, in a way that doesn’t seem the same when staring at images on screens. But in the end, we didn’t need new photos. We had each other, we had our memories –both old and new — and we had an epic brunch in beautiful, bohemian surroundings that would tide us over for a while. At least until dinner that evening.

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.

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.