Category: Meat

The Baker’s Son by Valerio’s

The Baker’s Son by Valerio’s (https://thebakersonusa.com/) is a Filipino-American bakery/cafe that first opened in Jacksonville, but opened a second, much larger location in Kissimmee this past Thursday, December 4th.  (The address is 4797 W. Irlo Bronson Memorial Highway, Kissimmee, FL 34746, in front of the Target.)  I have been following its progress, excited about sampling new and unfamiliar sweet and savory baked goods, as well as any drinks and dishes they might serve.

According to the website, owner-operator Jun Valerio is a third-generation Filipino-American baker, and his family owns multiple Valerio’s bakeries on the West Coast.  Jun and his wife Kathleen ran Valerio’s locations in California, Seattle, and Canada before opening their own spinoff, the first Baker’s Son location, in Jacksonville, which has a larger Filipino population than the Orlando area.  But now that they have opened in Kissimmee, I have a feeling they will have a huge hit on their hands with mass appeal that will reach beyond Filipino locals and tourists.

I finally made the hour drive to the new Kissimmee location on Saturday morning, hoping to beat the lunch rush, but instead I found myself in a slow, serpentine line that wrapped around the entire store.  There weren’t any employees directing traffic, but customers walked to the left upon entering to grab any packaged breads and sweets off the shelves, then found their way to the end of the line.  I estimate it took me an hour and 15 minutes from entering the store to ordering my food and paying at the front counter, but I chatted with the guy in front of me, and everyone was patient and polite, helping point the newcomers in the right direction.

The full menu is not on the website, so I took photos for my dozens of readers, so you can study in advance.  Try right-clicking on these menu photos and opening them in new tabs for slightly larger images.

This is the coffee, tea, boba, and signature drinks menu:

Here is the food menu, with merienda (snacks), rice plates, sandwiches, burgers, healthy eats, and breakfast sweets:

And this is the Cloud Series (The Baker’s Son’s version of milkshakes), plus soft serve ice cream:

The coffee drinks people were picking up from the cafe counter all looked delicious, but coffee makes me feel terrible.  I, on the other hand, have never met a cold, refreshing, citrusy drink I didn’t like, so I got the fresh calamansi juice.  Calamansi is a fruit that is similar to lime, and its juice adds sour notes to many Filipino recipes.  This was similar to limeade — sweet, sour, and so refreshing.  

After how long the line took, I didn’t know how long it would take for the food I ordered to be served, so I asked for an empanada when I got to the counter.  They looked really good.  This was a little smaller than a typical Cuban empanada:

It had a saucy, seasoned beef filling with some peas, but it was nothing like the picadillo filling I’m used to in Cuban empanadas.  It was definitely saucier, and the fried shell had a really pleasant salty-sweet flavor and didn’t taste or feel greasy.   

I really wanted to try something with longanisa, a sweet and savory Filipino sausage.  They offer a longanisa burger, but since I was planning to eat there after waiting that long, I chose something that would not have traveled well: loaded longanisa fries.  These were really crispy fries that any fry lover would love, topped with crumbled longanisa sausage, caramelized onions, creamy garlic sauce (like an aioli), and an over-medium fried egg.  It was so delicious and decadent.  

I’ve had bacon, egg, and cheese breakfast sandwiches on my mind recently, so since I didn’t get a burger, I opted for the tocino glazed bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich, served with sweet glazed bacon called tocino, scrambled eggs, American cheese, and a crispy hash brown patty on a pillowy-soft roll called pan de sal (literally “bread of salt”) that had been grilled to crisp up its interior.  Pan de sal (sometimes stylized as pandesal) is one of the specialties of The Baker’s Son, so I’ll come back to that a little later.  

This was sinigang popcorn chicken off the merienda (snacks) menu.  I certainly didn’t need it, and it was a bit of an impulse buy, but the guy in front of me said he was going to get it, and I trusted him.  He said it should have a sour seasoning sprinkled on it, but even though mine was good, with a crispy, crunchy batter, it didn’t taste sour to me.   While writing this, I found out that the sour sinigang flavor usually comes from tamarind. 
I ate most of the above food on site, but took most of the chicken home with me, where I will try it with my huge collection of condiments and sauces.

But since I was at a brand-new bakery, I couldn’t leave without buying some bread.  I bought the smallest bag of pan de sal they had.  These were smaller rolls, like dinner rolls, but they had much larger bags with larger rolls, more like what I had with my bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich (think of typical burger buns).  They are made with flour, eggs, yeast, sugar, salt., and powdered milk, so they will be nice and light and fluffy and slightly sweet.  They reminded me a bit of Japanese milk bread.

This was pan de coco, more small, fluffy rolls  stuffed with a sweet spread made of young coconut.  (If any MCs are looking for a new stage name, may I suggest “Young Coconut”?)

And this box of Spanish bread is a bit like buttery, soft brioche, with a sweet, buttery, creamy filing in the center.  I would have been fine with one or two, but they only came in boxes of six.  

They had so much more to choose from, including a lot of sweeter breads, rolls, and pastries, many of which had lots of icing and/or ube (sweet purple yam) filling.  But I knew my wife wouldn’t be terribly interested in any of these, so I reigned myself in.  I like to make sandwiches at home, so I could level up my sandwich game with all these different rolls.

I would definitely recommend The Baker’s Son, even though people might want to wait a little longer to avoid the long lines.  Most new restaurants will have a certain amount of hype involved, and I did make the choice to go on the third day it was open, but I suspect it will calm down soon enough (and probably be a lot more chill on normal weekdays, rather than the Saturday of its opening week).  Most of the people waiting inside with me were Filipinos of all ages, and I could sense their excitement and pride in The Baker’s Son.  I couldn’t be happier for them, or for the Valerio family and their staff, or for the rest of us, having a bakery/cafe like The Baker’s Son as an option in the Orlando area.  Head down to touristy Kissimmee when you can, and please let me know what you ordered and what you thought!

Fiesta Cancun

Fiesta Cancun (https://fiestacancunfl.com/) is a beautiful, festive, casual Mexican restaurant in Altamonte Springs.  It is tucked off the beaten path at 260 Douglas Avenue, just off busy Semoran Boulevard (State Road 436) and a minute from I-4 exit 92.  You can’t see it from Semoran, but turn onto Douglas, and it will be on your left before you hit the Waffle House on the left and the Cracker Barrel on the right.

The dining room is so colorful and fun, it is hard not to get swept up in a celebratory spirit and feel like you’re on vacation.  I blacked out the faces of nearby diners to preserve their privacy, but you can still tell that the vibes are super-festive.

I’ve said this before, but whenever a Mexican restaurant offers aguas frescas, I know we’re going to be in for good, authentic food.  I got a passion fruit agua fresca (one of my favorite flavors of anything), and my wife chose jamaica (hibiscus flower).  The glass mugs were huge, but our bill said they cost $7.50 each, and refills cost extra!  (The menu says they cost $4.25 each, so maybe they did charge us for refills.)  As much as I love it, I’ll stick to water in the future and not drink my calories.   

The fresh, free tortilla chips were fine after adding a little salt, and the table salsa was fresh and bright-tasting.  But even better, Fiesta Cancun offers a salsa bar, which was a real treat to me.I love a salsa bar, and it is one of the many reasons I’m such a fan of Las Carretas.  I appreciated that Fiesta Cancun had handwritten signs posted above each salsa explaining what each one was, and what the ingredients were.

Top row:
Sliced onions with habanero peppers, tomatoes, and lime juice
Spicy molcajete sauce with serrano chiles and onions
Spicy taquera sauce with avocado, serrano chiles, onions, cilantro, and mayonnaise to make it creamy

Bottom row:
Spicy red sauce with chiles de arbol, tomatillos, and onions
Non-spicy salsa verde with tomatillo and cilantro (the only one my wife wanted anything to do with)
Spicy Jalisco sauce with chiles de arbol, serrano chiles, tomatillos, and onions

They all looked so good, and of course I tried them all!  They have plenty of tiny plastic cups for you to fill.

My wife was craving a good taco salad in a crispy fried shell.  This one included shredded iceberg lettuce, a healthy dollop of guacamole, and pico de gallo and sour cream on the side.  I availed myself of the pico, since I am a giant fan of the stuff, and she doesn’t care for onions or tomatoes.   You can choose between ground beef, shredded beef, and shredded chicken with the taco salad, but I didn’t see any meat in the photo, and I don’t remember which one my wife ordered.

I had studied the large menu in advance, and I was so excited to see that Fiesta Cancun offered cochinita pibil, a dish from the Yucatan Peninsula that is sometimes called puerco pibil.  It consists of citrus-marinated, slow-roasted pork with a complex array of spices and flavors, cooked until it is fork-tender.  I am always inspired to order it whenever I see it on a menu thanks to the 2003 action movie Once Upon a Time in Mexico, in which Johnny Depp’s antihero also ordered the dish whenever he encountered it.  The DVD extras (remember those?) included badass writer-director-composer Robert Rodriguez demonstrating his own recipe for puerco pibil*, which I made for a work potluck once.  It was a labor-intensive recipe, and my version came out great, but my old co-workers were a tough crowd that didn’t share my enthusiasm.  My old director actually had the audacity to tell me I should not have wasted so much time making it, and she wouldn’t even try it!    To make a long story short, the cochinita pibil at Fiesta Cancun was dry!  I know, right?  I was disappointed, but I still ate it, and jazzing it up with the various salsas helped immensely.  The black beans were fine, and I did love the rich Mexican rice and tangy-sweet, crunchy, pink pickled onions.  I wouldn’t order it again, but I wasn’t even mad.  I was still having a grand time.

I had also ordered a chile relleno off the a la carte menu, intending to have it later, but I busted into it to make up for the dry pork.  I apologize for not photographing a cross-section of the battered and fried poblano pepper stuffed with melty cheese, but I honestly liked it a lot more than the cochinita pibil.  I would totally come back and try other things on the menu, but I’d get that chile relleno again too.  

I couldn’t take my wife to a Mexican restaurant and not order her churros or sopapillas!  This time, the churros won out.  The fried dough sticks were covered with cinnamon and sugar and came with a chocolate dipping sauce. 

So even though I was disappointed by my cochinita pibil, I would still return to Fiesta Cancun and try other things in the future, if I was ever in Altamonte with people who wanted Mexican food and fun surroundings.  You might have already noticed how vast the menu is, and how they offer a lot more seafood dishes than most Mexican restaurants, which makes sense, given that Cancun is a coastal city on the tip of the Yucatan Peninsula.  I think it would be a crowd-pleaser for most groups.  If you’ve been there before, what are your favorite dishes on the menu, and what should I try next time?

*By the way, I’ve been a fan of Robert Rodriguez ever since I first saw his $7,000 self-financed independent debut El Mariachi back in the early ’90s.  As much as I’ve enjoyed most of his movies, his coolest career moment might be when he says in the above video “Not knowing how to cook is like not knowing how to fuck.”  Spot on.  I also love his advice about learning to cook your two or three favorite dishes very well and making a little restaurant-style menu for your kitchen, to the point where you could always offer a few house specialties to guests with minimal notice or prep.  That’s entertainment!

GG Korean BBQ

GG Korean BBQ (https://ggkoreanbbq.com/) is an all-you-can-eat Korean barbecue restaurant located at 5319 West Colonial Drive in Orlando’s Pine Hills neighborhood.  I recently went for the first time with two good friends, including one of my inspirations as a food writer, the illustrious Amy Drew Thompson of the Orlando Sentinel.  It was the first time I ever got to meet her in person, and I’m sure I made a great first impression, stuffing my face with delicious Korean food that we cooked ourselves on the tabletop grill.

This was my second time doing all-you-can-eat Korean barbecue ever, after trying it with a friend at Hae Jang Chon in Koreatown in L.A. last year.  I was lucky to be dining with two sophisticated, experienced, worldly gastronomes who knew what they were doing much more than I.

GG Korean BBQ offers two options: $27.99 per person for the basic all you can eat experience (seven different fresh and marinated meats), or $39.99 per person for a more premium selection: 18 different fresh and marinated meats, plus two seafood options, shrimp and baby octopus.  I was curious about the expanded option, and my friends were both kind enough to humor me and go along with it.  Just FYI, your whole party has to choose the same option.

Many Korean meals start out with banchan, tiny plates of sharable side orders.  My favorite thing here was the slightly sweet and crunchy yellow pickled daikon radish slices on the bottom left.  I am not a fan of bean sprouts, so I left them alone, and as much as I have tried to become a kimchi fan (especially as a lover of sauerkraut and cabbage in general), it hasn’t happened for me yet.  I tried a customary piece but left the rest for my colleagues.  A sharp-eyed reader told me more about the yellow pickled radish: “The yellow pickle is called Takuan. It is a Japanese pickle that was invented in the 17th century by the Zen Buddhist monk named Soho Takuan. The pickle spread to Korea and very popular.”  Thank you so much, bkhuna!

Both dining choices come with a variety of other sides to choose from.  This was corn cheese — kernels of fresh corn heated over the grill with shredded mozzarella cheese, and probably some butter too.  It looked better when it was done, and it was a decadent hit at our table.

I really liked these japchae, savory translucent noodles made out of sweet potato starch, seasoned with sesame oil.  They had a nice al dente chew. 

We also tried the steamed egg side, but I didn’t get a good picture of it.

Here were three dips for our barbecued meats.  That was a seasoned salt on the left that accented the grilled flavors perfectly.  I really liked the sauce in the middle, and the one on the right had its own spicy charm.

When you go out for Korean barbecue, the group orders a few meats at a time.  Sometimes the server cooks them for you, and sometimes you get left to your own devices.  There can be a lot going on, so every group needs an experienced leader to make sure the meat is cooking but not overcooking, and that everyone has something ready to eat at all times.  When you’re all having a nice conversation, that can be distracting, but my friend stayed on top of everything for us.

This mixed grill included beef bulgogi on the bottom (a sweet and savory marinated meat that is a great “gateway” dish for folks who are unfamiliar with Korean cuisine), and I honestly don’t remember if the two long pieces of meat along the sides were beef rib fingers or pork belly.  I’m sure we got both, though.  That’s a thick slice of onion in the top right and some big slices of mushroom on the left — more for them!

Here’s a close-up of the beautiful, rich, marbled meat that was on top in the above photo.  I think this was ribeye, due to that lush, lovely marbling.

More meat!  Those off-white thingees on the right are large and small beef intestines.  I first tried those at an all-you-can-eat Argentinian-Jewish churrascuria restaurant in Altamonte Springs called Steak in the City, similar to the Brazilian all-you-can-eat rodizio concepts (like Adega Gaucha and Texas de Brazil).  Steak in the City closed abruptly over 15 years ago, taking my good friend and former roommate’s deposit for a wedding rehearsal dinner with them.  (Luckily, he paid with a credit card, so he was able to get refunded, but the restaurant folks disappeared into the night with his money.)   Anyway, the intestines (Steak in the City called them chinchulines) grill up with a crispy exterior, but they are mostly soft and chewy.  They don’t have a strong flavor, but I’d say they are worth trying at least once, if you’ve never had them before.  They would mostly take on the flavor of a marinade or dipping sauce.

Even more meat!  We were all losing steam by this point.
What do you think those thin, wavy, round slices of meat on the right are?

They were fresh beef tongue, sliced almost paper-thin.  As a Jewish person, I can’t go somewhere that offers tongue and not try it, whether it’s a Jewish deli, a Mexican taqueria, a Vietnamese pho restaurant, or in this case, a Korean barbecue establishment.  These slices grilled up to a nondescript brownish-gray color, so they looked a lot interesting here, before cooking.  But they were extremely tender! 

Anyway, I’m glad I went with two experienced, worldly gourmets who had done this before, because I trusted my one friend to do a lot of the cooking for us (he’s a team player and a tireless mensch), and I followed their lead.  It was a really nice lunch with two of my favorite people in Orlando, but here’s my hot take: I cook at home all the time (although I don’t grill because I don’t have a grill), but if I go out to a restaurant, I would rather rely on the chef to prepare food for me than have to do it myself.  Most of the time I go to restaurants these days, I either fly solo or bring home takeout to share with my wife, and you can’t really do Korean barbecue in either scenario, so it’s a moot point anyway.  I feel similar about hot pot places – fun with a group once or twice as an interactive activity, but maybe more trouble than they are worth.  But if you’re going to do Korean barbecue, especially with a good group, I think GG Korean BBQ would be a fabulous place to enjoy it together.

Pho Bar Vietnamese Kitchen

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bites and Bubbles

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Selam Ethiopian and Eritrean Cuisine

A while back, I went to a Transformers convention here in Orlando with one of my closest friends.  We went to high school together in Miami, and he was in town for the show, visiting from Tampa.  He is a vegetarian, so afterwards, I suggested lunch at Selam Ethiopian and Eritrean Cuisine (https://www.ethiopianrestaurantorlando.com/), located at 5494 Central Florida Parkway in Orlando, just off International Drive and close to the Sea World theme park.  I’ve only ever had Ethiopian food once before, a long time ago, at Orlando’s only other Ethiopian restaurant, Nile, which I need to get back to.  But I had been hearing great things about Selam for years (including a Michelin recommendation), and it lived up to every bit of hype.

We started our epic lunch by sharing this order of two lentil samosas, fried to perfection in their thin, crispy shells.  These were flatter triangles than the pyramid-like Indian samosas most of us are probably used to, with lighter, thinner shells that were more like spring roll wrappers than the empanada-like exteriors of Indian samosas.  They were stuffed with a blend of lentils (a legume I love), onions, jalapenos, and herbs.  Selam also offers samosas with minced beef or chicken, as an alternative to these vegetarian ones.  The chunky hot sauce was absolutely delicious.  I’d say it had a medium-hot spice level, so too much for my wife, parents, and in-laws, but not hot enough to make people run to the bathroom or beg for a glass of milk.

We each ordered lunch combination platters that are served on injera, which is a thin, sourdough-based bread that you rip apart with your hand and use it to scoop up or dip into various stewed meats and vegetables.  It’s a similar concept to Turkish lavas bread and Indian naan, but the injera is much thinner, more like a crepe or a very thin pancake, and almost spongey in consistency.  I’m always a little surprised Ethiopian food hasn’t caught on more as a mainstream cuisine, because Americans do love dipping things into other things.  Be prepared to scoop and dip, because there are no utensils!  The cuisine offers some of the most delicious vegetarian dishes I’ve ever tasted, and I say that as a committed omnivore.

This was my meat combination platter, which included four different meats.  The green vegetables on the left are gomen besiga, a dish of sautéed collard greens with beef, ginger, garlic, onions, and jalapenos.  I am a huge fan of collard greens, even though I didn’t grow up eating them, but now I am delighted to try every version I can, usually on barbecue and soul food menus.  But these were like nothing else.  To the right of the greens is ye beg wot, chunks of lamb stewed with onion, garlic, ginger, and turmeric.  I love lamb and stewed meats in general, and that had so much flavor.   The redder chunks of meat in the middle are beef wot, a similar stew made with beef that was a little spicier.  (If I mixed up the lamb wot and beef wot, I apologize to everyone!)  The dark red dish on the right with the hard-boiled egg (a pleasant surprise) is doro wot, a spicy chicken stew flavored by seasoned butter called niter kibbeh and a pretty spicy spice blend called berbere.  After this meal, I bought a little thing of berbere at Penzey’s Spices, and I need to experiment with it more.  That is homemade cottage cheese in the top right.  I loved everything.  I’m always excited to explore a new cuisine, and whenever a restaurant offers some kind of combo to let me sample multiple dishes and flavors, I will take that opportunity.

My friend did the same thing by ordering the vegetarian combination platter.  That’s a little side salad on the left, followed by ye timatim fitfit, which is the injera bread chopped up and sauteed with fresh tomatoes, green chilies, onions, garlic, and herbs.  It was cool to see how versatile the injera is, and kind of a meta thing to use the flat injera to scoop it up with, like dunking Oreos into cookies and cream ice cream.  The next one over, the yellow-orange dish, is ye kik alicha wot, which is mild split peas stewed with onion, garlic, ginger, and turmeric. After that, the dark red is ye misir wot, with pureed split red lentils simmered in chopped onions, garlic, ginger, vegetable oil, and berbere sauce, so it was spicier than the split peas next to it.  Next up is atakilt (vegetable) wot with the most delicious potatoes, carrots, green beans, onions, cabbage, and ginger, all stewed together.  Finally, the vegetarian combo platter had ye gomen (collard green) wot on the right side, which was probably similar to my gomen besiga, only with no beef in this one.

My friend, who is always a generous guy, let me sample all of those, and I have to say that as tasty as my meats were, and how exciting it was to try all those unfamiliar flavors, the vegetarian combo blew them away with depths of flavor.  If I was skilled enough to cook Ethiopian and Indian recipes well, I could probably go vegetarian, or at least eat vegetarian more often than I do, which is not as often as I should.  But I recommend this highly to everyone, whether you eat meat or not, to demonstrate the absolute wonders and miracles you can achieve with vegetables and spices.

In fact, two years before I published this review, I listed Selam’s vegetarian combination platter in Top Tastes, where I listed my favorite local restaurant dishes of 2023 in Orlando Weekly, back when I was writing those every year.  (Somehow we skipped 2024, and who knows what’s going to happen this year.)

I hardly ever drink coffee, but if you go to an Ethiopian restaurant, it almost feels like a necessity to do the traditional coffee ceremony, so we did.  While I don’t pretend to be a coffee connoisseur, this was really delicious and strong coffee, with a depth of flavor I never notice in plain black American-style coffee.  That said, I’ve never been into plain black coffee, and here at Selam, I needed some sugar in mine to mellow it out.

While this meal goes back a while, I remember it like it was yesterday.  I kept holding off on publishing this review because I was hoping to return, ideally with other friends to try other dishes.  Unfortunately, it is far from home, and Ethiopian food is a hard sell for most people I know (including my wife, who was brave enough to try it with me that one other time, 16 years ago, but it wasn’t her thing).  But I give Selam my highest possible recommendation, whether you are familiar with the cuisine or completely uninitiated and a little intimidated.  Don’t be intimidated!  Everything was a hit, and it’s FUN.  It would actually be a fun place to take a date, because you eat with one hand, which is kind of sensuous, and you share everything.  But if any of my friends ever want to go to there on a weekend, I’m your huckleberry!

Moa Kai Hawaiian Diner

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bari Italian Subs, D’Amato Bakery and Subs, and J.P. Graziano Grocery: An Italian Sub Tour of Chicago

Everyone associates certain foods with Chicago: deep-dish pizza (even though I like thin-crust tavern-style pizza better than those casseroles), Vienna beef hot dogs on poppyseed buns “dragged through the garden,” and Italian beef sandwiches dipped in au jus and topped with spicy giardiniera.

But Chicago has a lot of old-school Italian grocery stores, delis, and bakeries, so when I went there for two separate work trips over the summer of 2022, I researched what sounded like three local favorites and made a plan to sample Italian subs from each of them, in a little feature I like to call “Dare to Compare.”

The first two were easy.  Bari Italian Subs (opened in 1973), a great little Italian grocery store where you order subs at a deli counter in the back, and D’Amato’s Bakery and Subs (opened in 1970), were literally next door to each other, so that was convenient.  I hit them back to back and ordered my subs to go, since neither had any tables for dining in.  When I had some free time the next day, I took a Lyft ride to visit a third location, J.P. Graziano Grocery (opened in 1937) in the foodie-heaven neighborhood known as the West Loop, but it was closed for renovations.  Noooooooo!  (But relax, constant readers; a happy ending awaits.)

My first stop was D’Amato’s Bakery and Subs (https://damatoschicago.com/), where I ignored the glass cases full of tempting pastries and ordered a 9″ Italian sub ($9) with Genoa salami, mild capicola, mortadella, provolone, lettuce, tomato, oil, Italian seasoning, and hot giardiniera, a relish of chopped onions, celery, carrots, cauliflower, peppers, herbs, and spices, marinated in olive oil and vinegar.

I would have asked them to go harder on the giardiniera, but I had no idea.  Being a bakery, D’Amato’s sub roll was soft and fresh, and my sub tasted even better marinating in its butcher paper wrapper for a while before I got to enjoy it back in my hotel room.

The 9″ Italian sub I got at Bari Italian Subs (https://www.bariitaliansubs.com/) next door was also $9.  It contained capicola ham, Genoa salami, mortadella, provolone cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, onions, and Bari’s house-made hot giardiniera, a great twist on the standard pickled banana peppers, jalapeños, or hot cherry peppers that standard sub shops provide.  I believe Bari Foods even uses the rolls baked next door at D’Amato Bakery!

Once again, they went lighter on the giardiniera than I would have liked.  Was it still a killer sandwich?  Absolutely, yes.  Due to the ingredients alone, I think it barely edged out D’Amato Bakery’s similar version, although both were very good.   

I also got a container of macaroni salad at Bari Foods that I enjoyed back in my hotel room with both subs.  In fact, I don’t know if anyone else ever enjoyed two subs in a hotel room as much as I did.   Maybe a dom somewhere.  Don’t worry — I got two meals out of the two sandwiches and this eight-ounce container.   

As I said earlier, when I discovered J.P. Graziano Grocery was closed for some remodeling, I started wandering the West Loop on foot and accidentally discovered Au Cheval, where I ate what still remains the best cheeseburger of my entire life, three years later.

But on a subsequent trip to Chicago, later that same summer, I returned to J.P. Graziano Grocery (https://jpgraziano.com/) and was relieved to see it had reopened.  I ordered a Spicy Italian sub ($12) and a Mr. G sub ($13), knowing I could get at least two meals out of them back in my hotel room.

The Spicy Italian contained hot capicola, hot soppressata, pepperoni, provolone, lettuce, and tomato, with red wine vinegar and oregano.  No giardiniera here, sorry, but it would have fit well.  It was a pretty terrific version of an Italian sub, especially on the nice, soft roll.

Here’s a peek inside.  Pardon the not-great lighting.  I had a different phone back then, too. 

The Mr. G is the famous house specialty, with hot soppressata, prosciutto di parma, Volpi genoa salami, sharp imported provolone, J.P. Graziano’s own truffle mustard balsamic vinaigrette (ridiculously good), marinated Roman-style artichokes, fresh basil, and lettuce, with hot oil, red wine vinegar, and oregano.  As good as the spicy Italian was (and it was), Mr. G was even better.

Lookit dat!

I can’t believe I visited these three iconic Italian sub destinations three years ago, but much more recently, the website The Infatuation listed and ranked the 15 Best Italian Subs in Chicago, and all three of my choices made their list.  Earlier this summer, a website called Mashed published their list of The 15 Absolute Best Italian Subs In The US.  Since I am an Italian sub connoisseur, I naturally had to check it out, and I’m thrilled to say I have been to four of their 15 picks (so far): the Italian sub at Bari AND the Mr. G at J.P. Graziano Grocery in Chicago (two out of three right here!), the #1 at Mazzaro’s Italian Market in St. Petersburg, Florida, and a Los Angeles classic that I’ll get around to reviewing at some point.  I would have expected Mashed to write about potatoes rather than subs, and I don’t love that some of the subs on their list aren’t actual Italian subs with a variety of cured meats, served cold, but other sandwiches from Italian delis with Italian ingredients (chicken cutlets and pepper steak).  But despite the lack of consistency on the Mashed list, I’m glad websites like this are shining a well-deserved spotlight on great sandwich shops, and that others agree with me.

The Cairo Express

The Cairo Express (https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61577118088141) is a brand-new food truck that first opened last month, on July 12th, 2025.  It is always set up in the same place, next to a hair salon at 658 Wymore Rd, Winter Park, right off Lee Road facing the I-4 exit.  After a friend brought it to my attention and I looked at the menu online, I went straight there the next day, after seeing the Fantastic Four movie at nearby Winter Park Village.  The Cairo Express is a family affair, with a pedigree of serving delicious Egyptian food in Orlando years before opening this truck.  When I ordered, I noticed some uncommon menu items that I tried way back in 2019 when I reviewed an Egyptian restaurant called Makani, out on International Drive.  I caught up with an old friend and bandmate and had a fantastic dinner there, and we shared several dishes I haven’t seen anywhere since.  The fella in charge at the food truck confirmed his mother worked at Makani, and those were her family recipes they prepared there and again here at The Cairo Express.  That food was awesome, and I knew I would be in for a real treat, trying it again so many years later.

Here is the menu, kindly provided by The Cairo Express after I forgot to take a photo and reached out to them on Facebook.  You can see prices are very reasonable, and I can tell you everything is totally worth it:

This was the beef shawarma, which I devoured in the car while it was hot and fresh.  It’s a wrap with beef, onions, tomatoes, cilantro, pickled turnips, and tahini sauce (creamy sesame paste), then grilled on the flattop grill to add some crispiness to the outer texture of the thin flatbread, like the best burritos.  I love crunchy, tangy pickled vegetables, and the pickled turnips really made this shawarma something special.  I’ve been disappointed by a lot of shawarma with dry, bland beef (or chicken), but this beef was really tender and juicy.

Here’s a cross-section, so you can see that tender beef for yourself.  I always say that gyros are to tacos as shawarma is to burritos, in terms of shape and structure.  I wouldn’t dare eat a gyro in my car, but the shawarma held up just fine. 

I love liver in all its forms, from chopped chicken liver at a Jewish deli to liver and onions at an old-school diner.  So I was surprised and excited to see a sandwich with marinated beef liver with green bell peppers, garlic, cumin, coriander, cilantro, and tahini sauce on a hoagie roll.  I could not turn that down!  Looking in the food truck window, I saw they use Cusano’s hoagie rolls, which I make a special trip to Gordon Food Service to buy.  The nearby LaSpada’s Original Philly Cheese Steaks and Hoagies uses them, and I believe Gabriel’s Subs might as well.  Great roll, and the entire sandwich was superb.  The liver was so rich and tender.  I personally would have loaded the sandwich up with onions too — sautéed with the liver, as well as some crispy fried ones — as well as some spicier peppers and/or hot sauce for some acid to cut the salty richness, but that’s just me.

Just as gyros are to tacos and shawarma is to burritos, the lesser-known Egyptian street food hawawshi is to quesadillas — except there is no cheese in hawawshi.  Instead, it is spiced ground beef with onions, garlic, and parsley, stuffed into pita bread and grilled on the flattop grill to get that great crispy texture.  Hawawshi is magical.  You get four equal wedges, and mine came with a little cup of tahini for dipping.  The menu mentioned I could have gotten hot sauce instead, which I would have preferred to try, but I was a little overwhelmed when ordering and didn’t think to ask.   I had hawawshi for the first time at Makani back in 2019, and it was just as good there.  I think the outer texture was crispier, almost like it had been fried, but this was great too.

Koshary is a famous Egyptian street food that I also tried for the first time at Makani.  How could I resist a mountain of rice pilaf, lentils, spaghetti, elbow macaroni, tomato sauce, crispy fried onions, and chickpeas?  It’s a carb-lover’s dream and a perfect snack for vegetarians and vegans too.  The version of koshary from The Cairo Express came with an extra ramekin of tomato sauce and two ramekins of a vinegar sauce.  I didn’t add any of either, because I wanted my wife to try it, and she doesn’t care for saucy, spicy, pungent foods (while I, on the other hand, can’t get enough of ’em).  Once I ate the tomato sauce and onions off the top, we shared the rest of the koshary, and she enjoyed it as much as I did.

This baba ganoush was my wife’s sole request, since the smoky, creamy  roasted eggplant dip is one of her favorite foods.  She’s not a dipper like I am, but she will go through it with a spoon!  She has high standards for baba ganoush, and she said Cairo Express’ version was one of the best in Orlando.  I tried a tiny taste too, and I detected a lot of tahini (sesame paste) in there, while some go harder on the actual eggplant.

I returned to The Cairo Express the following Saturday because they had a weekend special that was another dish I was introduced to at Makani.  These are mombar (pronounced with the emphasis on the “bar” rather than the “mom”), savory sausages made of rice seasoned with various herbs and spices, stuffed into a chewy lamb intestine.  I swear I tasted cinnamon and clove in them.  I believe the mombar are boiled and then fried until their texture is lightly crispy but also chewy.  They are so delicious and fun to eat.

And I got a little piece of baklava that was good, because you can never go wrong with baklava!

On my second visit to the truck, I met Gigi, the matriarch of the family who cooked at Makani for years, then left after new owners took over, and is back in action at The Cairo Express.  She was so sweet, and her son was very affable when I met him on my first visit.  I’ll definitely be back.  You should check them out too, as soon as possible.  Even if you like Mediterranean and Middle Eastern food, the unique Egyptian dishes they offer like hawawshi, koshary, and mombar may be completely new to you.  I think people will especially love the hawawshi and koshary (and vegetarians and vegans, don’t sleep on the koshary!).  You can also try familiar favorites like shawarma and falafel and compare them to other versions you’ve eaten elsewhere.  I highly recommend The Cairo Express and wish this lovely family all the good luck in the world.

CLOSED: Candee Lee’s Soul House

EDIT: I learned that Candee Lee’s Soul House permanently closed in October 2025, barely two months after I wrote my review!  What a damn shame.  The food was really good.

***

Candee Lee’s Soul House (https://candeeleessoulhouse.com/) is the dream of Chef Tony Tone Blakey, a Culinary Institute of Virginia alumnus, a former chef at Walt Disney World, and a personal chef.  Inspired by his mother, the titular Candee Lee, he opened his soul food restaurant in a touristy stretch of Irlo Bronson Highway in Kissimmee, Florida, in March of 2025, and I had been wanting to make it down there to try it for a long time.

Anyone who knows me and my family would not be surprised to learn I did not grow up eating soul food, but it a nostalgic treat to me every time.  I discovered soul food the summer between my junior and senior years of high school.  As a teenager obsessed with the TV series ER, I thought I might study to become a doctor, and somehow I scored a prestigious(?) internship at the University of Miami School of Medicine in downtown Miami.  I felt like such an accomplished and sophisticated adult, taking the Metrorail from suburban Kendall into downtown every morning and home every evening, even though I was placed in a hematology research lab and assisted with mundane experiments that never seemed to cure any diseases.  A lot of the time, they drew my blood to use as the “control” for the daily experimentation, adding insult to injury for this young, unpaid intern.  The highlight of those long and frustrating internship days was eating lunch in the med school cafeteria, where every day they offered a cheap daily special that was usually soul food.

That summer internship made me realize I had no future as a medical researcher or a patient-facing doctor, but I fell in love with ham hocks and collard greens, fried cabbage and yams, and my beloved oxtails — one of my favorite meals to this day.  I looked forward to those nourishing lunches so much, knowing my days would be halfway over at that point, and I still think about that cafeteria soul food today.  It could be said that I’ve been chasing those tastes ever since.

Anyway, there have never been many soul food options in Orlando.  I loved Nikki’s Place when I reviewed it a few years back, a historic restaurant located in Parramore, near downtown Orlando.  But when I learned Chef Tony Tone had opened his own restaurant, I couldn’t wait to try it, even though it was much further from home.  Well, while Nikki’s Place has the old-school atmosphere of the soul food restaurant from The Blues Brothers, Candee Lee’s Soul House is modern, full of natural light and bright red and blue painted walls, and located in a suburban strip plaza, looking a bit like a fast food spot.  I had a rare Wednesday off work this week, so I drove down there with a friend to try it for the first time.

I took the liberty of photographing the menu displays on the wall, since they didn’t quite match up with the menu on the website.  You can choose between lunch plates with one entree and one side (only Monday through Thursday, from 12 to 3 PM) or dinner plates with one entree and two sides (any day, anytime).  The entrees include chicken (either fried wings or garlic and herb-roasted leg quarters), boneless fried catfish filets, and fried bone-in pork ribs (three for the lunch or six for the dinner).
There are also chicken or fish sandwiches which are supposed to come with coleslaw, homemade pickles, and one side, which I did not read carefully at the time.  (More on that later.)  The chicken and fish sandwiches ($12 and $15, respectively) are half-price on Wednesdays, which was one of the reasons I timed my first visit for a Wednesday.

Here is the menu of sides and drinks.  I wanted to try most of the sides, and between my friend and I, I got to try five, which isn’t bad at all.  

My friend and I didn’t have the sheer numbers necessary to order the Family Box (which serves 4-5) or the Big Mama (which serves 7-8), but here is the information, for anyone who might live or vacation down that way with a large group:

At this point I should note that it is a long, thin restaurant space, where you order on the far end of the counter and pay closer to the door, and the only seating is a series of red stools along a long counter on the opposite wall.  There aren’t any tables, and I’m sure a lot of people get their food to go.

My friend, a Mississippi boy, ordered the fried catfish dinner, which came with two huge filets.  He let me try a piece, and it was excellent.  I loved the breading.  It is definitely some of the best fried catfish I’ve had anywhere around here (up there with my favorite seafood restaurant High Tide Harry’s, and of course the iconic Nikki’s Place). 
For his sides, he got the collard greens with smoked turkey and the “Better than ya mama’s” grits.  I’m not a big grits guy, but I tried a bite of his, and it was definitely better than any grits I’ve tried anywhere else.  They were buttery and rich and a bit gritty, and definitely not instant grits (as no self-respectin’ Southernah uses instant grits).  Chef Tony Tone definitely takes pride in his grits.

The whole reason I planned to take a Wednesday off work just to drive the hour each way to Candee Lee’s Soul House was to try their oxtails, which are only served on Wednesdays.  We got there a few minutes after they opened at noon, but when I asked for the oxtails, they said it wouldn’t be ready until 1:00.  Okay, okay, that’s not a problem.  We would still eat, and I’d order other stuff and get the oxtails to go.  No problem, right?

So I decided to get the fried ribs lunch special, with three ribs, a side, a sauce, and a drink.  I love ribs in all their forms, but I’ve never had fried ribs before, and neither had my friend.  I gave him one, because this is how we roll.  The spareribs were a generous size, and they were definitely meaty.  They had a pleasantly crispy exterior, and they were still tender and juicy, luckily not dry at all.  I would have been really disappointed if they were dried-out and both crunchy and greasy at the same time, like how way too many sports bars ruin their wings in the fryer, but these were really good.   The meat didn’t exactly fall off the bone (which is a good thing, texture-wise), but it was tender enough to easily munch off the bone without leaving shreds behind.  By the time I finished my two ribs, it looked like a piranha had gotten to them.

These ribs came unsauced, unlike most restaurant ribs, but Candee Lee’s offers a few different house-made sauces in little ramekins, and I tried three of them.  There was an Angry sauce, which is a house-made hot sauce, there was another sauce that was sweet and spicy with a honey base, and then there was an Oooh Baby sauce that was their barbecue sauce.  The ribs were tender enough to tear off little chunks with my fingers and dip them in the various sauces to try them all, which was nice.  They were a good blank canvas, and all three of the sauces slapped.

For my side, I ordered the double meat baked beans, which were dripping out of the styrofoam box, but every drop was worth saving and savoring.  According to the website, these baked beans are slow-cooked in molasses and spices with ground beef and smoked sausage.  According to me, your friendly neighborhood Saboscrivner, these are the best barbecue-style baked beans I’ve had anywhere in the Orlando area.  I absolutely loved them.  10/10, chef’s kiss, no notes.  (Spoiler alert: that will become a trend with the other sides.)

In an attempt to both kill time so we could get the oxtails and go, and also to try as many things as possible on the menu, I also ordered the chicken sandwich, which is half-price on Wednesday.  It included a large chicken thigh, breaded and fried to perfection, on a soft bun.  It was an awe-inspiring piece of fried chicken.  My only disappointment was realizing later that the sandwich did not include any coleslaw or house-made pickles, as promised.  I thought it seemed a little minimalist, but the chicken itself was so good, and I enjoyed dunking it in the three aforementioned sauces after giving my friend a piece, so I got distracted.  It didn’t occur to me until after we left that we missed out on the coleslaw and pickles, and therefore got an incomplete chicken sandwich experience at Candee Lee’s. 

This time, my side was the “million dollar” mac and cheese, which was so rich and buttery and cheesy that I had to pace myself to get through the modest scoop.  I don’t mind telling you, constant readers, that this might be the best macaroni and cheese I’ve ever had in the Orlando area.  It’s different from my previous favorite from Pom Pom’s Teahouse and Sandwicheria (which no longer lists mac and cheese on its menu after reopening in Sanford), but it is everything you dream of good mac and cheese being.  Truly the stuff that cheesy, buttery, carby, gooey dreams are made of.

By the time we got our food, chatted a lot, finished everything, and watched the restaurant get pretty damn busy during its first hour of operation, it was almost 1:00, so I asked if the oxtails were almost ready to get an order to go.  I paid, got a refill of the delicious lemonade (from a company called Tractor that I had never heard of before), and resumed talking with my friend.  By this point, they were even more slammed.  I asked for an oxtail update again at about 1:45, not out of patience yet, but starting to get close.  They eventually brought out the oxtails and two sides, and we finally hit the road for home closer to 2:00.  I know oxtails take a long time to cook, but if I had known they wouldn’t be ready when the restaurant opened at noon, I definitely would have timed our visit to arrive later.

These were HUGE oxtails, not like the small pieces in a dark brown gravy I’m used to from Jamaican restaurants, or even the ones I’ve had in the past from Nikki’s Place.  These slow-roasted oxtails had an orangey-red mirepoix gravy on them (comprised of onions, carrots, and celery, for those who were wondering), and the tails themselves were much longer segments of bone than I am used to, with rich, unctuous, fatty, tender meat clinging to them.   They were delicious, just different.Once I got home and started writing this review, I saw photos on Candee Lee’s Facebook page that the oxtails were supposed to be topped with a generous portion of fried onions.  I love fried onions, so much so that I obsessive-compulsively sample onion rings anywhere I can find them and make a special point to review said onion rings on this very blog.  I even have a catch-phrase: RING THE ALARM!  I was so sad and disappointed that once again, a key component had been left out of something I ordered, with no notice or warning.

But I cheered up a bit once I tried the same collard greens with smoked turkey that my friend got with his catfish.  Just like with the baked beans and the million dollar mac and cheese, these smoky, savory greens were the best collard greens I’ve ever had in my life.  Better than Nikki’s Place, better than 4 Rivers Smokehouse from 15 years ago, when you could always count on them to have great barbecue and sides, better than anywhere.  These are the greens you’re looking for!

And my second side, which I also enjoyed back at home was the macaroni salad, a side item I am now in the habit of ordering anywhere and everywhere I see it on the menu.  Just like my obsessions with onion rings, chili, and Italian subs, I can’t turn down macaroni salad or pasta salad, because everyone’s versions are different, and they’re almost all good to great.  Well, stalwart Saboscrivnerinos, this macaroni salad was GREAT.  Once again, even though you’ve already heard this familiar refrain, this might be the best macaroni salad in the greater Orlando area.  There was a bit of yellow mustard in it, along with the mayo, shreds of carrot, and bits of celery and onion, and the elbow macaroni was perfectly al dente.  Perfect in every way. 

I think Chef Tony Tone should consider offering a side sampler on his menu, where diners can choose anywhere from three to five sides for a fixed price (factoring in small upcharges for the mac and cheese and greens).  Maybe someone doesn’t feel like heavy meats but really wants to sample as many sides as possible without paying $5.50 for a la carte portions or just getting one or two sides with a larger meal.  I think that would be a big hit.  Even though the fried chicken and fried catfish were both excellent, the fried ribs hit different in the best possible way, and the oxtail was on point, I thought all the sides were the stars of our huge and heavy lunch.

With all this said and done, I give a rousing recommendation to Chef Tony Tone and Candee Lee’s Soul House.  All the food was a hit, even though I am not thrilled about missing out on the fried onions on top of my oxtails and the cole slaw and pickles on the chicken sandwich.  Because the restaurant is an hour away in a direction I never travel in, sadly, I don’t think I will make it back down there, so I’ll never get to try the “complete” versions.  But if you’re ever in the area or just craving soul food, I still encourage others to check it out.  Just be on the lookout when you receive your food, and don’t hesitate to ask if anything seems to be missing.  And if you come for oxtails on a Wednesday, call first to confirm when they will be ready, so you don’t kill two hours waiting around there like my very patient pal and I did.