Category: Meat

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.

Chain Reactions: First Watch

First Watch (https://firstwatch.com/) is a chain restaurant that serves breakfast and lunch, named for the nautical term for the first shift of the day.  My wife has been bravely and boldly undergoing physical therapy for most of the year, a few mornings a week, after a major surgical procedure.  There is a First Watch location between our home and the outpatient PT clinic, so it has been nice to stop there a few times on our way home, almost like a mid-morning date before I have to start work.

I think our friendly neighborhood First Watch has only been open for a year or so, opening in a space that used to be a busy Panera, but the food is so much better than Panera ever was.  It is a bright, open, spacious dining room with lots of natural light, always clean, with friendly service and a hands-on manager who runs a tight ship.  Even though it’s a chain, we have never had anything but good food there, especially when our schedules are very limited by where we can go during the week (as in, hardly anywhere).

On our first-ever visit, my wife ordered this seasonal beverage, the Blue Booster.  I was totally on board with it, due to my favorite superheroes being DC Comics’ Blue Beetle and Booster Gold, best friends and Justice League alumni who need their own movie and/or TV series.  The drink was a blend of fresh blueberry, Fuji apple, and lemon juices, garnished with a basil leaf.  She likes blueberries a lot, so it was a hit, but it didn’t stay on the menu very long.   

She loves this “Million-Dollar Bacon,” baked with brown sugar, black pepper, and cayenne pepper and drizzled with maple syrup.  I think it is her favorite bacon anywhere, and I like it too.  Nothing beats the taste sensation when maple syrup collides with salty, smoky breakfast meats, and if you don’t believe me, Special Agent Dale Cooper on one of my favorite shows ever, Twin Peaks, agrees.
She has ordered this on each one of our return trips, but if you’ve seen one photo of Million Dollar Bacon, you’ve seen ’em all.  Of course, we essentially get four servings out of it every time because she insists I have a strip of bacon at the restaurant, she has one there too, and then she takes the other two home and has them one at a time.

I ordered a seasonal special, the carne asada hash, with thinly sliced carne asada beef, crumbled chorizo sausage, and diced red bell peppers in a potato hash, topped with two cage-free eggs (I got mine scrambled), cheddar and Monterey Jack cheeses, house-made pico de gallo, fresh avocado, shaved radish, cilantro, and jalapeño crema, and served with two warm wheat-corn tortillas. 

This was my wife’s avocado toast with two eggs over-easy.  We might be Xennials rather than Millennials, but she sure appreciates good avocado toast.

These were called “Holey Donuts,” and they were essentially cinnamon-sugar doughnut holes with really nice textures.

On our second visit, she got this honey caramel crunch iced coffee, festooned with salted caramel and honey swirls and topped with a sweet cream cold foam and toffee nut crumbles.  Like so many iced coffee concoctions, it is more like a dessert than anything:

I got an item off the regular menu this time: the chile chorizo omelet, a cage-free egg omelet with chorizo, avocado, green chiles, house-roasted onions, cheddar and Monterey Jack cheeses, topped with all-natural sour cream and served with whole grain artisan toast. 
It looks like I must have requested a side of Million Dollar potatoes to go with it, seasoned fried potatoes that were so good last time, now topped with crumbled Million Dollar bacon and what looks like some melted cheese.

She got raspberry ricotta French toast, another seasonal special that has come and gone.  The thick-cut, custard-dipped challah bread was griddled and topped with fresh raspberries, whipped lemon ricotta cream, raspberry puree, and spiced with gingerbread cookie crumbles, then lightly dusted with powdered cinnamon sugar.  Is it breakfast, or is it dessert?  ¿Por que no los dos?

On our third visit, I tried a seasonal drink called the Pineapple Express, with pineapple and orange juices, coconut water, lime, and agave with a “mint crystal rim.”  It was okay, but I should have just drank water, especially for the price.  You live and you learn.  I love straight-up pineapple and orange juices, but I’m trying really hard to not drink my carbs.

She ordered a seasonal spring special of wild berry lavender French toast, with thick-cut, custard-dipped challah bread griddled and topped with fresh strawberries and blueberries, warm mixed berry compote, spiced gingerbread cookie crumbles, and mint leaves on the side, and lightly dusted with powdered cinnamon sugar.  It also came with lavender whipped cream, but she isn’t a fan of the lavender flavor (it smells too much like soap to both of us), so she asked them to hold it.

That time, I also got a seasonal spring special: SoCal breakfast hash, with hardwood smoked bacon, grilled all-natural sliced chicken breast, seasoned black beans, house-pickled sweet peppers and cheddar and Monterey Jack cheeses over a potato hash, topped with two cage-free scrambled eggs, fresh avocado, house-made pico de gallo, cotija cheese, scallions, and a drizzle of jalapeño crema, and served with two warm wheat-corn tortillas.
I appreciate the creativity of all of these Tex Mex-inspired seasonal specials.  If they keep making them, I’ll keep ordering them.

Most recently, she got the avocado toast again, this time with eggs over hard:

We shared the blueberry lemon cornbread topped with lemon butter, a summer special:

And I got the elote breakfast burrito, a summer special with chorizo sausage, scrambled eggs, seasoned potatoes, diced red bell pepper, cheddar and Monterey Jack cheeses, seasoned black beans, and fresh avocado wrapped in a grilled flour tortilla, covered in Vera Cruz hollandaise and topped with house-roasted corn salsa, cotija cheese, house-pickled red onions, chipotle aioli, Tajin seasoning, and diced cilantro.  It was huge and really cool-looking, with a lot going on flavor-wise.  Of the four breakfast entrees I’ve tried at First Watch, this was probably my favorite, and the presentation had a lot to do with it.

I have mentioned before that I am not a brunch fan.  I like breakfast food as much as anyone, but I don’t usually eat in the morning.  Also, we don’t drink, and that’s a major selling point of brunch, especially on weekends.  And I get super-steamed when restaurants only offer a brunch menu on weekends with a few overpriced breakfasty selections and most of their lunch selections unavailable.  Plus, I can make most breakfast foods just fine at home!

Well, as much as I unironically love our local Waffle House and have nothing but deep, resounding love and loyalty to Orlando’s beloved icon of Southern decadence Se7en Bites, First Watch has really grown on me, especially for their ever-changing seasonal specials that bring some exciting flavors to traditional breakfasts, and for those mid-morning, post-PT, impromptu weekday dates with my wife.  Chain or no chain, they are convenient, consistent, and keeping it interesting, so we’ll keep returning.

Istanbul Grill

I love Turkish food.  It might be my second-favorite cuisine of all time, after Italian, and the insidious social media algorithms are always sending me reels of the most amazing-looking Turkish street foods that always make me hungry.  Unfortunately, Turkish restaurants don’t always last here in Orlando.  I was a big fan of Beyti and Cappadocia, but they didn’t survive.  Luckily, I have a new favorite, Istanbul Grill (https://istanbulgrillorlando.com/), but unfortunately, it isn’t close to home like Beyti was or close to work like Cappadocia was (especially because my work and home are now one in the same).  It is way far south on Orange Blossom Trail, south of the Florida Mall, south of the 528.  It’s a haul — about 45 minutes each way in good traffic on a weekend during the day.  But I’ve brought home takeout twice from Istanbul Grill, and it was so worth it both times.

It is a big attention-getter to order lavas bread in a Turkish restaurant.  They walk it out to your table, this big, beautiful bread puffed up with hot air like a football, and then you stab it with utensils to deflate it (and watch out for the hot steam escaping).  It is very soft, and you rip off pieces and use it for dipping and scooping.  Of course, if you get lavas bread to go, it deflates on the long drive home, but if you’re lucky, it stays warm and may stay soft overnight if you have any left.

And why do you need soft bread for dipping and scooping?  For this mixed appetizer platter!  Almost every Turkish restaurant offers a variety of cool, fresh, refreshing dips, and you can usually order some kind of assortment.  My favorite is spicy ezme in the top left, almost like Turkish salsa — a combination of fresh tomatoes, onions, parsley, green and red bell peppers, hot peppers, garlic, tomato paste, and lemon juice.  My wife wants nothing to do with ezme, so I get it all.  In the top right, the tabouli salad is all hers — crushed bulgur wheat, parsley, scallions. and tomatoes with olive oil and  fresh mint.  She told me this is her favorite tabouli from any restaurant, Turkish or otherwise.In the bottom left, we have baba ganoush — fresh smoked eggplant puree with tahini (sesame paste), olive oil, labneh (strained yogurt thickened into a cheese-like form), mayonnaise, garlic, and lemon juice.  We both love this one, but it is her absolute favorite.  In the cup in the middle, we have cacik — a dip of creamy yogurt, shredded cucumber, mint, dill,  and garlic, perfect for cutting spice and mellowing out rich meats.  And in the bottom right, we have the old classic hummus — chick peas, tahini, olive oil, garlic and cumin.

As great as this mixed appetizer bounty is, I do wish Istanbul Grill served two more dips that I rank even above ezme: soslu patlican (eggplant sauteed with tomatoes, onions, and peppers, like a spicy ratatouille) and taramasalata (a creamy dip made with salted, cured fish roe).

For my first visit, I made sure to order lahmacun, one of my Turkish favorites.  These thin, round flatbreads look like pizza without cheese, but they are much thinner than even tavern-style pizza and not as crispy, and aren’t sliced.  They are topped with a delicious mixture of ground lamb, tomatoes, onions, and peppers, and then baked.  Here you get three in an order.
I’ve made lahmacun from scratch before, and I think I’m going to have to do it again soon, since I have ground lamb in the freezer and want to use it up before hurricane season gets hot and heavy.  Mine are pretty awesome, but not quite as perfect as Istanbul Grill’s.

Instead of eating lahmacun like pizza, you are supposed to roll it up and fill it with sliced tomatoes, red onions, fresh cilantro, and a squeeze of lemon juice.  It is so refreshing and light, much moreso than you would think a pizza-looking thing would be.

My wife ordered “mosakka” (often called moussaka on other restaurants’ menus), an oven-baked dish of eggplant with ground beef and tomato sauce, topped with mozzarella cheese.  If you’ve made it this far, you might be more familiar with the Greek version of moussaka, which is often assembled in layers and topped with a bechamel sauce, but both of us really love the tomatoey Turkish variant.  I tried a bite, and folks, you have to try this some time!  This is actually my preferred moussaka/mosakka.

It was hard for me to choose, but I made the game-time decision (standing at the counter placing my order) to go with lamb adana, grilled kebaps of ground lamb seasoned with red bell peppers.  Think of it as a grilled meatloaf with a firmer texture.  These were fine, especially when I added some of the house-made hot sauce, but I was hoping they would be a little more exciting, flavor-wise.  I almost always gravitate toward lamb dishes at Turkish, Middle Eastern, and Greek restaurants, but I probably would have been happier with the special beef adana, grilled ground beef shoulder kebabs tender seasoned with mint, red bell pepper, onions, chili flakes, and cumin.  There seems to be more going on in that one.  Leave it to me to choose the lesser adana!  Or maybe I should have tried a different lamb dish.  Luckily, there would be a next time.   They came on a bed of rich rice pilaf (which gets so much better with all the meat drippings soaking in) with a small salad and crunchy pickled red cabbage.

My wife had asked me to pick her a dessert, so instead of baklava, I brought home this kunefe, because she is in her pistachio-loving era.  This Middle Eastern dessert is a large “patty” of very fine shreds of dough that almost look like vermicelli strands, often with a sweet cheese filling, soaked in a sugary syrup and topped with crushed pistachios.  It looks a bit dry in this photo because the sugar syrup came in a separate little ramekin (not pictured) for us to pour over the kunefe when we got it home.  That definitely improved its looks, texture, and most importantly, its taste.  I didn’t try it, so I don’t know if this one had cheese inside or not, but she liked it, so that made us both happy.   

For our second visit, we got Istanbul bread instead of the fluffy, puffy lavas (that is actually quite thin once you rip it apart).  This was very similar to a thicker pita bread or a good pizza crust, minus toppings, and much thicker than the lahmacun.  It held up well dipping and scooping the mixed appetizer platter I brought home again.

My wife asked for an order of falafel, which came with four decent-sized discs and a little cup of tahini, which really surprised me when I took a big dip, expecting it to be hummus.  I like hummus (who doesn’t?), but straight-up tahini, not so much.    These looked darker than your average falafel, so she thought they were burned and ended up not having any after all.  I ate them a few days later, so I can vouch for them not being burned and actually being delicious.  I made them into two separate sandwiches (two falafels in each) on onion naan bread with homemade pickled cabbage, homemade pickled red onions, tomatoes, Istanbul Grill’s own hot sauce, and Flavortown Secret Sauce from my giant collection of condiments.  I should have taken a picture of one of those, because they turned out pretty.

One thing my wife ate with gusto was this order of four beautiful grilled lamb chops, seasoned to perfection.  I asked them to grill them as rare as possible.  Despite being very thin (much thinner than the thick lamb loin chops I buy at Costco), they were delicious, and seasoned so well.  The rice pilaf underneath them got better and better as it soaked up all those savory drippings.  She actually got four separate meals out of this, with one lamb chop and a little rice in each portion!

She surprised me by taking a big bite of the grilled pepper on the left, before I could warn her it would be too spicy for her.  It was.  She won’t do that again!  And I ate all the crunchy red pickled cabbage, of course.

This was my lamb shank, a tender, braised chunk of meat barely clinging to a large bone, which was stewed in a tomatoey gravy.  This is one of my favorite dishes to order at Turkish or Greek restaurants, but because I love it so much, I learned how to make braised lamb shanks myself at home, and my sauce is a lot thicker, spicier, and more robust overall, especially since I braise mine in the oven for five to six hours.  This was perfectly good, but just like I’m exceptionally picky about restaurant lasagna because I love my homemade version so much, I also like my lamb shanks a lot more than this one.  Sorry, Istanbul Grill.  It’s not you, it’s me. 

It came with a big styrofoam container of rice pilaf, which I dumped into the lamb shank’s somewhat thin gravy to soak it up. 

And this was the iskender style kebab, a dish I was introduced to a long time ago at Bosphorous, the first Turkish restaurant I fell in love with, and then Cappadocia (RIP) raised the bar even higher.  I didn’t eat this until the following day, but it consists of “signature house prepared meat” sliced  thin over “garlic bread” (I’m thinking fried Istanbul bread) topped with  a tangy, tomatoey “special sauce” and served with yogurt.  It is mildly spicy, acidic, and also creamy, and you get the crispiness of the fried bread underneath catching all those meat and sauce drippings.  The other Turkish restaurants used their doner kebap meat (think sliced gyro meat, all salty and garlicky usually grilled to make it a little firmer), but this was definitely different from those. 

Like I say at the end of too many of these reviews, we both really liked Istanbul Grill, but it is too far from home to return with any regularity, and too far to even drag my wife down there to dine in the restaurant.  But I recommend it, and I will challenge myself to keep ordering different things off the expansive menu whenever I return.  And FYI, there is a second location in Kissimmee, which is even further from me, but might be more convenient for some.

Walala Asian Noodle House

Earlier this year, I met two foodie friends at a relatively new restaurant in Orlando’s “Chinatown,” a huge plaza in Pine Hills on West Colonial Drive that is absolutely full of Asian-owned restaurants and other businesses, including Enson, a sprawling supermarket.  I’ve eaten at a few places in the Chinatown plaza and reviewed two of them, both of which have since closed.  But one that I know isn’t going anywhere anytime soon is Walala Asian Noodle House (https://walalaasiannoodlehouse.toast.site/), specializing in hand-pulled noodles in rich, beef-based soups from Lanzhou, China.  The noodles are called lamian, the term that gave us both Chinese lo mein and Japanese ramen.  Don’tcha love etymology?

Back in 2023, I visited and reviewed Mr. J’s Hand-Pulled Noodle in Ocoee, but I really preferred my meal at Walala.  Not only was it a lot closer to home, but everything had more flavor.  Of course, it helped that I went with two friends, and we shared everything.  That said, we all ended up with the same kind of long, thin lamien noodles, even though Walala also offers Japanese ramen (but there are so many good places for ramen already, especially my favorite, Ramen Takagi), Hunan-style rice noodles (which we all thought might be too similar to the familiar noodles in pho), hor fun noodles (I’m assuming wide, flat noodles like in beef chow fun or ho fun, even though hor fun cracked us all up), and they added knife-cut noodles  to the menu after our visit.

It was my choice to start with a tea-infused boiled egg for each of us.  I know, I know, in this economy?  But before eggs became a luxury good, I was experimenting with pickling eggs with different combinations of vinegar, herbs, spices, and other seasonings, and I enjoyed similar tea eggs at Mr. J’s.  (Anyone else reading that in the late Arleen Sorkin’s voice?  Seriously?  Just me?)  Just like at Mistah J’s, we had to peel the eggs ourselves, but these came pre-cracked:

Due to the cracks, they took on beautiful patterns from the tea infusion process:

We shared an order of rich, chewy pig ear slices tossed with spicy chili oil and fresh herbs, including lots of fresh, bright-tasting cilantro.  This is probably better than you are thinking.  They were cartilicious!

One of my friends got braised beef boneless short rib soup with the hand-pulled noodles.  I was tempted by it, because I love any braised meats and especially short ribs, but she let me try a piece, and it was an excellent choice.

Another friend, much more familiar with Lanzhou cuisine than the rest of us, ordered braised honeycomb tripe soup with the same hand-pulled noodles.  I enjoy some unpopular organ meats (give me all the liver, beef tongue, beef tendon, and chicken hearts you have!), but I’ve never developed a big appreciation for tripe, despite all the times it has ended up in my pho and I still eat it.  It’s a texture thing, but this tripe looked a lot different from the style most Vietnamese restaurants add to pho. 

I ended up getting the large sliced beef shank noodle soup because I love lamb shanks so much, and because this one also came with beef skewers on the side.  I couldn’t pass that up!  The meat was very tender, the broth was a little spicy and very unctuous from all the meat (including bones and fat), and the noodles were nice and springy and chewy.  Totally different consistency from Italian pasta or the rice noodles in pho.

Why didn’t at least one of us order a different kind of noodle?  The world will never know.  (But they also offer rice noodles and ramen, although you can get good-to-great ramen at so many other places.)

Anyway, Walala does something I’ve never seen a restaurant do before.  If you eat all your noodles but still have a lot of soup left, they will bring you another order of plain noodles to add back into your soup, and it’s free!  It almost sounded too good to be true, but two of us tested it.

And here are the heavily seasoned, slightly spicy skewers of slightly chewy beef.  These are individual cubes, not whole pieces, so it was very easy for us to share.  

Unfortunately, I didn’t get to try the Chinese pickles, but there are so many interesting things on the menu, including new knife-cut noodles they didn’t have on my initial visit (wider and flatter noodles, essentially shaved off the block of dough straight into boiling water, so they end up with beautiful fluted edges), a return trip can be easily justified.

So that’s Walala, although you’re probably hearing A LOT more about it, since it just received a prestigious Michelin recommendation at the recent ceremony last month.  I personally have more faith in my own taste and that of my friends, acquaintances, and mutual followers than a non-transparent process and anonymous reviewers from a tire company, but I am still thrilled for Walala and all the other local Michelin award recipients (see my recent reviews for others).  Regardless of my own skepticism and misgivings, those awards will drive more business their way, and I don’t begrudge that to anyone.  It’s one of the most unique Chinese restaurants in Orlando, and especially if you love noodles like I do, you must get over there as soon as possible.

Smokemade Meats + Eats (revisited)

EDIT: I first published this review on August 29, 2021, but this is an updated, expanded version for May 2025.  A lot has changed since Smokemade Meats + Eats was just doing pop-ups, especially in the past month!  Read on…

***

Sometimes my parents joke that they have no idea why I like so many different kinds of food that my family never ate when I was growing up.  I got curious and wanted to try new things once I was on my own, out of their house, taking the advice of cultured, worldly friends or the Internet hive-mind.  Not my dad, though!  He likes what he likes, he’s set in his ways, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t on a constant quest for the best too!  Just today I reassured my dad that he is a big reason I appreciate food as much as I do.  He used to drive all over Miami to find the best Chinese buffets, hot dog carts, New York pizza (by the slice!), bagels, Cuban bistec milanesa, and pastrami sandwiches.  He’d schlep up to an hour for a good meal, so that’s where I get it from.  We had a heartfelt conversation where I told him that I love all the same foods he loves, but along the way, I just figured out I like to eat other things too.  We had one of those “We’re not so different, you and I” moments over the phone.

Well, another kind of food my dad actually likes is barbecue… as long as it is not too saucy or spicy, that is!  He got me into barbecue at the legendary Shorty’s in Miami, and we ate there together countless times.  Barbecue is a reliable crowd-pleaser and a timeless and true American art form, like jazz, blues, and comic books.  Most people have strong opinions and great loyalty to barbecue, but even when we find a ‘cue joint we like, we’re always scanning the sky for scintillating smoke signals, seeking something equally good or even better.  And today I think I found that place.

Smokemade Meats + Eats (https://www.smokemade.com/) is a pop-up restaurant that started pitching a tent and serving up Texas-style barbecue at local breweries around Orlando earlier this year.  I’m back at work with a heavy teaching load, so between that and the pandemic worsening in Florida, I’ve been laying low, avoiding crowds, and not exploring as much as I would like.  But after several months of frustration, I finally made to a Smokemade pop-up at Whippoorwill Beer House & Package Store in Orlando’s Milk District and met Tyler Brunache, the sorcerer supreme of smoke and mystical maven of meat.  Tyler, an FSU graduate (which I’ll forgive) started barbecuing in Washington D.C. before returning home to Orlando, and we should all be glad he made that decision.  You have to follow Smokemade on Facebook or Instagram and find out where he’ll next appear, so you can try this delicious food for yourselves.

I hated crowds and long lines before social distancing was cool, so I was smart and made it to Whippoorwill Beer House on the early side, before it got overrun with Milk District hipsters.  I parked right in front of the establishment (a very pleasant surprise), and Smokemade was already set up in a tent in the parking lot with Tyler, three associates, and a very tenacious bee flying around inside the tent, occasionally landing on them but going unnoticed.  Everyone was friendly as they were taking and assembling orders, and nobody seemed perturbed about the bee, even though I warned two of the guys to watch out for it.  Those guys are nonchalant AF.  I would have gotten the hell out of that tent until the bee got bored and took off.  He must have been there because of all the positive buzz online.

Anyway, even with the curious bee, I was one of the first in line, so I was able to order and get my food packed up within ten minutes.  Keep in mind that proper barbecue is smoked low and slow — low temperatures for hours at a time.  Tyler’s beef brisket is smoked for 16 hours, his pulled pork is smoked for ten hours, his pork spare ribs are smoked for six hours, and his scratch-made sausages are cold-smoked for four hours.  Then all the meats have to rest for hours before serving to be at their best, kind of like me.  So even though I got my order quickly, it took over 24 hours to get ready behind the scenes.  What looks like a pop-up to us takes days of planning, prepping, and perfecting.  And looking at drool-worthy photos of Smokemade’s food online over the past few months, it sure looks like Tyler Brunache has perfected his process.

So what did I get?

Well, whenever I try any new restaurant, I always like to order something where I can sample as many different flavors as I can.  Here, that was the Texas Trinity Platter ($29), featuring a half-pound of beef brisket, a half-pound of pork spare ribs, and two sausages.  Keep in mind, I was bringing all of this home to share with my wife!

When I got home with this massive takeout order, I opened the heaviest box first to reveal the Texas Trinity Platter, and this is what we saw.  WOW.  But you’re not even seeing all of it here!

The first thing I did was remove that half-pound slice of brisket to portion it out.  Look at that gorgeous color, that bark, that marbling!  My photo fails to describe just how thick and substantial it is.  But it’s magnificent, masterful meat.  I asked for our brisket to be a little more moist and fatty, rather than lean.  Trust me, it’s better.  Texas-style barbecue is never served drenched in sauce, but even though we got several small cups of barbecue sauce, none of the meats really needed it.  This brisket stands on its own just fine.

By the way, you can also order a brisket sandwich on a roll for $15, and they look huge.

Underneath, you can see what is essentially a double-order of spare ribs, since I added on an extra half-pound ($9).  Hey, my wife and I both love ribs, and I knew she wouldn’t want any of the sausages.  The ribs are magnificent.  The sweet, sticky, peppery glaze adds tremendous texture and fabulous flavor.  These ribs are so tender, not only do they fall off the bone, but I swear I chewed up part of one of the bones, since it was as tender as the meat surrounding it!   Today, Tyler offered two different kinds of sausages, his popular cheddar jalapeño sausage, and a hot gut sausage.  I requested one of each in the Texas Trinity Platter, and they are both coarsely ground in natural casings (hence the “hot gut” moniker) that give you a satisfying crispy crunch sensation when you bite into them.  They were both heavy and dense sausages, and with everything else we tried, I could only eat a small segment of each.  The cheddar jalapeño was my favorite of the two, with pockets of oozing orange cheddar and a pleasant heat throughout.

Since I can’t always make it to these ephemeral pop-ups around town, I ordered what I could, while I could.  This here is a half-pound portion of pulled pork ($10), not included in the Texas Trinity Platter, but well worth trying.  It is much more understated than the brisket, ribs, and sausages, but I’d still totally recommend it.  You can also order a pulled pork sandwich on a roll for $11.  They were generous with the scratch-made barbecue sauce, which is thin and vinegary, not the usual thick slurry of ketchup, high fructose corn syrup, and artificial smoke flavor like too many sauces.

Barbecue focuses on the meats, but sides are part of the experience.  I couldn’t leave without trying three of Smokemade’s sides: coleslaw made with red cabbage and apples, jalapeño dill potato salad, and pinto beans that are spicier and more savory than the typical sweet “barbecue” baked beans served with Southern BBQ.  Each of these sides cost $3.50.  I liked the beans the most, but the meats are the real reason to chase down Smokemade.
Honestly, my favorite among all these pictured sides were the pickle slices and pink pickled onions in the top left corner of the box, and those actually came with the Texas Trinity Platter!  I already love pickled onions (I make my own), and I am starting to consider myself more of a pickle aficionado, but I really liked these.  Their puckery, pungent punches complemented the salty, smoky meats very well — even better than the actual separate side items, in my opinion.  I asked Tyler, and he said they make everything from scratch except for the slices of white bread that came with the platter.*  I don’t know if he would consider selling his pickles and pickled onions in larger portions in the future, but if he offers them, run, don’t walk.

Finally, I couldn’t come home to face my wife without a dessert, so I chose bread pudding over key lime pie (I love it but she doesn’t) and banana pudding.  Each of the three desserts costs $4.  This was a nice-sized chunk of sugary-sweet, soft, moist bread pudding, featuring cinnamon and caramel flavors.  We thought it might have been made with challah bread, as it did taste somewhat eggy.  We each had a nice-sized portion earlier tonight, and there is still some bread pudding left for tomorrow (with my wife’s name on it).  I’d love to try the banana pudding and key lime pie on a future visit.

You might have noticed this was a lot of food for two people, but I fully expected we would get multiple meals out of it, especially with me packing lunches for work to wolf down between classes and reference interviews, and her being home for the time being.  And it was all so good, neither of us will mind eating amazing Texas-style barbecue for another couple of days.

Five years ago, I was lucky enough to attend an annual conference for my professional organization in Dallas, Texas.  Of course I had to try the local barbecue, so I sought out the famous and highly recommended Pecan Lodge.  It was amazing — easily some of the best barbecue I’ve ever eaten.  Maybe the best.  I’ve never had anything quite like it in Florida, until now.  I never forgot that meal, but I can tell you that Tyler Brunache’s food from Smokemade Meats + Eats looks, smells, and tastes just like that real-deal Texas ‘cue I enjoyed so much in Dallas and dreamed about ever since.

Seriously, don’t sleep on Smokemade, and don’t write it off as a logistical nightmare just because there isn’t a permanent, brick-and-mortar location.  Follow the social media, figure out where Smokemade Meats+ Eats will pop up next, get there early so they don’t sell out of what you want, and go with friends so you can sample a little bit of everything on the menu.  But be careful out there, and drink responsibly at all these breweries!

Back in 1996, the great singer/songwriter/actor/Texan Lyle Lovett sang “That’s right, you’re not from Texas, but Texas wants you anyway.”  Well, I’m not from Texas, and neither is Tyler, and statistically, most of you stalwart Saboscrivnerinos probably aren’t either.  But take it from The Saboscrivner: you want this Texas barbecue anyway!  Heck, even my dad would.

***

Hey, my longtime readers know I almost never return to published reviews to edit them, but this is one time an exception must be made.  In 2024, Smokemade Meats + Eats moved into a permanent location on Crystal Lake Road in Orlando’s Hourglass District, and Chef Tyler Brunache’s food was even better than ever.  I have been a few times recently, always for takeout, and I always go out of my way to try all new things to bolster my original review of the pop-up location.

This brisket cheesesteak sandwich was such a treat — not nearly as drippy, greasy, and cheesy as the traditional Philly version, but the chopped brisket was a lot more flavorful and higher-quality than the fatty ribeye that a lot of cheesesteak slingers use.  I would have liked more cheese, but no matter what, I would always like more cheese. 

Pardon this blurry photo.  Smokemade’s smoked cheeseburger deserves so much better.  It is a smash-style double cheeseburger with American cheese (the best burger cheese), caramelized onions, and their house-made burger sauce, served on a brioche bun (that steamed and got kind of wrinkly in the foil takeout tray), and it is in my Top Five burgers in Orlando.  Easily near the top of the Top Five, if that helps.  Magnificent.  Even better than the brisket cheesesteak.

Crispy fries were very good too, especially when barbecue sauce is applied to them.

Collard greens were on point.  I liked these so much more than any of the original sides I tried and wrote about earlier.  They are NOT vegetarian, though, but the smoked meat helps make them so special.  I like adding a lot of pepper vinegar to my greens.  These didn’t even need it, but it didn’t hurt, either.

Smokemade’s smoked oxtails were also amazing — so much better than the photo below.  This was a special on a Saturday, and I considered myself so lucky for showing up while they were available, since it isn’t part of the regular menu, and I didn’t even know what the specials were going to be that day.  I love oxtails even more than I love steak — that’s how much I love oxtails.  They are definitely one of my favorite dishes, no matter the culture or the cuisine.  I’ve always wondered why barbecue places don’t serve smoked oxtails, but I know they are time-consuming to do right.  But then again, so is barbecue in general!

And finally, the bombastic beef rib — a favorite of both mine and my wife’s, to the point where we order them anytime I see them on a menu, which is all too rare.  Beef ribs are huge, and their prices are usually huge too, but she can get two to three meals out of a single one.  Me, not so much.  But it is some of the most tender, luscious, fat-marbled, unctuous meat there is,  to the point where the bone slides right out, and Smokemade’s beef ribs are no exception.  Like the smoked cheeseburger and oxtails, these Black Angus beef ribs are a weekend special, but get there early, because they always sell out.

This was my most recent beef rib that I brought home for my wife a few Saturdays back.  I went there on a whim (same day I found the oxtails), and I got the very last beef rib.  It was meant to be!  I would have been heartbroken if I had missed them.

*In the first part of my review, I mentioned Smokemade used commercial white bread in their pop-up era, but I am thrilled to report that in their brick and mortar location, they bake their own bread now, and it’s brioche, biatch!  They serve two slices of soft, buttery brioche with a beef rib, although they get sticky and greasy and juicy, as one would expect, making it even tastier.  But the bread is really damn good on its own, y’all.  They sell whole loaves of the brioche, pre-sliced, and it is spectacular on its own, or for sandwiches, toast, FRENCH toast, you name it.  It’s the best thing since… well, you know.

And finally, Chef Tyler makes the best tortillas I’ve ever had in my life, and I’ve had Mexican food throughout Florida, as well as in San Jose, San Diego, and Los Angeles in California and Dallas and San Antonio in Texas.  These are flour tortillas made with beef tallow, and I’ve never had their equal.  Chef’s kiss, 10/10, perfect in every way, no notes.  You can buy a ten-pack for $10, but as you can imagine, they go quickly.  I was all set to make tacos at home with some lean ground turkey, but after trying a solo tortilla, warmed in a hot, ungreased pan for about 30 seconds per side, I thought they were too good to enjoy any way but on their own.  Look at this beauty, starting to puff up in the pan:

And here’s the flip side, Daddy-O.  Best tortillas ever!  Nothing else even comes close.  My wife and I have been rolling our eyes and saying “DAMN, SON!” and other even more vulgar phrases to indicate our enjoyment as we nosh on these.  Imagine making sopapillas out of them!  I guess we could do that, but they are the best tortillas ever and deserve to be tried on their own, at least before you do anything else with them.

I would be remiss if I didn’t report that in April 2025, Smokemade Meats + Eats won a coveted Michelin Bib Gourmand award, meant for “good quality, good value cooking.”  That tire company only awards stars to high-end, upscale dining (think steakhouses and Japanese omakase joints), so I am even more impressed when the casual, everyday restaurants I love win a Bib Gourmand.  Smokemade got a write-up on the Michelin website, just in case my two-part review here didn’t already make you want to race over there.  Heck, I’ve been writing this update over the past few weeks, and now I want to return this weekend!  Maybe I’ll see you there, stalwart Saboscrivnerinos!

Kai Kai

This week, I want to talk about Kai Kai (https://www.instagram.com/kaikai.bbq/), Jerry and Jackie Lau’s stall that serves up Cantonese barbecued meats, as beautiful as they are delicious.  Kai Kai is located inside Mills Market, the new Asian food hall on East Colonial Drive between Mills and Thornton Avenues in Mills 50, arguably Orlando’s best foodie neighborhood.  Last week’s review recipient UniGirl is one of Kai Kai’s neighboring stalls inside Mills Market, and so is former favorite Banh Mi Boy, that Vietnamese sandwich stall sandwiched between UniGirl and Kai Kai.
Before Mills Market opened last year, Kai Kai was located inside of iFresh Supermarket, the Asian market on the corner of East Colonial and Bumby Avenue (next door to Chicken Fire and Lam’s Garden!), but since then, Meng’s Kitchen has moved into the former Kai Kai space inside iFresh Market.

I swear I’m going to move on, but I feel the need to say that Kai Kai is not to be confused with Michelin-recommended Kai Asian Street Fare, one of my favorite restaurants in the Orlando area (just over the Casselberry border in Winter Park).  Everybody still with me?

Well, I dare you to walk up to Kai Kai and not be entranced and enthralled by the barbecued ducks and chickens hanging on display… unless you’re a vegetarian, that is.

I appreciate that they have photos of all their dishes on display.  I honestly wish more restaurants would do this.

Something else I appreciate about restaurants is when they offer some kind of sampler plate with two or three items to choose from so you can try a few things.  I will almost always choose this option, whether it’s an American barbecue joint or a Cantonese restaurant like Kai Kai.  If you order a “rice box,” you can choose two or three of the six house specialty meats.  I, of course, went with three meats, which only costs $2 more than the two-meat option, so it seems like a no-brainer.  I treated myself to roast duck, honey barbecue char siu pork, and soy sauce chicken (from top to bottom in the photo below).

The sliced meats are served over white rice with some garlicky sautéed bok choy, but you can pay a small upcharge for either fried rice or Hainanese garlic rice.  I chose the garlic rice, and I have zero regrets.  I strongly encourage my readers to do the same.  But look at this gorgeous plate of food!  It is huge and heavy, so much so that even *I*, chronic overeater that I am, easily got two and a half meals out of it.

Just because this is a feast for all the senses, including the eyes, here is a close-up of that lovely roast duck with crispy, crackly skin, and the tender, sweet, slightly sticky char siu pork beneath it:

And here is that soy sauce chicken, with lightly crispy skin as well.

They also offer honey barbecue chicken, honey barbecue ribs, and “crispy pork,” either in these rice boxes or by the pound or half-pound, but I feel like I made great choices.  I’ll have to try the ribs next time, though!

I also brought home an order of beef chow fun — chewy, wide, flat rice noodles (made from scratch by Jackie Lau herself!) wok-fried with tender sliced beef, onions, and green onions in a savory brown sauce.  Forgive me for not snapping a “noodle pull” pic, but I ate it too quickly.  This is one of my go-to dishes at any Chinese restaurant, especially as a way to evaluate places that are new to me.  If they have beef chow fun on the menu, I consider it a good sign, and if they do a good job of it, I feel more confident that anything else that comes out of the kitchen will be equally solid.

Spoiler alert: they did a great job of it.

On top of everything else, Kai Kai also serves Singapore rice noodles (another dish I love, the spicier the better), char siu pork lo mein noodles, young chow fried rice with shrimp, chicken, and pork, duck fried rice, and Chinese sausage fried rice, which I love so much that I will definitely try their version next time.  But that’s not all!  They also have an entire scratch-made dim sum menu featuring siu mai, multiple dumplings and bao buns, spicy Szechuan wings, and even cucumber salad (regular or spicy) that is probably super-refreshing to balance out all those heavy barbecued and roasted meats and fried noodle and rice dishes.

Obviously I enjoyed the food at Kai Kai, but I’m far from the only one.  The latest round of Florida Michelin awards were announced on Friday, April 5th, and Kai Kai received a vaunted Michelin recommendation, alongside its Mills Market neighbors UniGirl and Banh Mi Boy, which both received Bib Gourmand awards.  Congratulations go out to Jerry and Jackie Lau, who are absolutely killing it at Kai Kai.  I look forward to returning, but in the meantime, there is magic happening in the stall kitchens of Mills Market.    Whatever restauranteurs Johnny and Jimmy Tung of the Bento Group are doing to build their brands and spread the word, it is paying off!

California Grill

I’ve joked before that my wife and I are not “Disney adults” or theme park people in general.  That said, once in a while, we end up across Orlando from us on Disney property, and food is always involved on those rare occasions. Usually that means meeting visiting friends or my former co-workers out at Disney Springs, but we recently went upscale.

Every year, I task my wife with deciding where she would like to go to celebrate her birthday — anywhere she wants, the sky’s the limit.  Sometimes she wants something down to Earth, sometimes she aims a little higher.  Some years, I end up bringing in takeout or even cooking for her at home, but I leave the decision up to her and try my damnest to make her happy.  This year, she suggested a place we had never been, but both of us had always heard about: the California Grill (https://disneyworld.disney.go.com/dining/contemporary-resort/california-grill/), the high-end restaurant on the 15th floor of the Contemporary Resort at Walt Disney World.  The hotel is an example of brutalist architecture that seems like both a time capsule from the 1970s and an idea of what the future would have looked like at the time.  Along with the Polynesian Resort next door, the Contemporary was one of the two original hotels that opened when Walt Disney World opened in 1971, and believe me, it looks like it!

The Contemporary is noteworthy to me too, because it was the hotel my family stayed at for our two (count ’em: TWO!) Disney family trips when my brother and I were kids, back in the late ’80s.  My family is definitely not “of the travelers,” and trips out of Miami were exceptionally rare for us.  I realize Disney has always been a splurge and an extravagance, but it wasn’t until I moved to Orlando as an adult that I realized how big a deal it was that we stayed on Disney property, as opposed to any of the hundreds of independent, off-site hotels between Orlando and Kissimmee.  And the Contemporary, which costs and arm and a leg now, surely wasn’t cheap back then either.

A big selling point for my dad was being able to park at the hotel and not drive again the entire trip.  A futuristic monorail connects the Contemporary, the Polynesian, the Grand Floridian Resort (a super-high-end hotel that looks like a big Southern plantation, bless their hearts), and the Magic Kingdom and Epcot parks.  Of course we rode that monorail as a family, and it might have led to my lifelong love of public transportation AND tours where I can explore as much of an unfamiliar area as possible.  That monorail appealed to me more than most of the relatively pedestrian rides inside the parks (keeping in mind that we didn’t ride Space Mountain, and most of the Magic Kingdom rides back then were aimed at really little kids).  But I have digressed enough!

So to access the toney California Grill, you check in on the second floor of the hotel and take a seat until they contact you.  Then you ride a special elevator up to the 15th floor, where the restaurant is.  It is a huge dining room with a long, open kitchen and glass windows all around.  One of the major selling points is being able to watch the nightly fireworks through all the windows when they start at 8 PM.  Unfortunately, I was only able to score a reservation for 5:20, but they will let you reenter to watch the fireworks if you show your receipt from an earlier dinner.

As is typical at Disney, the service was impeccable.  That’s that “Disney magic” in action, where everyone is warm, welcoming, and helpful.  Even if I scoff sometimes about Disney, I have nothing but respect for friendly and professional service.  We got a comfortable booth (that I requested with our online reservation), and our “cast member” server, the charming Charmaine, wished my wife a happy birthday.

She explained that the California Grill serves a price fixe menu: for $89 per adult diner, each person chooses an appetizer, an entrée, and a dessert from a list of multiple options.  We had already studied the menu in advance, being studious little nerds.  A lot of dishes included mushrooms, because fine-dining chefs loooove mushrooms, but I’m always on the lookout for them — my culinary Kryptonite.

Charmaine brought us a basket of warm, freshly baked rolls, with the lightest, crispiest exterior crusts and warm, fluffy interiors.  I should have photographed a cross-section, but trust me, you would want to shrink down and curl up for the coziest nap ever inside these rolls.

They came with a board featuring soft, salted butter in that fancy shape that only higher-end restaurants use for butter and occasionally ice cream, as well as a bread dip of olive oil, tomatoes, garlic, and herbs.  As anyone who knows us might guess, my wife went for the butter and I went for the bread dip.

It wasn’t long before we received our apps.  I went out of my way to pick things I knew my wife would want to at least try, hoping to share everything.  This was the barbecue American eel roll, a sushi roll with unagi (the fresh and tender grilled eel), avocado, cucumber, “dragon sauce” (a savory, sweet, sticky brown sauce), toasted sesame seeds, and crispy garlic.  It was great.  I love sushi rolls and I always enjoy eel, but I’ve never seen one served like this, with the whole long tail of the eel. 

My wife was really excited about the farmer’s market salad on the menu, and to be fair, neither of us had ever seen a salad like this before: petit mixed greens (normal enough), roasted baby beets (we are both new to appreciating beets), poached pears (she loves pears!), pear gel (fine dining chefs love their gels!), chocolate biscotti (I had always dismissed biscotti as God’s joke on people who like cookies, but props for putting it in a salad), vanilla “pudding” (WHY is “pudding” in quotation marks?!), and citrus vinaigrette dressing.  This salad was a huge hit for her, and seeing it on the menu was probably what made up her mind about coming here in the first place.  As far as we could tell, the vanilla “pudding” looked and tasted just like vanilla pudding, hold the quotes.

My wife chose the seared halibut for her entrée… just for the halibut.  I don’t mind calling it a main course, but I don’t like “mains” on a menu and I especially don’t like “proteins.”  This lovely seared rectangular prism was served atop bourbon-brown butter risotto with a slice of fondant sweet potato, sweet potato purée (fine dining chefs also love their purées), sweet potato leaves, kale (she has been on a kale kick ever since that dinner), toasted pecans, and a cranberry vinaigrette dressing.  We both wondered if the halibut might be a little overcooked, since the texture was more firm than we expected.  I think she liked some of the components of this dish more than the fish itself.  A lot of it came home with us, and she invited me to finish it off the next day.

As for me, I chose the pan-seared lamb strip loin, since lamb is always one of my favorite meats (not “proteins”).  I requested my lamb rare, and it came back perfectly rare.  It was served with roasted root vegetables, baby brussels sprouts, beautiful thin-sliced radishes, and crispy fried parsnip chips over a bed of parsnip-celeriac Purée, with a juniper-cranberry-cabernet demi-glaze (a very rich, delicious, savory-sweet-tart reduction).  

I had to take a picture of the “back” of the dish too, because it was such a marvel to behold.  It reminded me of the artful plating at the legendary Noma restaurant in Copenhagen (not that I’ll ever go to Noma, or probably even to Copenhagen), where the food looks like little terrarium environments for wee Danish fae.  While the lamb was cooked as well as lamb can be cooked, and the demi-glace was awesome, I must admit the dish lacked the strong flavors I always seek.  It was on the bland side!

Because I had said in the reservation that we were celebrating my wife’s birthday, Charmaine brought us out a small slice of festive “funfetti” cake, which was unexpected and unnecessary, but sweet.  Very, VERY sweet.  The icing was pretty heavy and super-sweet.

For her actual dessert off the price fixe menu, my wife went with the chocolate-hazelnut tart, artfully presented with orbs of chocolate-hazelnut praline crémeux served over a long, thin chocolate shortbread cookie,  topped with candied hazelnuts and decorated with dots of espresso crème anglaise.  I didn’t try a nibble of this one, but she seemed to like it. 

I chose the lemon mousse and olive oil-poppyseed cake, which sounds a lot weirder than it actually was.  The presentation was gorgeous for the small, rectangular Meyer lemon-olive oil cake, studded with poppyseeds, topped with lemon cream, and decorated with dots of blood orange gel.  (Fancy chefs love gels!)  The pretty latticework on top was the thinnest, crispiest , most delicate sugar structure, but maybe I’m wrong, because it almost felt like a delicate, crispy cookie. 

After the hour drive down to Disney property and the long, luxurious birthday dinner, my wife didn’t feel like sticking around for the fireworks or revisiting the 1988 Saboscrivner family monorail tour, so we headed for home.  Both of us agreed that we were glad we went to the California Grill, but nothing amazed or astonished us enough to return.  This will be a true one-and-done experience for us — nothing was bad by any means, but for that kind of a schlep, and at those prices, there are old favorites we would rather return to and plenty of other restaurants to try out for future special occasions.  That said, I appreciated how pleasant they made our experience, with top-notch service and no stodgy, stuffy, precious pretentiousness.

Don’t worry, folks.  After this excursion into fine Disney dining and last week’s review of one of the best meals I’ve ever eaten (in Miami, no less!), I’ll be back to waxing poetic about sandwiches, discovering delis, and obsessing over sardines and mustards soon enough.  My vox populi is never gone for long!