Noodles – Page 2 – The Saboscrivner

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.

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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.

Finka Table & Tap (Miami)

Finka Table & Tap (https://www.finkarestaurant.com/) is a Cuban-Peruvian-Korean fusion gastropub in Miami. If that sounds too good to be true, trust me — it’s real, and it’s spectacular. My best foodie friend took me there on my a recent trip to visit him and my family down in Miami. It is one of his favorite restaurants in the city, and he knew I would dig it too.

Finka is probably considered to be off the beaten path in Miami, far from the tony and trendy areas like Wynwood, Brickell, South Beach, and Coral Gables, but tucked away in the West Kendall suburbs. But just like another kick-ass Miami restaurant my friend brought me to, the award-winning, Cuban-inspired barbecue paradise Smoke & Dough, which is only five minutes away, Finka is worth a trip to Kendall to discover and experience for yourself.

It has been a while since our visit, so I didn’t remember what impressive-looking cocktail my friend ordered, but he identified it as a mai tai, one of his favorite drinks. He said it was a particularly good one, too, since Finka uses orgeat syrup.

It was your typical sweltering Miami summer day, and I have become a true lemonade connoisseur. Finka’s lemonade hit the spot.

Finka serve croquetas de jamon from the iconic Islas Canarias Cuban restaurant in West Kendall, and they are the absolute best croquetas anywhere in Miami. If you don’t believe me, my best foodie friend reviews Cuban cuisine and especially croquetas all over the city in his Croqueta Diaries, and he agrees. I admire his focus, and he is an excellent food writer. He’s brought me to the Islas Canarias ventanita before, to try croquetas straight from the source, but it felt like a bonus to be able to order them at Finka. They are never burnt or greasy — just fried to golden-brown perfection, smoky, creamy, and rich. A squirt from the lime wedge brought a nice acidic tang to cut the savory richness.

We set to work sharing those as well as the malanga nachos, crispy malanga (taro root) chips smothered with ribeye picadillo, a three-cheese sauce, maduros (we both love sweet fried plantains), pink pickled onions, leche de tigre sour cream, Fresno peppers, and scallions. It was a fusion feast.
By the way, leche de tigre is the spicy marinating liquid left over from marinating ceviche, so don’t worry — no real tigers were milked for this sour cream. Can you imagine?

I don’t think this is on the menu anymore, but my friend ordered the gochujang noodles, a dish with spicy sweet potato noodles, shrimp, snow peas, bok choy, squash, carrots, and mushrooms. I didn’t try it (I avoid mushrooms), but he seemed to like it.

I got “dak-galbi”-style chicken fried rice, with queso frito (fried cheese!), pineapples, red peppers, seasonal veggies, maduros, sesame seeds, spicy gochujang sauce (which I have become a huge fan of), and pickled cabbage. It was hard to choose, with so many interesting dishes on the menu, but this seemed to exemplify Finka’s commitment to fusion cuisine, while a few other things seemed a little more “normal.”

I know tourists, hipsters, and bon vivants probably avoid Kendall for their grand nights out in Miami, but there are more top-notch, destination-worthy restaurants there than when I left that area for good and moved to Orlando, at the end of 2004. My best foodie friend and I grew up in Kendall. We survived Kendall. Whether you’re a Miami local or just passing through for a good time, if not a long time, you could do a hell of a lot worse than venturing into West Kendall for a memorable fusion feast at Finka. Maybe plan accordingly and hit Finka and the outstanding Smoke & Dough on the same trip — possibly dinner at one place and takeout for lunch the next day from the other!

Yamasan Sushi and Grill

Yamasan Sushi and Grill (https://www.yamasanorlando1.com/) is a beautiful little Japanese restaurant that has been around for a decade or so, in the Mills Park complex on Mills Avenue, just north of Virginia Drive. I have driven by it literally hundreds of times, but never stopped in to eat until this past Monday, a rare weekday off. My wife and I were already nearby and craving sushi, so we decided to try it, not knowing anything about the place. (Longtime readers know I usually research restaurants and study menus in advance, but not always!) Anyway, I’m so glad we did, since we had a wonderful experience.

Yamasan’s menu is absolutely huge, and they have all kinds of Japanese food, not just sushi. They have hot and cold appetizers, bento boxes, noodle and rice dishes, poke bowls, hibachi grill options, and even a Japanese/French fusion menu. The thing is, I’m a roll guy. I love ornate sushi rolls, especially with raw fish and lots of ingredients to keep things interesting. Most of the “Yamasan special rolls” are in the $15-$25 range, and some are even more expensive than that, so I figured it would be an expensive meal, but probably worth it.

However, our lovely server Maggie let us know that Yamasan recently began offering an all-you-can-eat menu, where for the price of $47.95 per person, you had a pretty large variety of selections to choose from — not the entire multi-page menu, but still a lot. There is a 9o-minute time limit, and everyone in the party must choose the all-you-can-eat option. Even my wife was on board, because if you were even thinking about ordering three rolls, you come out ahead, and we each ordered more than that! If you show up hungry, it would be foolish not to.

I took the liberty of photographing both sides of the all-you-can-eat menu, since it isn’t available on Yamasan’s website as of now:

I am going to include the regular menu prices with each description below, just to show you how much money we saved by doing all-you-can-eat instead of ordering a la carte.

I started out with the tuna carpaccio appetizer ($21.95 on the regular menu), which was very small, but it’s all good, because we had a lot more food coming. This was two pieces of lightly seared tuna topped with creme fraiche, black caviar, grated pecorino Romano cheese, fleur de sel (very posh sea salt), truffle oil, and capers, with wild field greens drizzled with raspberry dressing on the side. Needless to say, there’s a lot going on in this little app! It was so magnificent, I implored my wife to try the second piece, and she liked it so much she ordered another portion for herself (also $21.95).

She got one piece of escolar sashimi ($12 for three pieces on the regular menu), and I got three pieces of mackerel sashimi ($12 for three pieces on the regular menu). I love mackerel, because it is always lightly pickled, and I grew up eating pickled herring (one of the foods of my people).

This was the Japanese mentaiko udon ($18.95 on the regular menu), a decadent noodle dish from the Japanese/French Fusion part of the menu. These super-thick, super-chewy udon noodles were topped with salty salmon roe that pop in your mouth, finely shredded nori (roasted seaweed), more grated pecorino Romano cheese for an umami punch, and what I’m guessing was salty, punchy cod roe mayonnaise on the right side of the photo below. That’s what they put on the mentaiko fries I tried many years ago at Susuru, anyway. This was another dish that was as gorgeous as it was tasty.

I loved everything about this, and I was even considering ordering it before we discovered the all-you-can-eat menu (and that this was included in it). Again, my wife impressed me by trying it and pleasantly surprised both of us by liking it. But what’s not to like… unless you already don’t like salty, fishy flavors?

The rolls started to show up next. This was a Dynamite roll ($11.95 on the regular menu), with tuna, yellowtail, wasabi, and scallions, a nice opening act for the superstars about to arrive. It was dynamite!

And here’s a gorgeous tray with three of my selections: the Salmon Tower roll in the front, the Capitan roll in the middle, and the Unforgettable roll in the back. Lord have mercy!The Salmon Tower roll ($19.95 on the regular menu) is pressed into that rectangular shape, and it includes green shiso (perilla) leaves mixed with sushi rice, smoked salmon, salmon roe, kani (krab), mayonnaise, and eel sauce. I wasn’t sure what shiso/perilla leaves were supposed to taste like, but my research tells me the flavor is a cross between basil and mint — both good flavors to go with the salty, smoky richness in this roll.

The very traditional Capitan roll ($18.95 on the regular menu) includes fried calamari, avocado, Cajun seasoning, topped with smoked salmon, wasabi, creme fraiche, mango salsa, and eel sauce. Okay, so it isn’t traditional at all, but I love fusion cuisine, and I already said I’m a sucker for sushi with a lot going on!

I really should have turned the tray around for a better pic of the Unforgettable roll ($18.95 on the regular menu) in the back, but I forgot. Yes, I forgot the Unforgettable roll. I’m here all week, folks. Anyway, it includes spicy tuna and barbecue eel, and it is topped with avocado, seafood sauce, eel sauce, crispy fried noodles, and masago (red flying fish roe). Each of these was mighty fine.

Here were my wife’s first two roll choices, which curiously came out some time after my first three. In front, you can see the Mango Tango roll ($17.95 on the regular menu), with tempura shrimp and cream cheese, topped with mango, shredded coconut, and eel sauce. It’s always a crowd-pleaser.Behind it is the Sweet Sixteen roll ($17.95 on the regular menu), with shrimp, krab, cream cheese, and a rice paper wrapper, topped with mango and strawberries and drizzled with a “mayo sauce.” I like some sweet flavors with my sushi, like eel sauce, and I’m never sad to see mango show up, but that one was a little too desserty for me.

This was her next roll, the Lover roll ($18.95 on the regular menu), with krab salad, topped with tuna, spicy mayo, a tiny Hokkaido scallop, and red caviar (masago) on top. There was something else in this Lover roll that wasn’t listed that was brown and had kind of a funky flavor that didn’t fit. At first, I feared the chef sneaked mushrooms into this roll, because it definitely wasn’t a fish. The menu listed tempura flakes, but we didn’t see any or feel their familiar, pleasing crunch. It turned out that it was inari, also known as bean curd, or fermented and fried tofu, a common sushi ingredient which she likes, but I don’t — especially when I’m not expecting it. But once she got too full, I poked the inari out of each piece with a chopstick and dutifully finished the rest of the Lover roll.

And this was my last stand: the Dream of Dream roll ($20.95 on the regular menu), which you have to say in the old-timey newsman voice of the late, great David Lynch, as you can bet that I did. It was a fitting way to end our unexpected feast at Yamasan, with tuna, salmon, shrimp, krab, tempura flakes, regular AND spicy mayo, eel sauce, and black caviar. Back in 2009, David Lynch quoted The Upanishads on Twitter, in those days before it became one of the worst places on the Internet: “We are like the dreamer who dreams & then lives in the dream.” Later, in his brilliant third season of Twin Peaks in 2017, Lynch’s character Gordon Cole had a dream in which Monica Bellucci repeated the line. And that’s all I could think of while I ate the Dream of Dream roll.

So if you add up the prices of everything we got, had we ordered a la carte:

Two tuna carpaccio appetizers ($21.95 x 2) +
Escolar sashimi ($12 for three pieces, since we would not have been able to order just one piece) +
Mackerel sashimi ($12 for three pieces) +
Japanese mentaiko udon ($18.95) +
Dynamite roll ($11.95) +
Salmon Tower roll ($19.95) +
Capitan roll ($18.95) +
Unforgettable roll ($18.95) +
Mango Tango roll ($17.95) +
Sweet Sixteen roll ($17.95) +
Lover roll ($18.95) +
Dream of Dream roll ($20.95) =
A whopping $232.45 (plus tax and tip)!

We would never run amok like that if we were ordering off the regular menu… or would we? I always say we know how to party, and why doesn’t anyone ever party with us?

But instead, we paid $47.95 x 2 = $95.90 (plus tax and tip, of course). YOU’RE WELCOME. And thank you to Yamasan Sushi and Grill!

Well, stalwart Saboscrivnerinos, I am thrilled to report that our first visit to Yamasan surpassed my wildest dreams (or dreams of dreams). I would happily go back, because even if it isn’t a cheap dinner, you will eat like a king and go home satisfied and ready to crash for the night. I feel like we got our money’s worth, and then some. And it’s such a nice little restaurant (with comfortable booths!), I would recommend it even if you don’t go with the all-you-can-eat option, even though I personally think it’s a no-brainer. Ask for Maggie — she was the only server on duty, so she was slammed, but she will take the best care of you, as she did for us.

Lim Ros Thai Cuisine

Lim Ros (https://limrosthairestaurant.com/) is a new Thai restaurant in Maitland that opened in the fall of 2024. According to the website, “Lim Ros” means “to taste” in Thai, and there is plenty to taste on the menu. It is located on the bottom floor of a fancy-looking apartment building on the corner of State Road 17-92 (aka Orlando Avenue, which turns into Mills Avenue as you head south) and Lake Avenue. The interior of Lim Ros is modern, spacious, and upscale, with high ceilings and lots of natural light that make the dining room look even larger. When we went for lunch a few weeks back, it wasn’t very busy, but I imagine it is poppin’ on Friday and Saturday nights.

My wife started her meal with a Thai iced tea, as she will at any Thai restaurant. This one was sweet, creamy, slightly smoky, and refreshing, as they should be.

She also started with an order of summer rolls, her go-to appetizer at any Vietnamese restaurant we visit, so she wanted to try them on a Thai menu. The soft rice paper wrappers held massive amounts of finely shredded lettuce, chewy rice vermicelli noodles, julienned carrots and cucumbers, Thai basil, and shrimp , but vegetarians and folks who keep kosher can also order them with tofu instead of shrimp. That is peanut sauce on the top, even though it looks like it could have been cocktail sauce.

I’m not a big summer roll guy, but she insisted I try half of one, and these were a lot more substantial than the usual summer rolls at Vietnamese restaurants. Thicker. Girthier, if you will. Okay, that’s enough of that.

After being introduced to life-changing larb last year at Isan Zaap Thai Cafe, my favorite Thai restaurant in Orlando, I decided to try the larb gai here at Lim Ros. It is a spicy, tangy, refreshing, cool salad made with ground chicken and various crunchy vegetables and fresh herbs: carrots, red onion, cilantro, mint, kaffir lime leaves, roasted rice powder, and served with cucumber slices for scooping and crisp iceberg lettuce leaves for making lettuce wraps. Dig this gorgeous plating:

I must admit I preferred the taste and texture of the larb at Isan Zaap, which was made with ground pork and pork liver, as opposed to the ground chicken in this larb gai. This one also seemed to have a lot of funkiness from fish sauce. Trying to roll up some larb gai lettuce wraps was a messy business, and my fingers smelled like fish sauce for a day or two after this meal.

For entrees, we both ordered off the lunch menu, which has some nice specials. Everything comes with a house seaweed soup and a crispy fried spring roll, so you get a filling meal with a couple bonus items for less than the price on the regular menu.

My wife defaulted to pad Thai, a safe choice for her because she isn’t into spicy food at all. If the classic dish of rice noodles, eggs, bean sprouts, chives, peanuts, and pork sounds basic or unadventurous, I would disagree, because every restaurant’s pad Thai is different, and a truly great one can be a monumental discovery. She said this one was just okay. I tasted it, and she agreed with my criticism, that it lacked the acidic tang from citrus it needed to achieve perfect balance. To be fair, that is my biggest complaint about most versions of pad Thai that I try.

Since my go-to Thai dish, drunken noodles, wasn’t on either menu at Lim Ros, I decided to try something totally new (to me): Panang curry. Here is the whole lunch platter:

This is the actual Panang curry, with Thai eggplant, Thai basil, kaffir lime leaf, chili, and pork (which I chose, but you can also choose chicken, tofu, or vegetables, or beef or shrimp for a $2 upcharge). I wanted something spicy, and I would have to describe it as “medium hot,” but next time I will challenge myself with “Thai hot.” I added all my rice to the bowl of curry and mixed it all up, so that alone dampened the heat level.
I was surprised that the Thai eggplants were little, round, and green, not at all like the huge purple-black eggplants all of us are used to. They looked like tiny round watermelons on the outside, and they had a texture similar to zucchini.

This was the house seaweed soup, which reminded me a lot of the standard miso soup served in Japanese restaurants, but with a delicious “roasted” flavor from the seaweed. Umami? Maybe your mommy. There were tiny little white tofu cubes in there, along with all the seaweed, carrot, onions, and scallions. It was a very nice soup, and it reminded me that I never order Thai soups, but I should branch out.

And the spring roll was a standard spring roll — no big surprises there — but you can’t go wrong with a spring roll! I took the shredded cabbage and carrots home, mixed in with most of my larb gai, so I had a whole meal for the following day.

We both thought Lim Ros was perfectly fine, but there are other Thai restaurants we like more, including another recent discovery I will be reviewing soon, so watch this space. It’s a very nice restaurant and would probably be great for a date, a business lunch, or for bringing family and friends who are unfamiliar with Thai food and nervous about trying it. If you want Thai and you’re already in Maitland or surrounding Fern Park to the north or Winter Park to the south, you can’t go wrong. However, the next time my wife and I are craving Thai, I might drive farther in other directions.

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.

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!

The Prince (Los Angeles)

The Prince (https://www.instagram.com/theprincela) is a classy, old-school Los Angeles Korean restaurant and lounge that is most famous for appearing in multiple movies and TV shows over the decades, including Chinatown (one of the greatest L.A. movies, neo-noirs, and movies in general of all time), Mad Men (one of my favorite shows of all time), and New Girl (where it was the characters’ regular hangout). I’ve never actually watched New Girl, but now I am imagining Zooey Deschanel with bangs and glasses, singing a silly old song (maybe “Dream a Little Dream of Me”?) and strumming a ukulele in this dusky, dark red hipster hangout.

Back in November, I was on a work trip to L.A. and had a chance to join some of my amazing co-workers for dinner. I always stay in Koreatown, where my employer is located, and where there seem to be hundreds of Korean restaurants to choose from, at all different styles and price points. I am still very new to Korean food, but the more things I try, the more I feel inspired to branch out and try more. The Prince was walkable from our campus, so since I was already aware of its cinematic résumé and timeless cool décor, I convinced this small group to trust and follow me.

I must apologize in advance for the photos that follow in this review. It’s a gorgeous room, dark and anachronistic, but as soon as I took my first photo to set the scene, a server yelled at me to not use flash photography inside. So I did my best, such as it is, to share the red vinyl booths, the dark wood, the dim lighting, and even these hale and hearty knights standing guard.

Also, I swear I saw Spike Jonze, director of super-creative movies and iconic music videos, dining there, but I wasn’t 100% sure it was him. As much as I wanted to thank him for “Sabotage,” Adaptation, and Jackass, I didn’t want to be That Guy who disturbed his dinner… especially if it wasn’t Spike.

Anyway, our group was a mix of adventurous and unadventurous eaters, so we picked five things that looked good to everyone, and we all shared them. That is my favorite way to dine with friends.

These are the onion rings (RING THE ALARM!) and cheese balls, because you know if I go anywhere and see onion rings on the menu, I have to order them. They were crowd-pleasers, and it was not the first time I had really good onion rings at a Korean restaurant. The cheese balls were even better — perfect, golden-fried, golf ball-sized orbs with melty cheese in the middle, under the breading. I should have tried to get a shot of a bisected cheese ball to show you their molten, sticky, creamy centers, but they went fast!

When you’re introducing Korean food to unfamiliar diners, beef bulgogi is one of those perfect gateway dishes. Bulgogi is a dish of thin-sliced beef (often sirloin steak), marinated in a savory-sweet sauce, and then grilled or stir-fried with onions and green bell peppers. The bulgogi marinade contains soy sauce, sugar, sesame oil, garlic, ginger, and pear juice, which tenderizes the meat. There is nothing spicy or “weird” to scare off the unadventurous diner, so it was another hit at our table. Just FYI: “bul” is Korean for fire, and “gogi” means meat.

We also ordered galbi (sometimes called kalbi), a very similar dish but with beef short ribs sliced cross-wise against the bones, rather than thin-sliced steak. It has a similar flavor due to the marinade, but I already love short ribs in any form — not just the flavor, but the wonderful texture. I especially like the chewy part of the meat right around the bones, which you can just pull off with your fingers if you don’t want to gnaw it off. This was served over onions and scallions, and there wasn’t a morsel left.

I didn’t have any input in choosing this garlic shrimp dish, served with fresh, raw, shredded cabbage, but I was happy to try a couple of the shrimp, which came in their shells and had to be peeled. It was delicious — different from scampi or any other garlic shrimp dish you might be envisioning, but still very satisfying.

I did choose this dish, though: thick, perfectly al dente udon noodles served with mixed seafood: shrimp, mussels, squid, and tiny crab legs (more trouble than they were worth to crack open). The menu describes it as coming in a spicy broth, but it could be served mild upon request. I honestly don’t remember what we decided as a group, but I think we went with spicy and almost everyone still loved it.

Real Korean food aficionados might be rolling their eyes, disappointed that we made relatively staid and familiar choices, but that’s often what happens in a “family-style” group dining situation. I would have loved to try the soondae, since I always love blood sausage in all its other forms, from Argentinian morcilla to British black pudding, but nobody else was on board with this one. It’s all good!

I have no regrets or complaints about The Prince, especially because it is such a part of Los Angeles and Hollywood history. I would not be surprised if there are better Korean restaurants in L.A.’s Koreatown, but the vibes at The Prince are unmatched. Every time I make it out there for work, I try to visit at least one historic, iconic L.A. landmark, whether it’s a tourist attraction, a restaurant, or both. So far, I’m making quite a list. I love my job, and I love L.A.!

An Vi

As all Orlando residents know, the vast majority of our Vietnamese restaurants are mostly located together in the Mills 50 district, centered around East Colonial Drive and Mills Avenue, east of downtown Orlando. There are a few more in Orlando’s Chinatown, centered in Pine Hills on West Colonial Drive, west of downtown. A few Vietnamese restaurants have come and gone in the Seminole County suburbs, closer to where The Saboscrivner lives, but they are never fantastic, and they rarely last. So when An Vi (https://www.anvirestaurant.com/) opened relatively close to home in Casselberry (I think in 2023), we hoped for the best. I am pleased to say it did not disappoint after two visits — one for takeout and the second for dining in. Chef-owner Joseph Nguyen and his wife-partner Rose Nguyen opened An Vi after running two Vietnamese restaurants in Seattle, and my favorite city’s loss is our gain.

For our first takeout order, my wife requested lemongrass tofu with rice vermicelli noodles (bun). I didn’t try any, but she loved it.

We ordered shrimp pad Thai noodles to share, since we hadn’t had pad Thai in a long time, and it always hits the spot, even from a Vietnamese restaurant. Especially from this Vietnamese restaurant. I love it when the pad Thai is a little bit tangy, even approaching sour, and An Vi nailed it. Some places make it too sweet, without that acidic tang to balance it out.

We also shared an order of gumbo, that Cajun stew that usually contains shrimp, chicken, andouille sausage, and the “trinity” of onions, celery, and green bell peppers, served in a rich roux thickened with okra and ladled over white rice. If getting gumbo at a Vietnamese restaurant sounds even weirder than getting pad Thai at a Vietnamese restaurant, consider that many Vietnamese immigrants settled along the Gulf Coast in Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi, and there is a wonderful culinary fusion cuisine called Viet-Cajun. (King Cajun Crawfish is one of several Viet-Cajun restaurants around Orlando that serves this style).
My wife and I both adore good gumbo (although I like mine much spicier than she does), and An Vi’s version did not disappoint either of us.

I am famous for my love of sandwiches, especially banh mi, the Vietnamese sub sandwich that is a product of French colonialism. While the menu teased a ribeye French dip banh mi that sounded amazing, I was told it is no longer available. I chose my standard, a house special pork banh mi, with a few different pork-based cold cuts, pickled carrot and daikon radish, and fresh cilantro and jalapeno peppers served cold on fresh, crusty French bread. It is a surprisingly light and refreshing sandwich, compared to the heavy gut-bomb Italian hoagies and Jewish deli monoliths-on-rye I love so much. I usually like a lot of mayonnaise (usually Kewpie brand) and pork liver pate on my banh mi, but I didn’t notice any on this particular sandwich.

Despite being a bit dry as a result, it was generously stuffed with the various meats and vegetables.

About a month later, we were both hungry on a Friday night and climbing the walls after working from home (and eating at home) all week. I took my wife to dinner at An Vi, since it is so close, and we knew we would get seated and served quickly. My wife always loves summer rolls with peanut sauce at any Vietnamese restaurant, but we almost didn’t order these, since they were called “fresh rolls” (also known as goi cuon) on An Vi’s menu. But when we saw them being walked out to another table, we asked, and she was glad we did.

She ordered a house special vermicelli platter that came with a lot of neat meats in addition to the rice vermicelli, but she didn’t love all of them. Luckily, I did.

It included grilled beef, chicken, and pork sausage skewers, all with a slightly sweet, tangy, and funky flavor from being brushed with fish sauce. There was also sugarcane shrimp, with ground shrimp brushed with fish sauce and reformed around a length of sugarcane before being grilled, and a fried spring roll stuffed with pork. While she liked the vermicelli and all the crushed peanuts, I think the funky fish sauce flavor turned her off these grilled meats, so I happily devoured them. I think I’ll order this exact dish for myself on our next visit to An Vi.

I had a feeling she might not love all those unique meats, so I ordered a fried catfish banh mi sandwich because I wanted to try it, but also because I know my wife always loves fried catfish and might end up preferring it. I was right — it was good, and she loved it. This banh mi almost reminded me more of a New Orleans-style po’ boy sandwich, the way it was dressed without the traditional butter, pate, or pickled vegetables. The side of Cajun fries really hit the spot too.

Since Pho Huong Lan is my absolute, accept-no-substitutes favorite restaurant for pho, I tried the bun bo hue at An Vi instead of pho. Labeled as Hue’s spicy beef soup on the menu, it was warm and refreshing, spicy without being overwhelmingly so. I was so glad I had the foresight to wear an expendable shirt for all the inevitable splashing of the oily orange broth.It was good, but the bun bo hue at Pho Huong Lan still wins.

I ordered a side of French bread (the same bread they use for the banh mi) for dipping in the rich, spicy broth and for eating plain to cut the heat.

I hope An Vi makes it in Casselberry, where too many good restaurants that are considered “exotic” don’t last. While our first impulse when we crave Vietnamese food is still to schlep down to Mills 50, I am glad An Vi is so close to us, and I’m sure we will be ordering plenty of takeout over the cooler months ahead.

Prato

The upscale Italian restaurant Prato (https://www.prato-wp.com/) is a mainstay of Winter Park’s tony Park Avenue for good reason. Chef and co-owner Brandon McGlamery (also of the excellent Luke’s Kitchen and Bar in Maitland) has always served top-notch food in gorgeous surroundings. This is not a typical “red sauce” Italian-American restaurant, so don’t expect spaghetti and meatballs or red and white checkered tablecloths. But even though Prato is a cut above, it isn’t snooty or snobby, and the comfort food truly comforts.

I had not been back to Prato in years, due in part to the difficulty of parking on Park Avenue (ironic, eh?) and a lot of bad timing. Sometimes I’d find myself there in the off time between lunch and dinner service, where Prato only offered a limited menu, and one of the most famous pasta dishes in Orlando was unavailable. This review was from a recent visit with my wife for lunch, which I timed just so I could try the legendary pasta for the first time, after years of reading hype about it online.

We started out with pretzel-crusted calamari, fried to golden-brown perfection. I always note that too many restaurants overcook their squid tubes and tentacles until they are chewy and rubbery, but these were really tender, as they should be. We had tried these before, too many years ago, and these were just as good as they had always been. I always appreciate dipping sauces (salsa rosa and grain mustard aioli), but this calamari didn’t even need them. That didn’t stop me from dipping, though!

After how much we enjoyed the beef tartare on a recent trip to Luke’s, we decided to trust Chef McGlamery and ordered the carne cruda at Prato as well, to compare and contrast them. It is raw beef (which tastes great and must be the highest quality to avoid safety concerns), topped with a farm-fresh egg, grated horseradish, and romanesco conserva. I realize romanesco is a relative of the cauliflower that grows in stunning fractal patterns, but I didn’t see any of that vegetable, so I wondered if the menu might have meant romesco, which is a sauce made from cooking down tomatoes, roasted red peppers, garlic, and almonds. It was also served with crunchy toasted focaccia bread slices for scooping up the meat or spreading it onto the toast. We loved it, just as we loved the beef tartare at Luke’s.

Here’s a close-up of that amazing carne cruda. The meat was so tender and flavorful in a way we rarely get to experience, since everyone cooks their meat (and should continue to do so, don’t get me wrong).

I forgot to mention that we came to Prato during weekend brunch hours, being sure to be there as it opened to avoid a long wait. After the savory appetizers, my wife went with a sweet dish: perfect little pancakes topped with freshly made ricotta cheese and blueberry compote (which strikes me as more of a dessert than a breakfast dish, but millions of brunchers will disagree). She adored it.

And I finally got to try the legendary pasta dish, mustard spaghettini “cacio e pepe.” I fully admit to being a red sauce guy, since that’s the Italian food I was raised eating. I am always drawn to rich bolognese and spicy arrabbiata sauces, so I rarely order cacio e pepe on menus, even though it can be so luxurious and decadent despite its relative simplicity (just Pecorino Romano cheese — the cacio — and black pepper — the pepe). This version was anything but simple, though. It included mustard in there somewhere, but it’s subtle, and you definitely won’t detect the brightness of yellow mustard or anything horseradishy, so don’t worry about that. I love mustard (and even review mustards on this blog), so that was the main thing that had me intrigued for so many years.
This house-made pasta also includes balsamic vinegar (another favorite ingredient of mine), radicchio, a spicy and bitter vegetable that looks like red and white cabbage and is sometimes called Italian chicory, and speck, a cured and lightly smoked pork leg (think of ham or bacon) from the cold and mountainous South Tyrol province in northeastern Italy. If you are familiar with geography, you might guess that there is some German or Austrian influence to this particular cured meat, and you’d be right. Also, the mountains are called the Dolomites, but Rudy Ray Moore had nothing to do with it.

This was a gorgeous and delicious pasta dish that surpassed all the hype. I make pretty great pasta dishes at home, but I had never had anything quite like this, and I was so happy to finally try it, after all these years. It was one of my favorite things I ate in 2024, that’s for sure.

I don’t know when we will return to Prato, but as tempting as it always is to try new things on every visit, I am obsessed enough with the mustard spaghettini “cacio e pepe” that I will probably order it again and again in the future. It’s like nothing I’ve ever tried before. Leave it to me to be late to the party and then never want to leave! But I’m sure Prato being great is no big surprise or secret to anyone else in Winter Park or Orlando. It has a swanky vibe that would be perfect for a date night or just a nice dinner out. The hardest parts will be parking nearby and figuring out what to order, but hopefully I have already helped you with the second challenge.

Mazzaro’s Italian Market (St. Petersburg)

Mazzaro’s Italian Market (https://www.mazzarosmarket.com/), located in mainland St. Petersburg, Florida (not on St. Pete Beach) is to me what Walt Disney World is to most people — a land of magic and wonders, an expensive way to have a grand time, and if not the happiest place on Earth, then one of the happiest places in Florida for sure.

The market is huge — not quite as large as a Publix-style supermarket, or even as big as the two-story Eataly in Chicago, but much larger than Orlando’s beloved Stasio’s Italian Deli and Market or even the new D’Amico & Sons Italian Market and Bakery. (Honestly, I enjoy it so much more than the very corporate and bougie Eataly.) It seems to sprawl on forever, with a wine room, a cheese room, a cafe, a gelato area, counters for freshly made sandwiches, deli meats and cheese sliced to order, hot prepared foods, fresh pasta, and this scenic bakery to your left when you enter, where everything is made from scratch, like almost everything else in Mazzaro’s. It is always crowded, so you’ll have to jostle your way through the narrow, mazelike aisles. Midwesterners, prepare to say “Ope!” a lot, while New Yawkers might prefer “Eyyy, I’m walkin’ here!”

Back in 2022, my wife chose this simple cannoli from the bakery, with the crispy-crunchy pastry shell piped full of rich, sweet cream and dipped into crushed pistachios.

This was a gorgeous sfogliatelle, a delicate shell-shaped pastry made of dozens of crispy layers of dough, with cream in the middle (usually a bit lemony), dusted with powdered sugar so it looks more like it came from Miami than St. Petersburg. Luckily, one can get sfogliatelle in Orlando now, at Stasio’s or D’Amico & Sons, but on a rare pilgrimage to Mazzaro’s, you have to try everything you can. One of my favorite food-related activities is “Dare… To Compare!”, and this pastry shell will make you yell “Shell yeah!”

Hilariously, my wife calls sfogliatelle “schmuckatelli.” I could listen to her say that all day.

I don’t even remember what this thing was! Some sort of fruity center, for sure.

Heck, we brought these two sugar-topped beauties home with us last month, and I don’t remember what they were either!

My wife is a sucker for a good New York style black and white cookie, which are more like cake when done right, with the slightest hint of lemon underneath the rich, shiny icing. This one, from our most recent visit last month, was as good as any we’ve gotten from New York bagel shops, bakeries, and delis.

As I said, Mazzaro’s is almost always crowded, but never moreso on Fridays or Saturdays, where everyone feels packed in like a certain tinned fish I love. That may be a reason the store seems so large, because it takes so long to traverse and even longer to take it all in. When you finally make it past the bakery, weaving through equally overwhelmed shoppers experiencing sensory overload in that maze of shelves for non-perishable groceries, you will find yourself faced with a plethora of options for fresh pasta, prepared foods, and deli sandwiches.

Here are just a few of the fresh filled pastas to choose from, which you can order by the pound.

There is a large refrigerated case with more handmade pasta already rationed and weighed in convenient containers.

I’ve never ordered any of the prepared foods because I’m always just passing through, but if you lived locally, you could easily take care of dinner for a single person, a couple, a small family, or even a big party. Yes, for those in the St. Pete area, Mazzaro’s caters as well, and I have to imagine you would be the host with the most or the hostess with the mostest if you brought in their fine fare.

My wife doesn’t share my obsession with Italian subs or sandwiches in general, so on our 2022 trip, she ordered this pair of lobster and seafood rolls from the deli counter. She prefers lobster rolls served warm with butter (Connecticut style), whereas I prefer them served cold with mayo and a little bit of diced celery for crunch (Maine style), and that’s what these were. I ended up eating the vast majority of these, which was fine with me. On our return in 2024, she remembered this was not the way (at least not for her), so she ordered a grilled caprese sandwich, with tomato, fresh basil, fresh mozzarella, and pesto spread on grilled Italian bread, and devoured it with gusto on Mazzaro’s covered patio, despite not liking fresh tomatoes or sandwiches that much. I didn’t even get a photo of it!

This is Mazzaro’s tried-and-true #1 from our 2022 visit: ham, Genoa salami, capicola, mortadella, provolone cheese, Romaine lettuce, tomatoes, onion, roasted peppers, Italian slaw, and oil and vinegar on fresh-baked Italian bread from a wood-fired oven. It’s a magnificent Italian sub, and I say that with pride and authority, since an Italian sub may just be my favorite meal (and is definitely my favorite sandwich).The Italian slaw is no joke, adding a tangy, vinegary crunch to the sub. More places should experiment with different kinds of cabbage slaw on sandwiches.

I had to get another #1 when we returned in 2024, and I asked for this one on a softer hoagie roll to try it a little different. I actually preferred it this way, because my one minor complaint about Mazzaro’s sandwiches is that sometimes the bread is a little burnt on the outside (see above).

If you recognize our familiar plates from dozens of takeout reviews, it’s because I always order these sandwiches and bring them home with me, rather than do the two and a half hour drive on a full stomach. I will enjoy them more in the comfort of my own home, and it gives the intense flavors time to marry and marinate. Usually I bring a cooler when I know I’ll be stopping by Mazzaro’s.

And I can’t go to Mazzaro’s without also ordering a #7 for later. This sandwich is both beauty and beast, with prosciutto di Parma, sweet soppressata, hot capicola, marinated sun-dried tomatoes (one of my favorite ingredients in sandwiches, salads, and sauces), and fresh mozzarella on a ciabatta roll. Both the #1 and #7 sandwiches taste even better after a drive back to Orlando and a night in the fridge.

Here’s my latest #7 from our most recent visit in July 2024. The outside of the ciabatta roll was overdone, but the interior ingredients are so good, the sandwich couldn’t possibly be ruined.

I also brought home three different, interesting salumi, so we could have a little salami as a treat: a bison salami from Angel’s Salumi & Truffles (no truffles for us, though!), a venison, pork, and pinot noir salami from Driftless Provisions, and a “bonfire cider” salami from Short Creek Farms (which I don’t see on their website, so here are all the salami).

The one disappointment for me, even though it sounded like a can’t-miss delicacy, were these prosciutto “chips,” made in house by Mazzaro’s. Prosciutto might be my favorite meat ever, and it is definitely one of the finest things you can make out of pork. However, a major part of its appeal is getting it sliced paper-thin so it almost melts in your mouth, with a pleasant chewiness. These crispy, crunchy strips lost that experience, although fans of crunchy bacon might like them more than I did.

I could have run amok a lot more on this most recent visit, but the relentlessly hangry crowds seriously stress out my poor wife. I resolved to go without her next time, whether I’m coming or going from St. Pete, so I can linger longer without guilt and she can be spared the entire hectic experience.

As much as I appreciate the Italian markets in and around Orlando, there is nothing like a trip to Mazzaro’s, which is why I’ve been recommending it to St. Petersburg locals and tourists alike for years (and even recommending Orlando denizens consider it for a day trip, because it is that rad). Heck, I wish I could pop over there right now, but I’m writing this on a Sunday evening, and it wouldn’t be open anyway. For such a popular place, they have pretty limited hours, so review them in advance so you don’t schlep over there and end up disappointed:

Mon-Fri: 9am-5pm
Saturday: 9am-2:30pm
Sunday: Closed

And if you’re already a “Mazzaro’s Adult” (not quite the same as a Disney Adult, am I right?), let me know what your can’t-miss favorites are for my next visit, whenever that might be.