Sandwiches – Page 4 – The Saboscrivner

Dough Boyz Pizzeria

Dough Boyz Pizzeria (https://doughboyzpizzaoviedo.com/) is located in a small, nondescript strip plaza in Oviedo, near the intersection of Aloma Avenue and Tuskawilla Road, just west of State Road 417. It is a few doors down from Ramen Takagi, a Saboscrivner favorite and home of the best tonkotsu ramen in the Orlando area. It is also a few moments from another newer discovery I enjoyed earlier this year, Alma Argentina.

Like any good New York-style pizzeria, Dough Boyz offers pizza by the slice, which is my preferred way to try any new pizzeria. While I was bringing home a whole pie, I had to try a plain cheese slice, crispy and warm from the oven, while I was still on the premises. To me, that’s the best way to get an idea of any pizzeria at its best. I ate this huge slice in the car, and it did not disappoint. It was the perfect blend of crispy and chewy, with nice robust sauce (not too acidic nor too sweet), melty mozzarella, and a thin crust that wasn’t burnt to a crisp. It was a little floppy, but that doesn’t bother me at all.

But this was the main event that I brought home, the grandma Sicilian, a thin-crust square pizza that is already pretty unique, because most Sicilian pizzas in my experience are thick and on the chewy side, with crispy bottoms and edges from cooking in a pan. Dough Boyz does that thicker Sicilian style too, but this was one hot grandma! It was topped with their house-made plum tomato sauce, fresh mozzarella (it’s fun to call it “MOOT-sa-DELL”), and homemade pesto sauce — a perfect combination. The only things I could have possibly added to edge this pizza pie further into pie-fection would have been some fresh basil leaves and a swirl of balsamic glaze. But I can’t complain, because it was a little slice of heaven — or more like twelve huge, rectangular slices of heaven.

A major reason I wanted to try Dough Boyz, out of all the friendly neighborhood pizzerias in every single strip plaza around here, was because they sell cheesecake from a local baker based in DeBary, Florida, Cheesecake Chino’s. I haven’t met Chino himself, but I have interacted with him online, and I wanted to try his New York-style cheesecake to compare it to familiar ones like Publix, the Factory, and my personal favorite cheesecake, from the New York-based Junior’s. The slice I got reminded me more of Junior’s than any other cheesecake I’ve had, and I mean that in the best possible way. It was a plain, dense slice with no toppings or additional flavors (fine with me), with the slight tangy tartness I crave from cheesecake, and an interesting chocolate crust, rather than a more typical graham cracker crust (or the weird cakey crust Junior’s uses, which is maybe the only thing I don’t love about their cheesecakes). It was very good, and I would be really interested in trying some other varieties from Cheesecake Chino’s in the future. I’m always thrilled to support local bakers, just as I love supporting local restaurants.

Two weeks had not passed before I returned to Dough Boyz for another takeout mission. I had not seen arancini on the menu, but when I arrived at the restaurant and saw them, I had to order one for my wife. She loves these things: a ball of creamy rice stuffed with seasoned ground beef and peas, rolled in seasoned bread crumbs and fried to perfection: crispy on the outside and soft and yielding on the inside. If you’ve ever had a Cuban papa rellena, it’s surprisingly similar, just with risotto instead of mashed potatoes.
It came with a dipping cup of marinara, but she wanted nothing to do with that, so I had something to dip my pizza crusts in. Score!

I ordered an eggplant rollatini pizza for us to share over the next few days — a classic New York-style pie with plum tomato sauce, “special blend” ricotta cheese, and thin slices of breaded and fried eggplant, but no mozzarella cheese. My wife likes eggplant and especially eggplant rollatini more than I do, but I ended up liking this pizza more than she did. I know she doesn’t share my red sauce obsession, but I think Dough Boyz has a particularly good, fresh-tasting tomato sauce, and I’m not at all surprised that they make it in-house.

And after trying the thin crust Grandma Sicilian last time, I had to go back for the thicc Brooklyn Sicilian this time. I would have settled for a slice, but they didn’t have any Sicilian slices left, so I sprang for a whole pie, knowing I’d make it last over several days. It started out with twelve slices, but I HOUSED three of them before remembering to take this photo. I loooove Sicilian pizza, you guys. I used to get slices at Cozzoli’s Pizza in the Dadeland Mall food court in suburban Kendall as a kid, and that’s how my love affair with rectangular, pillowy-soft, crispy-edged Sicilian pizza started, in the early ’80s in Miami.
This Brooklyn is slightly different from other Sicilian pizzas I’ve had elsewhere (including from Orlando-area mainstays Valdiano, Del Dio, Paradiso, and Antonella’s) because the chunky, robust tomato sauce is applied on top of the mozzarella and provolone cheeses, and then the whole thing is topped with oregano, grated parmesan cheese, and olive oil. It makes it messier to eat, but really, really good. I have always said that the sauce is usually the most ignored ingredient on pizza, but Dough Boyz takes their sauce as seriously as their dough and cheese.

Finally, for dessert on this epic second takeout trip, I brought home Dough Boyz — not the staff of the actual pizzeria, but fried dough balls topped with so much powdered sugar that they looked like they were partying in the aforementioned Miami, perhaps in the 1980s. You may know them better as zeppoli. My wife absolutely loved these, even more than the cheesecake, but I stand by the cheesecake.

Dough Boyz Pizzeria does have a few tables for dining in, but it is a no-frills place, and I’m guessing the vast majority of their business comes from takeout. I’m sold. It is twelve minutes from my home, and I pass a few other pizzerias to get there, but they have earned a loyal and enthusiastic regular customer moving forward. Give them a try, especially if you’ve heard the tiresome bleats of ex-New Yorkers saying there is no good pizza in Orlando. There is plenty, and you can just click on the “Pizza” category link in this review to read my other reviews on the subject (or just click on all the other links I’ve made sure to sprinkle into this review, like so much parmesan cheese). My personal favorite pizzeria is too much of a schlep across town to just get there anytime I crave it (sorry, John & John’s – A Pizza Shop), but Dough Boyz is my new friendly neighborhood destination, and I’ll be back again before long.

CLOSED: La Femme Du Fromage

EDIT: Tonda Corrente closed La Femme Du Fromage in Orlando’s East End Market at the end of October 2025, but I’m sure we haven’t seen the last of her, or her cheeses.

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La Femme Du Fromage (https://www.lafemmedufromage.com/) is Orlando’s finest cheese shop, but it is also a restaurant. Located inside our hipster-friendly food hall in the Audubon Park district, the East End Market, this stall is a required destination for anyone who loves cheese… and wine, and charcuterie boards, and the finest grilled cheese sandwiches you’ll ever find anywhere. The finer things in life, basically.

Owner-operator-cheesemonger-chef Tonda Corrente is a delightful person with great taste in music — you thought I was going to say cheese, didn’t you? Well, she has the best taste in cheese of anyone I’ve ever known, and she even introduced me to my all-time favorite cheese, Cahill’s Irish porter cheddar, as beautiful as it is delicious. I am currently obsessed with her grilled cheese sandwiches, and I am dragging everyone I know to her little shop, one by one, to get them equally obsessed.

I ate there recently with a former co-worker, a brilliant professor and top-notch legal mind who I have the utmost respect for. This person admits to not being the most adventurous eater, so I figured suggesting Tonda’s cheesy creations was a safe bet. It was. We shared a magnificent early lunch on a Friday, dining at one of the outdoor tables at East End Market before it got too unbearably hot. The only issue at La Femme Du Fromage is what to choose, because every sandwich on the menu tempts and entices. I think we both chose wisely.

Because all my friends know how much I love a good Italian sandwich, I chose Tonda’s baked Italian sandwich, which was stuffed with genoa salami, prosciutto di Parma, housemade chorizo spread (kind of like nduja, that wonderfully rich, soft, spicy, spreadable sausage), house-made olive tapenade, and of course Tonda’s three-cheese blend (cheddar, gruyere, and havarti), topped with arugula and citrus vinaigrette, on a crusty baguette. It was a fine, fine sandwich. No complaints, no regrets. The only way to improve it would be for it to be twice the size, but it was great as is.

My friend ordered the egg and cheese sandwich, with a fried egg and Tonda’s three-cheese blend on garlic-buttered artisan bread. It was a wise choice for a first-timer, and she seemed to like it a lot. She was also kind enough to share it with me, and I thought it was a fabulous sandwich that blew me away. It’s so simple, yet so perfect.

When I returned with my wife the following weekend (after raving about it all week), Tonda had a special menu available, in honor of the Kentucky Derby. While I am not fascinated by big hats nor preoccupied with playing the ponies, I am a big fan of limited-time food specials. But even I didn’t realize we would try three of them on this visit (my wife’s first trip to La Femme Du Fromage).

This was my Triple Crown grilled cheese, with hickory smoked ham, bourbon glaze, smoked gouda, Tonda’s three-cheese blend, berry port jam, and garlic chive butter, topped with crumbles of smoky blue cheese from Rogue River Creamery. It was probably the best ham and cheese sandwich I’ve ever had in my life. My wife didn’t try it, because (gasp!) she doesn’t like ham. I know, right?

These were her Derby pretzels, soft pretzel sticks that reminded me of the ones I buy at Aldi. However, they came with something you cannot get just anywhere: pimento cheese dip, that decadent Southern treasure that I always love to sample everywhere, because it’s always a little different but always good — kind of like chili, onion rings, and Italian sandwiches. Tonda later told me this wasn’t house-made pimento cheese, but it came from Sweet Grass Dairy, where they added mayo, piquillo peppers, and Spanish pimentón to their own semi-soft, French-style Thomasville Tomme cheese. It was awe-inspiring.

This was the peach and prosciutto flatbread, another special recommended by Tonda herself, and it tasted like spring in all the best ways. It included pesto sauce, mozzarella and goat cheese, arugula, and white balsamic glaze, in addition to the paper-thin slices of salty prosciutto (the rare kind of ham my wife will make an exception for, because it is that damn good) and fresh, juicy peaches.

Tonda Corrente and La Femme Du Fromage were featured in the Orlando episode of Somebody Feed Phil earlier this year, Phil Rosenthal’s good-natured food and travel show on Netflix. Phil visited the East End Market, among other destinations in our City Beautiful, and he spotlighted some of our best local restaurants and their chefs and owners. I even made a list of my own reviews of Phil’s Orlando stops, and by the time you read this new review, I will have updated that list with a link to it. La Femme Du Fromage is a cheese-lover’s paradise, but there is nothing cheesy about it, or about its lovely, stylish proprietress Tonda, who has forgotten more about cheese than I will ever know. You must pay her a visit and try her fabulous flatbreads and god-tier grilled cheese sandwiches, which she charges a reasonable amount of bread and cheddar for.

Corelli’s Pantry (Clermont)

Whenever I travel out of my normal radius, I always check online to see if there are any interesting restaurants or grocery stores near where I’m going. In that lackadaisical week between Christmas and New Year’s Day, when most people don’t get anything done, I took a long-overdue drive to Clermont, a town south and west of Orlando that I never have any reason to visit, to check out a restaurant I had been meaning to try for years. And on my way to eat a solo lunch at that restaurant (more on that some other time), I took the scenic route through quaint, picturesque downtown Clermont and discovered another restaurant, an Italian restaurant with a small deli and market attached. Of course, I had to stop in and get some stuff to bring home with me!

This Italian restaurant/deli/market I stumbled across was Corelli’s Pantry (https://corellispantry.com/). It is a teeny-tiny space, although the dining room in the back might be more spacious. When you enter, you order at the counter, whether you are planning to dine in or take things to go. I wasn’t sticking around, but I should have stuck my head into the dining room to scope it out. Sorry.

Up front, they had your typical glass deli cases full of cured meats and cheeses to slice and sell by the pound, some ready-made sandwiches and other prepared foods, and lots of Italian bread, cookies, and other baked goods.

I wasn’t in the market (no pun intended) for anything sweet, especially with the recent addition of D’Amico & Sons Italian Market & Bakery so close to home, but things definitely looked good here. There were also some arancini (rice balls) in this particular refrigerated case.

Corelli’s Pantry serves pizza by the slice, which is my favorite way to order and eat pizza. I had to get a slice to eat on the premises, which is the ideal way to gauge a pizzeria. Don’t bring up that other Jewish guy who rants, raves, and rates slices of pizza — I’m aware, and I am not a fan. But from my first taste, I definitely became fan of Corelli’s New York-style pizza. This was a damn near perfect slice that I enjoyed back in the car: HUGE (the odd angle of this photo definitely doesn’t do its size justice), thin and crispy, not floppy, robust sauce, nice melty cheese, not dripping with orange oil, crust was neither too doughy nor too dry. If I don’t mind eating the plain crust at the end, I consider it a very good slice, and this one was.

They also had half of a muffuletta sandwich in the display case, already assembled, with the ingredients all mingling and marinating. I had not had a muffuletta anywhere in years, so I brought that home with me, planning to cut it in half and get two sandwiches out of it. The wide, round, flat loaf of bread wasn’t as good as the legendary, flawless muffuletta served at Central Grocery in New Orleans, but I haven’t been there since 2001, and beggars can’t be choosers. The bread was drier and more crumbly, but it held up well against the multiple layers of Genoa salami, ham, provolone cheese, and olive salad (made from some combination of green and black olives, carrots, celery, onions, roasted red peppers, herbs, spices, red wine vinegar, and olive oil). I am not always the biggest fan of olives, but this Sicilian-inspired relish is what makes the muffuletta special and sets it apart from other Italian sandwiches. You can also buy jars of it, including from Central Grocery itself, but it isn’t that hard to make at home.

Here’s a dynamic view of a quarter of that marvelous, mouthwatering muff. It really hit the spot.

I also ordered an Italian combination sub with ham, salami, capicola and provolone, topped “David’s way,” with house dressing, shredded lettuce, tomato and thin-sliced red onion, plus I asked for balsamic vinegar and hot cherry peppers. I stuck it in a cooler I brought with me and enjoyed it hours later, after it had a chance to chill out in the fridge back at home.

The roll was great quality — most likely baked in-house at Corelli’s Pantry, but I did not confirm that. They stuffed the sub generously with high-quality ingredients, just like that muffuletta. It was a tremendously good (and just plain tremendous) Italian sub — one of the better ones I’ve enjoyed anywhere in Florida. It was up there with the namesake Stasio sub from Stasio’s and the Capone from Bad As’s Sandwich, two all-time favorites.

With Stasio’s in Orlando’s Milk District, D’Amico & Sons in Oviedo, and Tornatore’s Italian market next door to its College Park restaurant (where you can also get a very nice Italian sub), I don’t know when I’ll ever make it back to Clermont to visit Corelli’s Pantry again, since it was over an hour away from home. But I’m so glad I discovered it, almost accidentally, and even happier that I stopped there and tried so many things. Nothing disappointed. Everything exceeded my expectations. If you are anywhere near downtown Clermont, or even if you aren’t, please stop there for a slice, a sandwich, or maybe even take a load off and enjoy some Italian food in the dining room, and then let me know how that was.

Smoke & Donuts BBQ

Not to be confused with the similarly named Smoke & Dough in Miami, Orlando’s Smoke & Donuts (https://www.smokeanddonuts.com/) is a relatively new restaurant that started serving excellent barbecue and beautiful, festive cake doughnuts just over a year ago, right in one of the best foodie neighborhoods in the city, the Milk District.

My wife and I recently had our first meal at Smoke & Donuts, and me being me, I made sure we could sample as many things from their eclectic menu as possible. The restaurant is open from 11 AM to 9 PM on weekdays, but on weekends, it opens at 9 AM for a brunch menu in addition to the full regular menu. We figured that would give us even more options to choose from, especially with my weird work hours that prevent us from going out to eat during the week. Luckily, there was plenty of parking and no wait shortly after 11 AM on a Saturday.

Once you arrive, you take a paper menu to study as you walk down a line where you can see those dazzling, decadent doughnuts on display, then the stations where the staff assembles barbecue bowls, sandwiches, and “boards” (really metal trays). My wife sat down at an open table while I took the walk toward an extremely patient woman who took our large order at the end of the line. It’s a familiar setup — you pay at the register, take a number, and then someone delivers your food to your table.

Before I reveal everything we ordered, here are the sauces diners will be able to choose from, since sauces are such an important part of the barbecue experience. They are all in squeeze bottles over by the self-serve soda fountain, and there are plenty of tiny plastic cups with lids to fill with the six sumptuous sauces. Over here you have toasted guajillo pepper, KC (Kansas City) sweet, spicy vinegar (it’s a North Carolina thing), and a marvelously thick hot sauce with visible spicy pepper seeds and a touch of sweetness.

Next to them, kept on ice, are Lowcountry SC (South Carolina) mustard sauce (kind of a creamy, herby, tangy mustard, not like bright yellow mustard or overly sweet honey mustard at all) and AL (Alabama) white barbecue sauce, which is creamy, tangy, and sweet. You KNOW I tried them all!

Here’s my sauce lineup. Before our food even arrived, as I was assembling our sauces, they brought us each a sample of a perfect, delicately seasoned, crunchy pork rind, which we both liked. Pork rinds can be heavenly or a pointless waste of calories, and the seasoning usually makes all the difference. But this one was very light, which was also nice.

My wife ordered a blueberry “MOCK-jito,” a delightful mocktail with fresh mint, lime, and fresh muddled blueberries. She said it was so refreshing, and it was one of the highlights of this epic brunch. I am so glad to see more restaurants offering interesting mocktails made with the same love and care as their alcoholic cocktails. Thank you, Smoke & Donuts!

It wasn’t long before our meals were walked out to the table. My wife and I each chose a Pit Sampler board, which comes with a choice of three meats and either one side and a piece of cornbread or a glazed doughnut (one of the more basic doughnuts, not the fancier ones). She chose pork belly (on the left; smoked and prepared in a sous vide water bath), pulled smoked chicken slathered in the Alabama white barbecue sauce, and sliced brisket for her meats. When I was given a choice of ordering her brisket lean or marbled, I chose marbled, which we both prefer. With steak, brisket, or pastrami, when in doubt, go for the marbling!

Instead of a side, she opted for a cinnamon sugar cake doughnut. Those pink strips are pickled red onions, something I love a lot (and make myself at home), but she has no interest in onions at all, or anything pickled. Needless to say, I got them for myself, along with the rest of the house-made pickles and pickled onions in the top right corner of her tray.

For my Pit Sampler board, I purposely chose three different things, knowing we would offer each other samples of ours anyway. I got chopped brisket (doused in TG sauce, the toasted guajillo pepper sauce), chorizo sausage, and St. Louis ribs (rubbed in “red chile and brown sugar slather”).
I chose baked beans for my side (see above), which included Kansas City sweet barbecue sauce, caramelized onions, sorghum, and stout. And you can see my cornbread up there too. But wanting us both to have a chance to try more sides, I also ordered a side sampler with three additional sides:

French fries, a necessity for dipping in the six different sauces:

Crunchy cucumber and cabbage slaw, shredded and tossed in a sherry and rice wine vinaigrette. I didn’t even try this until later, when we got home with multiple boxes of leftovers, but I liked it a lot. What a gourmet, nontraditional take on cole slaw. It was a bit dry, even with the vinaigrette, but a little Alabama white sauce perked it up.

Rich macaroni and cheese, featuring cheddar, Swiss, Chihuahua, and cotija cheeses and a little lager. This is definitely one of the best versions of mac and cheese in Orlando, and my far-and-away favorite of all the sides we sampled.

Here’s a close-up of my chopped brisket, which was good, although I think I would definitely opt for the sliced, marbled brisket in the future:

I had no idea how many ribs came in the sampler, but I have to be honest, I only expected one rib (making me think of Chris Rock in I’m Gonna Git You, Sucka, a movie I made my wife watch for the first time recently, still as funny as it was when it came out in 1988). Imagine my surprise when the guy delivered the trays to our table, and there were three ribs, although he told me he accidentally gave me an extra one. So normally you would get two in the Pit Sampler, and even that would have been great. The ribs were my favorite of the three meats I ordered, by far. They were so tender and smoky and sweet and spicy, easy to pull off the bone, but not exactly “falling off the bone” (barbecue mavens try to avoid that texture).

And from the brunch menu, my wife really wanted to try the biscuits that came with a trio of different flavors of soft, spreadable butter. It looks like they change these flavors all the time, but today we got mango, cilantro-jalapeño, and strawberry-basil butters. My wife really loved the two fruity ones, and I liked all three. The biscuits weren’t huge, but we also shared my cornbread and still had plenty of these rich, creamy, velvety butters left to bring home in the tiny plastic sauce cups. Thank goodness for the lids!

We were as interested in those stunning doughnuts as we were in the barbecue, so we ordered more to take home and parcel out over the next few days. On the left is a blonde blueberry doughnut we intended to share, with vanilla glaze, oat streusel, blueberry compote, and a chewy, buttery blueberry swirl blondie (the triangle “hat” on top, definitely a fascinator). In the middle is a red velvet doughnut my wife chose, with chocolate glaze, red velvet fudge, and a lightly crispy meringue on top, like a little beret sitting at a jaunty angle. On the right is a passion petal dancer, the most butch-sounding dessert name ever. I chose that one as soon as I saw it includes passion fruit cremeaux (I don’t even know how to pronounce that), lemon pavlova, and a dehydrated strawberry.

And this was one last doughnut for me, back at home: the key lime doughnut, with candied lemonade glaze, ginger snap streusel, key lime pavlova, and meringue. Good grief, this was so good. All the doughnuts from Smoke & Donuts BBQ are cake doughnuts, so they are really dense, heavy, and on the drier side, but not crumbly. If you’re craving the light airiness of yeasty Krispy Kreme doughnuts, then go to Krispy Kreme. But you’ll miss out on these lovely, luxurious, cakey creations.

We were lucky enough to meet Smoke & Donuts’ chef-owner Ian Russell, a graduate of the only CIA that makes the world a better place, the Culinary Institute of America. He worked as an actor (appearing in at least one local production with my wife when they were both a lot younger!) and some other interesting careers before founding Smoke & Donuts as a food truck. After building a reputation there, he then moved into the current space, directly next door to one of Orlando’s most famous and beloved restaurants, Se7en Bites. I was impressed that Chef Russell went around from table to table, introducing himself and asking his guests how everything was, and that’s when my wife recognized him from when they were in Cyrano together. Then the lady who had so patiently taken my large order introduced herself as his mother, and she stopped by to check up on us and kvell about her successful son.

I would be proud too. Chef Russell and his entire staff (including his mom) were wonderful. We felt very welcome and had a terrific brunch/early lunch that ended up being the only meal we needed for the rest of the day, with plenty of leftovers for the next couple of days. The ribs and mac and cheese were definitely my favorites of everything we tried, but I would return just for a big ol’ order of fries so I could use them as sauce delivery devices, the sauces were that good. People are intense (and intensely loyal) when it comes to barbecue. Orlando is lucky to have some good options (along with Briskets in Oviedo and Smokemade opening a permanent location soon), and Smoke & Donuts is definitely among the best. The Milk District has another winner, and since they have lasted over a year in this location, I’m sure they aren’t going anywhere. Come try them when you’re craving meat and sauce, and they even offer smoky jackfruit for vegetarians!

Philippe the Original (Los Angeles)

On my second trip to Los Angeles for work, I caught a Lyft ride at the airport and went straight to another famous, historic L.A. restaurant, luggage and all, before even checking in at my hotel or reporting to work. I had done my research like any good librarian, so I planned to go to Philippe the Original (https://www.philippes.com/), the inventors of the French dipped sandwich. Founded in 1908, Philippe the Original has probably changed very little over the decades. The prices have surely gone up in the past century and change, but not nearly as much as you would think.

You order and pay at the counter, and then the very patient servers assemble you a tray, cafeteria-style, while doubling as cashiers. I miss cafeteria-style restaurants. We went to a bunch when I was a kid, from Morrison’s in the mall to the old K-Mart cafeteria, but you don’t see this much anymore, aside from some casual Latin restaurants like Orlando’s Lechonera El Barrio. Philippe the Original also has a diner feel to it, since it also serves breakfast (and Los Angeles is a big diner city). But I was not here for breakfast, dear readers. Oh no, I was a man with a shopping list. With an agenda, even.

The main draw is the French-dipped sandwiches, which come on a delicious French roll. You can also get them on white, wheat, rye, or sourdough bread, but please don’t do this. You can get the sandwiches single-dipped, double-dipped, or “wet” in au jus, so I opted for a single dip as a first-timer, with an extra ramekin of jus on the side for this Jew. You can choose between sliced beef, pork, lamb, New York pastrami, ham, or turkey, and even though I’m sure you can’t go wrong with any of those, I had a hard time choosing. I asked, fully expecting to be told no, if I could get two kinds of meat on my sandwich, and the nice lady said of course! I couldn’t get half the roll with one and the other half with the other meat, but I could definitely get two different meats stacked upon each other. Now we were talking! I asked what she recommended, and she said of the six, she would narrow it down to beef, lamb, and pastrami. Now, I already had plans to meet friends at one of L.A.’s most iconic deli institutions, so I figured I would save the pastrami for that later meal. Beef and lamb for the win! I also added on bleu cheese, which pairs so well with red meat, but rarely makes an appearance in sandwiches and even less often as a thick slice. It got surprisingly melty on there, between the warm roll, hot meat, and hot jus. You can see the light brown lines in the cross-section of this roll above the cheese, and that is where they dipped the roll in the jus. This was a huge, thick, hearty sandwich. The beef and lamb were both very tender, but I preferred whichever one was sliced thinner (the beef, I think, which surprised me, since I always gravitate toward lamb when it is an option). That purpley-pink thing in the corner was a pickled egg, one of many accoutrements I ordered with my two-meat sandwich, fished out of a big jar on the counter. I couldn’t resist! It was so vinegary and tangy and good. I love pickled eggs, but never thought to employ beet juice when I make my own at home. Now I know… and knowing is half the battle!

Believe it or not, Los Angeles is a big chili city. Angelenos love putting chili on hot dogs and burgers and serving it in diners, so I figured the meat-centric Philippe the Original would serve a good cup of chili. They did. Like everything else, it was pretty classic — no frills, not fancy, just mildly spicy, and of course they knew better than to add beans. If you imagine a cup of chili from a diner, you’ve got it. It might not win any awards in the Terlingua Chili Cookoff, but this is quintessential L.A. chili. And to me, that makes it quintessential American chili.

Like any classic diner or cafeteria, Philippe the Original also had a refrigerated glass case full of tempting pies, cakes, baked apples (talk about old-school!), and prepared salads: cole slaw, macaroni and potato salad. As much as I would have loved to try all three of those, I was already going a little wild.

I chose the macaroni salad, which normally edges out potato salad for me, and I chose wisely. It was a simple, mayo-based macaroni salad with a slight crunch from celery (or green bell pepper?) and a tangy sweetness. It reminded me of a macaroni salad you would get at a mid-century lunch counter, maybe in a drugstore or even a department store. I miss those places too, and they were already 99% phased out by the time I was a kid in the ’80s.

Each table had a squeeze bottle of a relatively thin, horseradish-heavy hot mustard, that I applied to my wonderful beef, lamb, and bleu cheese sandwich after taking a few unadorned bites as a control. It was an excellent mustard that complemented the rich, salty, juicy sandwich perfectly. I noticed they sell it in bottles, but as much as I would have loved to bring one home, I do not check bags, and I knew TSA would confiscate it. Regular readers know my obsession with mustards and other condiments (such as my Cutting the Mustard reviews), but at least I got to try it in the restaurant.

Also, I got the most delightful little glass of lemonade for something like 95 cents. When I saw the price, I didn’t know how big the glass would be, but it was wee. I guess this is like portion sizes were like back in the day, before Big Gulps and whatnot. Really refreshing lemonade, though, especially after all that salty food and waking up at 4 AM for a flight.

I might have looked like a big weirdo, wheeling my roll-aboard bag through Philippe the Original, but I knew it would have to be my first stop in L.A. or I wouldn’t be able to make it back later. I’m so glad I did, because it was truly awesome. It lived up to all the hype I had read online, to say nothing of passing mentions and sightings in L.A.-based TV shows like Bosch. I love these historic restaurants that have been doing the same thing for decades, sometimes lasting a century or more, because they are that damn good. Los Angeles is full of them, and I look forward to exploring more on future work trips (and eventually getting around to reviewing everything from this last visit). If you appreciate a good French dip sandwich, try to make a pilgrimage to the creator some day. The originator, the O.G. — Philippe the Original.

Chain Reactions: V Pizza

Based on a recommendation from one of my closest foodie friends, who I trust completely, my wife and I took a drive across Orlando to Palm Parkway, down near the entrance to Disney World, to try a new pizzeria. The touristy Lake Buena Vista seemed like quite a schlep for pizza, but V Pizza (https://www.vpizza.com/locations/lake-buena-vista-orlando-fl/) ended up being totally worth the schlep. V Pizza is a chain based in Jacksonville, a city that has never held much appeal to me, but this is its first of hopefully several locations in Orlando.

V Pizza uses clay brick ovens made in Italy to bake Neapolitan-style pizza at 900 degrees. The website says the “V” stands for Veloce, Italian for “fast,” because the ovens bake pizzas in as little as 90 seconds. Their pizzas come out with a thin, crispy crust, similar in style to Anthony’s Coal Fired Pizza and Orlando’s own Pizza Bruno, two of my favorite pizzerias. All of their pizzas are 13″, so kind of a personal size, but still fine for sharing. Having said that, I think any pizza can be a personal pizza if you believe in yourself.

When you get to V Pizza, you order and pay at the counter, then sit down, and a server walks your food out to you. It is a very casual restaurant, not upscale or fancy, but really, really good. They have an open kitchen, and you can see multiple flavors of gelato on display in a glass case. There is also a bar in the back of the restaurant, and they have trivia nights. (I wish my friends and acquaintances would invite me to a trivia night some time, because we would totally win. But alas, I work until 9 PM during the week, which puts a damper on the Saboscrivner’s social life!)

I ordered one of the house special pizzas, the salsiccia pizza, with San Marzano tomato sauce (made with the world’s best tomatoes, grown in volcanic soil in Italy), provolone and mozzarella cheeses, spicy Italian rope sausage (I couldn’t resist trying an unfamiliar sausage), roasted bell peppers and onions, and a drizzle of Calabrian chili pepper oil. It was so fine. All the high-quality ingredients worked really well together, the sausage was excellent, the crust was perfect (not quite as charred as Anthony’s Coal Fired), and the sauce really sang. It was a top-tier pizza, put over the top by that fresh, bright, robust sauce and tender crust.

My wife and I were both kind of shocked that I ate the whole thing right there, in the restaurant. I didn’t set out to eat an entire pizza; it just happened. It was just so good, and surprisingly light, even with the slices of rope sausage on top. So much for leftovers!

My wife built her own pizza, with mushrooms, black olives, and a whole burrata cheese ball. She demurely ate a slice at the pizzeria, and we took the rest home. You might be wondering “Where’s the burrata?”

It came on the side, in a little metal bowl, rather than plunked on the pizza. In case you haven’t experienced the wonder of burrata before, it is a ball of tender, fresh mozzarella cheese (about the size of a large egg, give or take), but the inside is made of stracciatella cheese curds made from buffalo milk and clotted cream, so it is really soft and stretchy with a rich and creamy center. You can buy it at most grocery stores, but this one at V Pizza was really good, drizzled with a bit of olive oil. She loved it, and I think it was better this way, rather than being baked and melted on top of the pizza, losing its consistency and creaminess.

We also shared a pancetta sandwich that came out before the pizzas, like an appetizer. I have recently won my wife over with the wonders of pancetta as an ingredient in so many dishes, from scrambled eggs to roasted potatoes to pasta sauces. It is similar to bacon, only cured but not smoked. I think of it so much as an ingredient, with unrivaled versatility in the kitchen like anchovies, but better. Restaurants hardly ever offer it as a sandwich meat or even a pizza topping, so we couldn’t refuse!

The pancetta in the sandwich was served warm in slices, with melty fresh mozzarella, fresh tomato, fresh basil, and some drizzled Calabrian pepper oil on a crusty, ciabatta-like roll. It was fine, but I think I still prefer pancetta as an ingredient, and I would prefer prosciutto as a (cold) sandwich, which V Pizza also offers.

In addition to pizza and sandwiches, V Pizza also serves salads, pasta dishes, wings, and even brunch on Sundays from 10 AM to 2 PM.

I would be remiss if I did not mention V For Victory (V4V), V Pizza’s charitable mission to partner with local businesses to provide financial support for area families fighting cancer. The website says “V4V and their business partners provide support throughout the duration of treatment, connecting individuals and families with direct services to meet everyday needs such as lawn care, house cleaning, auto repairs, free meals, and more.” That is a noble goal, and even if I didn’t like the food as much as I did, I would still feel really good about supporting V Pizza and boosting their signal.

There is so much on the menu at V Pizza that I would like to try, and I will certainly return. Our server told us they are planning to open another location in Winter Park, and I will probably wait for that one to open. It should do well there, whereas I was sad to see the restaurant on Palm Parkway mostly empty when we went for a late lunch. There are so many dining options in that sprawling shopping center, including the beloved Japanese izakaya Susuru, the hot new Kung Fu Kitchen (which I tried going to once, but the line was way too long), a Korean barbecue and hot pot place (so trendy right now!), two completely unrelated Irish pubs, and a video game bar. I just hope V Pizza doesn’t get lost amid all those other options, especially not being on some main drag in the touristy side of town, because I loved it, and I have impeccable taste. With that in mind, I think most people will find a lot to love there too, even if it’s a schlep for you to get out there as well. Help the battle against cancer and eat some perfect pizza while you’re at it! That’s a win-win situation if there ever was one.

The Town House Restaurant

The Town House Restaurant (https://www.oviedotownhouse.com/), a friendly neighborhood diner in every sense of the word, has been slinging breakfast, lunch, and dinner in Oviedo since the 1950s, with a heaping helping of Southern hospitality accompanying each order of fresh, hearty comfort food from its kitchen. I went there for the first time in November to meet a friend for breakfast, brought food home for my wife, and then brought her back to dine with me a few weeks later. I tried to document everything that we ordered on those visits to paint a homey, welcoming picture of this beloved family restaurant.

Now that I can’t ever meet friends for lunch or dinner during the work week, my friend was patient and kind enough to join me for breakfast. She ordered a breakfast platter that came with eggs (she went with scrambled) and sausage (which she chose over bacon or ham). You can’t go wrong with American classics like these!

Or “French” classics, for that matter. I didn’t try the Town House’s version of French toast, but the menu described it as “fluffy, custard-dipped Texas toast,” and I don’t see how you can go wrong with that:

She then chose home fries instead of the alternative of grits, and I made a mental note of how great they looked, especially topped with melted cheddar cheese and sautéed onions and green bell peppers.

I’m a weirdo who always has to see if the lunch and dinner menu is available at breakfast time, and the Town House Restaurant allows you to choose from either. They said only a few lunch and dinner options might not be ready — most likely the dinner specials like steaks and grilled salmon.

I had a hard time saying no to an order of fried mozzarella sticks at 10 AM. These were really good — battered rather than breaded — and I got two sticks stuck together, which I have never encountered before. I took it as a good luck sign. Don’t worry, I shared with my friend!

There was so many things I wanted to try between the two menus, that I ended up splitting the difference and ordering Zephy’s Big Mouth breakfast sandwich off the lunch menu. I love a good breakfast sandwich, and this one included a thick slice of sweet Virginia ham, two over-hard eggs (my current preference for eggs after a literal lifetime of ordering them scrambled), and pepper jack cheese on grilled Texas toast, a wonderful and underrated bread for sandwiches, especially warm, melty, comforting sandwiches like this. I asked for mustard, because I always like mustard with ham and eggs, and of course it was typical yellow mustard to brighten things up.

I asked if I could choose from lunch sides instead of the listed options of grits and home fries, and our very patient server told me to go ahead. Then she called me “hon,” or perhaps “sugar,” as diner waitresses are wont to do. I chose macaroni and cheese, a premium side, which was a little on the bland side but still pleasantly chewy and gooey.

Our breakfast was so nice, I texted my wife and told her to check the menu online and place an order with me. She did not surprise me at all by requesting fried catfish, one of her favorite dishes to order at any restaurant. It was still warm and crispy by the time I got it home, and here it is with her premium side of fried okra (and cocktail and tartar sauce for dipping).

Since her fried catfish entree came with two sides, she told me to go ahead and choose another one for myself. I decided to try the Town House’s version of potato salad, which I enjoyed later that day at home. I’ve had more exciting potato salad recently, but even average potato salad can still hit the spot. I definitely hit it with some pepper back at home!

But my wife did want the sweet tater tots, made with sweet potato, as one would expect. This is an appetizer portion, and they came with a little ramekin of powdered sugar to shake onto them once I got them home. Neither of us noticed the sweet tater tots were also available as a side order, so I could have brought her a smaller portion of those and gone without the potato salad, but oh well. These tots also stayed warm and crispy on my short drive from Oviedo back to Casselberry.

By the way, I was going out of town the day after this breakfast, which is why I was ordering a lot of food for my wife. She also asked for the red velvet bundt cake from the dessert menu, and here is a really bad photo of it. It was baked fresh, and it took a while because they were making a new batch of the cream cheese icing (served in those ramekins on the side). She loves red velvet cake, whereas I am not a big fan, so I didn’t even try it. But you can’t go wrong with cream cheese icing, especially when it’s fresh!

Like I said, I returned a few weeks later for breakfast on a Friday, this time with my wife. She once again ordered the fried catfish and liked it even more this time. On her first visit to the actual Town House Restaurant, she chose a side of grits.

And for her second side, she went with a Greek salad. We both liked that they were liberal with the feta cheese, and she gave me her pepperoncini pepper and the scoop of potato salad at 1:00. (As far as I can tell, putting a scoop of potato salad on a Greek salad is unique to Florida Greek restaurants, especially diners. I am always happy to find it in my Greek salads.)

The fried catfish also came with a huge biscuit, which I simply forgot to photograph last time, but here it is now:

Because I am an altacocker (an old man, years before my time), I chose the baby beef liver and onions special, because I always love to eat liver in any form. It was nice and tender and a little gamey, served smothered in gravy. After trying it, I would opt for the gravy on the side next time, because I actually like ketchup and hot sauce with my liver and onions more. For my two sides, I got the home fries with onions and peppers like my friend got on my first visit to the restaurant, as well as cool, creamy, crispy cole slaw that was nice to balance out the salty richness of everything else on the huge plate.

Here’s a close-up of the home fries, which I would definitely recommend to any Town House visitors.

So that’s Oviedo’s iconic Town House Restaurant! They offer so many different things here, including burgers and gyros, but I probably wouldn’t order a burger at a down-home diner like this, and I still have a very strong opinion about the absolute best gyro in the Orlando area (Mediterranean Deli, my friend). This gyro might be awesome, and maybe one day I’ll give it a chance. But there is so much to choose from, and they even offer prime rib a couple of nights every month. Maybe I’ll time my next visit to try that, because I really love rare prime rib with lots of creamy horseradish. Basically, you can’t go wrong at the Town House, hon.

Alma Argentina

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Summer House on the Lake

My latest review is of one of the newest restaurants to open at Disney Springs, the part of Walt Disney World devoted to shopping and dining, where you don’t have to pay a hefty admission fee or even pay for parking. We end up out there a couple times a year, often to meet visiting friends, but this trip was just a daytime date with Dr. Professor Ma’am, my beautiful and brilliant better half.

I had told her about the mid-December opening of Summer House on the Lake (https://www.summerhouserestaurants.com/disney-springs/), part of a restaurant chain that boasts “California-style cuisine and breezy beach vibes.” It also sounds like the title of a horror movie, if you ask me — at one point I referred to it as Last House on the Left. My wife’s graduate school was based in Santa Barbara, and she relished her occasional trips out there, just as I’m slowly falling in love with Los Angeles, after two visits to my new employer out there. She loves the emphasis on fresh ingredients and lighter dishes in Southern California dining, so it sounded like a restaurant made just for her. It is owned by a corporate restaurant group called “Lettuce Entertain You,” so even though I was skeptical, I always appreciate a pun.

I believe we arrived for lunch on the third day Summer House on the Lake was open. It was a huge space (I believe in the old Bongo’s location, and yes, right on a manmade lake at Disney Springs), and the dining room was full of light wood and natural light. It looked like any number of hotel lobby restaurants to me, but I can definitely see the California influence, sure!

The menu features small plates, sandwiches, tacos, and salads, as well as pastas, pizzas, and a burger, but it didn’t strike me as the kind of place to order pasta, pizza, or burgers. It also highlights an in-house bakery with plenty of cookies to choose from, lots of cocktails, and a “signature Rosé Cart.” This confirmed my suspicion that Summer House on the Lake is the kind of restaurant my beloved Uncle Jerry once referred to as a “chick place,” meaning the kind of restaurant women are the most likely to love. (He was referring to the chain restaurant Mimi’s Cafe at the time. If you know, you know.) Seated at our booth, I improvised a bit of comedy about a bunch of bros wanting to hit up Summer House on the Lake to watch the game, pound some beers, demolish some nachos and wings, and hit on moms who are “being so bad” by quaffing rosé and nibbling cookies, and my wife continued to put up with me.

Anyway, we started with ahi tuna and watermelon tostadas, which came with Hass avocado and Thai chili on crisp corn tortillas. We got a plate of five, and while they were beautiful and delicious, with the slightest bit of heat, I did not detect any watermelon anywhere.

I am a sucker for raw tuna in sushi and poke, and they were pretty generous with the tuna on these tiny tostadas. i could have eaten about twenty of these myself, easily and happily. They were my favorite thing we had at Summer House on the Lake, and I would definitely recommend them to fellow raw fish fans.

For her main course, my wife ordered a Costa Mesa salad, with queso fresco, corn, pico de gallo, avocado, quinoa, and crispy tortilla strips. She asked for dressing on the side, and while they brought her chipotle crema in a little ramekin, we were confused if the other ramekin of dressing was the lime vinaigrette from her salad or the herb vinaigrette that was supposed to come with my salad. (More on this in a bit.)
She opted to add seared ahi tuna to her salad as a protein, I guess to stick with the tuna theme of our lunch. You can see they served her a beautifully seared slab of ahi, with a gorgeous pinkish-purple center. Other protein options, all available for an upcharge, are grilled or crispy chicken, salmon (unfortunately cooked, rather than sushi-grade raw), and steak.

I figured that as long as I was at a “chick place,” I might as well get a salad too, which is a rarity for me at a restaurant. I do make and eat salads quite often at home, believe it or not! But after chuckling at the house salad called “a nice house salad” on the menu, I chose the Buena Vista Cobb salad for myself, with avocado, egg, corn, cucumber, tomato, bacon, blue cheese, and herb vinaigrette (that might have been in that ramekin on the side, or might have been completely absent). I always forget that Cobb salads are full of delicious things I like. I would make them at home, except I never have bacon or blue cheese on hand.
This was actually quite good, and the eggs were a lovely soft-boiled consistency I have tried to duplicate at home over the past two weeks. I think boiling for eight minutes produces creamy, glistening yolks like this.

After we were so good with our salads, it was time to be so bad with dessert. My wife ordered this seven-layer chocolate cake with vanilla chantilly cream. I wasn’t terribly interested in it, so I didn’t even try a bit. She said it was just okay.

After we paid our check and left, we discovered the cookie bar in the front of the restaurant, with huge cookies on display behind a glass counter. If you have tried the cookies from Gideon’s Bakehouse in Orlando’s East End Market or at Disney Springs, these are along the same lines — huge, decadent, chewy (a little under-baked, which I prefer to over-baked), and ridiculously rich. We got three cookies to go, which we enjoyed at home later. According to her, they were better than the chocolate cake, but so rich and heavy that they were almost too much.

My wife chose a chocolate chip cookie topped with chunks of their brown butter crispy rice treat, which are essentially posh Rice Krispies treats. They also sell the treats separately, but didn’t have any when we were there. It was good, because how could this not be good?

She also chose this fudge bomb cookie, a moist and chewy sugar cookie topped with thick, rich, fudgy frosting. I ended up eating most of this later, because she didn’t like it as much as she expected to. It reminded me a bit of a classic New York black and white cookie, only the cookie was more buttery and less “cakey,” without that slight lemony flavor, and the frosting was softer and lacking that glossy shine. If we return, we would try different cookies next time.

But on a rare occasion when I chose a dessert for myself, the lemon cookie did not disappoint. My wife lacks my obsession with citrusy desserts, but this had a nice, bright flavor and a slightly tart tang to balance the buttery richness and the sticky sweetness of the glaze. Like the other cookies, it came close to being too much, but I liked it much more than the other two. It tasted like a perfect summery confection, perfect for a summer house on a lake. But at the end of the day, I would sooner choose cookies from Heartsong Cookies, baked by the delightful Kathy Paiva, than any of these.

I also don’t know when and if we will return to Summer House on the Lake. Over my 19 years in Orlando, I’ve eaten at most of the restaurants at Disney Springs and certainly had good meals, but nothing ever bowls me over, knocks me out, leaves me raving and craving more there. I’m glad we tried a new restaurant, and I absolutely recommend Summer House at the Lake, especially to my female readers in search of a “chick place.” That said, whenever my wife and I end up at Disney Springs again for a concert at the House of Blues or meeting out-of-town friends, we would probably try something new next time.

Palm Avenue Deli (Sarasota)

Back in November, I took my wife to Naples, Florida, to visit a friend who had traveled in from Maine. Naples is almost four hours south of Orlando, but it’s a hell of a lot closer than Maine, so we divided up the long drive by stopping for lunch in Sarasota. I’ve never been to Sarasota in my life, so of course I did my research, and I decided to stop at a New York-style delicatessen restaurant that had a great-looking menu and enthusiastic reviews: the Palm Avenue Deli (https://palmavenuedeli.com/) in downtown Sarasota. It was fabulous. I’m so glad we chose to go there, and I wish I had opportunities to return.

When we arrived in the middle of the day on a Friday, I gushed about this being our first time, how we were passing through town from Orlando, and how excited I was to visit after reading their menu online. Our lovely hostess and steadfast server must have thought they had a real live one here, but they had no idea just how much food we would order, or how much fun we were about to have.

We were seated near the open kitchen, and I was so tickled to see this old library card catalog behind our table, repurposed to add some flair to the dining room. You can’t see it here, but each of the card catalog drawers was labeled for some kind of Jewish deli fare, like Bagels, Brisket, Chopped Liver, Corned Beef, and so forth. You get the gist. I’m a librarian, so I really knew we had made a great decision for lunch.

The lunch menu literally offered a dish called “Pickles for a Nickel,” and they weren’t joking. We actually got a couple of sour kosher dill pickles and a dish of cool, creamy, crunchy cole slaw for five cents, cinco centavos, whatever you want to call it. For that alone, I would have to recommend Palm Avenue Deli, because where else can you get ANYTHING for a nickel, with or without a picture of a bumblebee on it? Anyway, this is the cole slaw:

My wife and I both ordered egg creams, those fizzy, creamy concoctions from old-timey New York City soda fountains. A place like this would certainly make them the right way, with Fox’s U-Bet syrups (which I have reviewed before), milk, and seltzer water, creating sweet and refreshing foamy drinks that contain neither eggs nor cream. My wife got the classic chocolate egg cream, and I opted for a coffee egg cream, since I haven’t found coffee Fox’s U-Bet around Orlando in a long time.

We shared an order of excellent potato latkes, fried to golden-brown perfection and savory with onions and black pepper. How do you like your latkes? My wife likes applesauce with them, while I prefer sour cream. But the ultimate question is, “Why not both?” At Palm Avenue Deli, you don’t even have to choose.

My wife is a sucker for the Ashkenazi Jewish dish kasha varnishkes, which is kasha (buckwheat groats, toasted and then boiled until they are soft and tender) served with al dente bowtie noodles. I’ve never had a strong opinion on the dish one way or another, until now. Palm Avenue Deli went hard with caramelized onions, and let me tell you, that made all the difference. I get it now. Those caramelized onions added savory flavor as well as sweetness and brought this carb-fest to life (to life, l’chayim!).

She also ordered a smoked fish platter with sablefish, cream cheese, butter, and a toasted everything bagel. The sliced onions, tomatoes, and cucumbers come standard on almost any deli or appetizing store’s smoked fish platter, along with salty capers and fresh dill.

Close-up on the sliced sablefish. Also known as Alaskan black cod, it is a rich, buttery fish that is rubbed with spices and then smoked. If you’ve ever had nova, lox, or gravlax (different kinds of smoked salmon), you know how delicious those are, especially offset against creamy, tangy cream cheese and some fresh vegetables on a good bagel or bialy. Is your mouth watering yet? Well, think about how tasty nova salmon is, and sablefish is somehow even better. Many years ago, I introduced my wife to its glory at our beloved Ess-A-Bagel in Midtown Manhattan, and now she is a member of the Sable Squad with me.

I ordered a classic sandwich that is a great benchmark to gauge any deli: a combo sandwich with sliced pastrami and corned beef on rye bread with caraway seeds. It was excellent quality. I’ve certainly had more ridiculously overstuffed deli sandwiches, but I can’t complain about the quality or the flavors of this one. I still prefer pastrami to corned beef, and I still prefer my pastrami hand-sliced (like at Katz’s in the Lower East Side, Langer’s in Los Angeles, and The Pastrami Project here in Orlando), but I can’t take anything away from this lovely sandwich. The rye bread here at Palm Avenue Deli was certainly better than Katz’s, and the meal was so much more leisurely and relaxing, as opposed to Katz’s chaotic atmosphere.

I opted for a side of potato salad with my sandwich, since I already got to sample the cole slaw in my “Pickles for a Nickel.” For sharp-eyed Saboscrivnerinos who are eagerly awaiting my next set of Cutting the Mustard reviews, I was thrilled to try a new (to me) mustard here: Sy Ginsberg’s New York Style Deli Mustard. It was perfectly good — very similar to Gulden’s, but not as good as Ba-Tampte, which is pretty much my go-to deli-style mustard.

As long as we were tearing things up at this deli and just passing through town, I figured “Why not try the chopped liver too?” I was able to order a bissel of chopped liver — just a small side portion to taste it. It was very rich, thick, and savory, with a pleasant consistency — smooth with some little chunks for texture. I’m very glad I tried it, because chopped liver is a decadent treat that even a lot of delis don’t serve that regularly anymore (at least not here in Central Florida). I wish they had served it with some extra rye bread and caramelized onions, but I could say that about almost anything.

My wife feels as strongly about desserts as I do about delis, although she has definitely come around to appreciating delis like I do. She saw flourless chocolate cake on the menu and made sure to save some room for it. It came with a glistening dark chocolate glaze, a scoop of vanilla ice cream, a puff of fresh whipped cream (not the canned stuff), and fresh diced strawberries, and she loved it.

I did not intend to order dessert at all, but I might have made a comment like “Mmmmm, blueberry cheesecake.” Much to my surprise, our very friendly server brought out a slice of blueberry cheesecake on the house, which we neither needed nor requested, but I certainly welcomed it enthusiastically. It was “New York style” cheesecake — rich, thick, dense, and a little bit tangy — more like the legendary Junior’s than the familiar Factory, but made in-house. What a delightfully unexpected end to this epic road trip lunch!

Even the restrooms had character and style. The men’s room had a framed photo of Marilyn Monroe and Andy Warhol-inspired Elvis wallpaper. My wife reported the ladies’ room had an Elvis photo and Marilyn wallpaper. Who were you expecting — Joan Rivers and Jackie Mason?

So I says to my wife, I says, “I wish this place was in Orlando, because we would be regulars for sure.” She agreed. Sadly, Sarasota is nowhere near home, and I can’t imagine returning anytime soon, as good as our Palm Avenue Deli experience was. It’s amazing that this small city on Florida’s Gulf Coast can support three Jewish delis (Palm Avenue, the Meshugana Deli, and the newly opened Wolfie’s), which is definitely more than we have here in our progressive and cosmopolitan City Beautiful. I have some strong opinions about dangerous and disquieting things happening elsewhere in Sarasota, but a food blog is no place to get into that kind of editorializing. That said, for our first visit ever and probably our only one for the foreseeable future, I could not have chosen a better restaurant for our own meal in town. If you’re anywhere close, drive into clean, welcoming downtown Sarasota, park in the nearby garage to avoid having to parallel park along the busy streets, and check it out. You won’t be sorry. You can tell them I sent you, but even though I ordered half the menu, they probably won’t know who you’re talking about.