Category: Seafood

Il Pescatore

Il Pescatore (https://ilpescatoreonline.com/) is an old-school Italian restaurant in Orlando’s Milk District, nestled between Vietnamese restaurants Pho Vinh and Pho Hoa on Primrose Drive, directly south of East Colonial Drive.  Se7en Bites and Smoke & Donuts BBQ are just past it, too.  The Milk District is full of treasured restaurants, and Il Pescatore turned out to be one more.  It’s not new, and many Orlando locals probably know it already, but it’s still relatively new to me, okay?

I honestly don’t go out for Italian food very often anymore (excluding pizza and my beloved Italian subs), since I make myself multiple salads a week at home and work wonders with pasta.  But my first visit to Il Pescatore two years ago was kind of a treat, and also an emotional milestone, because two valued co-workers and great friends took me to lunch there on my last day of a job I had held for 15 years.  Even though I worked close to the Milk District for that many years, I had never gone to Il Pescatore before, because I thought it was a fancy, upscale restaurant, and those are usually not my thing.  I was wrong!  It was cozy, comfortable, and welcoming, and the food was super-solid.

This was my side salad, with fresh, crunchy iceberg lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, red onions, a bit of shredded red cabbage, and an excellent house-made vinaigrette dressing that really stood out. 

One of my colleagues ordered the tri-color salad with romaine lettuce, tomatoes, and fresh mozzarella, topped with the same house dressing.

Another colleague ordered this Greek salad, with mixed greens, feta cheese, kalamata olives, tomatoes, cucumbers, whole pepperoncini peppers, red onions, and that incredible house dressing.

I did not try this funghetti al ‘aglio, mushrooms sautéed in olive oil-based garlic sauce, but my colleagues seemed to really enjoy it.

This was good ol’ bruschetta, a crowd-pleasing classic, with tomatoes, garlic, and herbs tossed in olive oil and served over toasted Italian bread.  We all dug into this appetizer and enjoyed it.

This was my colleague’s calzone, which would have been stuffed with ricotta cheese and mozzarella.  Like the lasagna, you can’t go wrong with something like this!  By the way, Il Pescatore’s red sauce slaps.  You can tell they make it fresh in house and aren’t just opening some industrial food service can.

I ordered this baked lasagna from the lunch menu, and while I wish I remembered it better after two years, I’m sure it was great, as anything smothered and baked in red sauce and mozzarella cheese would be.  Lasagna is one of my favorite dishes of all time, but I make such an amazing version myself (especially in the winter), I rarely order it at restaurants.  Once in a while, I make an exception, and I’m sure I chose wisely here. 

This combo sub was definitely mine too: ham, genoa salami, capicola, provolone cheese, shredded iceberg lettuce, tomatoes, and more of that house vinaigrette on a nice, soft roll, served cold.  I have a hard time passing up an Italian sub, and while this one wasn’t the biggest or the best of all time, it definitely hit the spot.   

I didn’t order the tiramisu, but my colleague/mentor/friend was kind enough to offer me a taste.  It’s a wonderful dessert I rarely partake in but always enjoy whenever I do: an architectural marvel of lady finger cookies layered with mascarpone cheese and espresso.

I returned to Il Pescatore this past week with the same two now-former co-workers, along with a third.  Of the four of us, only one person is still at the old workplace.  I think the world of these people, and I am so glad we have kept in touch.  The last time we got together to catch up over a meal, earlier this year, we also ended up at an Italian restaurant, Terralina Crafted Italian at Disney Springs.  This time, it was a lot closer to people’s work and home (and for me, they are one in the same).

I ordered an appetizer of fried smelts, hoping to share them with the group, but my one male colleague had one, the two ladies wanted absolutely nothing to do with them, and I enjoyed the rest.  I am a huge sardine eater, so finding small fried fish like sardines and smelts at restaurants is a rare treat.  Olympia Greek Restaurant used to have good ones, but it closed years ago.  These were very good, especially dunked in Il Pescatore’s wonderful red sauce.

My vegetarian colleague ordered this lovely pizza bianco, a white pizza topped with mozzarella and ricotta cheeses, sliced tomatoes, crushed garlic, and fresh basil.  I thought she ordered the 12″, but it seemed a lot bigger than that.  

Someone got the chicken parmesan with linguini, which looked like a HUGE portion:

And someone else got the similar-looking eggplant parmesan, also with linguini: 

Since I studied the menu over the two years since my first visit, I learned about a dish on Il Pescatore’s dinner menu called tortellini di Stefano.  It sounded so perfect, but it isn’t on the lunch menu.  Luckily, when I mentioned it to our server, she told me they could still make it, but there wasn’t a more moderately priced lunch portion.  Hey, that was fine with me!  It was really satisfying and different enough from the pasta dishes I make at home that I felt like I made the best possible choice.  It arrived with a melty, oven-baked layer of provolone (not mozzarella!) cheese, and I do love provolone. 

After folding in the cheese, you can get a better idea of what the dish looks like beneath.  The tortellini pasta was in a “creamy meat sauce with a touch of prosciutto,” almost like a cross between a creamier Bolognese meat sauce and a vodka sauce.  And prosciutto is one of my favorite foods — not just meats, but foods in general.  I shook some red pepper flakes onto the pasta to add a bit of heat.  They aren’t just for pizza anymore! This tortellini di Stefano wowed me.  I would totally order it again whenever I return to Il Pescatore, and hopefully that won’t take me two more years.

“Red sauce” Italian is pure comfort food for me.  My family used to go to Anthony’s Pizzeria in Kendall throughout the ’80s and into the mid-’90s, and when it closed, they switched to getting takeout from The Big Cheese, a South Miami/Coral Gables institution.  I love a good bowl of pasta in red sauce, which sometimes I make from scratch and sometimes I leave to the experts (Rao’s).  When I’m stressed or depressed (which happens a lot, surprise surprise), pasta and a good salad and some bread help get me through, and when I’m feeling celebratory, relaxed, and relieved, the same meal sounds just as good then.

After trying the humble but excellent food at Il Pescatore twice now, I know they have a lot more interesting options than the same pasta and sauce I can easily make myself at home.  The tortellini de Stefano was a dynamic dish, but next time, I might try the linguini scungilli, with conch in a garlic tomato sauce.  If I’m feeling flush, I might treat myself to the zuppa di mare Trapanese, a Sicilian seafood platter with shrimp, mussels, calamari, clams, and snapper, all simmered in tomato sauce.  Maybe I’ll just get the eggplant parm like my colleague ordered this week, since my attempts at eggplant parm at home never come out well.  I know Il Pescatore won’t let me down!  They haven’t so far.

Fiesta Cancun

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pho Bar Vietnamese Kitchen

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Runabout Brewing Co.

Runabout Brewing Co. (https://www.runaboutbrewing.com/) calls itself a “Kitchen and Raw Bar,” a brewpub that serves an assortment of Southern-accented comfort food (pizza, burgers, sandwiches, salads, oysters, and more) and has 20 beers on tap.  Longtime readers know my wife and I don’t drink, but a cool and trusted friend loves this place, so we recently followed her advice and went out there for a Saturday lunch date.  It is located at 4721 S. Orange Avenue in Orlando, south of downtown in a district I believe is called Edgewood, between SoDo and Pinecastle.  We were among the first to arrive, a little before noon, but the place was pretty slammed by the time we left, probably full of loyal locals.

This hot and crispy jumbo pretzel (that’s what they call it!) is more than enough for two people to share.  It has the best crackly texture, almost like it was lightly fried.  It is also dusted with Tajin, a chili-lime seasoning that I’m used to having over fruit, not a baked (and fried?) good.  My wife doesn’t dig on cheese sauces or dips in general, but I loved the lager cheese fondue dipping sauce.   

These were some great onion rings, definitely beer-battered and served with sriracha aioli.  I give these a strong and confident RING THE ALARM!

My wife ordered this lovely arugula and spinach salad, topped with feta cheese, Granny Smith apple slices, and sugar-dusted pecans.  There is also a lemon vinaigrette dressing on it that she really liked.  She added two buttermilk chicken tenders to the salad, which didn’t photograph well, but she seemed to like them.  You can also get herb-seared steak, crispy fried oysters, a salmon filet, or three chilled prawns added onto any salad there.

I couldn’t decide between two entrees, but I had not had a good burger in a while, so I ordered this “hot stuff” burger topped with pepper jack cheese, fire-roasted peppers, and crispy fried pickled jalapenos and topped with chili sauce.  It wasn’t the largest burger in town, or the thickest, or the prettiest, or the juiciest, but it was still tasty. 
The fries were pretty standard — if you’re thinking they would taste like McDonald’s fries, you’d be right, but there isn’t anything wrong with that!

And while it isn’t on the menu on the website, they did offer an Italian sub on the lunch menu when we went, so I ordered it to go.  I got some salami, pepperoni, provolone cheese, lettuce, tomato, onion, and vinaigrette dressing on the whitest sub roll ever.  It looked underbaked but tasted fine, and it was a solid sandwich.The potato chips were house-made and stayed crispy all the way home, when I separated them from the sandwich so they wouldn’t get soggy.

It is quite a haul for us to get to Runabout Brewing from home, but I’d go back to meet friends there, absolutely.  There might be bigger, better burgers and Italian subs elsewhere in Orlando, but I liked these, don’t get me wrong.  I was impressed by the breadth and depth of the menu just the same, especially for a brewery-restaurant.  Next time I’d probably try some seafood, especially since I love oysters so much, or the marinated and wood fire-roasted wings, since so many places serve wings but so few get them right.  The menu on the website now displays collard greens braised with smoked turkey necks, which I didn’t notice at the time (or maybe they weren’t on the menu when we went), but I’ve enjoyed a lot of good collards lately, so I would definitely get those on a return trip.  I am just glad to see so many local breweries thriving and serving good food, not just the lowest-effort bar food.

Thailicious

Thailicious (https://thailiciousfl.com/) is a very casual Thai restaurant in the suburbs of Longwood.  The building looks like a house, complete with outside tables on a covered, screened-in front porch.  My wife and I have gone three times so far, and we really like it, enough to already consider ourselves semi-regulars.  I want to work our way through the entire menu, but their dishes are so good, it is hard to not default back to past favorites.

My best advice for going for dinner is to arrive early, because it always gets super-busy.  The people of Longwood know what’s good, and they also may not want to drive far and wide for newer, trendier Thai restaurants, knowing they have a wonderful, well-kept secret in their own back yard.

On all of our visits, my wife starts out with sweet, cool, creamy, slightly smoky Thai iced tea, her beverage of choice:

She usually orders summer rolls, one of her go-to favorites at any Vietnamese or Thai restaurant.  Thailicious’ version comes with shrimp, rice noodles, carrots, and Thai basil leaves, wrapped in fresh rice paper for a chewy texture and served with a sweet peanut sauce.

On our first visit, we also ordered a crab rangoon appetizer, just for the heck of it.  I hadn’t had crab rangoon in years, probably not since the days of the all-you-can-eat China Jade buffet on East Colonial Drive near Fashion Square Mall, but these were better than I remembered.  They were fried to crispy perfection, not greasy or heavy at all, with sweet cream cheese inside (but nary a hint of crab, as usual).
These were so good, we got them again on our third visit.

The first time in, my wife ordered her go-to noodle dish, pad Thai, since we are now on a quest to discover all the best versions of pad Thai in and around Orlando.  This was one of the best versions either of us have tried around here.  The rice noodles were sauteed with pork (but you can also choose chicken, tofu, or beef or shrimp for a small upcharge), eggs, ground peanuts, bean sprouts, and green onions.  The sauce was actually kind of tangy and citrusy for a change.  A lot of places serve pad Thai that is too sweet, and it never has that tangy funk that I love.

I ordered my own go-to noodle dish, pad kee mao, also known as drunken noodles.  These are wider, flatter noodles, sauteed with onions, bell peppers, carrots, zucchini (a nice touch that nobody else seems to add), fresh basil (so important to the overall flavor of this dish), and scallions, and I asked them to hold the bean sprouts.  I also got pork as my meat of choice, and it was a wise choice.  This was a delicious version of drunken noodles.  The dish is always sweet, but I ordered mine medium-spicy, because I like my Thai noodles like I like my women, sweet and spicy.  Next time I’ll try Thai-spicy, now that I know I can more than handle the medium-spicy baseline.
Well, my wife was brave enough to try the drunken noodles, and she loved them so much that she ordered them (mild, of course) on our second visit, and again on our third!  I tell ya, this dish is a crowd-pleaser.  If you’ve never tried them before, either at Thailicious or your Thai restaurant of choice, give them a chance, and you won’t be sorry.  She wasn’t.

I tried something completely new and different on our second visit: a noodle curry dish from northern Thailand called khao soi, made with egg noodles, napa cabbage, pickled sweet peppers, and pork (instead of chicken or tofu).  The noodles came in the creamy, medium-spicy curry kind of like a thick soup, and our very friendly and patient server gave me chopsticks with it, utensils you don’t usually get at Thai restaurants.  It was nice gambling on a brand new, unfamiliar dish and enjoying it so much.  I’d totally order it again, but that would also defeat my purpose of making my way through the Thailicious menu, as I intend to do in the months and years to come.

Get ready for the noodle pull!

It was so good, it inspired me to start ordering this dish elsewhere, to compare other restaurants’ versions to the first khao soi I’ve ever had here at Thailicious.  You know what they say: You never forget your first time!

Then we got coconut sticky rice for dessert on visit number two, which we never order, but we loved it so much that we wondered why.  What a delicious, sweet treat!  We haven’t been living right, avoiding sweet sticky rice, but better late than never.

On our third visit, I ordered the laab gai, a dish of ground chicken seasoned with lime juice, shallots, roasted rice powder, and scallions, served at the hot spice level, on a bed of fresh, crunchy iceberg lettuce.  I am still relatively new to laab (sometimes called larb) after being introduced to an incredible version with ground pork at Isan Zaap Thai Cafe last year and then trying a chicken version at Lim Ros Thai Cuisine earlier this year.  I would rank this one between the two.     

I also got the spicy basil from their traditional spicy Thai dishes menu, with sautéed pork, sweet basil leaves, onions, zucchini, and red and green bell peppers, at a hot spice level.  It came with a bowl of jasmine rice on the side, which I mixed in to soak up the delicious flavors.  They always get the pork so tender here at Thailicious.  In fact, not only are the flavors fresh and strong, but everything is the perfect consistency.

It was delicious, but I always return to noodle dishes, so I’ll give the edge to the fabulous drunken noodles, pad Thai, and that amazing khao soi from  visit #2.  Now that I’ve written a review with a good bit of variety, I will start returning to those old favorites, because I will definitely return to Thailicious.

Orlando has several Thai restaurants, many of which are new, hot, and trendy.  This Longwood mainstay isn’t hot or trendy, but it is so damn good, without any pretension or attempts to be the new influencer-illuminati destination.  That makes me love it even more.  It’s a friendly neighborhood sort of place with next-level food, comfortable booths, and warm and welcoming service.  Just don’t get there too late on Friday or weekend evenings, because the locals know what’s good, and you will have to wait!

HMS Bounty (Los Angeles)

HMS Bounty (http://www.thehmsbounty.com/) is a beloved dive bar in Los Angeles’ vibrant Koreatown.  Named after a British ship where sailors staged an infamous mutiny (you may have seen the 1962 movie Mutiny on the Bounty with Marlon Brando), the bar is nautical-themed, but not in a cheesy way.  Just don’t let “dive bar” dissuade you, because it’s a cool, dark room with a lot of character (dig those red leather booths, one of my favorite bits of recurring decor in L.A. dining and drinking establishments), history (it opened in 1962 — the year that movie came out! — on the ground floor of an apartment building dating back to 1924), and most importantly, super-solid food.

Before my L.A. work trips, I often consult websites like Eater for recommendations, and they listed HMS Bounty on their lists of The 38 Best Restaurants in Los Angeles (as of this writing, I’ve been to four), 20 Classic Los Angeles Restaurants Every Angeleno Must Try (five so far!), and The Best Dive Bars in Los Angeles.  The restaurant was even a filming location in season 1, episode 11 of Mad Men (a fantastic show I loved), where Elisabeth Moss’ audience point-of-view character Peggy Olson went on a date to a seafood restaurant, “La Trombetta.”  Season 1 was set in 1962, so the vibes were perfect, like everything else on that show.  A different season 1 episode of Mad Men filmed at The Prince, another classic Koreatown restaurant with similar vibes and decor (and surprisingly good Korean food), so they were pros at capturing L.A.’s enduring old-school cool and making it stand in for early ’60s New York City.

After teaching an evening class on one of my L.A. visits, some students invited me out to dinner with them, and I was so honored, of course I agreed.  We walked to HMS Bounty (which was their idea, not mine) and proceeded to share several plates while chatting and decompressing from the school day.

Fried calamari was on point, with a nice, light breading and a tender texture.  No rubber bands of squid here!  I think the sauce turned out to be cocktail sauce rather than marinara, which surprised me in the moment.

As my longtime readers know (the couple dozen of you), I will order onion rings anywhere and everywhere they are available.  These were really good, with a completely different kind of batter than the calamari that was crispy, stayed on, and the rings weren’t too thick or too thin.  It was a generous portion for $6.  RING THE ALARM!

I was blown away by these thick, meaty, tender, well-seasoned hot wings, which were mildly hot, if anything.  I’ve written before about my contempt for tiny, dry, crunchy sports bar-style wings, but these were the complete opposite.  They were honestly in the Top Ten wings I’ve ever had anywhere. 

I don’t think I ever got a piece of fish from this fish and chips platter, and I might have grabbed a single fry, just for the experience of it all.   The menu said all entrees (including these fish and chips) were served with mashed potatoes and vegetables, but I honestly don’t remember if they arrived on a separate plate or not.  If not, nobody noticed or complained.   

But because I always study menus in advance, this is what I really wanted to try: sautéed sand dabs, a kind of fish that I’ve never seen on any menus in a lifetime in Florida, but I’ve already been to two restaurants in Los Angeles that serve them (both old-school places, if that makes a difference).  I will review the other one at some point in the future, because I’d still love to return there.   
How often do you get to taste a completely new, unfamiliar fish, especially by the time you hit your 40s?  These sand dabs were mild and tender (definitely not a “fishy”-tasting fish), probably lightly dredged in seasoned flour.  I was so happy to try an all-new, all-different fish!  By the way, sand dabs are a flat-bodied fish related to the flounder.

The one thing we didn’t order that we probably should have was the “famous baseball steak,” which the Eater writeups had mentioned.  But there was plenty of food to go around, and nobody left hungry or disappointed.

This group of brilliant, ambitious, warm, welcoming students that invited me out was all about sharing food (although I think I was the most interested in the onion rings and sand dabs) and spirited conversation.  It was a delightful dinner with even better company, and I was so honored to be there for multiple reasons.  I mean, most of my readers have been students at one point or another, but how often have you ever wanted to hang out with your teachers or professors socially?  Has that ever happened?

I can’t imaging too many L.A. tourists making a special trip to HMS Bounty (but if you do, more power to ya!), but it is definitely a place that locals should pop into at least once.  With all that history, timeless cool vibes, and much better food than one might expect, it would be worth checking it off your lists.  And as I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized I really like dark dining rooms, even if I sometimes need reading glasses to make out the menu.  That lovely dinner felt like I was transported to a different time and place, if only temporarily, and that’s what a really nice restaurant experience should be able to do.

Bites and Bubbles

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The ‘Dines List 4: Sketches of Spain

This is my fourth installment of The ‘Dines List, a series of rambling reviews that extol the virtues of sardines and other tinned seafood, which I eat quite often. The goal is to review new and interesting tinned fish and shellfish I discover in my travels (or friends send me as gifts), and also to win over the sardine-skeptical.  Sardines in particular are very healthy due to being pure protein and full of omega-3 fatty acids.  They are mostly environmentally friendly since they are tiny little fellers who are low on the food chain.  And they are surprisingly delicious — far tastier and less “fishy” than the uninitiated might think.

A few years back, sardines started going viral for being “hot girl food” (check that Vogue article if you don’t believe me!), which really raised their profile and made these humble little fish both trendy and sexy.  Well, I am neither hot, nor a girl, nor sexy, and rarely am I trendy, but I’ve been flying my fish flag since I was a poor college student decades ago.  Now I eat them because I like them, not because I have to.  I guess I’m just ahead of my time, like with the whole loving superheroes thing, ever since I was a little kid in the early ’80s, long before they were cultural icons.  Awww, I’ll never be a cultural icon.

(But good grief, there is already some backlash against the whole tinned fish trend, and I blame the criticism on the fact that women have embraced it.  Let people — and especially women — enjoy things!  Be curious, not judgmental!)

Anyway, back in 2021, I wrote my first riveting installment of The ‘Dines List, which I titled Canned Sardines 101, listing and reviewing some of my favorites and providing advice and recommendations for the ‘dine-curious.  Then I started getting geographical with The ‘Dines List 2: Mission to Morocco!, where I only reviewed Moroccan sardines, and The ‘Dines List 3: Postcards from Portugal, where I only covered Portuguese tinned seafood.  As you might guess, these countries along the Mediterranean Sea have huge fishing and canning industries, as well as a culture and tradition of dining on ‘dines.  I wrote about Portuguese sardines way back in March 2023, so it was only fitting that I’d get around to Spanish sardines and other tinned seafood eventually.  Spain and Portugal produce the most serious gourmet tins, and I’ve been trying as many different varieties as I could in the meantime.  So with all due respect to the legendary Miles Davis, welcome to The ‘Dines List 4: Sketches of Spain.

I found Vigo hot spiced sardines in sunflower oil at Mazzaro’s Italian Market in St. Petersburg, a place I always recommend and rave about.  As sardines and other tinned seafood have become more popular and trendy, Mazzaro’s has dramatically increased its tinned seafood selection with a lot of higher-end Spanish and Portuguese brands that you won’t find at everyday supermarkets.  These Vigo sardines are some of the cheaper ones at Mazzaro’s, for $2.99.  I’ve also seen them at Walmart, but just the big Supercenter near me, not the smaller Neighborhood Markets.  Does anyone else think of Vigo the Carpathian coming alive inside the painting in Ghostbusters 2, whenever they see this Spanish food brand?  No?  Just me?  It can’t just be me!

Once I drained most of the oil, these definitely weren’t as pretty, so maybe you get what you pay for.  I either ate these bad boys straight out of the tin or dumped them on top of a salad.  I recall them being perfectly okay, but I’ve had better — read on to see some of them!

I bought these La Española sardines in “oil – spiced & piquant” at Bay Cities Italian Deli & Bakery, an awe-inspiring Italian market and deli in Los Angeles’ beautiful Santa Monica neighborhood.  Bay Cities is a West L.A. icon that has been open since 1925.  I bought several sandwiches and a bunch of snacks there on a work trip in April 2025, including a few different La Española tins, since I’ve never seen this brand for sale anywhere in Florida.  That way I had food for my hotel room and for work lunches, since I never rent a car in Los Angeles.  At some point, I’ll get around to writing a Bay Cities Italian Deli & Bakery review, because it deserves one.

These were larger sardines — firm and meaty, not super-spicy, but just fine for eating out of the tin in a hotel room like the most depressing film noir antihero ever.  I don’t remember finding the pickle and carrot slices pictured on the outer box, but they may have been under the ‘dines.

These Jadran sardines with hot pepper are interesting, because they seem to be harvested from the Adriatic Sea (between the boot of Italy and Croatia), but the box specified they are a product of Spain — perhaps processed there.  I think I bought them at either the huge International Food Club out on L.B. McLeod Road off John Young Parkway (a super-fun place to browse and discover treasures) or at Tima’s House, the small Euro-Balkan market in Longwood.

They weren’t the prettiest sardines ever, but I have plenty of silvery beauties coming up:

I added them to a nice salad, so isn’t this a work of art?  Dig the jammy hard-boiled eggs and beautiful pickled onions I made myself.

I’m pretty sure I picked up these Serrats small sardines in olive oil when they were on sale at our friendly neighborhood Fresh Market, because I don’t like paying full price for the fancy Spanish and Portuguese sardine brands. 

These were attractive, silvery fish, packed tightly and beautifully in their tin.  (I had already drained the oil here.)  I think more people would like sardines if they all looked this nice and orderly, since people eat with their eyes.  But did they taste good?

I served them on some lightly toasted Cuban bread with more of my homemade pickled onions from a different batch and some sliced tomatoes.  As you can see, they fell apart a bit as I removed them from their tight tin, but these were very good.

Fresh Market is where I’ve bought the vast majority of my Matiz sardines as well.  I am nuts for lemon desserts, but not as big on lemon in savory dishes.  Still, I had to try these Matiz wild sardines with natural lemon essence.

Trust me, they looked a lot less blurry in real life.  I don’t recall them tasting super-lemony, which was fine with me, but they didn’t make a strong impact on my memory, which means they weren’t mind-blowingly amazing or mind-blowingly awful.  I probably wouldn’t buy this variety again as a result, but I never regret trying anything.

My next Matiz product was their wild spicy sardines with piri piri pepper in olive oil, also from Fresh Market:

My only experience with piri piri peppers so far had been in hot sauce from Nando’s, the South African grilled chicken chain I tried in Chicago and still need to write about.  If Nando’s opened locations in Orlando, it would be a license to print money, but you can buy Nando’s piri piri-based hot sauce  (they call it peri peri there) and “Perinaise” at Publix and Fresh Market.  Just one look at these ‘dines made me think they would have a nice, vinegary, tangy bite to them.   

I had these with some rice after draining most of the oil, and sprinkled them with some crispy fried jalapeños.  They were a great little lunch, and barely spicy at all on their own.  The little included pepper is usually like an empty sack of seeds and never terribly pleasant to eat, but do I try every time?  YUP!

I had an even better feeling about these Matiz wild small sardines with sweet piquillo peppers, because I always think smaller sardines taste better and have better textures than the larger ones, and piquillo peppers make everything better.

They looked nice and silvery in the tin after I drained most of the oil.

I don’t even remember what kind of dark, crusty bread I ate with these little ‘dines, but I spread some cream cheese underneath them.  They were excellent, and for a change, the little peppers were pleasant to eat.  I always appreciate a piquillo pepper, though.

I liked these so much that I tried another tin on a different nice salad:

A while back, an old friend mailed me these Donostia Foods sardines in spiced sauce, and I knew they would be awesome.  She runs The Back Yard restaurant and bar in Baltimore and started their imported gourmet tinned seafood program, which sounds like a big hit.

I knew that despite a nondescript box, these would be special sardines because they included olive oil, tomato, carrot, cucumber, red pepper, onion, “spices,” and salt.  They were some of the most delicious ‘dines I’ve ever had. 

Here they are on a cracker with a wee cornichon from the tin.  This was a well-balanced bite of food!

I am lucky to have true and dear friends in my life, and sometimes they even hook me up with tinned seafood.  I hope you all have people like this in your own lives.  My best foodie friend and his wonderful girlfriend surprised me with these Los Peperetes sardinillas (small sardines), which he had read raving reviews about.  She was already in Spain, and he sent her on a special mission to track these down for me.  Can you imagine going to that trouble for someone you haven’t even met yet?  They are awesome, and so were these Los Peperetes.

Look at how beautifully packed these tiny sardinillas are!  Los Peperetes did an artful job.
Even the tiny tails were lightly crispy.  Yes, you can eat the tails, and you won’t choke or anything.  I like them.

I had to include this photo to show that there was a whole second layer of tightly packed fish below the top layer.  It was the gift that keeps on giving!  These were really something special.  I ate them plain at first, to get the full effect without any other distracting flavors, but I still have one more tin that I’m saving for a special occasion (or maybe a nice treat if we lose power during hurricane season).  You can’t ask for better quality sardines than these, or better quality friends than mine!   

The same dude surprised me a different time with this assortment of imported Spanish tinned seafood from Conservas de Cambados, which blew my mind.  This freakin’ guy!  What a mensch!  I had never heard of this brand before or seen them for sale locally, but I recently saw them for the first time “in the wild” at the aforementioned Mazzaro’s Italian Market in St. Petersburg.  I was absolutely blown away by his generosity and excited to dig into each of these.

There was only one tin of sardines in the box, but I knew they would be great because they were small.  Luckily for us, the label tells us the tin contains fish (sardines, in fact)!

This was up there with the Serrats and the Los Peperetes for gorgeous presentation.  I definitely think more people would eat sardines if more tins looked like this:

Here they are on some toasted Cuban bread… or maybe this was a Cusano’s hoagie roll, which I make a special trip to Gordon Food Service to buy.  There were a bunch of these little guys!  I might have added some lettuce, tomato, onion, and a splash of vinaigrette after the photo op, but I wanted to photograph them in an unadulterated manner first.

Wait a minute, ye scurvy scalawag!  This next thing isn’t a sardine!  I know, I know — it is line-caught Spanish white tuna belly, also from the Conservas de Cambados assortment.  I love tuna in all its forms: raw in sushi or poke, seared as a posh appetizer or entree, or even the cheap canned stuff in a tuna salad sandwich or tuna melt.  I hardly ever eat canned tuna because of the mercury, and because the smell of regular canned tuna makes my wife gag in a way that sardines (luckily for both of us) do not.  But this was a rare and decadent treat, and this was the best place to include it. 

I don’t know what I was expecting, but it looked a hell of a lot more appetizing than the cheap “chunk light” tuna in natural spring water that I grew up eating, and packing the fish in oil rather than water makes it smell a lot less offensively fishy.   

After draining the oil, I enjoyed it on some toasted Cuban bread with a light slathering of Duke’s mayo underneath.  I make really good tuna salad (and chicken salad, and egg salad), but this was such a luxurious product, I didn’t want to dilute the flavor with any other distractions.  As you might guess, it was a cut above any canned tuna I’ve ever had in my life.  It just tasted rich — not necessarily fatty, but not “fishy” and definitely not dry.

The Conservas de Cambados gift box also included a tin of line-caught Spanish white tuna in olive oil, which I forgot to photograph, but it was also really good, I assure you.  And the other tins in the photo above were scallops and two different types of octopus, which I will tell you about later.

As long as we’re talking about delicious Spanish tuna, this is my most recent discovery from Bravo Supermarket, the Latin grocery store chain with multiple locations here in the Orlando area: Conchita Fritada de Atun, or Zesty Tuna Fish Dip.  It was essentially a tuna paté blended smoothly with tomatoes, pimento, onions, pickles, “spices,” rice flour, and sunflower oil.  It might look like cat food, but it tasted luxurious and was absolute heaven to eat, meow meow.  I dipped some toasted pita bread wedges in it, and I loved every moment.  It was cheap, too — had to be $2.99 or at most, $3.99.  It would be easy enough to make something similar, but this was better than it had any right to be.

Finally, these aren’t sardines either, but huevas de merluza, or hake roe (hake being a whole different kind of fish).  I had never heard of this Spanish company Agromar, or even hake, but it turns out they are medium-to-large fish related to cod and haddock, so nothing like the little dudes I’ve been specializing in writing about so far.  But I do love fish eggs, whether they are masago (orange capelin roe), tobiko (orangey-red flying fish roe), or ikura (that much larger salmon roe that pops in your mouth like popping boba) in sushi, or caviar, that ultra-decadent delight.  And these were spicy too, so how could I not try it? By the way, I bought this at the best place to buy fancy tinned seafood in Orlando, Hinckley’s Fancy Meats in the East End Market food hall.  I reviewed Matt Hinckley’s wonderful sandwiches a few years back, and he is definitely a master of smoking and curing meats, making patés and rillettes, and so much more.  But since then, he has branched out into curating and selling some very high-end, fancy tinned fish and shellfish from Spain and Portugal, so check out his staggering selection and order some.  Yes, he ships!

These definitely didn’t look anything like what I would have expected, though.  Not tiny round eggs, and not anything like bottarga, that intensely flavored, decadent, Italian salt-cured roe sac from a grey mullet, either.  The box refers to them as “medallones” (medallions), and I guess they look like that… or sliced Vienna sausages.  At first, I didn’t know what to think, but I will try anything once!

These hake roe medallions are some serious gourmet shit, and what do I do?  Serve them (just to myself, because my wife would have wanted nothing to do with this) on Ritz crackers, which are the best and most versatile crackers.  I’ll dip Ritz crackers into smoked whitefish salad or chopped liver, spread them with cream cheese and guava paste, or crush them and bake them into the best buttery-salty-sweet pie crust ever.  Or I’ll put hake roe on ’em! Were they tasty?  Sure.  They weren’t spicy at all, not salty, or even “fishy,” but they were pleasant.  Can I describe the texture?  No, not really.  It really wasn’t like anything else I’ve ever eaten.  Am I glad I tried them?  You better believe it!  Would I get them again?  Probably not, only because there is a wide world of seafood out there, and I’d love to try some different impulse buys from the vast selection at Hinckley’s Fancy Meats before doubling back.  But if you’re buying the next round, stalwart Saboscrivnerinos, I will happily enjoy some future huevas de merluza tapas with you!

That’s all for now, but I have a huge stash of more sardines and other tinned seafood to review, from Spain and other seas and ports around the world.  In the meantime, whether you read this piece while sardines are still in style or discover it long after the tinned trend has come and gone, you can always rely on The ‘Dines List for detailed descriptions and unbiased reviews of humble (and occasionally not so humble) tinned fish.  And coming soon, we’ll venture into the wild waters and delicious depths of tinned shellfish, so get ready to see me flexing my mussels.

Moa Kai Hawaiian Diner

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CLOSED: Candee Lee’s Soul House

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

***

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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