Seafood – Page 3 – The Saboscrivner

Sushi Yama

Sushi Yama (https://www.facebook.com/p/sushiyamaOrlando-61554754973187/) is one of a handful of all-you-can-eat sushi restaurants in Orlando. I used to love Mikado Japanese Sushi Buffet in Altamonte Springs, but nobody else ever wants to go there with me, and I fully admit it isn’t as good as it once was.

More recently, I took my wife to another all-you-can-eat sushi restaurant, but one where you order off a menu and everything is brought fresh to your table, rather than grabbing premade sushi rolls and nigiri off a buffet. That was a truly horrendous experience, to the point where it almost seemed like a prank or a comedy sketch — terrible food and cartoonishly inept service. I love sushi, but that was the first time I ever “hate-ate” anything (similar to hate-watching a movie or TV show out of bewildered fascination or the hope that it might improve). I never reviewed that place because I had nothing nice to say about it, but to nobody’s surprise, it did not last.

As a result of that execrable experience at a completely different restaurant, when I discovered Sushi Yama and wanted to try it, my wife wanted nothing to do with it. I ended up going by myself for lunch, after checking in at the wonderful Gods & Monsters comic book and collectible store on International Drive. Well, I had a grand time, and I will be happy to go back anytime, for any of my friends and acquaintances who also like sushi and good deals.

I had a good feeling when I was greeted by a human-sized maneki neko (lucky cat) at the entrance.

Here are photos of the menu. At the time I visited, the all-you-can-eat lunch was $20.95 (the price of two to three rolls at most regular Japanese restaurants), and you can choose from so many great options.

In addition to the sushi on the previous page, lunch also includes hot, fresh appetizers, soups, fried tempura dishes, fried rice and noodles, and even teriyaki, all prepared fresh in the kitchen. If you’re the least bit curious about going but don’t actually like sushi or have friends or family who don’t, there is plenty for you folks to choose from as well.

I was told that the kitchen would be faster than the sushi chefs, so I might want to order something from the kitchen to tide myself over. Instead of ordering the vegetable tempura (with broccoli, zucchini, sweet potato, and an onion ring), since it was all one price for the lunch, I asked if I could just get onion rings, and that was totally cool. Ring the Alarm! Leave it to me to go out for all-you-can-eat sushi and still end up with onion rings. But they were terrific, and the tempura batter was a perfect consistency and stayed in place.

I love ornate rolls with multiple contrasting ingredients (sorry, sushi purists!), so I ordered several Chef’s Special rolls, and they all came on this gorgeous platter, arranged beautifully.

This assortment included:

- Rainbow roll – a California roll topped with tuna, salmon, whitefish, and avocado
- Salmon run roll -a roll containing eel and spicy krab, topped with salmon, masago fish eggs, and eel sauce
- Baby tiger roll – a roll containing spicy tuna and cucumber, topped with salmon, avocado, masago fish eggs, and tempura crunch
- SnowMan roll – a roll containing spicy tuna, shrimp tempura, and avocado, topped with snow krab, masago fish eggs, tempura crunch, and and eel sauce
- Spicy tuna roll (done as a hand roll, in the bottom left corner above)

Here they are again from a different angle. Beautiful!

I also got three pieces of nigiri: smoked salmon, red snapper (tai), and eel unago), which were all fresh and tasty.

I should note that you get a penalty for ordering a bunch of food and not finishing it (including the rice that is part of nigiri sushi), as you should, because I consider wasting food a shanda. For the carb-conscious among us, Sushi Yama charges more at dinnertime, but you can also get sashimi — just the slices of fresh, raw fish without the rice underneath.

It’s too bad Sushi Yama is across town on the north end of International Drive, or I would go there quite often. As it is, I will return whenever I can, which won’t be often enough. But whenever I have a chance to stop by Gods & Monsters, I will make it a point to arrive hungry and head straight there afterwards. I’ll try to go for dinner in the future to take advantage of that sashimi, too!

The Bayou Kitchen and Lounge

The Bayou Kitchen and Lounge (https://thebayouorlando.com/) is a New Orleans-style restaurant in Longwood, Florida. I loooove Creole, Cajun, and New Orleans-style food, all tracing back to the four trips I got to take to New Orleans between 1998 and 2001, as a young lad obsessed with music and food. Sadly, our options here in Orlando are somewhat limited to Tibby’s and Vietnamese-Cajun places like King Cajun Crawfish. (I still remember the long-gone Crooked Bayou in downtown Orlando and Jockamo’s way out on Sand Lake Road and John Young Parkway!) So needless to say, I was excited when The Bayou opened, and even more excited to read good reviews.

I recently made it over there on a weekend for lunch with my wife, and we were joined by one of her old and dear friends. My wife and her friend both ordered cups of gumbo, which looked more like bowls to me. (A lot of restaurants will give you a really puny cup, but not The Bayou!) It comes with a scoop of white rice in the rich stew, but my wife’s friend asked for hers with no rice, and this was the better photo of the two of them. The gumbo wasn’t very spicy (at least I didn’t think so), but it was loaded with chicken, shrimp, crawfish, andouille sausage, and both bowls came with a small crab leg sticking out, for dramatic effect. (We ended up taking both crab legs home, along with a bunch of other leftovers, where I cracked them open for myself. There wasn’t much meat, but I often think that even larger crab legs are more trouble than they’re worth.)

After becoming a huge fan of charbroiled oysters at one of my favorite Orlando restaurants, High Tide Harry’s, I thought I was being a cool, sophisticated guy by ordering charbroiled oysters for the table. However, I ended up eating almost all of them myself. I guess I can’t complain, even though I really did order them to share.
These were pretty big oysters on the half shell, fully cooked and covered with sizzling garlic herb butter and parmesan cheese, served with slices of toasted French bread dabbed with even more garlic herb butter. Not exactly health food!

Here’s an extreme close-up of one of the oysters. Was it delicious? Yes, of course it was! Enough garlic butter makes anything delicious. But it reminded me how much I prefer my oysters raw and chilled, with maybe just a tiny bit of mignonette. The Bayou doesn’t serve raw oysters, but they are so refreshing that way, and so heavy this way!

Our friend ordered a fried oyster po’ boy sandwich (the Bayou’s menu calls them “poboyz,” which I do not love) with a side of fried okra, and she seemed to really like it. I was impressed that they bring in French bread from the Leidenheimer Baking Company in New Orleans, which is the best-known and most beloved po’ boy roll out there. Unfortunately, the menu calls it “Linenheimer,” but I knew what they meant.

I couldn’t resist a po’ boy either, especially since they had the authentic rolls. I got a combination of fried oysters and fried crawfish, which you are allowed to do. The po’ boys come dressed with shredded iceberg lettuce, sliced tomatoes and pickles, and creamy, tangy remoulade sauce, as they should. I got house-made potato chips as my side.

But I also got a side of onion rings, because I am The Saboscrivner, and I try onion rings whenever and wherever they are available. Ring the Alarm for these big rings! They had kind of a loose battered coating — not my preferred style, but pretty good nonetheless. I thought they were very salty, even by onion ring standards.

My wife always loves chicken and waffles, so she jumped at the chance to order it here. You can choose between jerk chicken and fried chicken strips, so she went with the fried. It was served over a big pearl sugar waffle, which is definitely the new hotness when it comes to waffles. While she was grateful she didn’t have to get spicy jerk chicken, we both thought the fried chicken could have used more seasoning, especially at a restaurant specializing in such a well-seasoned, savory cuisine.

Since we were partying pretty hard (by our standards), she added on a side of fried lobster, which was only $11. She liked it a lot more than the fried chicken, needless to say.

And adding to this wild, uninhibited festival of fried food and heavy carbs, we all shared an order of beignets for dessert. It seemed like the thing to do. These fried dough balls, topped with enough powdered sugar to look like they were partying in the ’80s, are similar to doughnuts, and they are a major treat in New Orleans, especially at iconic establishments like Cafe du Monde.

So that was everything we had at The Bayou, which turned out to be quite a lot. I thought the food was better than Tibby’s and certainly different from the Vietnamese-influenced food at King Cajun Crawfish. I did wish The Bayou had a muffuletta sandwich on the menu, but I wish every restaurant had those. Nothing ever seems to compare to the food I enjoyed with dear friends in New Orleans almost 25 years ago, but for Orlando and its surrounding suburbs, this was pretty fine. Plus, The Bayou is the kind of unique, locally owned operation we should all strive to support, especially on a day like today, which happens to be Small Business Saturday. Tell them The Saboscrivner sent ya, and I guarantee you’ll have a great meal, but they will have no idea what you’re talking about!

Otto’s High Dive

Otto’s High Dive (https://www.ottoshd.com/) opened over a year ago in what I consider Orlando’s best foodie neighborhood, The Milk District. The “neighborhood rum bar” quickly earned a Michelin Bib Gourmand award for “good quality, good value cooking.” It is only open for dinner Tuesday through Saturday, but opens at 11 AM for brunch on Sundays (and is closed Mondays). Because Otto’s serves oysters and other raw seafood plus Cuban food, I had been wanting to try it ever since it opened, but finally made it in there with my wife on a recent Sunday afternoon. Neither of us drink, so we skipped the vast selection of rums and beautiful cocktails, but they looked really great, and I’m sure they were. But we arrived hungry and came to play.

Unfortunately for us, we were seated at one of the tiniest two-top tables I’ve ever seen in a restaurant. Even though we ordered a lot of food, it became a constant balancing act and rearranging game to make everything fit on the tiny table, to the point where plates were perched precariously as I tried to consolidate and stack everything I could. It should have been a relaxing and fun lunch, but the space didn’t really allow for that.

My wife ordered a Coke, and it was cool that they brought an icy-cold bottle of Mexican Coke (made with real sugar rather than high fructose corn syrup) and a glass full of crystal-clear ice cubes with lime wedges.

We started out with the ceviche, with cubes of raw yellowfin tuna, avocado, watermelon, mustard seeds, basil-chili oil, a splash of mezcal, and “leche de tigre.” Don’t worry, it isn’t real tiger’s milk (who would dare to milk a tiger?), but the citrus-based Peruvian marinade that “cooks” the raw fish in ceviche. It usually includes lime juice, onion, different chile peppers, salt, and pepper.

This was the crab salad: beautiful fresh crabmeat, chilled and mixed with avocado, pineapple, and lime, and served with long, thin, crispy plantain chips for spreading and/or dipping.

It was a surprisingly generous portion:

This was the bread platter with slices of Cuban bread (not toasted or grilled or anything) and one little plantain muffin. It was supposed to come with a third thing, but they said they were out of it, so they just left it off. Spreads include whipped, salted butter and guava spread. and I’m sorry I don’t remember the third. Neither of us would bother getting this again.

I was perfectly happy with all the seafood and snacks, but the main reason we finally went to Otto’s was because they serve a 14-ounce chargrilled Prime ribeye steak with a spiced coffee rub, and that sounded amazing to my wife. She ordered it rare, like both of us always order our steaks, and it came out… very much NOT rare. Neither of us like to be “those people” in a restaurant, but it was an expensive steak, so we politely asked to send it back because it wasn’t rare.

At that point, the chef came out of the kitchen and told us that they use a sous vide machine to cook the ribeye, so it should have been rare, but trust me, it wasn’t, and we told him as much. Then he offered to cook the skirt steak rare with the coffee rub so it could take on the flavors she was looking for, since I guess they don’t sous vide that cut. My wife agreed, and she got this huge and lovely coffee-rubbed skirt steak with tostones, white rice, and excellent black beans, plus some pickled onions sliced paper-thin on top that I happily ate.

I didn’t get a good picture of the interior of the skirt steak until we heated up the leftovers at home, but that’s how we like our steaks to look inside.
Sadly, my wife still would have preferred the ribeye done to her satisfaction. That whole exchange shook us both, and even though we didn’t feel great about sending the ribeye back in the first place, a restaurant charging those prices, with a damn Michelin Bib Gourmand award, maybe should not put polite customers on the defensive like that.

This was rich duck fat bordelaise, garlicky chimichurri, and red pepper sofrito that came with the skirt steak. All three were delicious, especially with the Cuban bread.

Being a glutton (as well as a glutton for punishment, apparently), I ordered a side of broccolini, one of my favorite vegetables, which was the seasonal vegetable during our visit. It was charred and topped with a romesco sauce that was really good.

I don’t think Otto’s High Dive has its dessert menu online, so I snapped a photo of it:

We decided on the toasted coconut rum cake, brown butter cake served with coconut lime curd. It was soaked with rum and set ablaze, which is always fun. It was delicious, and we chose wisely here, but I remain curious about the Florida orange tres leches too.

And this was a quesito that I hastily added on. It was a perfectly fine little pastry, but I admit I’ve had better at places like Zaza and Vicky Bakery.

So as if it wasn’t already painfully obvious, The Saboscrivner knows how to party. The food was good to great, but I admit it wasn’t the best time, and I don’t think I’d go back. Maybe Otto’s High Dive would be more fun and less stressful if you’re drinking. Then you might not care if all the plates don’t fit on your table, your steak is overcooked, and the chef gets big mad for politely, diplomatically standing up for yourself. But the place is a big hit, so try it for yourself and see what you think! Or don’t.

Rion’s Ocean Room

I was lucky enough to attend a recent soft opening of Rion’s Ocean Room (https://www.rionsoceanroom.com/), the new Hawaiian poke-by-the-pound establishment owned and operated by Orlando restauranteur Sonny Nguyen, who brought us the high-class ramen joint Domu and swanky izakaya Tori Tori, a standout in the Mills 50 District. Rion’s Ocean Room joins the original Domu in the East End Market, Orlando’s first food hall, a mainstay of the Audubon Park neighborhood and home of other beloved local favorites like La Femme Du Fromage, Hinckley’s Fancy Meats, Dochi, and Gideon’s Bakehouse.

I already love poke (I remain a huge fan of Poke Hana in Mills 50), but I was so excited to get a new poke joint that serves it the way they do in Hawaiian shops and supermarkets — kind of like an ice cream parlor, with all the varieties of fresh raw seafood diced into small cubes and pre-mixed with sauces and other ingredients, on display inside a glass case, ready to be scooped out by the pound. It’s just a counter inside the East End Market food hall — not a restaurant with its own seating, although there are plenty of outdoor tables. Rion’s Instagram page even describes it as “no frills,” but that’s fine with me. I order a lot of takeout, especially now that I work from home and don’t make it to Orlando’s best dining neighborhoods as often.

But when one of my best foodie friends invited me to this friends-and-family soft opening event, I jumped at the opportunity. I even got to meet Sonny Nguyen for the first time, complimented him on his past successes, and wished him the best of all things with Rion’s Ocean Room. It opens to the general public this coming Tuesday, October 29, 2024, and trust me — it’s going to be Orlando’s next big hit.

Here were all the different poke options on display, under glass, like gleaming gems in a jewelry store. The menu (which includes prices) explains that the ahi tuna is from the North Atlantic Ocean, the salmon is from Scotland, the ono (wahoo) is from the Caribbean Sea, and the shrimp is from northeast Florida.

The friends-and-family soft opening allowed us to choose the equivalent of one pound of poke, but we had a few options for that. I chose a rice bowl with two scoops of two different poke styles, and so did the two friends I went with. This was mine, adorned with ahi tuna in a spicy yuzu sauce and “lava flow” salmon in spicy mayo with tobiko (tiny, salty, crunchy flying fish roe). I also opted for krab salad with shredded surimi in mayo, extra tobiko, and scallions to adorn the top of my rice bowl. It was so cool and fresh and refreshing, which is what I love about poke the most.

Here are the poke rice bowls my dining companions and I got. Mine is the one on the right. My good friend got the creamy garlic shrimp (bottom left), which is actually cooked, unlike the fish. There was also a hot garlic shrimp to choose from. Any of these combinations would be a delicious, filling, and satisfying lunch or dinner.

But I still had more choices to make, so beyond my rice bowl, I chose two quarter-pound containers of additional poke to go. I tried to pick two non-spicy styles so my wife would enjoy them too, back at home. This was paina ono: a raw fish also known as wahoo, mixed with shoyu (soy) sauce, a type of citrus called yuzu, and shredded surimi krab:

And this was Hawaiian tobiko salmon, tossed with onions, scallions, sesame seeds, and plenty of the flying fish roe.

I was even lucky because my generous friend was off to a few more stops after our visit to Rion’s Ocean Room, so he gave me his poke containers to take home with me. I asked “Are you sure?”, but when he said yes, I didn’t push back any further and graciously accepted the bonus bounty. He hooked me up with his ahi tuna in spicy mayo with tobiko (one of my favorite poke combinations):

And this was a “wasabi furikake medley,” a combination of ahi tuna and salmon with soy sauce, sinus-clearing wasabi horseradish, and furikake, a seasoning blend of dried seaweed flakes and sesame seeds, which was also delicious:

Rion’s sells little bags of Deep River Sweet Maui Onion kettle chips, which work perfectly for dipping and scooping into the various poke varieties. I consider myself a potato chip connoisseur (certainly a dubious distinction, but I review them in my various Tight Chips reviews), but somehow, I had never tried this flavor before. I love onions, and I love sweet and salty together, so it was a winner. And I’m also a big dipper (heh), so I appreciated having the firm, crunchy, strongly seasoned kettle chips to sample with my poke.

They also sell Hawaiian Sun fruit drinks, so I treated myself to a can of strawberry lilikoi. Lilikoi is passion fruit, one of my favorite fruit flavors, which I have trouble turning down in any form. With how salty, fishy, and spicy the poke party turned out to be (especially with the Sweet Maui Onion chips), it was nice to have a sweet, cold, fruity drink to wash it all down.

Stalwart Saboscrivnerinos, I cannot rave enough about Rion’s Ocean Room. This fish was so fresh, so delicious, so perfectly seasoned in every form and style, you’re in for a treat. I fully admit to liking raw fish much more than cooked fish, so your mileage may vary, but if you like sushi, trust me — you’ll also fall in love with poke. The flavors, the textures, and the refreshing coolness will whisk you away to Hawaii, if only for a few minutes while you’re blissfully devouring the artful combinations at Rion’s. It’s also quite healthy, especially if you eschew the spicy mayo mixes and skip the rice, potato chips, and sweet drinks.

I am famous for my obsession with delis, sandwiches, and cured meats, but those are “sometimes foods” that you can’t indulge in all the time. Poke, on the other hand, is as wholesome as it is delicious. I would and could happily eat it weekly, if not even more often. I’m so glad Sonny Nguyen has gifted Orlando with Rion’s Ocean Room — one more option for poke in town, and probably the most authentic Hawaiian-style poke of all. Every staff member I spoke to was incredibly warm, friendly, and full of useful information, so if you have questions, they will be more than happy to answer them and put your mind at ease.

I look forward to becoming a regular, and I hope to see YOU there! If you’re another pokeholic, what are your favorite fish and combinations for poke? Let me know!

The Taproom at Dubsdread

I moved to Orlando almost 20 years ago, the day after Thanksgiving in 2004, so I feel a bit like a local. I like to think I know the best places to eat, even though there are always new hotspots and a handful of old classics I have yet to visit. One of them, one of the oldest and most classic Orlando restaurants of all, is The Taproom at Dubsdread (https://taproomatdubsdread.com/), the 100-year-old restaurant at Dubsdread Country Club, nestled between Winter Park and downtown Orlando. I had always heard great things about the food, but I avoided it for the better part of my two decades here, despite loving old, historic restaurants. In a city that isn’t known for its history, you’d think I would have checked it out long before now, but the whole “country club” thing kept me away.

I fully admit to being a bit of a class warrior, taking pride in my middle class origins and silently (or sometimes not so silently) judging and resenting the wealthy. Growing up listening to punk and hip hop and watching the Marx Brothers, the Three Stooges, and “slobs versus snobs” comedies like Trading Places, Caddyshack, and Animal House probably had a lot to do with that. My parents were even more influential on my class consciousness — two career public school teachers who lived simply, refused to spend beyond their means, felt like they had nothing to prove to anyone, and rarely treated themselves to anything. To me, a restaurant at a country club felt like another world I probably wouldn’t be welcome in (and that my parents would probably disapprove of anyway), so I rejected it before it could possibly reject me. I spent all my time in Orlando avoiding the beloved landmark Taproom at Dubsdread until a work colleague and friend who I think the world of invited me to lunch there. I figured this would be my chance to finally check it out and write an unbiased review for my blog. As the guest of a classy, professional woman, I would be less likely to get into trouble with a snooty maitre d’, a judgmental valet, a surly golfer, or a society matron who resembled Margaret Dumont.

And it was a perfectly nice restaurant, much warmer and more welcoming than I expected. If anything, it was a lot less pretentious and highbrow than Hillstone or Seasons 52, those upscale chains. They didn’t even have valet parking, and the hostess and server were really nice.

My colleague ordered the fresh apple and bacon grilled cheese sandwich, which came with Tillamook cheddar, Emmenthaler Swiss, almonds, and fig preserves, plus a side order of fries. It looked really nice, and it inspired me to invite her to the incredible La Femme Du Fromage later on, since I already knew she liked fancy grilled cheese sandwiches.

We must have met for lunch on a Wednesday, since that is the day they offer a chilled lobster and shrimp roll sandwich as a lunch special. I always appreciate a good lobster roll. I had the best one ever twelve years ago at Neptune Oyster in Boston’s North End neighborhood, and I’ve been chasing that high ever since. This one didn’t quite reach those euphoric heights, but it was still really nice and refreshing, served on the traditional split-top bun and served with a side of onion rings — the “good kind,” as far as I’m concerned, with their golden beer battered exterior. So RING THE ALARM, constant readers — you can get a side order of really good onion rings at a country club restaurant, and for only $4! They’re on the menu and everything; I wasn’t like that rube in the commercial who said “Would ya please pass the jelly?”, embarrassing himself at a fancy dinner party, asking Chef for something lowbrow that they normally wouldn’t serve. Great lunch, great company, great restaurant. I thought even my in-laws might like it, and they don’t like most places.

I returned to the Taproom at Dubsdread more recently during Magical Dining Month, when many Orlando restaurants offer a reasonably priced prix fixe menu with a few different appetizer, entrée, and dessert choices to mix and match, where a portion of the final bill goes to help local charities. This time I went for dinner with two very cool friends, a truly glamorous couple who share my love of good food, but we hadn’t had a chance to get together in years. They were great company, as always, and even challenged me to take better food photos than I usually take. We’ll see if their coaching and constructive criticism helped here — you tell me, stalwart Saboscrivnerinos!

We started with bread for the table, which I didn’t know about when I met my colleague for lunch, but now I know… and knowing is half the battle. The bread was like ciabatta, and the butter was whipped for easy spreading, which I always appreciate. Nobody likes frozen butter that can’t be spread!
Being true foodies, we shared everything throughout this magical meal.

These were buffalo shrimp (not mine), served with some celery sticks. I forgot if the dip was bleu cheese or ranch, but the shrimp were nice, with a slightly crunchy exterior and that mild acidity you get from buffalo sauce.

These were Italian meatballs (also not mine), but the owner was very generous and willing to share. I would have been happy to have meatballs like this over a bowl of pasta or in a sub, and I liked that the tomato sauce was chunky and not watery.

I ordered house-made potato chips topped with crumbled bleu cheese, scallions, and balsamic glaze, a delicious dish that was perfect for sharing. The chips were crunchy, not limp, overly greasy, or even overly salty. Of course, balsamic glaze makes everything better, and I’ve really gotten into bleu cheese lately.

For our entrees, someone ordered a bone-in pork chop that looked good:

And two of us, myself included, ordered prime rib. I like my steaks and prime rib RARE, and I was thrilled that the Taproom at Dubsdread took me seriously. Too many places blast a beautiful piece of meat far beyond rare because they don’t believe us and think we’ll send it back for being underdone. Nope, this is how I like it, especially with lots of creamy horseradish sauce for dipping — the more fiery and sinus-clearing, the better. The mashed potatoes scooped beneath were pretty nondescript. They could have used sour cream and/or cream cheese, bits of the potato skin, onions, or something else to liven them up, but sliding them around in the meat drippings helped resuscitate them a little.

The late, great Russell Jones, aka Big Baby Jesus, aka Dirt McGirt, aka Ol’ Dirty Bastard, famously warbled, “Oh baby, I like it RAAAAAAW!” Well, this prime rib was rare rather than raw, and oh baby, that’s how I like it.

It was time for dessert! I did not order this brownie sundae, with a scoop of vanilla ice cream, hot fudge, and whipped cream served over a warm brownie, but it looked really good. How can you go wrong with something like this?

Two of us opted for the key lime pie, which is always one of my favorite desserts, and the Taproom makes an excellent version. The very smooth, shiny topping was more tart than the rest of the creamy filling below, and I loved it. I go nuts for citrus desserts that are sweet and creamy but also tart, and too often, bakers are afraid to go tart enough.

So I would definitely recommend the Taproom at Dubsdread for a nice lunch or dinner, whether you’re some kind of jet-setting big shot with a sweater tied around your neck or an anti-establishment outsider who wants to subvert every dominant paradigm you’ve ever encountered. I’m glad I finally realized that a country club restaurant could be perfectly pleasant, without running into unpleasant stock characters from old-timey slapstick flicks or ’80s comedies from boomer filmmakers. And enjoying two meals with friends didn’t make me part of any System, so I still feel like the cool(?), nonconformist iconoclast I will always be.

Ted Peters Famous Smoked Fish (St. Petersburg)

Ted Peters Famous Smoked Fish (https://tedpetersfish.com/) is a legendary landmark in St. Petersburg, Florida, right off the beach. It is a perfect example of a classic “Old Florida” seafood restaurant and smokehouse, the kinds of places that barely exist anymore, but those that remain are both time capsules and treasures. Founded in 1951 and still family-owned and in its original location, Ted Peters conjures up sights, smells, and tastes of a bygone era, but luckily we can still enjoy them today. In fact, just last month, Southern Living magazine (which features some pretty great food writing) included Ted Peters in its list of Florida’s 17 Most Legendary Restaurants. (I have been to five of them and reviewed one other on this blog, Bern’s Steak House.)

I first visited Ted Peters with my wife several years ago, long before I started writing as The Saboscrivner in 2018. But strangely enough, neither of us remembered much about our first visit, aside from that I liked it. I’ve been wanting to return for years, and on a recent weekend getaway to St. Pete Beach, it was my first stop after checking into our hotel and depositing my wife in our room. I brought back a takeout feast, knowing the room had a mini-fridge in case we couldn’t finish everything. But we were both stunned by the portion sizes upon my return — somehow you’d think that would have stuck in my memory when we ate there the first time, but it didn’t. This recent visit was like getting to experience it all again for the first time.

Just so you know, it doesn’t get much more casual than this place. There are plenty of tables on a covered patio, and they can pull down outer walls in case it rains, as it did on the sweltering late June afternoon I showed up there. There is also an enclosed dining room with some rustic decor — wood-paneled walls and stuffed animal heads. I just poked my head in the room but didn’t linger. You can order beer (or root beer) in frosty glass mugs, but it’s a family-friendly restaurant in every way, not some kind of dirty dive (although it was featured on Guy Fieri’s Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives show).

This is the menu that hangs above the bar, with accurate prices as of June 30th, 2024:

They offer four kinds of smoked fish, all smoked over red oak wood: salmon, mullet, mahi mahi, and mackerel, but mackerel was out of season. Both of our orders came in huge white paper boxes, like the kind of boxes a bakery would send you home with a large pie or cake in. Like I said, we were both stunned back at the hotel when I opened everything up and saw how much fish they give you.

My wife asked for a smoked salmon lunch, which comes with fish, tomato, onion, pickle, and lemon. It was a huge hunk of salmon, hot-smoked to a golden brown color, compared to the delicate pink nova salmon we know and love from a lifetime of bagel breakfasts, appetizing stores, and delicatessens. The hot-smoked salmon was drier and flakier than the tender, thin-sliced nova that melts in your mouth, but it was still really good. You just have to think of it as its own thing — not as salty as nova, but much more oily and “fishy.”
The entire piece had thin, crispy salmon skin underneath that was easy to separate, even with the flimsy plastic fork and knife they included, but we both love salmon skin, so it was a nice surprise treat.

Because mackerel was out of season, I ordered a mullet dinner for myself, and not just because I had a mullet back in 8th and 9th grade. This was a nice piece of fish, even longer than the salmon filet, just not as thick because mullet is a smaller fish. This one reminded me more of the golden smoked whitefish I treat myself to every few years, which I pull apart to make rich, decadent whitefish salad. Like whitefish, mullet is full of long, thin, plasticky, pin-like bones that you have to carefully remove, as well as one long spine that you can pull out in one piece like a cat in an old-timey cartoon. As a result, the mullet was harder to eat in a hotel room due to how messy it is, but we brought a lot home, packed tightly in a cooler with ice, and I made it into some smoked mullet salad back in my kitchen.

Unlike the salmon, you can’t eat the scaly skin of the mullet (the entire underside), so I did what I could to peel it all off, along with the tail, fins, and all those bones. The little sauce containers were a creamy horseradish sauce that had a slight sweetness (not nearly as intensely spicy as the horseradish sauce at Orlando’s beloved Beefy King) and another sauce that was seemingly ranch (that one was for the Swifties), but possibly with some Cajun seasoning added. I brought those home as well and added them to the flaky, deboned mullet (because the meat is also drier than the smoked whitefish I’m used to).

The difference between the lunch and the dinner is that the dinner comes with cole slaw and potato salad, so of course I had to try those! The cole slaw was creamy, crunchy, and refreshing, perfect for cutting through the intensely fishy, oily, smoky flavors and textures.

The potato salad is actually German potato salad, so it is tangy and the slightest bit sweet from being made with apple cider vinegar instead of the standard mayonnaise. It is also rich, smoky, and has a nice blend of soft and crunchy textures from crumbles of bacon. It was served warm, as German potato salad usually is, and it was terrific. I’m so glad I sprang for the dinner instead of the lunch.

I couldn’t go to Ted Peters and not try their famous smoked fish spread, which I definitely did not try on my first visit however long ago. My wife didn’t care for it as much as the salmon and mullet, but surprise surprise, I liked it even more — maybe due to it being less intensely fishy and smoky. The fish (I’m assuming mullet, but it could be a blend) was mixed into a uniform creamy consistency with mayo and sweet pickle relish, adding some sweetness, coolness, and crunch. It reminded me of a really terrific tuna salad with that smoky flavor shining through but not overpowering.
At the restaurant, you can order smoked fish spread with Saltine crackers, but for takeout orders, you just order it by the half-pint, pint, or quart. I got a half-pint, and it didn’t come with crackers, so I had to run by Publix to buy some Saltines. They were fine, but I still contend that anything Saltines can do, Ritz can do better. But my wife loves Saltines, and I wanted to follow the founders’ intent here.

At this point, a couple of you might be lamenting “What if I don’t eat fish?” or “What if I don’t like smoked fish?” Well, first of all, I would probably suggest trying a different restaurant. There are so many to choose from up and down St. Pete Beach and on the mainland, and many are in the good-to-great range. But just in case, I had always read that Ted Peters Famous Smoked Fish serves really tasty burgers, and I had to put that to the test. I’m a cheeseburger guy, and I think American cheese is the best cheese you can put on a burger. But my wife doesn’t like cheese on burgers, so I ordered a plain hamburger with her in mind, just in case any of the fish were “too fishy” for her. When I showed her the plain burger as an option, she said it looked a little sad, plus she surprised both of us by liking the smoked salmon and mullet as much as she did.

Now I like a lot of stuff on a burger (surprise, surprise), so if it looked sad, that’s because it was plain. Since she wanted nothing to do with it, I added ketchup, yellow mustard, and relish (from included packets), the “seemingly ranch” sauce, and lettuce and tomato. It was delicious! It tasted like a burger you’d get at a cookout with that nice flavor from the grill. The bun was your typical squishy white bread bun, not grilled or toasted or anything, but absolutely fine for what it was. Adding American cheese and grilled onions and grilling the bun might have brought this burger over the top, but I have no complaints. If you don’t want your fingers or your breath to smell like smoked fish for hours after dining, like if you’re on a really hot date at Ted Peters, then consider the burger.

Now key lime pie is one of my favorite desserts ever, but my wife doesn’t share my love for it. I was all ready to skip the tempting key lime pie on Ted Peters’ menu for the second time, but it was actually her idea to order a slice. Of course I did not argue! It was nice and tangy, an ideal dessert for balancing out smoky, rich fish, but the crust was rather crumbly and a bit bland. Rather than the standard moist graham cracker crust, it might have been made of shortbread or even ‘Nilla Wafers, that mainstay of Southern-style banana pudding. (When I was a little Saboscrivner, before I spent 15 years working for a Catholic law school, I used to think the “wafers” consumed during Catholic mass were ‘Nilla Wafers.)
I would definitely recommend it anyway, since key lime pie is Florida’s official dessert (or should be), and it does go so perfectly at the end of a meal like this. But this is a rare occasion where I might give the edge to the Publix bakery, and I would be remiss if I didn’t credit the award-winning baker Evette Rahman of Sister Honey’s Bakery in Orlando for making the best key lime pie I’ve ever had in my life.

So anyway, Southern Living is right on about this place. And if you don’t believe me and don’t believe them, my friend and role model Amy Drew Thompson, the food writer for the Orlando Sentinel, is a fellow fan of Ted Peters Famous Smoked Fish, and she definitely knows what she’s talking about. But hopefully you can see from my words and pictures that Ted Peters is a unique experience, something that is all too rare in Florida and almost nonexistent anywhere else. After our most recent visit to St. Pete Beach, I said again what I’ve said before, that if I had to live anywhere in Florida that isn’t in or around Orlando, the St. Pete/Tampa area would be it for me. My wife and I love St. Pete Beach for short little weekend getaways, but it would totally be worth a day trip from Orlando just to take in a taste of timeless Old Florida at Ted Peters Famous Smoked Fish. Eat on the patio, spring for the dinner so you can have German potato salad and cole slaw, get your hands a little dirty, raise a frosty mug, and be glad that after all these decades and generations, the crew at Ted Peters still smokes fish every day.

Kiko Japanese Cuisine

Kiko Japanese Cuisine (https://www.winterspringskiko.com/) is an unassuming little Japanese restaurant next door to our friendly neighborhood Publix in the Willa Springs Village shopping center, on the corner of Red Bug Lake Road and Tuskawilla Road in Winter Springs. So many similar shopping plazas have little sushi restaurants like this. Since I moved to Orlando 20 years ago, there have been two that came and went in this exact location: Nagoya, and more recently, Kabuto Sushi & Grill, which I actually liked a lot, but it closed near the end of 2022. The locals may appreciate these restaurants, but they weren’t considered sushi destinations. Nobody was driving to our neighborhood from the cooler, hipper ends of Orlando. Nobody drives to Winter Springs for anything if they can help it.

But they’re missing out, let me tell you. My wife and I were blown away by how great Kiko was after our first visit to the restaurant, and we liked it just as much after bringing home takeout even more recently. This is a place that seems to have a devoted local following, but it should be a lot more popular and beloved than it already is.

We definitely overordered on our first visit, which included this insane sushi sashimi combo “for one,” in addition to all these other beautiful rolls. We didn’t expect the combo for one to come on this attention-catching wooden boat, or to be as pretty as it was. I’ve eaten a lot of mid sushi around this city, but every piece of sashimi and every sliced roll at Kiko was crafted with love, care, attention to detail, and the freshest possible ingredients. The combo comes with ten pieces of sashimi, four pieces of sushi, and one “crazy” California roll.

My wife is bigger on sashimi than I am. She worries about carbs, and I never do, even though I should. Here are the ten pieces of sashimi she got in the combo, serve on a bed of finely crushed ice concealing a pretty turquoise LED light. Aside from salmon at 12:00 and tuna at 3:00, I’m not sure what the other two kinds of fish were.

Here were the four gorgeous pieces of nigiri sushi that came with her combo, delicate slices of fresh fish served over rice. The top two are salmon and tuna, obviously, and the bottom one was topped with wonderful ikura, salty salmon roe that pop in your mouth.

This was the “crazy” California roll, topped with spicy surimi krab, in addition to the krab, avocado, and slivered cucumber inside. I’m a sucker for surimi and anything spicy, so I enjoyed this, even though I never order California rolls.

Since we figured that combo “for one” would be just for my wife, I ordered some rolls for myself, keeping in mind things she might like too. This was the mango tango roll, with tempura fried shrimp, cream cheese, and cucumber inside, topped with paper-thin sliced mango, mango sauce, and eel sauce. I know, it isn’t authentically Japanese at all, but it sure was delicious. The tempura shrimp was fried to perfection, and the sweet-tart mango, warm and crispy shrimp, and cool, creamy, refreshing cream cheese fit perfectly together.

This was a double-spicy roll, with spicy tuna and spicy salmon, deep-fried and topped with eel sauce and spicy mayo. I love crunchy stuff in my rolls, but I didn’t pay close enough attention when ordering to realize the entire roll would be deep-fried. It was tasty, but I feel like that throws off the delicate texture of the raw fish, and then it isn’t even raw anymore. And oh baby, I like it raw.

On the plate below, this is a smoked salmon roll on the left, with smoked salmon, cream cheese, and cucumber, a favorite of your cream cheese and lox-loving Jewish author. The one in the middle is the Sunset Blvd roll, named for one of Los Angeles’ most infamous streets (and Billy Wilder’s brilliant 1950 film noir that is my dude David Lynch’s favorite movie). It contains spicy yellowtail, salmon, and crunchy tempura flakes and is topped with spicy tuna, avocado, plum sauce, and tobiko (flying fish roe, which is the rich red color).On the right is the glamorous Hollywood roll, with tempura soft shell crab and mango inside, topped with a layer of spicy tuna, avocado, and scallions, then finished off with masago (the orange smelt roe), eel sauce, and spicy mayo. Crunchy, spicy, creamy — this roll had everything.

The Sunset Boulevard and Hollywood rolls were my favorites, but everything was awesome, even the deep-fried double-spicy roll. That was the only one I wouldn’t order again, but we were both blown away by how amazing everything was. We didn’t set out to overorder or indulge like this, but we also had no idea Kiko would be this good. A random weekend lunch turned out to be a huge treat and a feast for all five senses, and we ended up with plenty of leftovers for later.

I returned a few weeks later to bring home some takeout. We didn’t go as buck wild this time, but we still had fun. This time my wife ordered the smaller sashimi dish, which included tuna, salmon, tako (octopus), tamago (egg, essentially like firm slices of an omelet), and a fish with firm white flesh that I didn’t try and she couldn’t readily identify.

I ordeered myself an appetizer called the spicy tuna twister, not knowing what it included or involved, but figuring I couldn’t go wrong. When I got home, I was surprised to see two pretty little clusters of spicy tuna in almost a paste-like form, surrounded by beautiful spirals of thin-sliced avocado. But what were they surrounded with? These were tempura-fried onion petals, almost like pieces of a Bloomin’ Onion, only not as heavily seasoned, and a hell of a lot less greasy. Long-time readers, the stalwart Saboscrivnerinos, know I’m an onion ring aficionado, but I never expected this! They were fried to perfection (I know, I know, but they were!), and paired perfectly with the ramekin of spicy mayo for dipping. These aren’t onion rings if you stick to the literal definition, but since they were a pleasant surprise of breaded, fried onions, I still give them one of my Ring the Alarm! shout-outs.

This time, I tried the salmon skin roll (on the left), because salmon skin is so savory and crispy and awesome, and the spicy yellowtail roll (on the right), because I don’t eat enough yellowtail (also known as hamachi or Japanese amberjack), but I always love it whenever I do. These rolls were slightly less ornate and ostentatious than the ones I got on my first trip to Kiko, but I liked them just as much, and I was able to focus on their core ingredients more.

We also got that mango tango roll again, because YOU KNOW WE HAD TO DO IT TO ‘EM! This time, enjoying our Kiko feast at home, it was just as inauthentic, but just as good.

I am thrilled that Kiko Japanese Cuisine opened in 2023, so close to our home. I’m sure pretty much anyone reading this who likes sushi already has their own favorite sushi restaurant — possibly even one for “everyday” sushi and a more upscale locale for a splurge meal. Well, I hope I have convinced some people to give Kiko a try. It is a great place for an “everyday” sushi restaurant, and easily good enough (and affordable enough compared to some of Orlando’s Michelin-affiliated darlings) that you can splurge there too. I’m going to keep returning, and I hope to run into some readers there as I become a regular.

Isan Zaap Thai Cafe

For years, I had been hearing my friends rave about Isan Zaap Thai Cafe (https://isanzaaporlando.com/), unfortunately a little far from home for me, but moments away from another Thai restaurant my wife and I love very much, Naradeva Thai. You could seriously eat a big meal at one, then still comfortably walk to the other for another meal, they are that close. But I don’t recommend doing that.

I do, however, recommend Isan Zaap, and I’m not the only one. Michelin, that tire company that doubles as a restaurant critic organization, awarded Isan Zaap Thai Cafe one of its coveted Bib Gourmand awards, for “good quality, good value cooking,” joining some of Orlando’s finest establishments. So if you don’t trust your friendly neighborhood Saboscrivner’s recommendations by now, you can rely on the Michelin Guide, known for its completely unbiased judging.

While Naradeva’s dining room has a serene wilderness vibe, Isan Zaap is more of a modern dining space. Their menus are very different as well. I do not pretend to be an expert on Thai food, but I know they represent different regions of Thailand, with Isan Zaap covering Isan, the Northeastern region of Thailand (similar to another local Thai restaurant, Mee Thai). According to Isan Zaap’s website, Isan cuisine includes fresh herbs and spices, multiple proteins, and fermented ingredients, which makes sense, because I enjoyed a lot of funky, pungent flavors in the dishes I tried.

On my first visit in late January, I brought a friend with me who I always run into whenever I do anything cool and fun around town. Whether it’s a concert, a stand-up comedy show, or a comic book convention, this dude is always there with his finger on the pulse of all things cool and good. We were both riding high after attending a comic art show where I met my all-time favorite artist, so I chose Isan Zaap as a way to prolong the good feelings and rare chance to hang out.

I started my meal with a refreshing, sweet, slightly smoky Thai iced tea. It was so good, I wanted to gulp it all down, but I knew I would want to save it to cut the heat of whatever food I ordered.

I decided to order larb for the first time ever, after remembering young Peter Parker and his smokin’ hot Aunt May (played by Marisa Tomei) riffing about larb in Spider-Man: Homecoming. I don’t think they ever explained what larb was in that scene, but it sounded right up my alley, with minced pork, pork skin, pork liver, and “seasoning” with lime juice, herbs, and roasted rice powder. I asked for it with medium heat, but boy, was it spicy. I have gotten used to ordering Indian dishes hot, but I eat Thai food so infrequently, medium felt just hot enough. Man, was this some luscious larb! Listed under the “Salads” on the menu, it was so bright and tangy, sour and spicy, crunchy and funky, and surprisingly cool and refreshing, while spicy enough to make my lips tingle. It was served chilled, with thin slices of onion, finely shredded carrot, cucumbers, and lots of mint, and it exceeded all my expectations with its blend of flavors and textures. I was a little surprised the larb did not come with rice, but what do I know? Anyway, it made me a larb lover for life.

Because I’m me and I just can’t help myself, I ordered a second dish, figuring I would try it there and finish the rest at home: my go-to favorite that I like to try at every Thai restaurant, stir-fried drunken noodles, also known as pad kee mao (or sometimes pad kee mow). These are wide, flat, chewy rice noodles sautéed with onions, red and green bell peppers, basil leaves, and a protein (I chose squid, which was a little rubbery, but still tasty), in a sweet and spicy sauce. I asked for this dish medium as well, and it also brought a pleasant amount of heat.

My friend chose excellent-looking pad Thai with tofu, another dish you can never go wrong with. He let me try a bite, which had the nice sweet-and-sour tanginess I always enjoy in pad Thai. I made a mental note of it, because my wife loves this dish, and I definitely wanted to return with her.

It was a great lunch and a great hang. I went home and talked about this meal for damn near three weeks before my wife and I finally made it back to Isan Zaap together, again for lunch on a weekend. We both ordered Thai iced coffees this time, which I liked even more than the Thai iced tea. (I almost never drink tea or coffee, but this just goes to show you that if you put sweetened condensed milk in anything, I will consume it.)

My wife ordered pad Thai, as I figured she would. She got it mild and chose mixed seafood for her protein. It came with shrimp, squid, and mussels in the half shell, which she was kind enough to share with me, because I notoriously love mussels and she is ambivalent about those bivalves. She liked it, and as usual with her, she got two meals out of the dish.

I chose two things again on this trip, figuring we would share them both. This is a picture of half our order of grilled pork neck, which looked and smelled so good that I uncharacteristically devoured half of it before remembering to take a picture. It was a very pretty plate of thin slices of perfectly grilled, marinated, tender pork, accompanied by pretty shredded carrots and cabbage on the side and a very spicy Isan dipping sauce that I loved and she wanted nothing to do with. The grilled pork neck did not come with rice or anything else, so it might not be the most filling dish for a single hungry person. I would definitely recommend it to share with a group, though — or if someone is avoiding carbs and just wants delicious lean protein.

I also thought we would both enjoy the chef’s special dish of crab fried rice, after noticing so many crab dishes on the menu. Again, I ate the vast majority of this, even though it was not spicy or intimidating in any way. It was solid fried rice, but there wasn’t a lot in it aside from eggs, garlic, a little basil, and the lump crabmeat on top. I certainly enjoyed it, but next time I will order something more unique and unfamiliar, that’s for sure!

Unlike our first visit, this time our server brought us a container of four tins of seasonings to spoon onto our food: chilli, sugar, vinegar, and fish sauce. I used a little bit of the chilli (just a red powder) and a splash of vinegar to jazz up the fried rice, but I did not want to overwhelm any of the flavors. I know the sugar is meant to cut the heat, but the spiciest thing I had at this second meal was the Isan dipping sauce with the sliced pork neck.

Last, but certainly not least, I ordered another dish to bring home and enjoy later: the pork liver larb, served chilled and tossed in the same spicy, sour dressing with toasted rice powder, shredded carrot and cabbage, sliced cucumbers, and more herbs on top. This time I made jasmine rice in my Aroma rice cooker to go with the larb, which may be completely inauthentic, but it worked for me. I love liver in all its forms, and the pork liver was rich and intense in that offal (but not awful) way, and tender enough to almost melt in my mouth. It might have been my favorite component of that original larb dish I tried, but I found myself missing the additional textures and flavors of the ground pork and pork skin in the “O.G.” larb. Again, you live and you learn, or at least I do! As always, I appreciated that Isan Zaap packed my takeout larb in one of those great plastic containers with a clear, locking lid. These are microwave-safe AND dishwasher-safe, and if you think I keep a collection of them, you’d be right as rain.

So Isan Zaap Thai Cafe was really wonderful after both of my visits, and it ignited my newfound interest in Thai food. I’ve been to a few other Thai restaurants in Orlando, and a longtime favorite closed in 2023, but I am excited that there is so much more to learn about and experiment with. I’m no tire company, but I can tell you that Isan Zaap is definitely worth all the hype and praise, whether you eat Thai food all the time or just dabble occasionally, as I do. I don’t know how often I will make it back to this restaurant, but Isan Zaap serves some of the best Thai food I’ve ever had, and not just in Orlando either. If you know, you know, and if you don’t, then what are you waiting for?

Adega Gaucha

Adega Gaucha (https://adegagaucha.com/) is an all-you-can-eat Brazilian steakhouse located at 8204 Crystal Clear Lane, Orlando, FL 32809, right in front of the Florida Mall, just south of the busy intersection of Orange Blossom Trail and Sand Lake Road. It opened about two years ago, and it is a single, locally owned restaurant, differentiating it from the similar chains Texas de Brazil (which I reviewed back in 2019) and Fogo de Chao (which I have been to twice, but never got around to reviewing). I grew up going to all-you-can-eat buffets with my family, and then they helped keep me alive through college and grad school. Because of my buffet background, I have a great appreciation for the variety and abundance of restaurants like this, even though I could never have afforded the typical decadence of a Brazilian steakhouse as a poor student. Despite the never-ending parade of patient waiters serving roasted meats on giant swords, my favorite part of this meal is always the sumptuous salad bar buffet, where I can gorge on some of my favorite foods, like cured meats, smoked salmon, and various fancy cheeses and roasted and marinated vegetables.

My wife, on the other hand, is not a buffet person, but she does appreciate a well-cooked (but never well done) steak, far more than even I do. We both like our red meat as rare as possible, and we share a fondness for marbled ribeye steaks, lamb, tender brisket, and gamey meats like bison. That’s why these Brazilian steakhouses are a rare and luxurious treat for both of us. We have gone to Texas de Brazil for a handful of special occasions in the past, and she suggested a return visit as a “last hurrah” before an upcoming surgery and a year where we’re both going to try to eat a little less and a little healthier. I suggested we try Adega Gaucha as an alternative, and I am so glad we did, because we both liked it even more than the vaunted, venerable old standby. Now I’m suggesting it to you stalwart Saboscrivnerinos, and I will do my best to point out the little differences that set this singular local establishment apart from its chain competitors.

I am happy to report that Adega Gaucha is cheaper than the “big two” chains. The full churrasco experience for dinner is $55 per person, and lunch on weekdays is $40. I would much rather eat a big meal like this for lunch than dinner, and ideally on a weekend, because I can’t think of anything sadder than gorging at a nice restaurant like this while worrying about rushing back to work in the afternoon and trying to be productive. Luckily, Adega Gaucha offers all the same stuff from the dinner menu for their Saturday and Sunday brunch, lasting from 11:30 AM until 3:00 PM, for $45 per person. To compare to the Orlando Texas de Brazil, weekend lunch from noon until 4:00 PM is $60. That $15 makes Adega Gaucha seem like a bargain, and I haven’t even gotten into how good the food and service are!

We made a reservation for 11:45 AM on a Sunday, and we were the very first party to be seated and hit the gourmet table (salad bar and buffet), so I was able to pause for some photos. Here is the charcuterie — pretty standard pepperoni, dry prosciutto and cured ham sliced paper-thin, and genoa salami folded into pretty flowers, atop a mountain of cheeses. As one would hope, they had glass sneeze-guards in place, to prevent these decadent selections from people’s germs. I grabbed some of these cured meats, along with the fine smoked gouda in the middle of the cheeses.

I helped myself to some melt-in-your-mouth nova salmon, leaving all the capers behind for diners who like them. Those white things I cut off are hearts of palm, which I have never developed an appreciation for.

This was beef carpaccio, another decadent delicacy, that I have never noticed at Texas de Brazil or Fogo de Chao.

My wife liked the sweet potato salad with raisins and dollops of goat cheese in the top left and the quinoa salad in the top right. I really liked the potato salad in the bottom left and the seafood salad in the bottom center. We both appreciated the tiny spheres of fresh, soft mozzarella cheese drizzled with balsamic vinegar in the top center. I am slowly developing a taste for beets, but I was a little too overstimulated to sample what seemed to be beet salad in the bottom right.

Back at our table, we were greeted by a basket of warm, freshly baked pao de queijo, Brazilian cheese bread — chewy little buns that my wife always likes a lot. She said these were better than Texas de Brazil’s version!

Something else Adega Gaucha does that Texas doesn’t is allow the table to select three sides. My wife chose fried yucca, which I am not into, and I chose caramelized bananas, which I figured we would both enjoy. They are so delicious. Go ahead, take those bananas!

I knew she would dig the sautéed mushrooms, so I let her take those. She liked them, but she found little marinated mushrooms on the gourmet table that she liked even better than these sautéed ones. Longtime readers know mushrooms are my Kryptonite, but I never claimed to be a fun guy.

Here is my plate after my first and only venture to the gourmet table, loaded up with some of my favorite foods in the world. Aside from things I have already discussed, I treated myself to sweet and spicy Peppadew peppers I could eat like candy (and have before), pink pickled onions, roasted red bell pepper, and one of the jewels of the gourmet table, candied bacon, which had a hint of spice and was a huge hit with both of us.

Then we turned our little red cards green to signal the gauchos to arrive with gifts of meat. (And how about Gaucho? The last truly excellent album by Steely Dan, if you ask me, but I give Aja a slight edge.)

I lost track of all the different cuts of steak the gauchos brought by our table, but between the two of us, we probably tried them all: filet mignon, top sirloin, the popular Brazilian sirloin cut called picanha, flank steak called bavette or fraldinha, and our beloved ribeye. Both of us always politely asked for rare, and the gauchos patiently offered us the rarest of the rare. I was overjoyed that none of the meats were over-salted, which is a major issue for me at both Texas de Brazil and Fogo de Chao, where on top of the encouraged gluttony, everything is ridiculously salty. I filled little metal ramekins at the gourmet table with fresh chimichurri, that wonderful, pungent condiment of oil, vinegar, garlic, and parsley, and fresh mango salsa that was tasty enough to eat with a spoon by itself. The mango salsa passed my “Would I eat this over vanilla ice cream?” test. Yes, it was that good — sweet and spicy and acidic and cool and refreshing and perfect in every way. I should have gotten a photo of it. I’m sorry!

But as good as the various cuts of steak were, for me, the highlights were the leg of lamb (also rare), the tender pork sausage called linguica, the roast chicken legs with crispy skin (capturing everything you would hope roasted chicken legs could aspire to be), and our absolute favorite meat at any Brazilian steakhouse, costela, the tender, juicy, marbled beef ribs that the gauchos serve sliced crosswise against the giant bones. As soon as the first gaucho visited us, we asked for the beef ribs, and you should too. Before we learned of the greatness of beef ribs at Brazilian steakhouses, we didn’t know to ask for it, and it rarely made appearances when we would dine at Texas de Brazil. But at Adega Gaucha, ask, and you shall receive.

Below, you can thrill to a later plate with more beef rib slices and two more delicacies that I’ve never had at Texas de Brazil or Fogo de Chao. You might have noticed the little dark round things at the top of the plate pictured above and the bottom of the plate pictured below. Those are chicken hearts, and they are wonderful, hearty (heh) fare. If you think that sounds gross, you are certainly welcome to your opinion, but they are such a delicious protein — dark and rich and slightly chewy, but so flavorful and extremely nutritious. I have bought chicken hearts before, marinated them in Italian dressing and then sautéed them, but mine always came out a little chewier than I feel they should be. I’ve had them on skewers, grilled over binchotan charcoal at Susuru and Tori Tori, two local Japanese restaurants that specialize in Izakaya-style pub grub like yakitori. But I had never had them like this, and I absolutely loved them. It’s funny that despite having all these different cuts of steak at my disposal, I liked the chicken hearts so much, but I did.

And that beautiful thing on the right is another hallmark of a meal at Adega Gaucha that I have never seen elsewhere: grilled pineapple, rich with butter, sugar, and cinnamon for a crispy, caramelized outer crust, like the best part of a pineapple upside down cake. This was a huge treat, serving as both a palate cleanser between the rich meats and a dessert. It was a damn delight, and we could not have been happier to end our meal with a few slices of the grilled pineapple, artfully cut off whole pineapples on the same kinds of swords wielded by the gauchos.

I have heard the cocktails and desserts at Adega Gaucha are as awe-inspiring as the meats and the gourmet table offerings, but we don’t drink, and we were too full for dessert, aside from that grilled pineapple. But next time (and there will be a next time!), I am ordering a Brazilian limeade, with fresh-squeezed lime juice and sweetened condensed milk. That has to be the best thing ever, to go with so many other “best things ever” we enjoyed and will absolutely return to enjoy again. In the song “Hey Nineteen” on Gaucho, Donald Fagen sang “The Cuervo Gold, the fine Colombian, make tonight a wonderful thing.” For your friendly neighborhood Saboscrivner, hopefully less pathetic than the narrator of that song, the beef ribs, leg of lamb, chicken hearts, chicken leg, linguica sausage, smoked salmon, caramelized bananas, mango salsa, and grilled pineapple made our first visit to Adega Gaucha a wonderful thing.

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.