Seafood – Page 4 – The Saboscrivner

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.

Summer House on the Lake

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Palm Avenue Deli (Sarasota)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chain Reactions: JINYA Ramen Bar

JINYA Ramen Bar (https://www.jinyaramenbar.com/) was first founded in California by second-generation restauranteur Tomo Takahashi, after he had already opened a JINYA restaurant in Tokyo in 2000. There are multiple JINYA Ramen Bar locations around the United States, including two in the Orlando area — the first in Thornton Park near downtown Orlando, and the second just opened in Oviedo.

I had never been to the Thornton Park JINYA location, but always meant to try it after reading rave reviews and rhapsodic recommendations. When I heard one was opening closer to me, I was excited, and when co-owner Taff Liao invited me to a “friends and family” preview over Facebook, I was overjoyed.

I just got home from that lunch, where I ran into foodie-about-town and all-around good dude Ricky Ly, founder of the Tasty Chomps! food blog and the really terrific Orlando Foodie Forum Facebook group, arriving at the same time to dine with his family. It was a great experience, and I am here to tell you that JINYA Ramen Bar will be an asset to Oviedo and East Orlando. Don’t hesitate to check it out.

***Before continuing with my review, I must note that even though I fully expected to pay for my meal, I did not realize that the “friends and family” preview would be comped by the restaurant, like a dress rehearsal for the staff before its grand opening for the general public. I don’t get invited to stuff like that often, and I honestly would have felt more comfortable paying. Still, I was honored to be there, loved my meal, and left what I hope was a generous tip for the friendly staff. But in the spirit of full disclosure and candor for my constant readers, you stalwart Saboscrivnerinos, I was not charged for this wonderful lunch.***

The restaurant is on the ground floor of the Ellington apartment complex, one of the many new developments in Oviedo.

The dining room is a gorgeous, modern, dare I say sexy space with nice light fixtures, brick walls, that trendy and ubiquitous plant wall, and lots of natural light streaming in through floor-to-ceiling windows.

An open kitchen overlooks the dining room. There is an outdoor patio, but you will be inhaling exhaust from busy Mitchell Hammock Road if you sit out there, and it was already hot outside when I arrived just before noon, even in late October.

Being a solo diner, I sat at the bar, where two friendly female bartenders hustled, making gorgeous, artful cocktails while keeping my Sprite glass full. One of them patiently explained the menu in detail, and I did not have the heart to tell her I studied it in advance. The entire staff is warm and welcoming and well-trained during this soft opening, so expect excellence when you arrive in the days and weeks to come.

I started with an order of crispy rice with spicy tuna, from the Small Plates section of the menu. I have loved these at other Japanese restaurants, including the late, lamented Kabuto, which closed back in December. This order came with three small rectangular bricks of rice, coated in panko breadcrumbs and fried to light, crispy perfection. Each crispy rice brick was topped with a puree of mildly spicy tuna and tiny, cute jalapeno pepper slices.

I tried one plain, one dipped in the zingy seasoning sauce, and one dipped in the gyoza sauce (it ain’t just for gyoza anymore!), and no matter what I did, every bite was magnificent. I could see ordering these every time I return to JINYA Ramen Bar in the future, which will hopefully be often. In fact, if they ever decide to offer a larger order of ten or twelve, I would probably order that.

I could not go to JINYA Ramen Bar without ordering a bowl of ramen, even if it was unseasonably hot outside. JINYA makes its own ramen noodles from two different kinds of flour, then ages them in a special noodle-aging machine, which proves that we truly live in an age of technological marvels. I ordered JINYA’s version of my standard ramen order at any Japanese restaurant, tonkotsu ramen, which features a rich, creamy pork bone broth. Specifically, I got the JINYA Tonkotsu Black, with a slice of savory, fatty, tender pork chashu, green onion, two sheets of dried seaweed called nori, a seasoned soft-boiled egg with a perfect runny, creamy yolk, garlic chips, garlic oil, fried onion, and “spicy sauce.” It was served with thin noodles, but different bowls of ramen come with thicker noodles. I like ’em thicc, so I will try that next time.

It was masterful. All the ingredients harmonized so well. The broth was delicious enough to slurp even without anything else in it. It wasn’t spicy-hot, but it sure was temperature-hot, enough to make me sweat and blow my nose. The noodles had an ideal springy chew, and the nori sheets softened as soon as I dunked them into the steaming broth. It was one of the better versions of tonkotsu ramen I have enjoyed in Orlando, but different enough from mainstays like Oviedo’s underrated Ramen Takagi and Baldwin Park’s trendy Domu that you still must dare to compare.

I could have kept going, and in fact, I thought long and hard about topping off this luscious lunch with two salmon poke mini-tacos on crunchy rice “tortilla” wrappers. But when I found out I was being comped, I felt guilty taking advantage of the JINYA owners’ generosity and opted against ordering anything else. I will absolutely return — with my wife and with friends — as soon as I can. It is a straight shot east from our home, and if this was just a preview while the staff was training, I can’t imagine how much it will improve as everyone gets more experience, because it already felt like a well-oiled machine that had been operating for a while.

Thank you to Taff Liao for inviting me, and I’m sorry I did not get to meet you. I did get to chat briefly with Eric, another one of the owners, who was very friendly. Trust me, folks — you are in for a treat. Having not been to the Thornton Park JINYA Ramen Bar before, the new Oviedo location did not disappoint in any way. In fact, it is almost too cool for Oviedo and East Orlando, but here’s hoping everyone discovers it and enjoys it as much as I did.

Z Asian Vietnamese Kitchen

Z Asian Vietnamese Kitchen (https://eatzasian.com/) is one of the nicer, more upscale Vietnamese restaurants in Orlando’s Mills 50 district full of Vietnamese and other Asian restaurants, markets, and shops. That said, as someone who does not love high-end, fancy, luxurious dining, it is still very accessible and welcoming for all. It is also unique because it received prestigious Michelin Bib Gourmand awards in 2022 and 2023. To clarify, that does not mean it has a Michelin star, like some of the highest-end eateries, but rather it was recognized for its “good quality, good value cooking.” Chef and co-owner Huong Nguyen focuses on street foods from Saigon, but her menu offers several dishes that Orlando’s other Vietnamese restaurants do not serve.

I first went to Z Asian with a former co-worker in late July. She and I both left our workplace for new opportunities this year, so it was a chance to catch up and chat. She is vegetarian, and Z Asian has so many vegetarian and vegan options on its menu, I thought it would be a perfect choice for dinner.

We started out with an order of two vegan summer rolls (goi cuon chay), with tofu, vermicelli noodles, and shredded lettuce rolled up in transparent, sticky, chewy rice paper and served at room temperature with a side order of peanut sauce. My wife loves summer rolls with peanut sauce from other Vietnamese restaurants like Little Saigon and Pho 88, but they are usually not my favorites. I’m not a big tofu guy either, but I’ll try anything once, and this was an excellent summer roll! The tofu had the consistency of a firm omelet with a slightly crispy exterior, balancing against all the chewy ingredients.

I also chose an order of pan-fried rice flour (bot chien), something I always see on Vietnamese menus but had never tried before. It always looks good, and I thought my vegetarian friend would like it too. It came served on a blanket of lovely fried eggs, although there is a vegan option too, without the eggs. It was served with a side of crunchy, sweet pickled carrot and daikon radish, with a sweet chili soy dipping sauce. This was AWESOME. We both loved it. This was another dish with a crispy exterior and soft, yielding interior, kind of like fries or tater tots — not in taste, but in “mouth feel.” They were terrific with the sauce, and I liked the pickled vegetables (necessary ingredients on any banh mi sandwich) a lot.

My friend ordered stir-fried garlic noodles with tofu. I didn’t try this, but she seemed to like it a lot. In addition to the fried tofu (similar to the pieces in the summer rolls), it came with bok choy, carrot, and plenty of crunchy bean sprouts.

I ordered special rice noodle soup (hu tieu thap cam), with thinner rice noodles than you usually find in bowls of beefy pho. Instead of being a beef-based soup like pho, this soup included pork, shrimp, squid, fish cakes, and krab sticks, in addition to aromatic herbs. It was a nice, light soup and a pleasant change from the pho I’ve ordered so many times elsewhere. Somehow, I managed not to splash my clothes, which was a minor miracle.My research tells me hu tieu is a Chinese-Cambodian invention that was adapted to Vietnamese tastes in the city of Saigon, and that I could have also ordered a “dry” version with a small bowl of soup on the side to protect my work clothes in the future.

Before leaving, I ordered the pan-fried rice cakes (minus the eggs) to bring home for my wife to try. She was dazzled with them too, and they did not lose their subtle crispiness on the drive home.

And I also brought home a dish I had really wanted to try, after seeing so many people post photos of it. My vegetarian friend would not have been into this at all, but I knew my wife would share my appreciation of Z Asian’s grilled jumbo squid (muc nuong sate). You can get squid at lots of restaurants (Italian, Greek, Chinese, steakhouses, and so forth) in the form of breaded, fried calamari, but I had never seen such squid served in such a beautiful presentation as this. If your fellow diners aren’t averse to eating cephalopods (so that counts out my in-laws), this will be a real attention-grabber at your table, and I strongly recommend it.
The menu says the grilled jumbo squid is marinated in “house sauce,” and it is served with house-made jalapeno green sauce, but it did not need to be dipped in anything. Squid can sometimes get chewy and rubbery, but this was so tender and flavorful, with slight spicy and sweet flavors balancing out the taste of the ocean (but not a fishy taste).

It wasn’t long before I returned to Z Asian with my wife, who ordered a Thai milk tea (tra Thai) that was rich and cool and creamy and sweet, with a slightly smoky flavor.

For some reason, I could not decide what to order. Normally I am not intimidated by a large menu, but for this second visit, I just couldn’t choose. I eventually picked something pretty random, the seafood stir-fried noodles in garlic sauce, which came with tail-on shrimp, squid, fish cakes, and the usual bok choy, carrots, and bean sprouts. I chose egg noodles instead of rice noodles, but I had completely forgotten that this was essentially what my friend ordered on our first visit, minus the seafood. To be completely honest, this was okay. I feel like I did not make the best choice. I might have been happier with pho or bun bo hue, but I kept thinking about how hot it was for soup (on a scorching August afternoon in Florida), and how it would be hard to beat Pho Huong Lan, maker of the best pho and bun bo hue I’ve ever had anywhere. Plus, with Z Asian’s huge menu, I wanted to challenge myself and step out of my comfort zone, trying something new instead of something familiar I’ve had dozens, if not hundreds, of times over the years. But there wasn’t anything wrong with the dish; I blame myself for being uncharacteristically wishy-washy and not choosing wisely. I was kind of hoping the garlic sauce on the noodles would be more like the awe-inspiring buttery garlic noodles at Kai Asian Street Fare, but not knowing any better, I just set myself up for disappointment.

As always, my wife was smarter than I, choosing a favorite from other Vietnamese restaurant menus: slices of tender grilled beef, tail-on shrimp, and a crispy fried spring roll cut in half, served over rice vermicelli noodles, with shredded lettuce, julienned cucumber and carrot, diced scallions, and crushed peanuts. This was not a noodle soup, but a very refreshing, summery dish with warm and cool ingredients. Sometimes you can’t go wrong with a classic!

So that’s Z Asian Vietnamese Kitchen. I would absolutely return and try something different next time — maybe something with clams or snails, or maybe even sample the bun bo hue or the pho. But I really don’t think you can go wrong, and if you are a vegetarian or vegan, you have a lot more options here than most other restaurants in and around Orlando. And if you don’t want to take my word for it, a certain tire company also really recommends the place.

Sanaa

This is a review of a wonderful meal I ate back in May, with five wonderful former co-workers. (I started a new job six weeks ago, so I’m still getting used to referring to the job I held for 15 years as my old job, and my co-workers as former co-workers.) After attending the lovely graduation ceremony for our students every May, we had a nice unofficial tradition of going out to lunch somewhere afterwards, usually a fun place somewhere on Disney property, where we would never have the time to go on a normal workday.

Last year we had an awe-inspiring lunch at Jose Andres’ huge Jaleo restaurant at Disney Springs, and this year we went to Sanaa (https://disneyworld.disney.go.com/dining/animal-kingdom-villas-kidani/sanaa/) at Kidani Village, part of the beautiful Animal Kingdom Lodge resort hotel. You do not need to purchase admission to the Animal Kingdom theme park to eat here, or I probably would have skipped out on this one. Sanaa serves African food with Indian influences,

Like everything at Walt Disney World, the theming of the restaurant is beautiful. It is a popular place, and my Disney-experienced colleague booked a reservation for our party weeks in advance, which was a wise move. You can actually see zebras, giraffes, and other wild animals out those windows… just not in my photo. (Sorry.)

If you ask me, the highlight of dining at Sanaa is the Indian-style bread service. This is a dream for vegetarians and people who are at peace with consuming carbs. It costs $21, and you get five different breads and a whopping nine different accompaniments. The six of us shared everything and were very polite about it, but in the future, I would totally order this just for myself, possibly even as my main meal. If you come to Sanaa and don’t order the bread service, you are missing out on something spectacular.

The five breads are supposed to be traditional naan, garlic-ginger naan, spiced naan, onion kulcha, and paneer paratha. I only see four in the photo below, and I could not possibly begin to guess which one was which, but trust me when I tell you that they were all fluffy, soft, buttery heaven. If you haven’t had naan or roti or paratha or kulcha before, I encourage you to find the closest Indian restaurant on your way home from wherever you are and pick some up to go, even if you don’t order anything else! Imagine the softest, fluffiest pita bread, and you’re still not even close to how good these clay oven-baked flatbreads can be.

Of course I got a lousy photo of the beautiful dips, sauces, and chutneys, trying to capture them before my colleagues dove in, but they were a real treat for a fan of condiments, sauces, and dips like me. I wasn’t always sure what I was dipping into what or spooning onto what, but there wasn’t a bummer in the bunch. They included cucumber raita (cool and creamy yogurt in the top right), roasted red pepper hummus (top left), mango chutney (second from top right; similar to a chunky mango salsa), tomato-date jam (I loved this one, whichever it was), tamarind chutney, coriander chutney, garlic pickle, red chile sambal, and spicy jalapeño-lime pickle. This was such a crowd-pleaser, and it was definitely the highlight of the meal for me. Like I said, whenever I get around to returning, I’m gonna get this just for myself, and then suggest anyone else I am with share one.

One co-worker ordered samosas, which were plated beautifully. These were potato and pea samosas in what looked like perfect pastry shells, served over mango and tamarind chutney. I didn’t ask to try hers because that is all she ordered for herself, but have you ever had a bad samosa? I don’t think that is possible, kind of like the nonexistence of bad empanadas.

I ordered the potjie (referring to food slow-cooked in small cast-iron pots), which I was drawn to because the menu presents several options to choose from. You may choose one from the “journey” (meat-based dishes): Goan seafood curry, butter chicken, braised beef, or pork vindaloo, and then one from the “harvest” (plant-based dishes): rajma masala, chickpea wat, sukuma wiki, or lentil daal. Our server was very patient, answering our questions and making suggestions.

I can try butter chicken at any number of wonderful local Indian restaurants, since that is my wife’s favorite Indian dish, and even though I love a good vindaloo, I knew our group was headed to Epcot next, so I did not want to ruin a rare, fun afternoon out by sabotaging my stomach with something really spicy. I thought the most interesting and offbeat choice was the Goan seafood curry, so that’s what I got.

It came with shrimp, fish, and scallops in a rich curry that was mildly spicy, probably much more mild than the vindaloo. Luckily, it came with plenty of fragrant basmati rice, and I mixed them together liberally.

My plant-based choice was sukuma wiki, an East African dish of collard greens stewed with tomatoes and spices. I love good collards, and even though these were purely vegetarian (rather than being cooked with any smoked pork, smoked turkey, or ham), they were so full of flavor. No regrets here! Even though this dish is from Kenya and Tanzania, it made me realize it has been more than a decade since I’ve had Ethiopian food (another cuisine that handles collard greens very well). It is also really damn good, and I need to get some again soon.

My one male colleague at the lunch also ordered the potjie, but with completely different options.

He opted for the braised beef, which looked and smelled really fine:

And he also chose rajma masala, a curry dish of kidney beans cooked with onions, tomatoes, herbs, and spices. It looked and smelled great as well, but he was not joining us for Epcot, so the rest of us dodged a big bullet that afternoon.
At this point, I was already pleasantly full, but people in my party insisted on ordering three separate desserts to share. Let it never be said that librarians don’t know how to party!

This was serradura, which was butterscotch pudding, almond coffee streusel, fresh pineapple and mango, and Breton shortbread (which I didn’t try because it looked like a biscotti, God’s joke on people who like cookies). The little spoonful I had was very nice. It was cool, creamy, not too sweet or rich.

This was kheer, a plant-based dessert of coconut-rice pudding with cashew streusel and saffron-poached fruit. I tried a tiny taste because sometimes coconut and nuts betray me, but I liked it more than I expected to. I would never have even considered ordering this dessert, but it was delicious.

And this was a dessert special that was like a fancy version of a chocolate candy bar with nuts. I left that for the other five people to devour, because I was very content at this point.

As my friends and regular readers (the stalwart Saboscrivnerinos) know, I am not what you would consider a “Disney adult.” I have nothing against Disney, but my wife and I just aren’t theme park people. That said, I had a blast at Epcot after lunch with my former co-workers, awesome people I am proud to call friends, as well as professional colleagues. (Frolleagues?) I especially want to thank one frolleague who also left that same institution over the summer, one of the dozens of stalwart Saboscrivnerinos, a wonderful woman who used a guest pass to get me into Epcot. Next time I see you, I’m treating you to something — and you know who you are!

My wife and I end up at Disney Springs every so often, usually visiting people who are staying at or near the parks, since you don’t have to pay admission to go there. There are good restaurants at Disney Springs, but it was a blast to go somewhere new on the sprawling resort property, somewhere I had never been before, and to enjoy new dishes and flavors I had never even tried before. I would strongly recommend Sanaa to any adventurous tourists and locals alike.

While I have favorite Indian restaurants in Orlando (Bombay Street Kitchen chief among them), not a lot of places serve African-Indian fusion dishes, aside from occasional specials at the casual Oh My Gyro in Longwood. There is nothing quite like Sanaa, and especially nothing like that breathtaking bread service. You don’t have to pay park admission to eat here or even pay for parking, so consider adding it to your list of Disney dining destinations.