Vegetarian – The Saboscrivner

Guelaguetza (Los Angeles)

Guelaguetza (https://www.ilovemole.com/) is an Oaxacan Mexican restaurant in L.A.’s Koreatown, founded by chef-owner Bricia Lopez. I first became aware of her as one of the guests on celebrity chef David Chang’s Netflix series Dinner Time Live, where he cooks for famous friends on an actual live (recorded) show from a set somewhere in L.A. She was vivacious and telegenic, with a big, fun personality. It almost seemed like she was auditioning for a cooking show of her own without even trying, and she really should get one. I had never heard of her before, but I thought she had everything it takes to become a household name. I looked Bricia Lopez up online, found out her parents founded Guelaguetza in 1994, they serve ancient family recipes, and she has even authored two Oaxacan cookbooks. After reading the menu, I had been wanting to go there ever since.

I actually work and stay in Koreatown on my occasional work trips to L.A., but I mapped out the route, and it was too far to walk from either my work site or my hotel, and public transportation wouldn’t take me there easily. Plus, I knew if I went there solo, there were so many things I would want to try, and the main thing I wanted would just be too much for a single diner. I honestly don’t eat as much as I used to, I swear! But I’m writing this review the day I had lunch at Guelaguetza with two of my wonderful local work colleagues. I had been bugging them to go out to lunch with me, of course I had a list of suggestions, and this place was the most appealing to everyone. It was the first time for all of us, and needless to say, everyone was thrilled.

We all ordered sparkling aguas frescas: lemon (left) and passion fruit (right). I am deeply skeptical of any Mexican restaurants that don’t offer aguas frescas in at least a couple of different flavors. I admit I like them better when they aren’t sparkling, but they were still nice and refreshing. No free refills, though.

Freshly fried tortilla chips weren’t salted, but they were nice and crunchy and not too greasy. They were topped with crumbled queso fresco and a thick, rich dark red sauce I figured was a type of mole. It wasn’t spicy, but it was very savory and had a hint of chocolate. More on that later, I swear!

My colleague suggested we order the molcajete de guacamole Oaxaqueño. It wasn’t made tableside, but that’s really not necessary for me. It was thinner guacamole than I’m used to, but it was so fresh and bright-tasting, with fresh lime, topped with cilantro, serrano peppers, diced tomatoes, and crumbled queso fresco, and it came with another order of (plain) chips.My well-traveled colleague said an authentic molcajete (the mortar bowl that guacamole and salsa are often mixed and served in, usually made of volcanic basalt rock) would have been in the shape of a pig, but that was news to me. As a Florida Man, I’ve eaten plenty of Mexican food, but I’ve never seen a pig-shaped molcajete at any of our Mexican restaurants. Of course, I’ve never found a Oaxacan restaurant anywhere in Florida!

This massive platter was the tlayuda Guelaguetza. A tlayuda is a 15” crispy corn tortilla, handmade in Oaxaca from heirloom corn and grilled over fire. It was layered with bean and chicharrón spread (mmmm, pork rinds), shredded cabbage, quesillo (salty shredded Oaxacan cheese), queso fresco (crumbled fresh cheese), pork cecina, pork chorizo, and beef tasajo. The tlayuda itself was cut into slices like a pizza to make it easier to eat, and we just shared the meats.

This is the pork cecina, pork loin that is rubbed or marinated in chile paste, pounded very thin, and air-dried before being grilled. It was a bit dry, but it had so much flavor.

The chorizo sausage on the left may not be the most appetizing-looking, but it was one of my favorite things we tried at this sumptuous lunch. Each round link was dark red on the inside, firm and slightly crumbly, and they could be easily cut or pulled apart. It was much less greasy than any other Mexican chorizo I’ve ever had (I love chorizo, but it always drenches everything in orange grease, except this one), and the outer casing had a nice snappiness. The beef tasajo on the right was salt-cured, pounded thin, air-dried, and grilled. It tasted like really good carne asada, but was closer in consistency to high-quality beef jerky (just not as dry).

The thing I had been dying to try ever since discovering Chef Lopez and Guelaguetza was the Festival de Moles, a sampler of four different moles, the specialty of the house. But that would be way too much food for one man, especially staying in a hotel room. I was thrilled that my colleagues decided to join me, so we could share all this deliciousness. The moles came on a long wooden serving board in four separate bowls that were all a lot deeper than they first appeared to be. These first two were laden with pieces of boneless pork spare ribs. On the left you see mole rojo, a “rich, spiced red mole featuring chilhuacle rojo and ancho chiles, heirloom tomatoes, toasted almonds, peanuts, sesame seeds, and aromatic spices.” Despite the chiles, it was more savory than spicy.On the right you see mole estofado, a “mild almond-based mole balanced with raisins, olives, and pickled jalapeños, creating a uniquely sweet and savory profile.” I didn’t fully read these descriptions until after we ate, so I never would have guessed it was almond-based, but I can tell you I’ve never had anything quite like it. I thought the raisins and olives were interesting additions, especially because both of them end up in Cuban picadillo, a seasoned ground beef dish that otherwise has nothing in common with mole estofado, or any mole.

These other two moles came stuffed with shredded chicken breast. On the left, you see mole negro, Guelaguetza’s “signature smoky black mole crafted from chilhuacle negro, ancho chiles, toasted almonds, peanuts, sesame seeds, and traditional spices.” This was another banger. On the right, you see mole coloradito, the same mole served on our complimentary chips at the beginning of the meal. It is a “sweet and mildly spicy mole with guajillo chiles, toasted almonds, peanuts, sesame seeds, spices, and a subtle hint of chocolate.”

Damn, son. I’ve tried a few mole dishes in my lifetime, but only ever thought they were okay. I’ve even bought a jarred, pre-made version that was terrible. I don’t think I could even finish the jar, which hurts, because I hate wasting food, but I couldn’t do it. But these four moles were not just streets ahead, but worlds apart. They were so rich and complex, I have never tasted anything like them, and I doubt I ever will again. If you go to Guelaguetza, I strongly recommend ordering one of these moles, or ideally, drag friends and share this Festival de Moles.

Even the veggie rice that came with our Festival of Moles was delicious, although we couldn’t finish it.

My other colleague ordered something else I had my eye on: the memelita sampler with five memelitas, small corn tortillas each topped individually with chicharrón spread and queso fresco, with additional different toppings on each one. From left to right, they were topped with pork cecina, nopal (cactus) salad, beef tasajo, quesillo (fresh, shredded, salty Oaxacan cheese, with the consistency of mozzarella string cheese), and papa con chorizo (diced potatoes with crumbled sausage), kind of like corned beef hash, but so much more flavorful.
I ended up eating most of the nopal salad memelita, and it was wonderful. Again, I’ve had pickled nopal cactus from Florida taqueria salsa bars and even out of a can, but these were fresh, and there is nothing quite like them, especially combined with the flavor of fresh diced tomatoes on top. They reminded me a bit of fiddlehead ferns, but maybe just texture-wise.

My female colleague’s birthday was the next day, so of course I had to mention it to our server. He brought her a complimentary piece of flan with a candle and three spoons, and we serenaded her with “Feliz cumpleaños a ti” (or “Happy birthday to you” in Spanish). I’m not a flan guy — never have been, even after growing up in Miami — but even I could appreciate this rich, decadent flan.

So anyway, that’s how you should do Guelaguetza. The three of us ordered a lot of food and still ended up with a bunch of leftovers, most of which I schlepped back to my hotel room, since at least I have a fridge and a microwave here. It wouldn’t have been the same going alone, especially because I would not have been able to try so many of Chef Bricia Lopez’s mind-blowing Oaxacan dishes. And the way the three of us ordered, I think we really maximized being able to taste as many different things on the menu as possible. Props to them for having such good taste and being willing to share. Plus, these two are always great company, and I’m grateful to be able to work with them and see them two or three times a year.

Several publications have named Guelaguetza one of the best restaurants in Koreatown, one of the best Mexican restaurants in all of L.A., and one of the best Oaxacan restaurants in the world, if not the best. It deserves all of those fabulous superlatives and more, and it’s a huge, festive, fun place — perfect for a celebratory dinner or just a weekday lunch with co-workers you actually like. Angelenos have no shortage of Mexican restaurants to choose from, but in my three years of traveling out to L.A., I am sure I’ve tried two of the best in the city: Holbox and now Guelaguetza.

Tuun (at Sea Thai)

Tuun (https://www.instagram.com/tuunorlando/) is essentially a restaurant operating within a restaurant, at Sea Thai (https://seathaiorlando.com/), located at 3812 East Colonial Drive, Orlando, FL 32803. Sea Thai has been in that location near the Fashion Square Mall and Orlando’s Milk District neighborhood since 2007), so it was still new in the early days of my old job, when I had lunch there a few times. I don’t know why I never worked it into my regular rotation, because it was always solid.

But I had been dying to get back over there to try the special menu offered at Tuun, coming out of the same kitchen as all of Sea Thai’s regular dishes. It’s the brainchild of Chef Jack Jone Tawa Chavitranurak, the brother of the owner of Sea Thai. He started Tuun in 2020, so it took far too many years to finally try it, but better later than never.

We got together with a super-cool couple for dinner (literally the coolest people we know), and it was the first time we’ve ever had a chance to sit and eat and chat, all four of us. You see, I would run into them on the rare times I go anywhere cool or do anything fun in Orlando, first meeting them at a Kyle Kinane show at The Abbey in Thornton Park, then at Neko Case at the Beacham in downtown Orlando, then at J.G. Thirlwell at the Timucua White House, and I saw him flying solo at a Surfragettes show at Will’s Pub and a couple of comic conventions. We’ve also had lunch at Black Bean Deli and Isan Zaap Thai Cafe before. I’d always come home raving about how cool they are, and my wife finally met this mythical couple when we all saw Fred Armisen perform at The Abbey last year. We’ve been wanting to hang out with them in a place we could talk and hear each other ever since, and we finally made it happen at Sea Thai!

Our friends ordered these spring rolls off the regular Sea Thai menu to start with. They are filled with glass noodles and mixed vegetables, fried in their tightly rolled wrappers until crispy, and served with plum sauce for dipping.

And here is a shot of the Tuun menu, since it isn’t on the Sea Thai website, and there isn’t a Tuun website:

This is the watermelon salad, two round watermelon slices topped with lemongrass, kaffir lime leaves, fried shallots, and chili watermelon dressing. Both couples ordered a watermelon salad to share, and I think everyone liked it a lot. My wife enjoyed it even more than I.

This was the roti, a crispy, crackly fried savory pastry topped with boneless beef short rib curry, chili oil, kaffir lime, and fried shallots. It felt so much more delicate than the flaky, buttery roti canai that everyone always orders at Hawkers Asian Street Fare. I’m not convinced the roti at Hawkers isn’t a frozen version, since I’ve bought very similar ones at Asian and Indian markets around Orlando. But there is nothing like this roti anywhere, I promise you that!My wife has really been expanding her palate since some surviving some medical issues earlier this summer, and she loves trying new foods more than ever before, which is a joy to watch. She was undaunted by the short rib curry, something she never would have messed with before, but it wasn’t spicy, just flavorful.

The roti was served with cool, crisp cucumbers and some thin-sliced red onions pickled in sweet vinegar. As a fan of so many things pickled and vinegary, I just loved this. It worked well for cutting the salty, fatty, spicy qualities of the other dishes.

My wife is always an octopus lover, and she chose this beautiful, lightly grilled octopus tentacle, served with mango salad, fried shallots, cashews, and garlic lime dressing.

I ordered the Tuun noodles, assuming we would split them, but she didn’t really want any. They were very similar to drunken noodles, also known as pad kee mao or pad kee mow, one of my all-time favorite Thai dishes, and these were served with spicy braised beef, bell pepper, basil, and a big fried egg in the middle. They come with mushrooms too, but I asked our server to hold the mushrooms. I’m sorry I didn’t take another photo to include a view of the flat, wide noodles, but you can kinda-sorta make them out around 6:00. Funny thing, my wife and our friends thought I ordered “tuna noodles” and were surprised when I mentioned beef. I remember eating tuna noodle casserole as a kid, but these Tuun noodles are a world apart from that. Drunken noodle lovers (by which I mean lovers of drunken noodles), don’t sleep on these.

And now, seared duck confit, a dish my wife and I both loved. She’s a superfan of it now, served with more of those fried shallots and tangy-sweet tamarind sauce. I now realize it was supposed to come with fried eggs, but they left them out. We didn’t even notice at the time, but the duck legs were so rich and decadent, cooked to perfection, that we were distracted.

A few weeks later, we had to return to Sea Thai ourselves to go through that Tuun menu again and revisit some of those killer dishes. My wife started with a creamy, smoky Thai iced tea, and this time I remembered to get a picture of it.

This was very much a “greatest hits” meal, because we couldn’t stop thinking about it. I think my photo of the watermelon salad came out better this time. But she loved it so much, I let her have it all.

I think my roti photi (sorry, photo) came out better this time as well.

And the sweet, pickled cucumbers were even more delicious and refreshing this time.

She got the duck confit again, and this time they included the egg, which were jammy in the center and lightly fried.

Me being me, I had to switch it up this time, so I tried Tuun’s stir-fried soft shell crab, with tom yum powder, kaffir lime, fried garlic, and fried shallots. I always like crispy soft shell crab, especially at Thai restaurants, and I was not disappointed. The sauce had a bit of tangy sweetness, maybe also from tamarind (I think the menu was the same on this second visit, but it didn’t mention it), and I swear I tasted ginger as well.

Here’s another angle on the soft shell crab dish:

We will definitely keep returning to Sea Thai for those Tuun specialties, and next time, I might actually order some things off the regular menu. I noticed they have khao soi noodles, which I fell in love with at Thailicious in Longwood last year. But I tell ya, if you go to Sea Thai on a Friday, Saturday, Sunday, or Monday evening, you are doing yourself a disservice if you don’t sample some of the dishes off the special Tuun menu. We are huge fans now, and I can’t imagine anyone could sample these gorgeous plates and not be blown away by their presentation and perfection.

Summer Breeze Roti Shop

Summer Breeze Roti Shop (https://summerbreezerotishop.com/) is a brand-new Trinidadian restaurant that opened in April 2026 in Longwood, at 215 W. State Road 434, Unit 203 (right next door to the second location of Dough Boyz Pizza). I have been there twice now because I love Trinidadian and other West Indian food, and it is much closer to me than other Trinidadian restaurants in and around Orlando.

The menu is on the website, but I snapped this photo of a menu at the front counter to show you prices and selections for June 2026, in case it changes.

This is a doubles, a popular Trinidadian street food that consists of curried chickpeas called channa served on two flatbreads called bara, which are soft, chewy, and fluffy, but a little greasy on the outside from being fried — kind of like the old Chalupas from Taco Bell, but softer. Depending on how it’s folded, a doubles could be structured similarly to a sandwich or a taco, but I find them far messier to eat than either of them. It is absolutely delicious, though. Vegetarians would love it, but I think most people would love it.

Here’s a look inside the open doubles. Kaye Mohammed, the owner-operator of Summer Breeze Roti Shop, adorns them with cucumbers sliced paper-thin and house-made sweet sauce and tangy pepper sauce, kind of like chutneys.

On my first visit, they didn’t have my first choice of meat. I wasn’t planning to order stew beef, but it looked really good, so I went for it. The beef was flavorful and tender, and it was easy to remove the bone fragments. It came with a heaping portion of channa, the curried chickpeas. All the meats at Summer Breeze Roti Shop are halal, by the way!

When you order a meat dish, you get a choice of roti skin to go with it. Roti skins are huge, soft, fluffy flatbreads, and you tear off pieces of them to pinch and scoop up the meat and sop up the savory sauces, like Indian naan or Ethiopian injera. Summer Breeze offers two varieties, which I have always enjoyed in the past, so I had to try them both. One came with the meat, and I paid $5 for the other, a la carte. On the top is the paratha, sometimes called a “buss-up shut” (Trinidadian dialect for a “busted-up shirt,” like ripped to rags). It is served steaming hot and wrapped in a paper bag, but when I unfolded it back at home, it was wider than this entire green plate. The buss-up shot is thicker than a flour tortilla or the Malaysian-style roti they serve at restaurants like Hawkers, but not quite as thick as Indian naan. It is about as chewy as naan.
The roti skin at the bottom is folded too, so it is much larger than it looks. This is the dhalpourie (sometimes called dhal puri), another Indian-inspired Caribbean flatbread, and it has a golden hue from turmeric and is stuffed with ground yellow split peas for an interesting texture and flavor. Just be careful ripping it apart, or the split pea fragments will go flying everywhere and make a mess.

I called Summer Breeze Roti Shop before heading over for a second visit, around 11 AM this past Saturday, to ensure they had oxtail, one of my favorite meats. I was excited to try Kaye’s version, and it did not disappoint. It was so savory, unctuous, and tender, and the rich, flavorful meat separated so easily from the bone fragments. I usually love oxtail with rice and peas at Jamaican restaurants, topped with plenty of extra oxtail gravy. But Summer Breeze only had plain white rice, so I opted for another buss-up shot roti skin instead.

On this second visit, I also tried an aloo pie, a soft and savory potato fritter. You usually get these cut open and can add whatever you want inside — meat, vegetables, channa, you name it.

Ashley, a really nice young lady working for Kaye, added the traditional doubles ingredients to my aloo pie: more channa, the thin-sliced cucumbers, and Kaye’s pepper sauce and sweet sauce. It was so good, I think I liked it even more than the doubles on my first visit, and I really enjoyed the doubles!

I was all ready to check out, but then I noticed they also had bake and saltfish buljol, so of course I had to order one of those too! This is a common breakfast food in Trinidad and Tobago, with shredded salted cod (some know it as bacalao) mixed with vegetables and served inside a “bake,” a different kind of soft, deep-fried dough. It was kind of like a deep-fried pita bread!

Here’s a shot of the lovely saltfish buljol inside, with plenty of crunchy, colorful hot peppers, onions, and tomatoes. There is some lime juice in there too, which really brightens it up. It was so delicious, and it is a nice option at any time of day, especially if you don’t want heavy, saucy meats. I am always a fan of smoked, cured, and pickled fish in any forms. Growing up eating nova salmon and pickled herring with bagels, I am always delighted to discover other cultures’ culinary traditions of curing fish and serving them in different ways. In Trinidad and Tobago, “bake and shark” is another common street food, and yes, they use actual shark meat. But I was perfectly happy with the bake and saltfish.

There are a few tables inside Summer Breeze Roti Shop for dining in, and a family was enjoying the heck out of their food when I arrived on my second visit this past Saturday. Kaye Mohammed runs a tight ship, but I’ve only seen her with one additional worker each time I’ve come in, so they may not have every dish listed on the menu. You may want to call before showing up if you’re looking for something specific (I haven’t caught their macaroni pie or potato salad yet), but you can’t go wrong with anything there.

I may not be “Trini 2 De Bone,” but I am a huge fan of Summer Breeze Roti Shop, and I know I’ll be back. Please give them a chance, even if you’re not previously familiar with Trinidadian food. Especially if you’re not familiar with it! If you know and love Jamaican food, you’ll feel very much at home with it, and if you like Indian food, it will be interesting to try some Caribbean variations. There is a lot for vegetarians to be able to enjoy, and practicing Muslims will also appreciate that all the meats are halal. Enjoy, and tell me what you like there and what I should try next time!

Gateway to India

Gateway to India (https://gatewaytoindiarestaurant.biz/) is a great, underrated Indian restaurant located at 790 E State Rd 434, Longwood, FL 32750. It is located a short walk away from the Spice House of Longwood Indian grocery store (820 E State Rd 434 #150), and very close to one of my favorite businesses in the Orlando area, Acme Superstore (905 E State Rd 434). I try to check in at Acme at least once a month, and I really should make it to Gateway to India more often than I do. But whenever I do, it never disappoints.

On my most recent visit for takeout (which was still too long ago), I tried their lamb biryani for the first time. Even though I like everything spicy, I ordered this basmati rice dish mild because I planned to share it with my wife. My fascinating research showed me that biryani may have reached the Indian subcontinent as an offshoot of Persian pilau, which other cultures refer to as the more familiar rice pilaf, and that also gave us the Central Asian plov, which I enjoyed at Caravan Uzbek & Turkish Cuisine and Chayhana (review coming soon, I swear!). The tender shreds of lamb blended with cashews, cilantro, and raisins, and there was a hard-boiled egg in there too.

There are two Indian dishes my wife returns to time and time again. One is butter chicken (sometimes called makhani), served in a creamy, tomatoey sauce. The velvety-smooth, rich consistency usually means there is butter in there, but I should clarify and refer to it as ghee. See what I did there?

The other go-to Indian dish my wife loves is palak paneer, which is spinach (the palak) served in a creamy, mildly spiced curry sauce with chunks of a soft cheese (the paneer). You can’t go wrong with it, and even if you’re not a vegetarian, it is always a delicious, crowd-pleasing choice.

Even though I didn’t get photos of the butter chicken and palak paneer containers, this is the plate I fixed for my wife, with the palak paneer over basmati rice at 12:00, the butter chicken taking up the largest compartment, and some of that luscious lamb biryani at 9:00.
The plastic plate with compartments is from some ancient takeout order (maybe from the defunct Stonewood restaurant), not from Gateway to India. But I kept two of these because they were so nice, microwave-safe AND dishwasher-safe, and they have clear lids that snap on. But most of all, she doesn’t like different kinds of food touching.

This was my lamb vindaloo ($19.95), served spicy hot. It has chunks of lamb and potato in a spicy curry flavored with vinegar, garlic, and chiles. Vindaloo has Portuguese origins, which those colonizers bought to Goa, a small, coastal state in western India. I go back and forth between different lamb dishes, but vindaloo is one of my favorites, along with rogan josh. I love vinegar as a flavor, so the vindaloo won out this time.

And here it is in the big compartment with butter chicken and palak paneer for me:

I’ve written before about my great love of Indian breads at Sanaa (which I recommend to my fellow Indian bread aficionados), but I am always a fan of naan, roti, paratha, kulcha, and more. I would like to create something where people sign up to get a different Indian bread every week, and we could called it Kulcha Klub. Maybe they could be served by a quartet of women in blonde wigs, the Four Naan Blondes.

I got an order of butter naan, because that’s kind of the fluffy, puffy standard:

As well as a butter paratha, to compare and contrast — not just the two breads from Gateway to India, but also to see how their paratha stands up to other versions I’ve had, like the crispy Malaysian style that I used to buy frozen. Paratha from Indian restaurants are never as flaky like those frozen versions (I call them the love child of a flour tortilla and a croissant), but they are still awesome, especially when you have rich, spicy curries to scoop up.

This was our container of raita, a cooling yogurt with cucumbers that was so good to cool down my tongue after the fiery vindaloo.

And even though this looks similar, this was a rice pudding dessert that my wife wanted to try. I don’t remember what it tasted like, but it’s possible I didn’t try any.

I really love Indian food, even though I don’t pretend to be any kind of expert. I don’t think I’ve ever been disappointed by a dish, meat or vegetarian alike, but I like to balance trying new things with going back to my old favorites. That means trying them at different restaurants too, to compare how each place makes those familiar favorites. Gateway to India is one of the closer Indian restaurants to our home, so I need to make it back there more often. If you’re in Seminole County, especially Longwood, Casselberry, and Winter Springs, it is so close to where all three areas converge at the intersection of 434 and 17-92. Even if you’re further out, it is definitely worth the drive. I might see you over there some time soon, probably after a bit of back issue bin diving at Acme. That always makes me work up an appetite!

The Hummus Guy

The Hummus Guy (https://thehummusguyft.com/) is a Middle Eastern food truck that sets up at 711 North Orlando Avenue (also known as 17-92), Maitland, Florida 32751, outside of a bank building. The truck’s usual hours are noon to 7 PM, every day except Monday and Saturday, but always check their Facebook page for updates, just in case. A friend of mine has been singing its praises for a while, but I finally tried it in January, and I’ve been back many times since that first discovery — almost weekly!
The Hummus Guy isn’t just a generic description, but the owner-operator’s name is Guy and he makes he best hummus ever… as well as the best of so many other things. Buckle yourselves in for this one, constant readers! You’re about to discover one of my new favorite places to eat in the entire Orlando area.

I had taken large, clear photos of the menu to share, but Guy recently posted a new, updated menu online, so I’m using his own posted images instead. These are all the pita sandwich and plate (bowl) options:

Here are all the “extras” — a la carte orders that aren’t sandwiches or bowls.

The first time I visited the truck was a pretty cold January evening. While I waited for my food, Guy was kind enough to give me a free sample of four freshly rolled, freshly fried falafel balls with a pool of the smoothest, creamiest tahini (sesame paste) ever. These were so delicious, with the perfect crispy crunch, soft and yielding centers, and not greasy at all. Best falafel ever? Certainly the best falafel I’ve ever had anywhere, and my falafel-loving wife would soon agree.

This is the crown jewel, the chicken shawarma pita sandwich. I’ve been on a shawarma kick lately, discovering a great grilled beef shawarma at The Cairo Express Egyptian food truck in Winter Park last summer, as well as a few lesser shawarmas. But this is the absolute best chicken shawarma I’ve ever had in my life. Best chicken shawarma in the world? I can’t answer that, but I would certainly support it in a shawarma-off. So delicious, so flavorful, so tender. It’s addictive. We have since ordered it so many times, and it is never dry. So many shawarmas are disappointingly dry!The pita sandwich is garnished with chopped salad, creamy hummus, and tahini. By the way, Guy’s pita bread is all baked from scratch, and it is smaller diameter than most store-bought pitas, but a lot thicker and fluffier. It makes for a wonderful sandwich, and those sandwiches are stuffed so full of ingredients spilling out the top, they are best enjoyed on the premises. (Don’t worry, there are a few tiny portable tables with chairs.)

This is one of the many chicken shawarma plates I’ve brought home over the past two months. This one is served on a bed of addictive, savory mujjadara, buttery rice sauteed with lentils and a healthy amount of caramelized onions. As a caramelized onion lover, I love this mujjadara, and I appreciate that Guy goes HARD on the onions. Even my wife, who usually hates onions in anything, likes this stuff.

On a later visit, I brought home an order of the best chicken shawarma ever, which came with a simple side of tahini. This was a HUGE portion, and while I probably could have devoured it in one sitting, my wife and I spaced it out and made it last a few days, since I am consciously trying to eat less, eat healthier, and lose weight (believe it or not).

Here is a falafel plate I brought home for my wife on one of my many recent visits, on another bed of that insanely good mujjadara. That’s hummus on the side, topped with some of Guy’s spicy sechug sauce, made with fresh herbs (I’m guessing cilantro and parsley) and jalapenos. I’ve bought the Trader Joe’s version before (they spell it “zhoug” and describe it as a spicy condiment from Yemen), but Guy’s version is lighter, thinner, and less oily than Trader Joe’s and reminds me of a spicy tomatillo salsa.

More recently, my wife requested a simple order of falafel, not as part of a plate. We got a lot of balls!

(Seriously, these orders usually include 12 or 13.)

Something my wife and I discovered over a recent breakfast at the new Turkish restaurant Cafe De Wan in Casselberry is that you can add a thick, syrupy, sweet grape molasses called pekmez to tahini, and it becomes like the Turkish version of peanut butter and jelly. I bought a big jar of pekmez at Global Bazaar, a Turkish grocery store, and sometimes she will dab a little into the side cups of The Hummus Guy’s tahini for a uniquely sweet treat.

This is Guy’s chicken schnitzel, thin chicken tenders that are breaded and fried to perfection, also over mujjadara. They are great too, don’t get me wrong, but if I come here for chicken, I’m going to stick to the chicken shawarma and leave the chicken tenders to my beloved Chicken Fire. But the chicken schnitzel had a lot of flavor and has never been greasy, dry, or burnt. With so many restaurants serving and even specializing in chicken tenders, a lot of them half-ass it, but not Guy! This is a man who takes so much pride in his product, you can tell. It is refreshing, and the side of hummus topped with more spicy sechug sauce is even more refreshing.

This is the sabich pita sandwich, which would have looked a lot prettier if I ate it on premises instead of having Guy wrap it up to go. It is a sandwich of baked eggplant, a brown boiled egg, chopped salad, fresh herbs, amba sauce (made of mangoes and pickles), and tahini. It tasted better than this photo looks, I swear. Next time I’ll get one and eat it while I wait for the rest of my to-go order.

Likewise, the kebab pita sandwich from my third visit, with two grilled beef patties mixed with herbs and spices, would have looked a lot nicer if I ate it while hanging out at one of the tiny tables set up outside the truck. There were tomatoes and scallions in this sandwich, along with the hummus and tahini. I asked for some of the amba sauce in this one too, once I found out what it actually was. I love the intense sweetness and tartness of mango, and I always think something acidic is the missing ingredient in most dishes that brings them from good to great.

This is one of the many 16-ounce containers of hummus I’ve brought home, because it is such a rich, creamy, tasty hummus. None of the premade commercial brands at the supermarket can compare. It comes topped with parsley, a little olive oil, and that spicy sechug sauce. My wife has been eating a lot of roasted or baked sweet potatoes at home, especially the incredible Japanese murasaki sweet potatoes they sell at Trader Joe’s. I never add any oil during the roasting process, but she likes to apply hummus and/or tahini when she eats them! She is definitely in her sweet potato and hummus era, thanks to The Hummus Guy.

This is Guy’s babaganush, roasted eggplant with tahini and garlic. It can be used as a spread or a dip, and it is one of my wife’s favorite things in the world to eat, so we try it everywhere. This babaganush is somewhat more tahini-forward than others we’ve tried, where you taste more of a smoky flavor from the roasted eggplant.

To fully compare and contrast, I also ordered the eggplant mayo salad, which is roasted eggplant with mayonnaise instead of tahini, as well as the requisite garlic. I’m not quite as into tahini as my wife, but I am a sucker for mayo-based deli salads (macaroni, potato, egg, tuna, chicken, cole slaw), and I honestly liked this one better than the babaganush.

The Hummus Guy has become a new Friday evening tradition for us, since he is not there on Saturdays. He closes at 7 PM, so I try to make it over there in the last hour he’s open. We’ve been going through a 16-ounce container of his hummus each week, in addition to whatever else I bring home. Guy is a stand-up guy, so friendly and welcoming, and his food is second to none in the Orlando area. He’s always busy, so people are definitely discovering his amazing food and spreading the word, and now it’s my turn to do so. Guy’s wife Abbie, who was so patient with me when I first texted to find out their location and hours, is a lovely person too. Try their food soon — the shawarma, the mujjadara, the falafel, the hummus, the tahini, the fresh-baked pita bread — and I promise you won’t regret it!

Sideward Brewing

Sideward Brewing (https://sidewardbrewing.com/) is a brewery-restaurant on the corner of Bumby Avenue and Robinson Street in Orlando’s Milk District. It shares a building with Stasio’s Italian Deli and Market, one of my favorite places to eat in the entire city, and the two casual eateries share an insanely tight and crowded parking lot as well.

My dozens of readers may remember that my wife and I don’t drink, but I’ve been wanting to try the food at Sideward Brewing for years. Everything is scratch-made in house, and I have cool, trusted friends who are regulars who rave about it. They also brew and can their own house-made root beer, and that was the final nudge we needed to make it over there on a recent Sunday in the late afternoon, before it closed at 6 PM. Sunday is the optimal day to go there, since Stasio’s is closed, and the parking lot won’t be as hectic and dangerous as it usually is. Seriously, I’d rather brave the Trader Joe’s/Shake Shack parking lot in Winter Park than the Stasio’s/Sideward parking lot on a Saturday.

Sideward has indoor and outdoor tables, and they all have wooden chairs. The outdoor area is covered, and the tables are four-tops, nicely spaced out. The indoor tables are long, with eight seats at each. We sat indoors, the only two people at our long table. It is a family-friendly place, and plenty of people brought little kids and dogs that were all quiet and well-behaved. You order your food and beer at the counter, and they have a cooler full of canned beers to go. They even have a house merlot, for anyone who prefers wine to beer.

We each started with a house-made Riff & Milo root beer, which is named after two dogs who I’m sure are the best boys. The cans are $5 each, but they are 16 ounces, the equivalent of a pint. I didn’t think twice about paying that price for getting to try a pint of a whole new root beer, to say nothing of supporting a local establishment. The ingredients included cane sugar, brown sugar, honey, vanilla, and natural and artificial flavors. We both thought there was a strong wintergreen taste to this root beer, so I wouldn’t be surprised if wintergreen extract is one of those flavors.

I’m sure their beers are tasty and the highest quality as well.

My wife loves boiled peanuts (which I call “bald peanuts” to fit in in the South), and I can’t think of any other restaurants in Orlando that serve them. She got a nice-sized serving of steaming hot “traditional” bald peanuts, but you can also request them with Korean BBQ, buffalo, sweet heat, Nashville spice, or spicy jalapeno seasoning. She hates anything spicy, so traditional was the safest way to go.

I appreciated that they included two cups — one for the bald peanuts and one for discarded shells.

We both love a good soft pretzel, so we shared an order of two soft pretzels, which were fluffy with lightly crispy, crackly exteriors and a light dusting of crunchy salt crystals, and so, so buttery. They were like the Auntie Anne’s pretzels I love, that I only treat myself to when I’m at an airport and my flight is delayed, but better. In fact, I would argue that this is the best pretzel in the Orlando area. Yes, even better than the big one at Hollerbach’s German Restaurant in Sanford. I said what I said! Take my word for it: there are definitely two in there. The second one is underneath the top one.

The pretzels were served with a grainy sweet mustard called Punks mustard (I’m assuming it was made with Sideward’s Punks in the Waiting Room lager), warm and gooey beer cheese (excellent), and wonderful pimento cheese topped with some thin-sliced pickled peppers. I loved both cheese dips, but these pretzels are so good that they don’t even need any accoutrements.

A muffuletta is one of my favorite sandwiches, and I was excited to try Sideward’s version. A muffuletta is a classic New Orleans Italian sandwich that originated at the Central Grocery on Decatur Street in the French Quarter. I’ve been lucky enough to have the real deal there a few times, but I haven’t been back to New Orleans since 2001. Sideward’s muff isn’t served on the same huge, round loaf of French bread topped with sesame seeds, but the salami, mortadella, capicola, provolone cheese, and olive tapenade came on fluffy focaccia bread. While some places serve a hot muff, I prefer mine chilled, as Central Grocery does theirs. Luckily, Sideward’s muff is tangy, salty, and cool. By the way, the olive salad is usually a combination of olives (green, black, sometimes kalamata), pickled giardiniera vegetables, onions, carrots, celery, and hot peppers chopped up and mixed with herbs and olive oil. You can buy the Central Grocery’s own olive salad expensively, but it is easy to make your own, especially if you start out with a jar of giardiniera. I love it on multiple kinds of sandwiches.

My wife ordered a caprese sandwich that she was kind enough to share with me. It was delicious! As good as the muff, if not better. It included house-made pesto, fresh mozzarella, roasted grape tomatoes, roasted red peppers, and balsamic-dressed arugula on a ciabatta roll that looked and tasted very fresh, with a crackly exterior crust. Usually I’m disappointed in ciabatta compared to focaccia, a nice crusty semolina roll, or even a soft hoagie roll. Many of them are difficult to tear with your teeth due to a hard and chewy outer crust, but this might have been the nicest ciabatta I’ve ever had. My wife absolutely does not share my sandwich obsession, but she appreciates a good caprese salad or sandwich (especially when I pick out the tomatoes for her, as I did here). She was really gung-ho about this one, and I was so glad she was in a sharing mood. It was perfect in every way!

I got cool, creamy, refreshing Gram’s potato-egg salad as a side, and it did not disappoint. I am convinced that hard-boiled eggs make any potato salad better.

Sideward serves a beautiful-looking breakfast burrito on Sundays from the time it opens at 11 AM, but we were too late for that. It didn’t matter, since we had plenty to choose from and enjoyed everything.

I’ve been wanting to return to Sideward Brewing for another meal, but haven’t had a chance, and I really wanted to get this review out there. I keep thinking about those pretzels and how comforting they would be in this unseasonably chilly weather, especially with all those accoutrements. I highly recommend them, along with the root beer and both sandwiches we tried. Yes, even sharing a wall and a (stressful) parking lot with Stasio’s, home of my favorite sandwich in all of Orlando (the namesake Stasio Italian sub), I would still consider Sideward’s muffuletta and caprese to be destination-worthy sandwiches. And if you like beer, I always hear it is one of the best breweries in Orlando. Check it out! And if you’ve already checked it out, what is your regular food order, and what beers do you recommend?

Cafe De Wan

Cafe De Wan (https://www.instagram.com/cafedewan_/) is a brand-new Turkish restaurant that just opened a few weeks ago in Casselberry. My wife and I love Turkish food, and we are still sad about Beyti Mediterranean Grill closing during the pandemic, only a year or so after it opened in our neighborhood. We really like Sourdough Bread House, another Turkish cafe in Casselberry, but Cafe De Wan is even closer, with more savory dishes on its menu. But like Sourdough Bread House, just five minutes north on Semoran Boulevard, Cafe De Wan serves an awe-inspiring Turkish breakfast feast.

We started with a spinach and onion borek (left), a flaky pastry filled with seasoned, sauteed (what else?) spinach and onions. On the right is a “Turkish pastry” that was very dense and barely sweet. These arrived at our table sliced up. They were sold separately (not part of the Turkish breakfast), but we were happy to have them, due to so many spreads and dips that were about to arrive.

The Turkish breakfast “plate” (which actually includes many plates) comes with a pot of steaming hot black tea. I am not a big tea drinker, but this was delicious, especially after adding a few sugar cubes and waiting for it to cool. I surprised myself by how much I enjoyed this tea.

Well, here we go! We first received a wooden platter with walnuts, almonds, golden raisins, grapes, orange slices, very nice green and black olives (both kinds had pits), English cucumbers, grape tomatoes, and mixed greens topped with three different kinds of cheese. The top dishes were fig jam, creamy tahini with pekmez, or grape molasses, swirled into it (not date syrup, as I originally thought), and what I thought was ajvar, a thick dip of roasted red peppers blended with garlic and olive oil, topped with a walnut. (Ajvar wasn’t listed elsewhere on the menu, but I’ve had it in jars a few times, and this was more like ajvar than any version of ezme, a spicy Turkish salsa, that I’ve ever tried.) I devoured the fig jam and ajvar, and my wife was crazy for the tahini with pekmez. A reader informed me that the combination is like Turkish peanut butter and jelly, which makes all the sense in the world. Thank you, Ipek! At the bottom, there was Nutella, that chocolatey hazelnut spread that is beloved around the world, and thick honey with decadent clotted cream in it.

The Turkish breakfast plate came with two pieces of this fantastic Turkish bread, which we both liked more than the Turkish pastry above. It was so fluffy!

This plate was menemen, a dish of scrambled eggs mixed with sauteed peppers and tomatoes and topped with a bit of cheese. I devoured the menemen since my wife didn’t want anything to do with it, so that worked out.

The Turkish breakfast plate came with yet another plate with a plain egg, fried over easy with a runny yolk. She ate that egg, and I did not get a picture of it, but I’m sure you are envisioning it in your head right now. This was so much food for $25, but we weren’t even done!

Just like I have go-to dishes that I will order anywhere (Italian subs, onion rings, chili, macaroni salad), my wife is like that with baba ghanoush, the Middle Eastern dip of roasted eggplant blended with tahini, olive oil, and garlic. We were disappointed by another new restaurant’s baba ghanoush recently, one that tasted like straight-up tahini, lacking that smoky flavor that comes from roasting the eggplants, so we were hoping for the best with Cafe De Wan’s version. It was stupendous, and the smoky flavor came through first and foremost. That’s another cured black olive on top.

The baba ghanoush came with yet another type of bread for dipping, this time pretty standard (store-bought?) soft pita bread wedges. I left most of the baba ghanoush for my wife, the true aficionado, but I used the pita for dipping in everything else on the table.

This was the lahmacun combo, one of my favorite dishes at any Turkish restaurant, which I order everywhere and have even made from scratch at home. It looks like a pizza without cheese, but it is a flatbread topped with seasoned ground lamb, onions, tomatoes, peppers, herbs, and spices, baked until crispy. Instead of cutting it into slices, you essentially put a salad on top of it (usually sliced tomatoes, onions, and flat-leaf parsley — not cilantro!), squeeze on some lemon juice, and roll it up to eat like a wrap. It is so good, and this was one of the better lahmacuns I’ve tried anywhere. It was definitely the crispiest and thinnest!

This was the “dip sauce” that came with the lahmacun combo. It was kind of like toum, a creamy, garlicky dip with the consistency of hummus. It was great, especially with so many things to dip into it!

In addition to the pot of tea that came with the Turkish breakfast plate(s), my wife ordered a drink called the Crimson Bloom, a combination of hibiscus, cranberry, and clove. She always likes jamaica (hibiscus) aguas frescas at Mexican restaurants, so this was a big hit with her. It also sounds like a superhero, or possibly a villain. The white drink is homemade ayran, a yogurt drink similar to Indian lassi, but this was tangy and sour, rather than sweet like lassi. I would not have ordered it, but it came with the lahmacun combo, which was a pleasant surprise. I wasn’t really into it, but my wife enjoyed it, so that worked out well. Next time (and there absolutely will be a next time), I’ll try Cafe De Wan’s mint lemonade. It is the same price as the ayran ($3.99), so I wonder if they would consider substituting it in the future. I would definitely get that lahmacun combo again!

It is my pleasure to welcome Cafe De Wan to our neighborhood. It doesn’t offer all the savory Turkish entrees you would find on the menu at Istanbul Grill or Bosphorous, but it has more of a cafe atmosphere, for lighter meals. That luxurious Turkish breakfast plate (which deserves to be called a feast or a smorgasbord, considering how many individual plates are involved) is a perfect thing for two people on a date to share, and they offer it all day, not just during breakfast hours. Yes, I asked. I am familiar with the concept of “girl dinner” — eating little bits of this and that, and that’s how I eat many of my meals at home, usually standing up in my kitchen so I’m not away from work for too long. If you like “girl dinner,” you’ll go gaga for the Turkish breakfast plate. My only concern (and it is a small one) is that they didn’t have any of the small plastic ramekin-style containers with lids to take home small amounts of different things, but that’s okay. They had larger containers, and we made do.

Believe me, my wife and I got at least four full meals out of everything we ordered, and you may have already noticed that I eat a lot. (I’m going to try to eat less and eat healthier in 2026, though, so wish me luck! I’m gonna need it.) Please give Cafe De Wan a try, because it deserves our support. Unique restaurants like this don’t always thrive or even survive in Casselberry, and I really enjoyed it, so please help them become a dining destination!

Fiesta Cancun

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thailicious

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Get ready for the noodle pull!

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

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

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

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

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

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

Woodlands

Woodlands (http://www.woodlandsusa.com/) is a vegetarian Indian restaurant on South Orange Blossom Trail, very close to my favorite Indian restaurant, Bombay Street Kitchen (which is not strictly vegetarian). That area is pretty far from me, so one day I went for lunch on a weekend while my wife was getting her hair cut and colored, knowing that whole process would take a few hours.

Woodlands specializes in dishes from Udupi, a town on India’s southwestern coast. Since I went alone and was a little intimidated by the menu, I ordered a few things, fully expecting to end up with lots of leftovers to bring home. I started with a tall glass of cool, tangy, sweet, creamy mango lassi:

I don’t even remember ordering this, but it is a soup called rasam, described on the menu as “Traditional South Indian Sour’n Spicy Soup.” The sour ‘n spicy aspects would have appealed to me, especially since I was ordering several carb-heavy dishes to come. It is made with tomatoes and tamarind and garnished with chopped cilantro leaves. I think I got it planning to dip the various baked and fried breads in it, not realizing that they would come with their own li’l dipping cups.

These doughnut-looking fritters are medju vada, which are like savory fried doughnuts made with lentils. They were served with coconut chutney (top) and sambar (bottom), a soup of lentils, vegetables, tamarind, and various spices.

These were paneer pakora, lightly spiced fritters stuffed with homemade Indian cheese called paneer. These were about the size of fried ravioli. For those who haven’t tried paneer, it is kind of a dry, firm, crumbly cheese that doesn’t get melty like mozzarella. It is similar in texture to feta, but firmer (and a lot less salty and pungent), and also similar in texture to tofu.The darker sauce is actually brown, and it is sweet, sticky, tangy tamarind chutney. The green sauce was a delicious mint cilantro chutney that had a bit of heat.

This was the onion rava dosa, which was different from smoother-textured dosas I’ve ordered elsewhere. It is a thin, crispy crepe made of cream of wheat and rice, grilled with onions and mildly spicy chilies. It has been too long since my visit, but now I’m wondering if I got the onion rava masala dosa, which is the same thing but stuffed with potatoes and onions. For a dollar more, that’s probably what I would have ordered! Anyway, it was awesome, and I could use one of these right now.

This was garlic naan, soft and fluffy bread baked in a clay oven called a tandoor. If you’ve ever had Indian food anywhere, you have probably tried naan, and you know how delicious it is. And garlic only makes things more delicious!

These were large, fried puffy bread called batura. They are often served with stewed chickpeas as chana batura (including at Woodlands), but these were on the bread menu without the chana. They are awesome, no matter where you order them from. Anyone remotely skeptical about trying Indian food would love these. Go ahead, take those batura.

Boy, I really carb-loaded at this meal! This is what I get for going alone on a whim, without having studied the menu in advance, and without having more experienced Indian food lovers joining me. Writing about this meal so many months later, I was reminded of the cafeteria at the Hindu Society of Central Florida in Casselberry, one of the greatest hidden treasures in the entire Orlando area. Guided by a knowledgeable friend and joining other friends, that was the first place I ever tried vada, dosa, sambar, and coconut chutney, many years earlier. I guess I defaulted to familiar favorites at Woodlands.

But to wrap up this review, Woodlands is one of Orlando’s best-known and best-loved Indian restaurants, and I guarantee that you won’t miss meat if you go there, with all the delicious, flavorful vegetarian options to choose from. I love meat, but I was overwhelmed by all the choices, and I really enjoyed everything I tried. Whenever I make it back (and who knows when that will be), I would love some suggestions of what to order next time!