Food Court/Food Hall – The Saboscrivner

Grand Central Market (Los Angeles)

Grand Central Market (https://grandcentralmarket.com/) first opened in Downtown Los Angeles in 1917. I can’t imagine the countless changes it went through during its first century, but it is now a culinary destination for Angelenos and tourists alike, with countless delicious options all concentrated in one dreamlike food hall. And there are few things I love as much as exploring and eating my way though a historic food hall in great American cities.

I will note that my adventures at Grand Central Market took place during three separate visits on three separate work trips to the city. I didn’t eat all this food on one trip, I assure you!

On my first visit, I got two tacos from Villa Moreliana, almost like a little snack. I knew they were going to be great, since there were so many different cuts of meat to choose from. I would have loved to try them all, or at least most of them. I can’t think of any taquerias here in Orlando that serve kidney or heart, but if you’re aware of any, let me know, since I would love to try those!

This is their magical, masterful al pastor, marinated pork slowly roasting on a vertical spit called a trompo:

The two tacos I ended up getting from Villa Moreliana were lengua (beef tongue) on the left and al pastor on the right. Both were served on double corn tortillas (made fresh), under a mountain of crispy and tangy pickled onions. The al pastor was masterful, and the lengua wasn’t bad either.

I wasn’t planning to order any pasta on my second visit to Grand Central Market (later in 2023), but once I paused under the neon sign for Knead and checked out all the fresh pastas to choose from, I had to try them for myself.

Here are some of the fresh, handmade pastas at Knead:

Look at that gorgeous squid ink pasta on the right! Goth pasta, I always call it.

But despite the Goth pasta, I chose mafaldine, such a great pasta shape that is hard to find most places. They cooked it up to a perfectly chewy al dente and served it with a trio of meatballs and some bright and fresh-tasting marinara sauce.

I make pasta at home once or twice a month, but even though I buy DeCecco and Rao’s pasta, bronze-cut and imported from Italy, these fresh noodles from Knead hit different.

On my second visit, I also tried Salvadorean food for the first time at Sarita’s Pupuseria, which was briefly featured in the delightful musical film La La Land.

Since it was my first pupusa, I ordered a traditional one that was listed first on the menu: the revuelta, with pork, beans, and cheese. I watched ladies rolling dough into balls, then flattening them out to add fillings, sealing them with more flattened dough, and grilling them to get the nice crispy exterior. I got a small piece of chorizo sausage on the side, as well as an order of platanos fritos, fried plantains that were so molten hot (temperature-wise, not spicy) that they scalded my mouth. The cole slaw-looking side is curtido, pickled cabbage, which is cool and crunchy and tangy, and it came with the pupusa.

Here’s a peek inside the revuelta, to see the pork, beans, and cheese therein.This is still my one and only time trying Salvadoran food. It would be nice to find a pupuseria here in Orlando and compare it to Sarita’s. Any recommendations, folks?

Ghost Sando Shop has expanded to six locations in and around L.A., including the one I visited on my second and third trips to Grand Central Market. On the new cop show Ballard (a spinoff of Bosch, both based on characters by the author Michael Connelly), they referenced Ghost Sando and showed the bag.

All their sandwiches (I hate saying “sandos”) come on these wonderful Dutch crunch rolls, which are large hoagie/sub-style rolls that are soft inside and lightly crispy-crackly on the exterior. Both times I visited Ghost Sand Shop, I got the Uncle Nikki to go, with Genoa salami, pepperoni, capicola, and provolone cheese, topped with lettuce, tomato, red onion, pepperoncini, and mayo, drizzled with house-made Italian dressing and house sub dressing (mad respect for dual dressings!) and sprinkled with Italian herb seasoning.
They wrap their sandwiches up tight, and they travel surprisingly well without leaking. Once I packed one of these bad boys in my backpack and ate it in the Dallas airport during a long nighttime layover home from L.A.

On my third visit to Grand Central Market, in 2024, I made the mistake of going in the evening rather than at lunchtime, and more than half the vendors were closed! Luckily for me, Nonna’s Empanadas was open, so I ordered a variety pack of six different baked empanadas: beef jalapeño, cheeseburger, salsa verde chicken, Filipino chicken, veggie, and samosa veggie (which was vegan). I didn’t eat all six of these in one sitting, believe me! They made great hotel room snacks over the next couple of days.

Here’s the beef jalapeño:

Here’s the cheeseburger:

This was the salsa verde chicken:

So this would have to be the Filipino chicken, with kind of a soy-based adobo thing going on:

Luckily for me, the veggie did not contain mushrooms, but plenty of broccoli, corn, onions, and I believe red bell pepper:

And this was the vegan samosa veggie, with potatoes, peas, and I think some peppers:

Sadly, the Grand Central Market location of Wexler’s Deli closed since my first visit to the market in 2023, along with the Santa Monica location. The only Wexler’s Deli location left is in Las Vegas! But this stacked, hand-sliced pastrami sandwich was the very first meal I EVER ate in Los Angeles.

The pastrami was rich and marbled, the rye bread was solid, the potato salad was creamy and tangy, and Wexler’s used Kosciusko mustard, which I reviewed in my second Cutting the Mustard review. It was a great pastrami sandwich, but I have since learned that Wexler’s smoked fish options were even better. I wish I could have tried them too, but I don’t see myself visiting Las Vegas anytime soon, if ever.

After visiting Wexler’s Deli and Villa Moreliana on my first visit to the Market, I picked up an assortment of eye-catching doughnuts from The Donut Man to bring to work, hoping to make the best possible first impression on my first ever trip to campus. I’m sorry I never got a photo of those doughnuts, but I will never forget the dozens of bees buzzing around The Donut Man stall, and how nonchalant and completely unbothered and unworried the employees seemed. I guess they just get used to the bees, and the bees get used to the people, but I was nervous for them and for myself as well! The Donut Man has been operating in suburban Glendora (which I only know from the Rilo Kiley song) for over 50 years, but opened its stall in Grand Central Market in 2020.

I put off publishing this review because I visited Grand Central Market twice in 2023 (August and November) and once in 2024 (November), and I wasn’t sure when or if I would return. But after waiting all that time, Wexler’s closed, so I decided to run the review and not wait any longer.

I will also say that if you do visit the Market, it is literally across the street from two Los Angeles landmarks that have been featured prominently in some classic movies and television shows, so you should totally play tourist and experience them for yourself.

One is the ornate and timeless Bradbury Building, which opened in 1893 and was featured most prominently in Blade Runner (1982), the legendary sci-fi neo-noir set in a dystopian (but somehow still beautiful) future L.A. It was also used as a location in Bosch, (500) Days of Summer, Lethal Weapon 4, and the Lethal Weapon TV show, which you probably forgot existed — but it was fun! As a tourist, you can only go into the lobby, but I took plenty of photos from down there. Here are but two, to set the scene:

And for only a dollar each way, you can ride Angels Flight Railway, the world’s shortest funicular railway, up and down a hill. Angels Flight has been operating since 1901, and over the last century and a quarter, it has been featured in so many things, including Bosch, the excellent HBO Perry Mason series (and the original series too!), La La Land, and so much more.

I rode the Angels Flight Railway on my second trip to Grand Central Market, after my lunch. There are some beautiful views of DTLA at the top of the hill, along with a beautiful little garden area with tables and chairs and a cool, pleasant breeze blowing through. I will remember to get my order(s) to go whenever I return, since dining up there would beat being crammed onto a stool eating in the busy food hall.

And I absolutely hope to return to Grand Central Market in the future. I love food halls, and while it isn’t as massive and sprawling as Reading Terminal Market in Philadelphia or Pike Place Market in Seattle, it still has a huge variety of restaurant stalls to choose from, and I’ve never been disappointed by anything I’ve tried there. Whether you’re a local or a tourist, you will have a blast exploring and eating your way around the Market. Just try to time your visit for lunch, since I discovered so many of the stalls close early.

The Butcher’s Nook

I first learned about The Butcher’s Nook (https://butchersnook.com/) the same way I learn about a lot of the best places to eat in and around Orlando: from a write-up by my brilliant friend Amy Drew Thompson, the multimedia food reporter for The Orlando Sentinel, our fine local newspaper. Back in January of this year, she wrote a great article about the Mount Dora butcher shop/deli restaurant and its chef-owner Mario Pennaherrera, and I had been wanting to try it ever since. Unfortunately, Mount Dora is over an hour away from me, but Amy Drew mentioned they would be opening a second location at a new food hall opening in Apopka, which is only half an hour away. I’ve been tracking its progress ever since, and it finally announced a soft opening this past Wednesday.

Me being me, I left early enough to beat rush hour traffic heading west on State Road 436, and I was the very first person in line for the soft opening of the Hall’s on 5th food hall in quaint downtown Apopka. The food hall was constructed in a hundred-year-old building that used to be Hall’s Feed Store… and now it’s a place that feeds humans, so that is fitting. The developers really modernized it, adding a bunch of comfortable outdoor tables, light strings that I associate with hipster parties, and even cornhole boards. It is already sweltering in mid-May, and I joked to some ladies who were also waiting outside that at least it isn’t August. But if we all survive until November and December, it will probably be wonderful to dine al fresco at Hall’s on 5th.

When you enter the building, there is a large indoor seating area with regular tables and smaller high-top tables against the wall, as well as a full bar. If you’re used to East End Market, the venerable food hall in Orlando’s Audubon Park neighborhood, having an actual indoor dining space and a bar is a huge upgrade. But then there are six food stalls down a relatively narrow hallway, and when this place gets busy, that hallway is going to be crowded and chaotic. That’s why I made sure to be first — arrive early, order first, grab a seat, escape easily. This is good advice for life in general, not just hip new food halls.

The Butcher’s Nook is the first food stall on the left side of the hallway. After it come Empanada & Co., Soulicious Vegan Kitchen, and Parlor Waffle Kitchen. On the right side, Thrive has a larger space, followed by Hawaiian restaurant Sweet & Salty Island Grindz, which also has a location I visited once at Henry’s Depot, the food hall in downtown Sanford. The Hall’s on 5th website has a page with links to all the other vendors.

I was the first person in line at The Butcher’s Nook, and after briefly studying the menu on the wall, I ordered three sandwiches to go (and technically got three meals out of them!).

This is the Italian Americano, with prosciutto cotto, mortadella, Genoa salami, pepperoni, provolone cheese, shredded lettuce, sliced tomatoes, red onions cut paper-thin (the best way to serve onions on a sub or hoagie), and some kind of beguiling vinaigrette on a soft sub roll. I couldn’t resist unrolling this sub and devouring half before leaving the food hall with the rest of my bounty. It is definitely one of the best Italian subs in Orlando.

Here’s a good shot of the other half back at home:

This is the L’Diablo, with prosciutto cotto, hot capocollo, spicy salame Calabrese, n’duja (an awe-inspiring, orangey-red spicy salami spread, kind of like a pâté), smoked provolone cheese, arugula, and Calabrian chili aioli on a ciabatta roll. I love a spicy Italian sandwich, and I’d give this one a 9 out of 10. The only way it could have been better was to be served on the same kind of sub roll as the Italian Americano, because I will always prefer a soft white sub or hoagie roll to ciabatta bread. But credit where credit is due — this ciabatta was softer than many I’ve tried elsewhere.

And this is the Nooky, with prosciutto di Parma, burrata (fresh mozzarella stuffed with stracciatella, or stretched cheese curds, and clotted cream), Grana Padano cheese (a hard cheese similar to parmesan), arugula, extra virgin olive oil, balsamic glaze, and fig jam on the softest, freshest, fluffiest focaccia bread. This was another damn near perfect sandwich, with the saltiness of the prosciutto, the creaminess of the burrata, the one-two punch of sweetness from the balsamic glaze and fig jam, and that incredible focaccia.

I ordered these three sandwiches on purpose, so I could try all three types of bread offered by The Butcher’s Nook, and these contained the best combinations of my favorite ingredients. I later contacted chef-owner Mario Penaherrera on Facebook to ask him which brands of Italian cured meats he uses, and he told me they serve Veroni, Citterio, Leoncini, and The Spotted Trotter — all high-end charcuterie purveyors; no Boar’s Head here.

Their website advertised a few other awesome-looking sandwiches, like the Downtown (corned beef, pastrami, gruyere cheese, caramelized onions, and Russian dressing on ciabatta) and The OG (mortadella, burrata, pesto, tomatoes, and extra virgin olive oil on focaccia), but those two weren’t on the menu at Hall’s on 5th, so they probably just serve those in their original Mount Dora location. It’s all good — I chose wisely and enjoyed the heck out of all three sandwiches I chose. And that reminds me of the sage advice from the late singer-songwriter Warren Zevon: “Enjoy every sandwich.” I try to live my life that way, and if you go to The Butcher’s Nook, I guarantee you will enjoy every sandwich you order from there.

Kai Kai

This week, I want to talk about Kai Kai (https://www.instagram.com/kaikai.bbq/), Jerry and Jackie Lau’s stall that serves up Cantonese barbecued meats, as beautiful as they are delicious. Kai Kai is located inside Mills Market, the new Asian food hall on East Colonial Drive between Mills and Thornton Avenues in Mills 50, arguably Orlando’s best foodie neighborhood. Last week’s review recipient UniGirl is one of Kai Kai’s neighboring stalls inside Mills Market, and so is former favorite Banh Mi Boy, that Vietnamese sandwich stall sandwiched between UniGirl and Kai Kai.
Before Mills Market opened last year, Kai Kai was located inside of iFresh Supermarket, the Asian market on the corner of East Colonial and Bumby Avenue (next door to Chicken Fire and Lam’s Garden!), but since then, Meng’s Kitchen has moved into the former Kai Kai space inside iFresh Market.

I swear I’m going to move on, but I feel the need to say that Kai Kai is not to be confused with Michelin-recommended Kai Asian Street Fare, one of my favorite restaurants in the Orlando area (just over the Casselberry border in Winter Park). Everybody still with me?

Well, I dare you to walk up to Kai Kai and not be entranced and enthralled by the barbecued ducks and chickens hanging on display… unless you’re a vegetarian, that is.

I appreciate that they have photos of all their dishes on display. I honestly wish more restaurants would do this.

Something else I appreciate about restaurants is when they offer some kind of sampler plate with two or three items to choose from so you can try a few things. I will almost always choose this option, whether it’s an American barbecue joint or a Cantonese restaurant like Kai Kai. If you order a “rice box,” you can choose two or three of the six house specialty meats. I, of course, went with three meats, which only costs $2 more than the two-meat option, so it seems like a no-brainer. I treated myself to roast duck, honey barbecue char siu pork, and soy sauce chicken (from top to bottom in the photo below).

The sliced meats are served over white rice with some garlicky sautéed bok choy, but you can pay a small upcharge for either fried rice or Hainanese garlic rice. I chose the garlic rice, and I have zero regrets. I strongly encourage my readers to do the same. But look at this gorgeous plate of food! It is huge and heavy, so much so that even *I*, chronic overeater that I am, easily got two and a half meals out of it.

Just because this is a feast for all the senses, including the eyes, here is a close-up of that lovely roast duck with crispy, crackly skin, and the tender, sweet, slightly sticky char siu pork beneath it:

And here is that soy sauce chicken, with lightly crispy skin as well.

They also offer honey barbecue chicken, honey barbecue ribs, and “crispy pork,” either in these rice boxes or by the pound or half-pound, but I feel like I made great choices. I’ll have to try the ribs next time, though!

I also brought home an order of beef chow fun — chewy, wide, flat rice noodles (made from scratch by Jackie Lau herself!) wok-fried with tender sliced beef, onions, and green onions in a savory brown sauce. Forgive me for not snapping a “noodle pull” pic, but I ate it too quickly. This is one of my go-to dishes at any Chinese restaurant, especially as a way to evaluate places that are new to me. If they have beef chow fun on the menu, I consider it a good sign, and if they do a good job of it, I feel more confident that anything else that comes out of the kitchen will be equally solid.

Spoiler alert: they did a great job of it.

On top of everything else, Kai Kai also serves Singapore rice noodles (another dish I love, the spicier the better), char siu pork lo mein noodles, young chow fried rice with shrimp, chicken, and pork, duck fried rice, and Chinese sausage fried rice, which I love so much that I will definitely try their version next time. But that’s not all! They also have an entire scratch-made dim sum menu featuring siu mai, multiple dumplings and bao buns, spicy Szechuan wings, and even cucumber salad (regular or spicy) that is probably super-refreshing to balance out all those heavy barbecued and roasted meats and fried noodle and rice dishes.

Obviously I enjoyed the food at Kai Kai, but I’m far from the only one. The latest round of Florida Michelin awards were announced on Friday, April 5th, and Kai Kai received a vaunted Michelin recommendation, alongside its Mills Market neighbors UniGirl and Banh Mi Boy, which both received Bib Gourmand awards. Congratulations go out to Jerry and Jackie Lau, who are absolutely killing it at Kai Kai. I look forward to returning, but in the meantime, there is magic happening in the stall kitchens of Mills Market. Whatever restauranteurs Johnny and Jimmy Tung of the Bento Group are doing to build their brands and spread the word, it is paying off!

UniGirl

UniGirl (https://www.unigirlfl.com/) is an whimsically named food stall in Orlando’s relatively new Asian food hall Mills Market, located inside the former Tien Hung market on East Colonial Drive between Mills and Thornton Avenues. It is even more adorable when you learn on the website that it was named after chef/owner William Shen’s shiba inu, a super-cute Japanese dog breed that looks like a fox. A cartoony shiba inu appears as the official mascot of the restaurant.

UniGirl specializes in onigiri, tasty triangles of lightly salted koshihikari Japanese short grain rice (nicely chewy and sticky; the same kind of rice used for sushi), molded with some kind of filling, sprinkled with furikake seasoning (diced roasted seaweed and sesame seeds), wrapped with a piece of roasted seaweed to use like a handle. They are served warm and best enjoyed that way. I first tried onigiri a few years back at Ramen Takagi, still my favorite ramen-ya in the Orlando area, but nobody else has focused on onigiri until UniGirl opened in November 2024. I had some fun on my first visit very recently!

This was the refreshing “daily mocktail” — so perfect on an unseasonably hot day in early April. It was a blend of calamansi and passion fruit juices and jasmine, served over crushed ice, which we can all agree is the best kind of ice. Calamansi is a tart little citrus fruit, similar to lime, that is very popular in Filipino cuisine, and passion fruit is one of my favorite fruits and flavors in general.

I got an order of three fried oysters while I waited, which were fried to order and to perfection. These were listed on a chalkboard as a konbini special, with konbini serving as an abbreviation of konbiniensu sutoru, or “convenience store.” Japanese convenience stores are supposed to be truly special places, 24/7 paradises where weary shoppers can pick up a variety of premade, fresh, tasty grab-and-go foods that are quite good, not just reheated junk food thrown together from the lowest-quality ingredients. Even the 7-Eleven chain, ubiquitous in Japan, is known for really great food and snacks, far more over there than they are here.

Just as an aside, I am obsessed with lemons. Whenever I get a lemon wedge served with my seafood, I eat it whole, just like normal people would eat an orange slice.

Anyway, the creamy, cool, slightly herby dipping sauce worked well with the golden, crispy exterior and almost creamy oyster centers. The fry guy warned me they would be boiling lava hot, so I might want to wait a little while once they came up. That was wise advice. About five minutes later, they were still hot, but no longer capable of burning my mouth. Did you hear about the hipster who burnt his tongue? He ate UniGirl’s fried oysters before they were cool!

On to the star of the show: the onigiri! I brought four onigiri home with me, but they had more than that to choose from, all individually wrapped and labeled.

As you can see, all the perfect little onigiri look similar, so thank goodness their disposable outer wrappers are labeled. Once I got home and opened them up, I made a note of which was which.

The tuna onigiri in the top left was more like tuna salad, mixed with mayo (probably the eggy Kewpie brand) and a bit of mustard, rather than the raw ahi tuna I always expect, like you get in sushi or poke. The miso tan tan (spicy crumbled pork) in the top right had a lot of flavor, including some mild spice.

The unagi (eel) onigiri in the bottom left was by far my favorite. It was sweet and savory, not fishy at all. In the bottom right, mentaiko (Alaskan pollock roe, from a fish in the cod family) was salty and spicy, with a subtle umami quality. I first tried mentaiko years ago at Susuru, another unique Japanese restaurant here in Orlando, where they served mentaiko fries.

Finally, UniGirl advertised potato-egg salad as anther konbini special on the Saturday I went, and I thought it would be a nice little treat, especially since I’m such a fan of delicatessen fare. I find it comforting that the Japanese like potato and egg salads too, and of course their versions are excellent.

Everything from UniGirl was a real treat — savory Japanese snacks meant for comfort and convenience, but so different from the conventional, familiar landmarks of Japanese cuisine like sushi, ramen, and udon. I’m definitely not the only fan, because just the other day, on April 17th, 2025, UniGirl was awarded a prestigious Michelin Bib Gourmand award for “good quality, good value cooking.” That is a huge honor for Chef William Shen (who also got an interview feature on the tire company’s website), for UniGirl, for the Mills Market (which houses a few other Michelin award-winning food stalls… STAY TUNED, stalwart Saboscrivnerinos!), and for Orlando in general.

Gideon’s Bakehouse

Gideon’s Bakehouse (https://gideonsbakehouse.com/) serves some of the best cookies in Orlando, if not in all of Florida. These are huge, heavy, rich cookies, ideally shared among two to four people. You’ve never seen or tasted anything quite like them anywhere else, but almost a decade after opening, they still have a loyal fan following. Read on to see why!

Steve Lewis opened the original Gideon’s location opened in 2016, in a small stall in the East End Market, a critically acclaimed and beloved local landmark in Orlando’s Audubon Park neighborhood. Since then, a larger location opened in Disney Springs in 2020, where tourists apparently queue up for hours for their cookies and photo ops. I admit I’ve never been to the Disney Springs location, not when the tiny original is so much closer and more convenient. You may notice that Gideon’s Bakehouse has a creepy/kooky/mysterious/spooky aesthetic, kind of like Tim Burton-meets-Edward Gorey. They include trading cards of all these cutesy, creepy, Funko Pop-looking characters that people probably go crazy collecting, even though I’ve never paid close attention to them. Apparently the Disney Springs location has even more of a Victorian haunted house mise en scène going on, but I’ll leave that to the tourists and local Disney adults.
I realize the books are just for show, especially since they have them displayed with the spines facing in rather than out. As a librarian, this strikes me every time, and I say to myself “No human being would stack books like this.”

But Gideon’s goes hard with their theming, and they have a lovely glass curio cabinet (not just a simple display case!) showing off all their cookies:

Here are some of their pistachio toffee chocolate chip cookies on the upper level with some mysterious limited edition cookies below. (They are always coming out with limited editions that don’t stick around for long, knowing their target audience feels those FOMO feelings.)

Here are some of their classic chocolate chips above, with triple chocolate chips below. I should have mentioned this sooner, but all their cookies are very soft, moist, chewy, underbaked. They melt in your mouth. Your mileage may vary, but if I’m going to indulge with cookies, this is how I like them, not hard little crunchers that shatter into a dust storm of dry crumbs.

Here are limited edition Kris Kringle cookies on display, which had to have been a holiday season thing. I tried it once, and I was more into it than my wife, who is the real sweet tooth.

And here are just a few of the cookies I’ve brought home for my wife or shared with friends and co-workers over the years, starting with my wife’s favorite, the pistachio toffee chocolate chip. Notice those crunchy salt crystals! Gideon’s uses salt crystals a lot, as a way to cut the sweet richness (rich sweetness?) and add a bit of additional texture.

Here was one of the many limited editions: a peanut butter cold brew cookie, inspired by their peanut butter nitro cold brew (which I’ve never tried, not being a coffee drinker. They describe it as a peanut butter cookie laced with freshly ground decaf espresso and covered in chopped Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups and Reese’s Pieces.

This is their standard peanut butter crunch cookie, made with a dough that is mostly peanut butter and topped with peanut butter chips and handmade crunchy candied peanuts.

Here’s that aforementioned Kris Kringle with a peanut butter crunch and a pistachio toffee chocolate chip from a different visit. It was a white chocolate chip cookie flavored with coconut, caramel, vanilla, and freshly ground coffee beans, adding a bit of bitterness to counterbalance all that rich sweetness (sweet richness?). It also had a crunch from coarse sugar and those sea salt crystals.

I’m sure you waiting for this one: dig that classic chocolate chip, and look at all those chips! I’m a reasonably large full-grown man, and I can only hold one of these cookies in my hand. Then I have to wash it, because the entire surface is covered with gooey chocolate chips.

On my most recent trip, I brought a triple chocolate chip cookie home for my wife. The website says they actually use five kinds of chocolate, including from high-end chocolatiers Callebaut and Ghirardelli. They also pour their chocolate ganache straight into the cookie dough as they mix it, to obtain a velvety texture. It seemed pretty intense, and so far I haven’t even tried a bite of this one.

The most recent limited edition cookie I got sent out for was a coffee cake cookie, exclusive to the Disney Springs location unless you preorder six cookies (any combination) online from the closer East End Market location. My wife and I both love coffee cake, to the point where I baked her a coffee cake from scratch back in our early dating days just because she mentioned liking it. You can call me a simp if it makes you feel better, but we have been together for 19 good years and married for almost 16, so we’re in it to win it and put in the work every day to be the best people we can for each other. Anyway, this was one of my favorites: a buttery vanilla bean cookie filled with cinnamon streusel (the website said “Strudel,” but I’m guessing they meant streusel, since I’ve baked coffee cake from scratch) and topped with “Homemade Double Baked Butter Crumbs.” Good lord, it was good. But seriously, with any of these, you can easily cut them into quarters, and even a quarter is plenty. Luckily, all these cookies freeze and thaw very well.

I still give the edge for soft, moist, chewy cookies to a small operation: HeartSong Cookies, owned and operated by one of the sweetest people ever, Kathy Paiva. But Gideon’s Bakehouse is a big deal — an Orlando favorite that has garnered national attention, and now you can see why. Despite not being a big cookie eater in general, I can’t disparage these cookies, nor would I want to. If you like huge, hefty, hulking cookies, this is your place. And if you also like sad little cartoon monster children, mysterious books shelved backwards, and humming Danny Elfman movie scores while you enjoy your cookies, this is definitely your place. Everyone is welcome at Gideon’s, from regular joes to goths to steampunks, who are goths that have discovered the color brown.

Oh yeah, and they sell slices of cake too!

Rion’s Ocean Room

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CLOSED: La Femme Du Fromage

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

***

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Polombia at Time Out Market (Chicago)

I’ve been meaning to write this review for a long time because it was one of my favorite finds from my work trips to Chicago last summer. I love interesting fusion cuisine, like The Escobar Kitchen in Orlando’s Lake Nona, which expertly combines Puerto Rican food with sushi. My wife and I used to love a Casselberry pizzeria called Del Dee’s, which served excellent New York-style pizzas along with Thai food (and one of the best Thai iced teas ever), due to the Italian husband and his Thai wife who owned and operated the restaurant. Alas, it did not last.

Chicago is arguably a bigger food city than Orlando, and one of the few places that could honestly be called even more diverse. That’s how we ended up with a restaurant as cool as Polombia (https://www.polombiachi.com/), a Polish-Colombian fusion restaurant located in the Time Out Market Chicago, a sprawling food hall with plenty of diverse dining options, from fresh pasta to barbecue, Greek to Indian, Southern to Korean, baked goods to bars. The Time Out Market sounded like a great place to drag two work colleagues in a Lyft for lunch, and I already knew I had to try the most unique cuisine combo of all. I definitely over-ordered at Polombia, a joint venture by visionary chefs Cynthia Orobio and Phillipe Sobon, but I wanted to try everything, so I regret nothing.

I started with meatless emparogi ($12), a lovely quintet of empanada-pierogi hybrids. These beautiful little pockets of dough were stuffed with potatoes, caramelized onions, chives, sofrito (a classic Latin seasoning blend of garlic, onions, sometimes tomatoes, olive oil, and other aromatic herbs, spices, and vegetables), and a swirl of aji crema, blending elements of a spicy Colombian hot sauce with cool cream to balance out all the acidic ingredients. There was also a version of these emparogi with all the same fillings, plus short rib, but I held off on that, at least for this dish.

This is bigos, or hunter’s stew ($8), rich with shredded beef, Colombian chorizo sausage, and sauerkraut in a tomato-based stew. I have loved bigos at Polish and Ukrainian restaurants, and this was a unique take that added Latin American flavors. It lacked the sweet, tangy touch I remember from the bigos I savored at Veselka in New York City, but this was a very different version of the classic dish. I think I might have also enjoyed it more in the winter than a particularly hot day in July, but don’t get me wrong, I liked it, and I’m very glad I tried it.

I couldn’t stop myself from getting an order of two arepa-ski ($14), cornmeal patties topped with ricotta cheese blended with honey, shredded pickled beets and carrots, and the protein of our choice. Those choices included mojo-roasted chicken, vegetarian lentils, and coffee-braised short rib, so this time I opted for the short rib. The order came with aji sauce that reminded me of a thicker chimichurri, bringing some acid and spice to contrast against the richness of the meat and the sweet creaminess of the ricotta. I was so excited to order all this food, I didn’t notice on the menu that I could pick two separate proteins, or else I would have. But I have no regrets. These were some of the more creative arepas I’ve ever tried, and the short rib was incredible. I always love short ribs, and these were so well-seasoned with the coffee rub and braised to ideal tenderness, I didn’t think twice about missing out on the chicken and the lentils.

These were a beauty to behold:

And for dessert, I got kolaczki ($4), six light rolled pastries filled with guava and fig preserves and dusted with powdered sugar. I might not have bothered with desserts, but I couldn’t turn down two of my favorite fruits for pastry fillings. The sticky sweetness of the guava and fig worked so perfectly with the light, buttery pastries, and I was so glad to have those flavors to choose from.

Since this is an Orlando-based food blog, I try to space out my out-of-town reviews, and I’ve been saving this one for a while. Orlando only has one Polish restaurant that I haven’t been to yet, but my wife and I dearly loved another restaurant, Polonia, that closed several years ago. That really introduced me to Polish flavors and dishes that I now love and crave and dream about. Being from Miami, I’m also familiar with all kinds of Latin food, and very fond of it too.

I’m always excited to try chefs’ interesting takes on fusion cuisine, blending together ingredients and dishes and entire cultures, creating something unique and new that pays homage to the original inspirations and influences. While Chicago certainly has some traditional Polish restaurants due to its large Polish population, I absolutely had to try Polombia while I was there. I couldn’t schlep all the way up there and leave without trying it. This was the exact kind of meal that I started this blog to write about, and I’m so glad I was able to visit and work my way through the beautiful, singular menu that Cynthia Orobio and Phillipe Sobon created.

Chain Reactions: Eataly (Chicago)

Eataly (https://www.eataly.com/) is like heaven for foodies: a massive Italian food store that contains several restaurants, from sit-down pastarias to wine bars to counter-service bakeries to grab-and-go snack shops. As a result, it is kind of like a massive food hall, with so much to see and do, smell and taste, experience and indulge. But most of all, Eataly feels like a temple to Italian food — truly a place of worship — and well worth a pilgrimage at least once. There are ten Eataly stores in Italy (the first one opened in Torino in 2007), nine in North America, and eight elsewhere in the world. I don’t know how different they all are, since I’ve only been to the Chicago Eataly (https://www.eataly.com/us_en/stores/chicago/) — first with my wife in 2014, and again on a recent business trip to Chicago. I had to venture back there, to make sure that first visit wasn’t just a wonderful dream, but the kind of place where dreams come true.

It had been so long since my first visit, I had to explore everything in the store before deciding on my first bit of food. I made my way to the second floor to a familiar kiosk that beckoned: the land of cured meats and cheeses. I felt like a weary traveler who had finally made it to my destination, yet also feeling like I was home.

Since I was just staying in Chicago for two nights, I couldn’t buy anything fresh or perishable or requiring cooking, but I’m sure some fancy Chicago locals bypass the local supermarkets and buy all their meats at this gleaming butcher’s counter. You can’t see the price labels in this photo, but take it from me: if you have to ask, you probably can’t afford it.

Here’s a shot of huge tomahawk ribeye steaks, slowly dry-aging to perfection in a clear refrigerated case:

The seafood counter was equally sumptuous. On my first visit to Eataly back in 2014, I made an indulgent purchase of bottarga here: the salted, cured, pressed, and dried roe sac of a fish (usually gray mullet, but sometimes tuna). I had read about bottarga before, and it sounded irresistible to me, as a connoisseur of the cured, a scholar of the smoked, and a professor of the pickled. So many cultures created their own versions of this delicacy, and I’ve still never found it in Florida. The bottarga I bought at Eataly made it back in my luggage without any problems, and it lasted months in the fridge, as I finely grated it over so many pasta dishes. It added a salty, savory, umami flavor to everything, and pretty much melted in my mouth. If that sounds good and not gross, I highly recommend it.

But all this browsing made me hungry, so I returned to the restaurant my wife and I dined at on our original trip to Eataly here in Chicago: the creatively named La Pizza & La Pasta. You can’t go to a restaurant like this and not know what you’re getting! They take reservations, but I arrived relatively late in the day, after a long training workshop and an architectural boat tour down the Chicago River, so I had my choice of seats and opted for a solitary barstool, far from any other diners.

The kind server brought out this wonderfully fresh, crusty bread with olive oil that was much sweeter and more flavorful than the kind I keep at home that regularly goes on sale at Publix. I’m not sure if every party gets “table bread,” or if it came with the dish I ordered, but if you’re visiting Eataly, hopefully you’re not obsessed with counting carbs, so you should definitely take advantage and enjoy this brilliant bread.

As a solo diner, I knew I couldn’t justify ordering two entrees, so it was difficult for me to choose. My server helped me break a tie, so I went with a fresh pasta dish, tagliatelle alla Bolognese ($24), topped with real-deal parmigiano Reggiano, not the shaky-can stuff I’ve bought my entire life. The fresh tagliatelle pasta was kind of eggy (not in a bad way, just not exactly what I expected), but the savory Bolognese sauce was awesome, with plenty of chunks of meat. I get that this was a pretty basic choice, and I make “pasta and meat sauce” quite often at home, but it is real comfort food for me, and I wanted to see how Eataly’s kitchen would present such a timeless classic. They knocked it out of the park, needless to say.

As an aside, here’s a photo I found of the dish I ordered here back in 2014, in those pre-Saboscrivner days: my favorite pasta dish anywhere, bucatini all’amatriciana ($21). This thick bucatini pasta (long, hollow tubes) was not fresh like the tagliatelle I had just tried, but there’s nothing wrong with good quality dried pasta. I think I prefer it, in fact. All’amatriciana is served in a spicy tomato sauce with guanciale (cured pork jowl), and this version from La Pizza & La Pasta was perfect in every way, even better than the tagliatelle from this most recent visit.
I make pasta all’amatriciana at home as a treat once or twice a year, but since guanciale is hard to find, I usually substitute cubed pancetta, which you can find at Trader Joe’s, Publix, and even Aldi sometimes. If you’re not into bucatini, pretty much any other pasta works well, except for weirdo choices like tri-color wagon wheels. What is the deal with those, anyway?

After dinner, I wandered around the store a little more and gazed at beautiful Roman-style pizzas on display at the Pizza alla Pala kiosk. I was tempted, but I had just eaten dinner, and I knew they wouldn’t be that great eaten cold in my hotel room the next morning.

But I saw these gorgeous foccaci farcita sandwiches, with cured speck ham, provolone, and arugula on fresh focaccia bread, and I thought “One of those would be awe-inspiring eaten cold in my hotel room the next morning!” Maybe because I got to Eataly relatively late in the day, they charged me a much lower price for the to-go sandwich than what you see pictured, more like the price of an individual slice of pizza.

Here’s an extreme close-up of the lovely sandwich. Speck is very similar to prosciutto. I could tell they brushed some olive oil on the bread, but I thought a tangy vinaigrette of some kind would have really put it over the top. (But I think about that with most sandwiches.)

And to go with my beautiful Italian breakfast, I found an Italian brand of potato chips, San Carlo la Vita e Buona, with a flavor that was too interesting to turn down: mint and chili pepper! If I recall, this bag was under $3. Since I love trying new potato chip flavors and reviewing them in this very blog, I felt obligated. I did it for YOU, stalwart Saboscrivnerinos!

San Carlo was a bit stingy with the flavoring, a marked contrast against many American chip manufacturers that really cake it on there, but they tasted very fresh and potatoey, and the mint subtly shined through. They were barely spicy at all.

I also brought home a salami from the cured meat counter that sounded amazing (elk, pork, and dried blueberries?!), but it wasn’t worth the price I paid. I would have loved to try so many more things at Eataly, but again, I was limited by what I could safely store in my hotel room and bring back in a carry-on bag, with TSA’s continuing rules banning liquids. That said, if you ever find yourself in a city grand and lucky enough to have its own Eataly location, I implore you to make that pilgrimage and try it for yourself. You will be tempted by all sorts of treasures, and it is just a pleasure to wander around and explore, treat yourself in one of the many restaurants, and bring back mouthwatering mementos, succulent souvenirs, and tasty trophies from your travels.

Chain Reactions: Buc-ee’s

We were somewhere around DeLand on the edge of I-4 East when the Beaver Nuggets began to take hold. Luckily, Doctor Professor Ma’am and I didn’t encounter any bats on our drive to or from Daytona Beach, but we shared a truly exhausting, truly American experience at Buc-ee’s (https://buc-ees.com/), the colossal convenience store just off I-95, a unique shopping experience as vast, overwhelming, and occasionally maddening as its home state of Texas.

Imagine Wawa, Cracker Barrel, and Walmart Supercenter twisted into a sweaty, throbbing throuple, and that comes close, but still doesn’t quite capture the sensory overload of Buc-ee’s. I counted 43 locations on the website, but there are only two in Florida, both new: off the highway in Daytona Beach and St. Augustine. We didn’t even bother to fill up the car with gas there, given the surprising crowd at lunchtime on a Friday. Instead, we hustled inside to see what food and snacks awaited us in the sprawling superstore.

They say everything is bigger in Texas: the deserts, the hats, the trucks, the cattle, the churches, the guns, the belt buckles, and unfortunately the intolerance (see recent news for far too many examples). Well, Buc-ee’s goes big in every way as well. Once we made our way through sections of the store devoted to kitschy casual clothing, folksy home décor, and touristy novelties (the “schlock and awe” department), we made it to the the real draws: stacks and stacks of snacks and snacks.

Here is the wall of jerky, which is the kind of wall Texas should focus on building. There is also a jerky counter, where you can get any of the jerky varieties you want, by the pound. It was easier and faster to grab bags off the wall for $7.99 each.

I chose cherry maple, Bohemian garlic, and sweet and spicy beef jerky. So far, the cherry maple was disappointingly bland, but the Bohemian garlic was packed with strong, garlicky flavor.

Doctor Professor Ma’am is more of a fan of gummy candy, and she was faced with overwhelming options, here at the wall of gummies.

She went with hot cinnamon gummy bears (I think that smell, taste, and texture are all gross, but more for her!) and chamoy-flavored peach rings, pictured below with three different flavors of Rice Krispy Treats she chose (regular, salted caramel, and “Fruity”), plus fried pecans.

I’m not really into nuts. I just buy them for her, and I almost never snack on them myself. But when we busted into these fried pecans back at home, all I could say was “GOOD LORD.” Even with the hell-squirrel armed with a sharp fork on the bag, “GOOD LORD” is the appropriate response. I couldn’t believe how good they were. At $14.99, that was the most expensive single item we bought, but it is a good-sized bag, and they are so rich, they should last quite a while.

As an unabashed fan and collector of condiments, sauces, and preserves, Buc-ee’s had a staggering selection to tease, tantalize, and tempt me.

I went a little mad, but we all go a little mad sometimes. I couldn’t resist (I’m your) huckleberry and blackberry preserves, peach-chipotle and mango-pineapple-habanero salsas, prickly pear cactus jam, candied jalapeños, sweet and spicy ghost pepper hot sauce, and pickled quail eggs!

I fully admit I haven’t tried most of these yet, since our fridge door has only so much space (and it is already stuffed with interesting things in bottles and jars, as one would expect from me). But I did just bust open the pickled quail eggs, after letting the jar chill in the fridge overnight, and I liked it a lot! Very spicy and tangy from the vinegary brine, which includes garlic and jalapeños. “What, you egg?” [I stabbed it.]

It was even hard to choose a soft drink, with dozens of options. This is only one of the three huge soda fountain setups. I grabbed an extra-large cup, avoided anything I could find elsewhere, and sampled sips of the Buc-ee’s-specific flavors. Favorites included pineapple cream soda, piña colada soda, orange Creamsicle soda, sarsaparilla, strawberry lemonade (non-carbonated), and my big winner, the cream soda on the far right, which I ultimately filled our shared cup with for the schlep home. Doctor Professor Ma’am said it tasted like pecan pie filling as a soda, and she wasn’t wrong. It was too sweet to be refreshing, but a very tasty cream soda nonetheless. We also tried the blue cream soda, which I thought tasted like banana-flavored candy. She liked it until the chemically aftertaste hit. We both really wished some of those sodas were sold in bottles or cans, since we would have definitely bought a few different ones to savor later, but alas, they were fountain drinks only.

There were multiple stations to get hot, fresh food, including a station with barbecue sandwiches already wrapped in foil. I grabbed us a pulled pork sandwich that was delicious. Doctor Professor Ma’am was tired and hungry by this point, so we split it in the car in the parking lot on the way out to keep hungry from approaching hangry. Forgive my freestyling, but we savagely ravaged this sandwich, and its richness fixed us from being sad bitches. The barbecue sauce was sweet, but it didn’t overwhelm the smoky savoriness of the pork.

There were also touch-screen kiosks for ordering other food, including tacos, burritos, chicken fingers, and a few other sandwiches that get freshly assembled. I was really hoping to get a pastrami Reuben on a pretzel roll, which came highly recommended, but they weren’t available! I was so disappointed, which is a quintessentially American take, to bemoan the loss of one option in this land of abundance. So I chose a “Chopping Block” sandwich that came with sliced rare roast beef, horseradish, Swiss cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, red onions, and I asked to add jalapeños for a 50-cent upcharge. We had to wait a while for that one, since the sandwich-makers were slammed due to 20 busy touchscreen kiosks all beaming in constant orders, but it was worth the wait. The roast beef was tender, flavorful, and rare, the way I like it, the hoagie roll was nice and soft, and the sandwich was still warm by the time I got it home. To the right is a chopped brisket sandwich that was also really good — pre-wrapped in foil like the pulled pork sandwich, and mixed up with sweet sauce. I liked it even better than the pulled pork.

She was disappointed by the fresh potato chips, but I thought they were fine. Just plain, crispy, salty, slightly greasy chips, as expected.

A fried apple pie was yet another impulse buy. She enjoyed it in the car (eating it over the open bag to catch the cinnamon sugar cascade), and the one bite I took was really good. The flaky fried crust was terrific. We hoped it would be like the bubbly, crackly McDonald’s fried apple pies of our ’80s childhoods, but it turned out to be so much better than those.

Here’s half of the brisket sandwich I saved for Doctor Professor Ma’am back at home, along with a cream cheese kolache (left), a strawberry cheese kolache (right), and a sausage, cheese, and jalapeño kolache (bottom). Kolaches are pastries that Czech immigrants brought to Texas. There are sweet and savory varieties, and as you can see, the sweet ones look a lot like danishes. The sausage inside that bottom one was hot dog-shaped, but much chewier, like a Slim Jim. It was okay. The pastry itself is just like chewy white bread.
I also got a boudin kolache that looked almost exactly like the one on the bottom in this photo, stuffed with the savory Cajun pork-and-rice sausage, but that one didn’t last long enough to get photographed.

They had a fudge counter with nearly 20 different varieties of fudge, all neatly divided into squares. You could buy any combination of four and get two more free, so how could we refuse? My wife chose the different fudge flavors, and there is a chocolate one for sure, a chocolate pecan, a “gooey pecan,” a “tiger butter” in the top left (vanilla, chocolate, and peanut butter), and a blueberry cheesecake fudge (bottom left). The sweet fudge lady would cut off little sample slivers, and I sampled key lime pie and banana pudding fudge. Both were good, but too rich to get entire slices of, on top of everything else. She warned me I might not like the banana pudding fudge, but I sure showed her!

Anyway, these are ridiculously rich, so I know we will make them last. We might even freeze some, forget about them for a while, and then have a pleasant surprise when we rediscover them days or probably weeks later.

The very first thing that tempted Doctor Professor Ma’am was a box of six pecan pralines. I suggested we do one loop around the store first to get the lay of the land before we start grabbing everything, and that’s when she found individual pecan pralines at the fudge counter. She was thrilled to be able to just get one, rather than a six-pack, with all the other stuff we chose. I broke off one little morsel, and it was almost cloyingly sweet and intensely rich.

Since I regularly review chips in my series of Tight Chips features here on The Saboscrivner, I couldn’t resist grabbing a few small bags of classic, barbecue, and hot Buc-ee’s chips. I don’t know how they’ll be, but I got ’em.
A sample guy was giving out samples of the barbecue-flavored Baked Chees-ee Curls, the Buc-ee’s version of Cheetos, and they were good enough to bring home a small bag. I’m surprised Frito-Lay hasn’t come out with a barbecue Cheetos flavor, in all these decades.

And we couldn’t go all the way to Buc-ee’s without grabbing a bag of Beaver Nuggets, one of the most famous (infamous?) and recommended snacks from fellow travelers. These things are unbelievably good. Crunchy, toffee-sweet, buttery, salty. Imagine Corn Pops cereal, but a million times better in every possible way. Neither of us had ever tried them before, but I figured she would love them, and I was right. As for me, I can eat a whole bag of chips standing up in my kitchen without even thinking about what I’m doing, but the Beaver Nuggets are so much richer, heavier, and more substantial than chips, I was perfectly content after just crunching on a few of them.
The Buc-ee’s Nug-ees on the right are a “Bold ‘n’ Spicy” version of the sweet, crunchy Beaver Nuggets. Their texture is softer, though — more like puffy Cheez Doodles that you can easily crush between your tongue and the roof of your mouth. They are well-dusted with spicy, cheesy orange powder that is spicier than regular Cheetos or Cheez Doodles, but much less spicy than Flamin’ Hot Cheetos. I can only imagine combining the two varieties in a bowl as some kind of decadent snack mix.

Finally, I grabbed two large boudain [sp] sausage links from a freezer case, and I got the small package of sliced smoked venison sausage at the jerky counter. Those were $5 and $4.40 respectively — cheaper than I expected. I haven’t tried them yet, but my hopes are high.

Our first trip to Buc-ee’s was both physically and mentally draining. It is a lot to process, and if you arrive hungry and like to try new foods and snacks, you can get yourself in a bit of trouble there, as we did. But it’s such an overwhelming experience, somewhere between the food halls in cosmopolitan cities like Philadelphia or Seattle and a Southern Walmart on Black Friday. I suspect that if we ever return, the novelty and mystery will have worn off, so we can quickly grab a few favorites and rush out, without feeling the need to see and try everything, like we did this time. Trader Joe’s definitely feels like that now, after breaking the bank on my first-ever visit so many years ago, but now just running in and out for a few staples while dodging the mobs. Novelty fades. Newness wears off. That’s why I constantly seek it out and share it here, with YOU.

But beyond the novelty of new sandwiches, snacks, and sodas, Buc-ee’s also felt like the kind of roadside attractions that used to line America’s highways and byways — bemusement parks that drew cross-sections of society away from their homes and out of their cars, those in-between places that made the journey so much more interesting (and often weirder) than the destination, before every highway exit started to feature the same corporate fast food restaurants and chain stores.

Being in a new job in academia where I no longer work directly with our diverse student body, and generally avoiding crowds and social situations for the past two years, this was the most people I had been around in a while — and such people! There were exhausted families, bored teenagers, leather-clad bikers, swaggering cowboy types, beachgoers, retirees, active-duty military men and women in uniform, actual Goths (in broad daylight, in Daytona Beach!), a guy who looked like Gung-Ho from G.I. Joe, and so many tattoos, with a particularly large amount of spider webs on elbows. The two of us only noticed one guy in an overtly political T-shirt, and we seemed to be the only two people still wearing masks. Stefon would have had a field day. But everyone was passing through Buc-ee’s on their way somewhere, fueling themselves up before or after they fueled up their cars, or stopping to use the gleaming, spotless restrooms (which are indeed glorious, living up to all the hype).

I wondered where that sea of sweaty people was off to, and how many had made the pilgrimage to Buc-ee’s as their ultimate destination, as we had, rather than just a rest stop along the way to someplace else. Well, stalwart Saboscrivnerinos, I can tell you that Buc-ee’s is definitely worth a stop — at least once — but don’t expect to get any rest there.