Category: Fusion

Aurora

To my dozens of regular readers, I apologize for accidentally publishing this piece last week, while it was still an incomplete draft.  I unpublished it immediately, but any subscribers would have automatically received an unfinished version, and I regret that.  That’s a rookie mistake, and you really hate to see it!

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Aurora (https://aurorarestaurantorlando.com/) is a beautiful restaurant located inside the Celeste Hotel, standing in front of the University of Central Florida in East Orlando, at the intersection of University Boulevard and Alafaya Trail.  I recently took my wife to dinner at Aurora, the first time for both of us, and we had an incredible experience that left us yearning for more.  Executive Chef Mike Trudnak is a CIA graduate (the good CIA, the Culinary Institute of America), and he has created one of the most exciting menus I’ve encountered in the Orlando area in a long time.  We will definitely return and hopefully become regulars, especially since Chef Trudnak changes the menu seasonally.

I had bugged my wife to try Aurora for years, but the impetus for us to finally make it there back in July was Bite 30, the annual midsummer event in which some Orlando restaurants offer an optional prix fixe menu where you can get an appetizer, an entree, and a dessert for the reasonable fixed price of $38.  (It started out years ago at $30, hence the name, but I get it, food costs more, and I don’t begrudge restaurants having to raise their prices to stay afloat.)  It’s a fantastic way to try new restaurants and sample several different dishes that you might never otherwise order.

I absolutely love that younger generations are drinking less, encouraging more and more restaurants to offer mocktails on their drink menus.  Neither my wife nor I drink alcohol, but she likes the experience of getting a  nice mixed drink in mocktail form.  This was the Asteroid, with muddled blueberries and blackberries, lemon lime soda, and simple syrup, and garnished with fresh mint leaves.  She said it was delicious.

Even though it wasn’t part of the Bite 30 menu, I suggested we get the bread service, with fresh, fluffy, pillowy-soft yeast rolls.  These were awe-inspiring.  If you’ve ever bought frozen Sister Schubert’s yeast rolls or tried the versions at Texas Roadhouse, those are fine, but these are a million times better, and not just because I’ve been eating low-carb lately.  I can’t rave about these yeast rolls enough. 

The bread service came with honey butter and house herb butter, both whipped for smooth and easy spreading.  They were great (show me some bad butter… I’m waiting!), but the rolls were so perfect, they didn’t even need butter.

The beet and goat cheese summer salad was on the appetizer list for Bite 30, but even though there were appetizers that appealed to each of us more, we were both very intrigued by this salad.  Our lovely and patient server Alura told us that we could order a half-portion of the salad and the kitchen would even split it for us, so we could each try everything.  That was the perfect solution to a first-world problem, and we were so grateful to her for letting us know.

So this beautiful plating is half of the half-portion!  The salad contains local baby greens, paper-thin sliced cucumber, heirloom tomatoes, pickled fennel, watermelon radish, baby beets, sorrel, sunflower seeds, hibiscus, and goat cheese puffs, with a wee pitcher of honey thyme vinaigrette dressing.  What a masterful salad, as beautiful as it was tasty.  We both love beats and goat cheese, and I’m always intrigued by interesting dressings because I eat so many salads at home.  This did not disappoint.

The baked puffs, airy and crispy at the same time, really did have goat cheese baked inside!

We both love raw tuna, and my wife chose these gorgeous tuna tostadas as her Bite 30 prix fixe appetizer.  They contained ponzu-marinated Ahi tuna, smashed avocado, aioli cabbage slaw, wakame (an edible seaweed), and pickled red onion on the top of the crunchy fried tostada discs.  They were a little messy to eat, but so worth it.

As for me, as a middle-aged man, I don’t get that many opportunities to eat an entirely new meat for the first time in my life, so I couldn’t resist the allure of camel empanadas!  Yes indeed, these golden-brown empanadas, fried to perfection, contained ground camel meat, seasoned with vadouvan curry, onions, peppers, and garlic.  What the heck is vadouvan curry, you ask?  Well, I didn’t know either, but I’m a librarian, so I looked it up.  As usual, Serious Eats had the answer — a sweet and smoky French-influenced blend of toasted spices, with shallots, onions, garlic (sometimes), fenugreek, chile, cumin, and curry leaves.
They were served with whipped feta  cucumber tzatziki dipping sauce.  Everything was so good.  As Jim Gaffigan once said, there’s no such thing as a bad empanada, and he was right.

Here’s a rare look inside a camel empanada!

My wife ordered the grilled beef filet medallions as her entree, a dish that would have cost $58 just by itself on the regular menu!  They were served on a bed of carrot puree with asparagus, fondant potatoes (the two brown puffs at 1:00 and 7:00), and the brown sauce is a peppercorn demi-glace.  Her only complaint was that she asked for them rare and they were cooked well beyond rare, but she still liked them a lot.

And since I was having a hard time deciding, I asked her what her second choice would be, so I could order that one.  She said she was curious about the tableside finished eggplant parmesan, so of course I ordered it so we could share.  The Italian-breaded eggplant cutlet looked a little naked, despite being topped with balsamic spheres and micro basil.  The description didn’t mention it came with any pasta, so I was pleasantly surprised to see a bed of thick sheets of (no doubt freshly made) pappardelle underneath it. 

But hey, what’s this?  A second server came to the table, carefully holding a sizzling skillet of San Marzano tomato vodka sauce topped with melty broiled burrata and parmesan cheeses, meant to pour over the eggplant at tableside!

I never record video on The Saboscrivner food blog, because nobody wants to watch me eat, plus I have a face for radio and a voice best suited for print media.  So you’ll have to believe me that it was a nice little production of the sauce and cheese sliding out of that hot pan onto my eggplant, but you don’t get to see it in action.  You can imagine, though.  I NEVER order eggplant  parm at restaurants (I have two talented friends who made the best versions I’ve ever had in their own kitchens), but this was a particularly nice one, especially with the whole “dinner and a show” aspect. 

For dessert, my wife got the flourless chocolate torte, with dark chocolate ganache, strawberry sorbet, and fresh strawberries.  Me not being a big chocolate eater, it would never have occurred to me to order this, but I tried a small morsel, and I loved not only the rich, intense, chocolatey flavor, but also the smooth texture.  It’s gluten-free, too!

I chose the lemon and wild berry cake because I always love any citrusy desserts.  The small cake was about the size of a hockey puck, rather than a slice from a larger cake.  It was topped with blueberry compote, a mountainous dollop of fresh whipped cream, and a beautiful hibiscus flower.

Here’s a better angle so you can see more of the blueberry compote on top and all the berries baked inside.

We went back to Aurora this past weekend for Magical Dining, when Orlando-area restaurants offer a similar fixed-price menu for either $40 or $60, and part of each bill goes to worthy charities like OCA (Opportunity, Community, Ability), which empowers individuals with autism and other developmental differences.  (Aurora’s menu was $40.)  This event is always scheduled for mid-August through September, historically one of the slower times of the year for restaurants, since kids are back in school and tourism decreases.  Just like Bite 30, it’s a great opportunity to try new dishes at new restaurants, or to go back to old favorites, and my wife was excited to return to Aurora.  Hopefully after reading this review, you might be excited to go there too, with several weeks left to go during Magical Dining.

The Magical Dining menu was very similar to the Bite 30 menu, but I tried my best to try different things this time.  My wife got the beet and goat cheese summer salad for her appetizer again, because she loved it that much, but I got something I hoped she would enjoy as well: the jackfruit “tostachos.”  This was a platter of crispy tostones (fried green plantains, not sweet or soft like maduros, which are ripe plantains), topped with shredded, roasted, and barbecue-seasoned jackfruit, pickled red onion, heirloom tomato salad, and adobo mayo ketchup.  I wasn’t sure what it was going to be like, but it was delicious, and it was a much larger portion than the other appetizer I was considering, the Mexican arancini.  There were actually five separate topped “tostachos” (like tostone-nachos, get it?), but I gave my wife one before snapping this photo. 
The mayo-ketchup was a nice touch, since that’s a common dipping sauce for tostones at Puerto Rican restaurants.  And the jackfruit had a similar consistency to shredded barbecue chicken, even though most people wouldn’t mistake it for chicken.  I can see it being a godsend for any vegetarians and vegans who used to eat chicken and miss the whole experience.

My wife was drawn to the same grilled beef filet medallions, but this time, they were cooked perfectly rare, as she requested, and I thought this photo came out better.

But I switched it up and ordered a real Florida Man fusion dish: alligator fried rice, with marinated and cornstarch-fried Louisiana gator, tamari orange sauce, stir-fried vegetables (lots of snow peas in there), and sesame  seeds.  Alligator sure seems like a novelty food — something tourists have to try when they visit Florida or Louisiana — but I can’t help but be drawn to it every few years, just because I crave novelty just like anyone else.  If I didn’t know it was alligator, I’d probably think it was fried chicken, but it is not as tender as chicken.  Other than the fried gator nuggets and the sweet orange sauce, this reminded me of the fried rice I make at home, which was somehow a confidence-booster.   I’m extra-glad I didn’t get the Mexican arancini appetizer, because that would have been two rice dishes in one meal, and that would be unhinged!

Creatures of habit that we are, we defaulted to the same desserts as last time, because they were so damn good.  She got the flourless chocolate tarte with dark chocolate ganache and strawberry sorbet again, and it was just as good this time:

And I got the lemon and wild berry cake again, because it is probably in the Top Five restaurant desserts I’ve ever had.  But this time, I was so full, I asked for it to go, and they were kind enough to pack up the fresh whipped cream and blueberry compote in separate little plastic ramekins.

Well, we have every intention of returning to Aurora in the future, even when they aren’t doing special fixed-price menus.  I think of it as a “special occasion” restaurant, even though they have perfectly normal menus and even serve breakfast every weekday until 11 AM, plus brunch on the weekends.  There aren’t a lot of “nicer” restaurants in East Orlando — just the Cooper’s Hawk chain in Waterford Lakes, the casual Wine 4 Oysters, and Aurora, and this is definitely our favorite.  It’s so nice, but not a stuffy or intimidating sort of nice.  Bring a date, bring your parents, bring out-of-town guests, and you’ll have a grand time.  Just show up for breakfast or lunch on a regular, normal day, and you’ll really enjoy it, but don’t miss that Magical Dining menu.  You have a few more weeks to catch the prix-fixe options, and I promise you won’t regret it.

Mae Tao and Son’s Kitchen

Orlando’s newest, hottest restaurant is Mae Tao and Son’s Kitchen (https://www.mtskitchen.com/).  Located in the food court of Lotte Plaza Market, the sprawling Asian supermarket at  3191 West Colonial Drive, Orlando, FL 32808 (on the corner of John Young Parkway), this venture from married couple Brittney Keophoxay-Lam and Dan Lam serves Laotian and Cambodian (Khmer) cuisines.  Orlando has had one Laotian restaurant for many years (Sticky Rice, which I haven’t been back to in far too long, come to think of it), but this is the first-ever Cambodian restaurant to open here, and it started out as a food truck before moving into its permanent location in the Lotte food court.  They were in a soft opening phase for the past week, and they had their grand opening yesterday.  Now that Mae Tao and Son’s Kitchen is officially open, the hours are Tuesday through Sunday, 11 AM to 8 PM. 

The menu is on the website, as well as on the illuminated big screens above the booth, and believe me, my wife and I studied it in advance.  I got there shortly after it opened today, and I ordered a bunch of food to bring home to share with her.  I always keep a big “heat bag” in my car for bringing takeout food home, and everything was still hot when I got back home.

We started out with an order of roti, those crispy, flaky fried flatbreads that came with pickled cabbage (more about this later) and a creamy, mildly spicy house-made curry dipping sauce.  If you’ve ever been to Hawkers, you probably know and love roti, and I’ve even bought very similar frozen ones, but these tasted freshly made.   

We were both intrigued by this cured salmon laap salad.  I am never a fan of cooked salmon, but I love raw salmon (one more reason I may be a bear, besides looking like one), and one of my favorite foods is cold-smoked, thin-sliced nova salmon, so I was curious about this version of cured salmon.  The website says the slices of cured salmon are tossed with herbs (there was a lot of fresh mint, in addition to crunchy red and green onions), toasted rice powder, lime, and traditional Lao seasonings.  It was served with some sliced cucumbers and a nice-sized portion of sticky rice, which I thought my wife would love, even if she wasn’t into the salmon.  Well, she loved the sticky rice (she had only ever had sweet sticky rice before, in Thai desserts), and she surprised me by not only liking the cured salmon, but liking it more than I did.  I generally love tangy, sour, acidic flavors, and I fell in love with the Thai “meat salad” larb when I first discovered it last year (at Isan Zaap Thai Cafe).  I wondered if this “laap” salad would be similar to larb, especially with the toasted rice powder and lime juice, but this particular recipe had a fermented funkiness I wasn’t expecting, which made me wonder if fish sauce was one of those traditional Lao seasonings.  I did appreciate that the salmon still had that nice raw texture and wasn’t “cooked” by the lime juice, the way salmon comes in ceviche.  That said, I don’t regret ordering or trying it!

This was kuy teav, a Cambodian noodle soup made with a Wagyu beef broth, tender (and chewy!) beef meatballs, and flat rice noodles, topped with fresh herbs, shallots, and crispy fried garlic.  I also paid small upcharges to have quail eggs, beef tripe, and a braised boneless beef rib added to the soup.  My wife and I both love Vietnamese pho, that ubiquitous beef noodle soup that maybe should become the official dish of Orlando (hey, it makes more sense than honey nougat glacé!), and I really wanted to compare and contrast this new soup to pho, since they sounded similar at the most surface level.   Like all the best pho spots, Mae Tao and Son’s packaged the broth on the side, so it wouldn’t turn the tender noodles to mush on my drive home.  
I liked all the ingredients in this kuy teav soup, even the addition of beef tripe, despite not always enjoying the texture of it in pho.  I thought the broth was more delicately flavored than the stronger flavor of pho broth, but maybe it’s because I’ve only tried it this one time, and it didn’t come with any additional condiments or seasonings that way every Vietnamese restaurant allows diners to customize their pho.  I loved the meatballs and quail eggs, though.  (I keep a few cans of quail eggs in the pantry at home because I like to pickle them in the fridge for quick protein snacks.  Yes, you can buy peeled, hard-boiled quail eggs in cans at Asian markets!)

Mae Tao and Son’s Kitchen is definitely a fusion restaurant, devoted to winning over new fans who are unfamiliar with Laotian and Cambodian flavors.  In addition to everything else we tried, we got two of their sandwiches, which are huge and beautiful and served on toasted brioche buns, served with the cut side up because they are so photogenic.  Longtime readers and anyone who knows me in real life know how much I love a good sandwich, and these sandwiches are designed to be perfect gateways to introduce those unfamiliar eaters to these two new cuisines.  (I still have fond memories of my first introduction to Filipino cuisine, which I now love, from the fusion dishes at the long-gone Taglish, a former tenant of the Lotte Plaza Market food court.)

This was the BBQ tiger beef “sando,” smoked beef in a crying tiger Lao-style barbecue glaze, layered with delicious black garlic aioli, jeow som cabbage, and fresh greens.  I was completely unfamiliar with jeow som, but I did a bit of research, and it is a Lao dipping sauce made with fish sauce (A-HA!), herbs, fresh lime juice, garlic, sugar, chopped cilantro, and peppers.  So the finely shredded red cabbage was tossed in this dipping sauce, making it like a sweet, sour, funky, crunchy slaw.

One thing my wife and I were surprised to discover on this sandwich that wasn’t listed in the ingredients was a large hash brown potato patty, which was a really nice touch.  I don’t know why more places don’t put those into sandwiches!  Anyway, this was a huge hit with both of us.

And this was maybe my favorite thing of all, the sweet and sour tamarind “sando,” with crispy panko-breaded and fried chicken thigh cutlets tossed in a sweet and sour tamarind glaze, topped with more of that black garlic aioli, jeow som cabbage, and fresh greens.  There is A LOT going on in both of these sandwiches, but in a good way.  Over the past three months, my wife has suddenly become a far more adventurous eater.  I’ve always loved trying new things, but she has started sharing my enthusiasm for food, even as I’ve been slowly eating less, eating healthier, and losing weight since the start of this year.  (Today was a bit of an exception, obviously.)  She never even cared for sandwiches before, mostly because she doesn’t like different food touching and usually tries to avoid bread, but she gave both of these sandwiches a fair chance and ended up liking the BBQ tiger beef more.  I was happy that she was all in on this new alimentary adventure with me.

So even though you’re probably going to be seeing these stunning sandwich cross-sections in your socials a lot over the next few weeks, I wanted to publish this review ASAP, while the details were still fresh in my head and the flavors were still dancing on my tongue and in my memory.  You should make your way to Lotte Plaza Market ASAP, because it’s still a super-nice Asian supermarket with something for everyone, and it’s still a lot less crowded and chaotic than H-Mart, a year after the latter opened.  And while you’re picking up your staples, sauces, seafood, and snacks, stop by the food court and give Mae Tao and Son’s Kitchen a try.  If you’re still on the fence, you would probably love Laotian and Cambodian food if you like Thai flavors.  It’s not a fully accurate comparison, but it might be the most familiar to the uninitiated.  The sandwiches were my favorite by far, but you really can’t go wrong.  I didn’t get to meet Brittany or Dan (and they would have no idea who I am anyway), but they’re off to an amazing start with Orlando’s hottest restaurant.  And as you can tell, this place has everything.

Kaya

Kaya (https://www.kayaorlando.com/) is an upscale Filipino restaurant in Mills 50, Orlando’s best foodie neighborhood.  It is owned and operated by Chef Lordfer Lalicon and General Manager Jamilyn Salonga Bailey, who first made names for themselves with Kappo in Orlando’s East End Market food hall, then launched their award-winning omakase sushi restaurant Kadence.  I have not been lucky enough to go to either yet, but I’ve been aware of them for the longest time, and they seem like incredibly nice, hard-working, talented people who deserve all their accolades and local love.  Kaya first opened in 2022, and while I’ve been wanting to try it ever since, I finally made it there for the first time a few weeks ago.  Better late than never, because I had an unforgettable experience that I’ve been replaying in my head ever since.

I was actually meeting a friend for dinner on a rare weeknight I was off work: someone I also consider a mentor and a role model, Amy Drew Thompson, the food writer for the Orlando Sentinel.  This was my second time meeting Amy Drew in real life, and she is a delightful person who is so nice, so knowledgeable, and an amazing writer.  Kaya is one of her favorite local restaurants, and I was thrilled she was willing and able to meet me there.  Of course everyone at Kaya knew her, because she does so much for Orlando’s local food scene.  Jami came by to check on us a few times, and even Chef Lalicon (who everyone calls “Chef Lo”) popped out of the kitchen.  We sat at the bar, and the two bartenders, Daniel and a nice lady whose name I’m blanking on, took wonderful care of us.

They started us out with a mocktail called Hiraya, with white peony and marigold tea, pineapple juice, and lime juice, sprinkled with Sichuan peppercorns.  It was so refreshing!  It started with the unmistakable sweet taste of pineapple, but that quickly faded to something more botanical.  I’ve never tasted anything like those tea flavors, but it tasted like my wife’s shampoo smells (in a good way). 

The first dish to come out was Lumpiang Shanghai, an order of three very long, very crispy spring rolls, stuffed with seasoned pork and chicken and served with hibiscus sweet chili sauce.  I knew these as lumpia, and I’ve had them before (including when a very sweet student made them and brought me some, years ago), but with all due respect to her, I’ve never had anything close to these.  They set the tone for a multi-course meal where each dish was the most interesting thing I had ever tasted, until the next one came along and supplanted it.   

Kinilaw is a raw fish-based dish somewhat reminiscent of ceviche in Latin American countries, except where ceviche uses citrus juices to “cook” the fish, kinilaw utilizes vinegar for a similar purpose.  This gorgeous kinilaw incorporated madai, the Japanese word for red sea bream, a whole new fish I had never tasted before (although some of my research tells me the term is used interchangeably with red snapper, usually when it’s served as sushi).  Delicate raw slices of the madai were served with peaches, paper-thin slices of crunchy radish, coconut, and chili flakes, all arranged artfully on separate little crispy islands of puffed rice.  You can see five little radish slices, each one topping a piece of the madai, and there’s puffed rice under each one.  You would scoop up the whole little stack, and it is a perfect bite of food with so many textures and flavors.  Chef Lo used pinakurat, which is a spiced coconut vinegar (made from coconut sap).  I’ve bought the Suka Pinakurat brand before, at Orlando’s many Asian markets, since I love experimenting with different vinegars almost as much as I love mustards, but I never dreamed anyone could use it to create a dish on this level of complexity and beauty. 

This beautiful dish was Bicol Express mussels, served in a broth of coconut cream, Thai chilis, shallot, garlic, and bagoong, served with thick slices of pandesal toast for dipping in the rich broth.  I love mussels in any form, and this dish was the most unique way I’ve ever eaten them.  Bicol Express is a Filipino dish traditionally made with cubes of pork, rather than one of the best bivalves.

Bagoong, by the way, is a Filipino condiment made of fermented shrimp or krill cured in salt, which makes a  salty, savory, umami flavor.  It sounds intense and funky, but I didn’t notice anything intense or funky standing out to distract from the mussels or their creamy, spicy, coconutty broth.  But I like intense and funky!  (I’ve been told that I AM intense and funky!)

I wrote about pandesal, literally “bread of salt,” when I reviewed the Filipino-American fusion bakery-cafe The Baker’s Son in Kissimmee, this past December.  It is some of the most delicious bread I’ve ever tasted, similar to buttery brioche, Japanese milk bread, and French pain de mie, sharing their subtle sweetness.   As I’ve gotten older, and especially as I’ve cut way back on carbs, sometimes I just really appreciate good toast, and this pandesal toast was no joke, especially when used to sop up the broth and flex a couple of mussels.   

This was Ningang’s rigatoni, a take on the Filipino style of spaghetti, which is traditionally served with cut-up hot dogs and Spam in a sweet tomato sauce.  On my one trip to the Filipino fried chicken chain Jollibee, I was most excited to try a side order of that spaghetti, but I didn’t think it was anything special.  Kaya’s menu describes their version of the dish as “Filipino beef Bolognese, Spam, aged gouda, a touch of sweetness, a lot of love.”  You can taste the love in it, along with in everything else Chef Lo makes.  I love a good pasta dish, especially a meat sauce, and I really loved this rigatoni.  I would have a hard time returning to Kaya and not ordering this every time (among other things, natch).

I’ve written often about how one of my favorite meats is oxtail, whether it’s in Jamaican or Trinidadian cuisine, American soul food, or even in a steaming bowl of Vietnamese pho.  I was curious about trying Kaya’s oxtail kare kare, served in a rich peanut sauce with eggplant, bok choy, and a little dipping bowl of bagoong (in the top right, so you can see it by itself), but I’ve never tried or even seen oxtail like this.  Usually eating it is a messy affair, as you’re holding the irregularly shaped bone segments and chewing the tender meat and unctuous fat off them, and the bones are slippery enough that they can slip right out of your hands and go flying.  If my dad ever dared to eat oxtail, he would probably add it to his list of foods to not eat on a date, including most other hand-held meat with bones, and anything you have to “fight with” too much — crab legs that need to be cracked, shrimp that need to be shelled, and so forth.  But Chef Lo deboned all that rich meat and pressed it into a brick, then seared the outside to crispy perfection.  It was not only delicious and not only gorgeous, like everything else we were experiencing at Kaya, but he made it EASY.The oxtail kare kare was served with a side of buttery garlic rice called sinangag, which you must order separately (for $5) if your entree doesn’t come with it.

Because I was dining with a culinary luminary, Jami and Chef Lo sent us out these gambas: huge Cape Canaveral white shrimp, served with the heads on as well as the tails, in rich garlic butter, kalamansi verde, and preserved lemon.  Now these were messy, but what a festival of flavors and textures and colors! 
Kalamansi (sometimes called calamansi or calamondin) is a small, round citrus fruit, a hybrid of a kumquat and a Mandarin orange, and their juice is used in a lot of Filipino recipes.  Ripe ones are orange, but because the ones used in this recipe were kalamansi verde (green), they added sour notes because they weren’t ripe yet, perfectly balancing the richness of the garlic butter.  My wife says I love sour and tangy flavors more than anyone she’s ever met, which is one big reason I’m so crazy about Filipino cuisine.  (I also jokingly call myself the “acidic Jew” because of this.)  I have enjoyed kalamansi juice in cool, refreshing beverages before, including from the aforementioned The Baker’s Son (not that different from lemonade or limeade), and after a dear friend with a green thumb hooked me up with kalamansi from her own garden, I squeezed enough juice out of them to make my favorite dessert ever, a variation of Atlantic Beach pie.  (If you’re curious, drop me a line, sweet-toothed Saboscrivnerinos!)

Speaking of dessert, we were about to be blown away by the creativity of Kaya’s talented pastry chef, Chef Clarice Lam.  This was her Silvana Alaska, based on beloved Filipino cookies called Silvanas: two cashew-meringue wafers with a layer of buttercream between them, coated with cookie crumbs.  Chef Lam’s show-stopper was a gluten-free dessert with cashew meringue, ube French buttercream, blueberry compote, a dome-like layer of toasted Swiss meringue (hence the “Alaska” part, like the classic old-timey dessert baked Alaska), tiny cubes of blueberry jellies, and surrounded by a sweet, creamy moat of ube crème anglaise.By the way, ube is a purple yam that is definitely having a moment, being used in all kinds of desserts.  My wife loves the ube soft serve ice cream at Sampaguita Filipino Ice Cream, mere moments away from Kaya, but I’ve never had a dessert of this level of complexity, with or without ube.

Once we split into the meringue dome, this is what the Silvana Alaska looked like inside.  (I think my photo looks like a big fish opening its mouth, with the blueberry jelly cube as its eye, but that was not my intention.)

I am so proud of my wife, who has been trying all kinds of new foods lately.  Even though she wasn’t with us at this dinner (arguably having even more fun than we were, seeing her beloved Tori Amos in concert), I selected another tempting dish to bring home for her to enjoy later.  We both love squid ink pasta (I call it “Goth pasta”), and this was Kaya’s squid ink pancit: house-made spaghetti noodles topped with calamari rings, adobo sauce, black garlic aioli, and pandesal bread crumble.  It was magnificent.  We both sampled it later that night, after I picked her up from the concert, and she got two more whole portions out of it the next day.

Folks, I cannot stress how awe-inspiring this meal was.  I rarely go out to dinner because of my odd work schedule, but if Kaya was open for lunch (it isn’t), I’m sure I would have tried it years ago.  Instead, I’m late to the party, but this was, without a doubt, the absolute #1 best meal I’ve ever eaten in my 22 years in Orlando, and in the Top Five meals of my entire life.

I can tell you three of the others right now:

    • Babbo in NYC for our honeymoon in 2009, before we knew what a shit Mario Batali was,
    • Chef Michael Solomonov’s elevated Ashkenazi Jewish restaurant Abe Fisher in Philadelphia in 2023, which closed not long after our visit up there to see Le Tigre, so I never got around to writing about it, and
    • Chef Marcus Samuelsson’s Red Rooster Overtown in Miami, before seeing De La Soul in 2025.

But I was wowed by every part of the Kaya experience: not just the once-in-a-lifetime dishes my friend/mentor and I shared, but the professionalism of our bartender-servers, Jami’s warmth and kindness, the decor, the unbridled creativity of Chef Lo and Chef Lam, and the way the whole place — the whole experience — feels like a labor of love and a way of sharing a cuisine and a culture that too many Americans have yet to experience.  The website lists Kaya’s values with their names in Tagalog, and I really needed to share these, because you don’t see restaurants with a mission statement all that often, and they really exemplify all these beautiful, noble, lofty ideals:

    • Pamilya: We treat our team and guests like family. We practice radical hospitality so that our guests feel a sense of belonging and ease. We create space to be present for our families.
    • Kapwa + Bayanihan: We care deeply about community. We treat one another with love, look out for each other, and lift one another up. We build a model that allows us to be full, whole humans in right relationship with one another.
    • Utang Na Loob: We respect and honor our community, elders, and ancestors, as well as the land and its resources. We take a no/low-waste, sustainable approach, and we celebrate the beauty and richness of our heritage.
    • Mapanlikha: We move from a place of possibility, learning from the past and our experiences while actively creating our vision for the future. We pay close attention to how we can constantly improve while shaping the narrative of what’s possible.

Nothing about this epic experience was “mid” or forgettable, nor was it snooty or snobby or inaccessible.  Nobody was going through the motions.  Even with my own hang-ups about fine dining (that it isn’t meant for people like me), I never felt like an impostor or a sellout or a disappointment to my parents.  It was a close to perfect as a meal could be, and I had a blast!  Kaya has clearly earned its Michelin Green star for sustainability, and deserves to be in that rarified pantheon of top restaurants in Orlando, if not all of Florida, but I feel like it deserves a regular star as well, if not two.  By the way, according to the website, “kaya” means capable in Tagalog, and “kaya natin” means we can.   They are beyond capable, and not only can they, but they do.

And as much as I hoped to return to Kaya sooner rather than later, I surprised myself by returning just a few weeks later — yesterday, in fact!  But it wasn’t for another dinner, not this time.  Instead, Executive Pastry Chef Clarice Lam hosts an event called Kapé Kaya, a daytime bakery concept featuring her awe-inspiring pastries, every Saturday, from 9:30 AM until 12 PM.  I’ve seen pictures of her past creations, but this was a rare treat: the second of three Kapé Kaya events where she teams up with another local restaurant hero: Chef Tyler Brunache of SmokeMade Meats + Eats, my favorite barbecue restaurant in Orlando that won Michelin Bib Gourmand awards for “good quality, good value cooking” in 2025 and 2026.

This was like when Jack White teamed up with Norah Jones… or when Jack White teamed up with Alison Mosshart from The Kills… or when Jack White teamed up with Q-Tip from A Tribe Called Quest!  Or maybe like the too-rare team-ups between Daredevil and Captain America, a pairing that makes all the sense in the world even though you don’t automatically think of them as obvious partners.  I had to be there, so I arrived around 8:45 AM, and there were already about 30 people ahead of me, waiting in line outside Kaya.  The heat and humidity didn’t get too bad until around 9:30, but they moved things along pretty well inside.  In the meantime, we studied the menu:

Jami came outside to announce when they were finally opening up, and I couldn’t believe she recognized me after meeting me once, a few weeks ago.  (I was also somewhat incognito, wearing sunglasses and my “I Love Research” bucket hat under the baking morning sun, looking like the nerdiest rapper ever, and she still recognized me and gave me a hug.)  When I finally got in, they had all the gorgeous pastries on display on the bar, with labels and prices.  You order and pay up front, then wait for the staff to assemble your order in large pink bakery boxes. 

I thanked Chef Lam on the way out the door, and even though I had considered doing it, I refrained from doing my Anthony Hopkins-as-Hannibal Lecter impression, greeting her with “Hello, Clarice.”  She’s probably heard it before, and Mads Mikkelsen was the better Hannibal Lecter anyway, by far.  (I said what I said.)  I was on my way by 10:15, leaving me enough time to make it to donate blood in Altamonte Springs by my 11 AM appointment time.  As usual, I brought a cooler with me to keep my Kapé Kaya treats safe and cool in this awful summer heat.

Back at home, this is a close-up of my brisket bear claw, which had buttery, flaky layers like the best croissant you’ve ever had.

This was the longganisa sausage bun, and keep in mind this was all one interconnected thing!  I’ve been lucky enough to catch Chef Tyler’s longganisa sausage as a weekend special at SmokeMade, and I love how sweet and savory it is.  All his house-made sausages have a perfect crispy natural casing, and Chef Lam’s dough was kind of like a savory danish pastry, not flaky and layered like the bear claw.

I love macaroni salad and always enjoy the slightly sweet taste of surimi (imitation “krab”) in sushi and poke, so I couldn’t resist the krab macaroni salad puff pastry tart.  It was so refreshing, especially compared to the other two heavier pastries, and the tart shell was flaky and light.

Here they are on a plate, so you can see a cross-section of the brisket bear claw with all those laminated dough layers and smoked brisket, gouda cheese, pickles, and barbecue sauce inside.  Upon tearing into it, it reminded me of a cross between a croissant and the Cuban pastelitos I grew up eating in Miami, sometimes stuffed with seasoned ground beef called picadillo.

And here are my sweet choices.  One the left, I got the mango coconut croissant bibingka, because I thought it was something my wife and I would both like, whereas I figured the savory pastries above would be all mine.  This thing was so dense and rich, we’re both slowly working our way through it over 36 hours later, a bite or two at a time.  Like so many other Filipino dishes, bibingka is new to me, so I looked it up.  Serious Eats never lets me down: it is a “coconut-flavored, banana-leaf scented rice cake topped with caramelized coconut strips.”  However, not having had prior bibingka experience, I would have guessed it was more like a bread pudding, since that’s what the texture and consistency felt like to me.  I loved the mango puree on top.  It was so good, but a little goes a long way.The same could be said for Chef Lam’s “thick’em cookie,” the one thing my wife actually requested.  This is a huge cookie, even bigger than the ones from Gideon’s Bakehouse.  The edges were crispy, but the rest was soft and yielding, which I always prefer in my cookies.  There were chocolate chunks, corn flakes, and some fancy salt crystals sprinkled on top.  My wife was in heaven, and she has also been nibbling away at the cookie because you can’t just devour it.  This plate was surprisingly heavy with both of these on it.

So that was my amazing Kapé Kaya experience, just weeks after my first dinner at Kaya.  I am posting this NOW because there is one more scheduled Kapé Kaya crossover with SmokeMade Meats and Eats, and that is next Saturday morning, August 1st.  I’ll probably be seeing the next Spider-Man movie before the Internet can spoil it all for me, but all my dozens of readers should do whatever it takes to be at Kaya before the line gets too long and the heat gets too unbearable.  Spider-Man is supposed to team up with the Hulk and the Punisher, but the best team-up in Orlando is going to be happening right at Kaya, and you don’t want to miss it!

Finka Table & Tap (Miami)

Finka Table & Tap (https://www.finkarestaurant.com/) is a Cuban-Peruvian-Korean fusion gastropub in Miami.  If that sounds too good to be true, trust me — it’s real, and it’s spectacular.  My best foodie friend took me there on my a recent trip to visit him and my family down in Miami.  It is one of his favorite restaurants in the city, and he knew I would dig it too.

Finka is probably considered to be off the beaten path in Miami, far from the tony and trendy areas like Wynwood, Brickell, South Beach, and Coral Gables, but tucked away in the West Kendall suburbs.  But just like another kick-ass Miami restaurant my friend brought me to, the award-winning, Cuban-inspired barbecue paradise Smoke & Dough, which is only five minutes away, Finka is worth a trip to Kendall to discover and experience for yourself.

It has been a while since our visit, so I didn’t remember what impressive-looking cocktail my friend ordered, but he identified it as a mai tai, one of his favorite drinks.  He said it was a particularly good one, too, since Finka uses orgeat syrup.

It was your typical sweltering Miami summer day, and I have become a true lemonade connoisseur.  Finka’s lemonade hit the spot.

Finka serve croquetas de jamon from the iconic Islas Canarias Cuban restaurant in West Kendall, and they are the absolute best croquetas anywhere in Miami.  If you don’t believe me, my best foodie friend reviews Cuban cuisine and especially croquetas all over the city in his Croqueta Diaries, and he agrees.  I admire his focus, and he is an excellent food writer.  He’s brought me to the Islas Canarias ventanita before, to try croquetas straight from the source, but it felt like a bonus to be able to order them at Finka.  They are never burnt or greasy — just fried to golden-brown perfection, smoky, creamy, and rich.  A squirt from the lime wedge brought a nice acidic tang to cut the savory richness.  

We set to work sharing those as well as the malanga nachos, crispy malanga (taro root) chips smothered with ribeye picadillo, a three-cheese sauce, maduros (we both love sweet fried plantains), pink pickled onions, leche de tigre sour cream, Fresno peppers, and scallions.  It was a fusion feast. 
By the way, leche de tigre is the spicy marinating liquid left over from marinating ceviche, so don’t worry — no real tigers were milked for this sour cream.  Can you imagine?

I don’t think this is on the menu anymore, but my friend ordered the gochujang noodles, a dish with spicy sweet potato noodles, shrimp, snow peas, bok choy, squash, carrots, and mushrooms.  I didn’t try it (I avoid mushrooms), but he seemed to like it. 

I got “dak-galbi”-style chicken fried rice, with queso frito (fried cheese!), pineapples, red peppers, seasonal veggies, maduros, sesame seeds, spicy gochujang sauce (which I have become a huge fan of), and pickled cabbage.  It was hard to choose, with so many interesting dishes on the menu, but this seemed to exemplify Finka’s commitment to fusion cuisine, while a few other things seemed a little more “normal.”

I know tourists, hipsters, and bon vivants probably avoid Kendall for their grand nights out in Miami, but there are more top-notch, destination-worthy restaurants there than when I left that area for good and moved to Orlando, at the end of 2004.  My best foodie friend and I grew up in Kendall.  We survived Kendall.  Whether you’re a Miami local or just passing through for a good time, if not a long time, you could do a hell of a lot worse than venturing into West Kendall for a memorable fusion feast at Finka.  Maybe plan accordingly and hit Finka and the outstanding Smoke & Dough on the same trip — possibly dinner at one place and takeout for lunch the next day from the other!

California Grill

I’ve joked before that my wife and I are not “Disney adults” or theme park people in general.  That said, once in a while, we end up across Orlando from us on Disney property, and food is always involved on those rare occasions. Usually that means meeting visiting friends or my former co-workers out at Disney Springs, but we recently went upscale.

Every year, I task my wife with deciding where she would like to go to celebrate her birthday — anywhere she wants, the sky’s the limit.  Sometimes she wants something down to Earth, sometimes she aims a little higher.  Some years, I end up bringing in takeout or even cooking for her at home, but I leave the decision up to her and try my damnest to make her happy.  This year, she suggested a place we had never been, but both of us had always heard about: the California Grill (https://disneyworld.disney.go.com/dining/contemporary-resort/california-grill/), the high-end restaurant on the 15th floor of the Contemporary Resort at Walt Disney World.  The hotel is an example of brutalist architecture that seems like both a time capsule from the 1970s and an idea of what the future would have looked like at the time.  Along with the Polynesian Resort next door, the Contemporary was one of the two original hotels that opened when Walt Disney World opened in 1971, and believe me, it looks like it!

The Contemporary is noteworthy to me too, because it was the hotel my family stayed at for our two (count ’em: TWO!) Disney family trips when my brother and I were kids, back in the late ’80s.  My family is definitely not “of the travelers,” and trips out of Miami were exceptionally rare for us.  I realize Disney has always been a splurge and an extravagance, but it wasn’t until I moved to Orlando as an adult that I realized how big a deal it was that we stayed on Disney property, as opposed to any of the hundreds of independent, off-site hotels between Orlando and Kissimmee.  And the Contemporary, which costs and arm and a leg now, surely wasn’t cheap back then either.

A big selling point for my dad was being able to park at the hotel and not drive again the entire trip.  A futuristic monorail connects the Contemporary, the Polynesian, the Grand Floridian Resort (a super-high-end hotel that looks like a big Southern plantation, bless their hearts), and the Magic Kingdom and Epcot parks.  Of course we rode that monorail as a family, and it might have led to my lifelong love of public transportation AND tours where I can explore as much of an unfamiliar area as possible.  That monorail appealed to me more than most of the relatively pedestrian rides inside the parks (keeping in mind that we didn’t ride Space Mountain, and most of the Magic Kingdom rides back then were aimed at really little kids).  But I have digressed enough!

So to access the toney California Grill, you check in on the second floor of the hotel and take a seat until they contact you.  Then you ride a special elevator up to the 15th floor, where the restaurant is.  It is a huge dining room with a long, open kitchen and glass windows all around.  One of the major selling points is being able to watch the nightly fireworks through all the windows when they start at 8 PM.  Unfortunately, I was only able to score a reservation for 5:20, but they will let you reenter to watch the fireworks if you show your receipt from an earlier dinner.

As is typical at Disney, the service was impeccable.  That’s that “Disney magic” in action, where everyone is warm, welcoming, and helpful.  Even if I scoff sometimes about Disney, I have nothing but respect for friendly and professional service.  We got a comfortable booth (that I requested with our online reservation), and our “cast member” server, the charming Charmaine, wished my wife a happy birthday.

She explained that the California Grill serves a price fixe menu: for $89 per adult diner, each person chooses an appetizer, an entrée, and a dessert from a list of multiple options.  We had already studied the menu in advance, being studious little nerds.  A lot of dishes included mushrooms, because fine-dining chefs loooove mushrooms, but I’m always on the lookout for them — my culinary Kryptonite.

Charmaine brought us a basket of warm, freshly baked rolls, with the lightest, crispiest exterior crusts and warm, fluffy interiors.  I should have photographed a cross-section, but trust me, you would want to shrink down and curl up for the coziest nap ever inside these rolls.

They came with a board featuring soft, salted butter in that fancy shape that only higher-end restaurants use for butter and occasionally ice cream, as well as a bread dip of olive oil, tomatoes, garlic, and herbs.  As anyone who knows us might guess, my wife went for the butter and I went for the bread dip.

It wasn’t long before we received our apps.  I went out of my way to pick things I knew my wife would want to at least try, hoping to share everything.  This was the barbecue American eel roll, a sushi roll with unagi (the fresh and tender grilled eel), avocado, cucumber, “dragon sauce” (a savory, sweet, sticky brown sauce), toasted sesame seeds, and crispy garlic.  It was great.  I love sushi rolls and I always enjoy eel, but I’ve never seen one served like this, with the whole long tail of the eel. 

My wife was really excited about the farmer’s market salad on the menu, and to be fair, neither of us had ever seen a salad like this before: petit mixed greens (normal enough), roasted baby beets (we are both new to appreciating beets), poached pears (she loves pears!), pear gel (fine dining chefs love their gels!), chocolate biscotti (I had always dismissed biscotti as God’s joke on people who like cookies, but props for putting it in a salad), vanilla “pudding” (WHY is “pudding” in quotation marks?!), and citrus vinaigrette dressing.  This salad was a huge hit for her, and seeing it on the menu was probably what made up her mind about coming here in the first place.  As far as we could tell, the vanilla “pudding” looked and tasted just like vanilla pudding, hold the quotes.

My wife chose the seared halibut for her entrée… just for the halibut.  I don’t mind calling it a main course, but I don’t like “mains” on a menu and I especially don’t like “proteins.”  This lovely seared rectangular prism was served atop bourbon-brown butter risotto with a slice of fondant sweet potato, sweet potato purée (fine dining chefs also love their purées), sweet potato leaves, kale (she has been on a kale kick ever since that dinner), toasted pecans, and a cranberry vinaigrette dressing.  We both wondered if the halibut might be a little overcooked, since the texture was more firm than we expected.  I think she liked some of the components of this dish more than the fish itself.  A lot of it came home with us, and she invited me to finish it off the next day.

As for me, I chose the pan-seared lamb strip loin, since lamb is always one of my favorite meats (not “proteins”).  I requested my lamb rare, and it came back perfectly rare.  It was served with roasted root vegetables, baby brussels sprouts, beautiful thin-sliced radishes, and crispy fried parsnip chips over a bed of parsnip-celeriac Purée, with a juniper-cranberry-cabernet demi-glaze (a very rich, delicious, savory-sweet-tart reduction).  

I had to take a picture of the “back” of the dish too, because it was such a marvel to behold.  It reminded me of the artful plating at the legendary Noma restaurant in Copenhagen (not that I’ll ever go to Noma, or probably even to Copenhagen), where the food looks like little terrarium environments for wee Danish fae.  While the lamb was cooked as well as lamb can be cooked, and the demi-glace was awesome, I must admit the dish lacked the strong flavors I always seek.  It was on the bland side!

Because I had said in the reservation that we were celebrating my wife’s birthday, Charmaine brought us out a small slice of festive “funfetti” cake, which was unexpected and unnecessary, but sweet.  Very, VERY sweet.  The icing was pretty heavy and super-sweet.

For her actual dessert off the price fixe menu, my wife went with the chocolate-hazelnut tart, artfully presented with orbs of chocolate-hazelnut praline crémeux served over a long, thin chocolate shortbread cookie,  topped with candied hazelnuts and decorated with dots of espresso crème anglaise.  I didn’t try a nibble of this one, but she seemed to like it. 

I chose the lemon mousse and olive oil-poppyseed cake, which sounds a lot weirder than it actually was.  The presentation was gorgeous for the small, rectangular Meyer lemon-olive oil cake, studded with poppyseeds, topped with lemon cream, and decorated with dots of blood orange gel.  (Fancy chefs love gels!)  The pretty latticework on top was the thinnest, crispiest , most delicate sugar structure, but maybe I’m wrong, because it almost felt like a delicate, crispy cookie. 

After the hour drive down to Disney property and the long, luxurious birthday dinner, my wife didn’t feel like sticking around for the fireworks or revisiting the 1988 Saboscrivner family monorail tour, so we headed for home.  Both of us agreed that we were glad we went to the California Grill, but nothing amazed or astonished us enough to return.  This will be a true one-and-done experience for us — nothing was bad by any means, but for that kind of a schlep, and at those prices, there are old favorites we would rather return to and plenty of other restaurants to try out for future special occasions.  That said, I appreciated how pleasant they made our experience, with top-notch service and no stodgy, stuffy, precious pretentiousness.

Don’t worry, folks.  After this excursion into fine Disney dining and last week’s review of one of the best meals I’ve ever eaten (in Miami, no less!), I’ll be back to waxing poetic about sandwiches, discovering delis, and obsessing over sardines and mustards soon enough.  My vox populi is never gone for long!

Red Rooster Overtown (Miami)

This past weekend, I visited Miami, the city where I grew up but never felt at home, for the first time in a year and a half.  I caught up with my parents and brother, then hung out with my best friend.  We saw the legendary hip hop group De La Soul (my second-favorite hip hop group of all time, after A Tribe Called Quest), performing at a nice concert hall in downtown Miami.  But before that legendary concert, we also ate what turned out to be one of the best meals of my life.

The restaurant was Red Rooster Overtown (https://www.redroosterovertown.com/), one of the many restaurants created by the Ethiopian-born, Swedish-raised celebrity chef Marcus Samuelsson, who opened his first Red Rooster location in Harlem.  If you watched the Luke Cage TV series, Harlem’s badass hero for hire Luke Cage took his ladyfriend Claire Temple to eat at the original Red Rooster in season 2, episode 1.  Back when that episode dropped in 2018, I looked it up to confirm it was a real place, checked out the menu, and remembered it when I learned a second location opened in Miami in 2019.  But this was my first chance to dine there, and I’m so glad we did.

By the way, Overtown is a historic Black neighborhood in downtown Miami that has definitely undergone some gentrification in recent years.  The Red Rooster building is literally standing in the shadows of expensive-looking high-rise condos, and we saw a “Museum of Ice Cream” and a Savage X Fenty lingerie boutique nearby.  But make no mistake, this esteemed restaurant celebrates the vibrant history of Overtown and Miami’s cultural and culinary histories.  The décor inside Red Rooster Overtown features artwork and artifacts on display in the beautiful dining room that celebrate and commemorate Black culture, including original covers and pages from different editions of the Green Book, safety guides for Black motorists, framed near the hostess stand.


Right above our table, I dug a gorgeous accordion, a cool old projector, and a reference book about the Black Panthers (not the superhero, but the unfairly vilified political activist organization that did a lot of good in so many underserved communities from the late 1960s to 1982).

Unlike the original Red Rooster in Harlem, which serves “elevated” soul food, Red Rooster Overtown combines soul food with Caribbean flavors, creating a fusion menu that is a perfect microcosm for Miami itself.  Every dish on the menu looked amazing.  I literally wanted to try everything, but my dude and I did try a bunch of stuff on our first (but hopefully not last) visit.  We went to town!

We started with the best deviled eggs I’ve ever had, and I love deviled eggs.  This quartet came sprinkled with Aleppo pepper, used the most in Syrian, Turkish, and Armenian cuisine, and each egg half was garnished with a crispy chicharron, or fried pork skin.  We each got two deviled eggs, and like a good sushi roll, they were best eaten in one bite to ensure we experienced all the flavors and textures (soft and yielding, crunchy and crackly) all at once.

Next up, we shared another appetizer: cassava papas bravas.  Cassava is probably better known as yuca, a starchy root vegetable that is usually boiled or fried, not unlike potatoes, and papas bravas are a Spanish dish with fried potatoes served with really cool stuff on them, like a spicy red sauce.  I’ve tried yuca from countless Cuban and Puerto Rican restaurants, and I must admit I’ve never loved it, especially not when sweet ripe plantains (maduros) or good French fries are available.  But this dish changed my mind and made me realize the heights that a talented chef could reach with the humble yuca.

These were perfectly chewy little orbs with lightly crispy fried exteriors, almost like the love child of gnocchi pasta and tater tots.  They were served with red curry sauce, blistered tomatoes, cotija cheese (a salty, crumbly, dry Mexican cheese similar to feta or parmesan), and lime, so it was a feast of salt, fat, and acid that formed a perfect balance.  They were sublime.  Chef’s kiss, 10/10, no notes.

My buddy ordered the fried yardbird, because he likes fried chicken even more than I do.  It came with three pieces, and I got the leg, which was magnificent.  Juicy, tender, fried to perfection, crispy and well-seasoned breading, not greasy at all.  Better still, it came with chili butter, house pickles, and braised collards, which I was very tempted to order separately until we realized it came with the fried chicken.
The braised collards are made with smoked turkey, and they were so damn fine — no getting funky on the mic for this batch of collard greens!  I always order them whenever I see them on a barbecue or soul food menu, but these were the best greens I’ve ever had.  In fact, “the best _____ I’ve ever had” is a running theme for this review.

I don’t know if I am famous for my love of oxtails, but I do love oxtails, and anyone who knows me knows that.  However, my friend is not a fan, so I opted against trying the Guyanese oxtail pepper pot with sweet plantains, piquillo peppers, and coconut lime rice, even though that seems like a winning combination.  He doesn’t dig on catfish either, so I skipped the Overtown fish fry, with fried catfish, red shrimp, and oxtail fried rice.

But since I have a lot of love for other tender, unctuous, bone-in braised meats, I ordered a new dish that had recently been added to the menu, the smoked jerk short rib, served with butter bean stew and fennel slaw.  These short ribs were served sliced on top of the creamy butter bean stew, with with all the bones removed, and tender enough to cut with a fork.  They were pleasantly spiced, but not spicy.  The fennel “slaw” wasn’t much like any slaw I’ve ever had before — not creamy nor vinegary — but thin, almost shaved shreds of fennel bulb on top of the short rib slices added some crunch and herby-sweet flavor.
We both loved this one.  I must admit it wasn’t the best short rib dish I’ve ever had (that was the Montreal-style smoked short rib dish I had at Abe Fisher, an Ashkenazi Jewish restaurant in Philadelphia that closed about a month after my wife and I ate like kings there in 2023), but it was probably the second-best short rib dish I’ve ever had.

We shared a couple of sides, too.  We know how to party!  The crispy brussels sprouts with shallot vinaigrette, topped with a snow flurry of finely shredded parmigiano reggiano cheese, was a savory, tart, umami adventure.  I’m a sucker for anything with an interesting vinaigrette dressing, so that was a hit.  I wish my brussels sprouts came out that well, but now I just need to experiment more.

And the charred candied yams with chili crunch (the hottest condiment around these days, rightfully replacing old and busted sriracha) and lime aioli was another feast for the senses, as beautiful as it was delicious, and full of wild flavors and interesting contrasting textures.  I never would have ordered this one on my own, but I sure was happy to try it.

Finally, even though neither of us are the biggest dessert dudes, we split the key lime pie, which is always one of my favorite desserts anywhere.  Since my wife doesn’t care for it, I never order it when I’m with her, but this pie was yet another platinum hit.  It was served as a round tart rather than a typical slice from a larger pie, with a light graham cracker crust and topped with wonderful coconut meringue that went perfectly with the sweet, creamy, tart pie filling.  The best key lime pie I’ve ever had is right here in Orlando, at Sister Honey’s Bakery, but this key lime pie/tart was damn fine in its own right.

So that’s my rundown of Red Rooster Overtown.  I cannot rave enough about this place.  I’ve had a handful of restaurant meals where every dish and every bite is better than the last, culminating in a culinary crescendo.  The aforementioned Abe Fisher in Philly (RIP) was one of those for sure.  This was another.  Normally I would say that nothing could top a meal like that, but then we saw De La Soul, and Posdnous, Maseo, and special guest Pharoahe Monch filled that theater with love and joy.  It was a perfect meal for the occasion — soul food before De La Soul.  Upon researching more about Red Rooster to write this review, I discovered another connection: De La Soul founded The Spitkicker Collective, a group of Black musical artists and other creative people to engage in social activism, and Chef Marcus Samuelsson — the Red Rooster founder himself — also got involved.  So our evening seemed preordained.  I wonder if the group hung out and partied at Red Rooster Overtown after the show.  Regardless, I’m so glad we went there before the show, and I certainly hope to return with my friend on a future trip to Miami.

And on that note, Red Rooster Overtown also offers a weekend brunch buffet with a DJ spinning, as well as a Sunday evening buffet with live jazz, with both buffet menus on the restaurant’s website (linked at the top of my review).  Either of those would be a great excuse to go back, and buffets and jazz are two of my favorite things!

The Moderne

I guess I haven’t published a new review in about a month, since work has been keeping me so busy.  Working from home, I also haven’t been able to go out to eat quite as often, which means I’m cooking more and saving money (yet not losing any weight).  But this review is long overdue, from a date night about a month ago at one of the prettiest, swankiest, sexiest restaurant/bar/lounges in Orlando, The Moderne (https://www.themodernebar.com/) in the foodie dream district of Mills 50.  I’m sure a lot of my regular readers have already been here, but this was our first visit to The Moderne.  I had been wanting to try it for a while, since it features an eclectic menu of small plates — mostly pan-Asian dishes, but some include other international influences, ranging from Italian to Peruvian.

This was my wife’s beautiful mojito mocktail, served with a dehydrated lime slice as a garnish.  I tried a sip, and it was delicious.  The Moderne features an enticing cocktail menu, but we were both happy to see a few mocktail options for non-drinkers like us.  I guess you could call this one a “no”-jito.   My wife reminded me to mention that she first asked for a simple Shirley Temple, but the gorgeous, well-stocked bar did not have any grenadine syrup, something we both thought was odd at the time.

Our order of duck wontons came out first.  These hand-folded wonton wrappers were stuffed with shredded duck seasoned with Chinese five-spice powder and fried until crispy.  They were served with chili oil peanut sauce.  We both wished they had been served with more duck inside, even though they tasted good and were surprisingly not that oily.

This beautiful dish was the tuna kobachi, with spicy cubed tuna, avocado, Japanese-style marinated cucumbers, scallion, red tobiko, micro cilantro, and a dish of ponzu sauce for dippin’ and dunkin’.  I loved it so much.  I could eat this every day of my life and never get tired of it, although I’d hate to think of what my mercury levels would be.  It was my favorite dish that we tried, a perfect 10/10. 

Next came our chashu quesadillas, which were plated beautifully.  Quesadillas are the easiest thing to make at home, but my homemade ones never feature chashu pork, (like the kind of pork you get in a bowl of “real” (not instant) ramen), shredded cheddar and mozzarella cheeses, Japanese Kewpie mayo, chili amarillo sauce, and pickled onions.  Well, mine would have the cheeses and Barbie Dream House-pink pickled onions, but that’s where the similarities begin and end.

This was another hit with both of us: yellowtail (hamachi) ceviche, with cubes of cool, refreshing yellowtail in mango wasabi lime sauce, diced onion, serrano, red tobiko, micro cilantro, all encased in perfectly thin, crispy, delicate spheres of pani puri, the Indian street food classic (see my Bombay Street Kitchen review for authentic pani puri).  It was a gorgeous fusion experience that dazzled all of our senses.

My wife chose these miso cream noodles, which sounded like something she would love.  The dish featured thin pasta (like angel hair or vermicelli), that chashu pork again, mushrooms, miso, fried garlic, toasted bread crumbs, parmesan cheese, and scallions.  She admitted not really being into it and said it was both very rich and on the bland side — an interesting dichotomy, kind of like fettuccine alfredo from the Olive Garden (although this definitely had more flavor than that)!  She picked at it and brought most of it home, where I happily finished it after picking the mushrooms out.  I’m a pretty tolerant guy, but I have this unfortunate intolerance to mushrooms, and chefs freakin’ love throwing them into things.

I chose a different noodle dish for myself that seemed like another fragrant fusion feast: seafood pappardelle, with pappardelle pasta (wide, flat noodles that are wider than fettuccine), shrimp, tamarind Nikkei sauce (Nikkei being a Peruvian-Japanese fusion due to all the Japanese immigrants in Peru), carrots, red peppers, onions, peanuts, and a cilantro-heavy “Asian herb salad.”  It was okay.  The sauce was a little sweet and tangy, not as spicy as I had hoped, and very thin.  I thought it was odd that the dish was called “seafood pappardelle” when the only seafood in it was shrimp.  This was a last-minute choice when the server was already taking our orders, but I think I would have enjoyed one of the other noodle dishes more.  Oh well, you live and you learn!

So that was our first experience at The Moderne.  I liked it and would go back, but my wife admitted it was not one of her favorite restaurants.  Oh well, people have different tastes and like different things — that is no surprise.  My favorites were the two dishes with raw fish, which is usually one of my favorite things to eat.  (This also explains why The Moderne’s neighbor a few doors down, Poke Hana, remains one of my favorite restaurants in all of Orlando all these years later.)  I might get those again, or other raw fish options, and I would definitely try a different noodle dish on a second visit.  Plus, after dinner at The Moderne, you can go next door and have some of Orlando’s finest ice cream at Sampaguita, which is exactly what we did on this date night!

 

Pigzza

EDITOR’S NOTE: As of September 2026, Pig Floyd’s Urban BBQ has closed its location at 1326 N. Mills Avenue and consolidated with its sister restaurant Pigzza, located at 1050 N. Mills Avenue, just a few blocks away.  The new Pig Floyd’s x Pigzza will serve menu items from both restaurants.

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Pigzza (https://pigzza.com/) is described as “An Italianish joint” on its website.  The creation of Thomas Ward, the chef-owner of Orlando’s beloved Pig Floyd’s Urban BBQ, Pigzza combines Ward’s love of barbecue with Italian food, specifically pizza and pasta, the same way Pig Floyd’s combines barbecue with Latin and Asian flavors.

I met one of my best foodie friends for dinner there in May, and we shared a lot of food, as we usually do whenever we have out.  We started with a beautiful order of oven-roasted chicken wings that were crispy but very juicy and tender, not greasy at all.   The plating elevated these even further, garnishing the wings with arugula, chewy craisins, and an artistic flourish of green goddess dressing.  Not many restaurants oven-roast their wings, but I always love these as an alternative to fried versions, which are more likely to get dried out.  Glancing at the menu on Pigzza’s website, it looks like these specific wings are not available anymore, but now you have a chance to get Calabrian chili and orange double-cooked wings instead, and that sounds pretty spectacular.

We also shared the Rhode Island-style calamari, crusted with cornmeal and tossed with garlic-herb butter, spicy pickled cherry peppers and banana peppers, and fried capers.  These were terrific too.  So chewy!  Such good breading!  I always appreciate cherry peppers on or in anything.  The calamari came with tangy red sauce and garlic aioli for dipping, and dip them I did, but they were so good that they didn’t even need the condiment.

For a pizza, we chose the CBW, topped with Alabama white barbecue sauce, barbecue chicken, bacon, smoked mozzarella, candied jalapenos, cilantro, and green onions.  Usually I’m a pizza purist who prefers red sauce to “white pies,” but since we got to taste Pigzza’s red sauce with the calamari, I was happy to try something different and unique.  And this isn’t any ordinary white pie, as you can tell.  These are 12″ pizzas, more Neapolitan-style than New York, and ideal for sharing between two people.The crust was very good, but I prefer the crispier crunch of New York- and Sicilian-style pizzas.  With this CBW, it was the combination of toppings that set it over the top.  Everything was fresh, high-quality, and combined so well together.

We also shared the spicy sausage tortiglioni pasta, which I learned is very similar to rigatoni.  The pasta was tossed in a vodka sauce, so it was tomatoey and creamy all at the same time, topped with grated Parmesan cheese and fresh oregano.  The sausage had a nice heat, and my only wish was that there could have been more of it in the dish.  I could have easily eaten it all myself, but I am always happy to share food with friends.

I returned to Pigzza in late July to meet two former co-workers, right after leaving my old job after 15 years.  We started with the Rhode Island calamari again, which was just as good this time (although my photography wasn’t).  My former supervisor went to school in Rhode Island, and this calamari earned her seal of approval too.

This was the pizza she ordered for herself, topped with pepperoni, Pigzza red sauce, smoked mozzarella (the smokiness makes such a huge difference), pecorino romano cheese, oregano, and marjoram.  We didn’t share each other’s pizzas, but she seemed very happy with it.

My other colleague, a vegetarian, got a pizza that I believe is called the Big Mo.  If this is it, then it was topped with roasted mushrooms, pink pickled onions, caramelized onions, and chives, along with vodka sauce and smoked mozzarella.  She was also really happy with her choice.  It wasn’t this blurry in real life, I swear!

And perhaps saving the best for last, this was my pizza, the Meat Me at Floyd’s, named for Pig Floyd’s just up the road.  It was topped with braised beef brisket, grape jelly barbecue sauce, smoked mozzarella and cheddar cheeses, pickled onions, green onions, and cilantro.  I loved this combination, even better than the CBW I shared on my previous visit.  But if I see brisket, pickled onions, and smoked cheese, I am going to be happy no matter what.

I’ve been sitting on this review for a while, half-written, hoping to visit Pigzza for a third time.  Working from home until late these days, it is much harder for me to get to the side of Orlando with all the great restaurants clustered together, plus parking is kind of abominable there unless you arrive super-early.  I will absolutely return, but I figured I should let everyone else know about it sooner rather than later, even though by now, probably — hopefully — everybody does.  It is a fine addition to the Mills 50 District and Orlando’s pizza scene, and Thomas Ward has done it again!

 

Smoke & Dough (Miami)

I try to visit Miami at least once a year.  I always enjoy it a lot more as a visitor than I did growing up down there.  On my last trip down in late July, my BFF (best foodie friend) and I went out to two different restaurants, which were both great.  But I could not wait any longer to rave about Smoke & Dough (https://smokeanddough.com/), which just this week made the New York Times’ 2023 Restaurant List, “the 50 places in the United States that [its reporters, editors, and critics are] most excited about right now.”  It was one of only three Florida restaurants to make the prestigious list, so it is in rarified company.

Smoke & Dough (not to be confused with Smoke & Donuts BBQ, a newer Orlando restaurant) is located in West Kendall — hardly the “cool, fun, sexy” Miami you are envisioning, but a pretty typical suburban area.  However, it is totally worth the drive from wherever you may be staying (or partying) in South Florida.  It is a barbecue restaurant first and foremost, but like so many things in Miami, it blends Latin and Caribbean flavors together to set it apart.  Owners Harry and Michelle Coleman opened its doors in January 2022, next door to their previous venture, the acclaimed Empanada Harry’s Bakery and Cafe, serving savory empanadas from Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Venezuela, and Peru, as well as gourmet signature empanadas, vegan versions, and sweet ones too.  Unfortunately, Empanada Harry’s was closed when we went to Smoke & Dough for dinner, or we would have tried it as well.

But Smoke & Dough was a marvel, a singular restaurant that amazed and astonished in every way, and not just because I had just driven down from Orlando and was starving.  We started out with ultimate loaded nachos, topped with smoked pulled pork, avocado-cilantro sauce, pickled red onions, pickled jalapenos, tomatoes, cilantro, salty cotija cheese, and nata, a Brazilian dairy product that is similar to sour cream, but is a little sweeter on top of being creamy and rich.  The tortilla chips were freshly fried, and all the ingredients sang in hot harmony, backed up by spicy Latin rhythm.  These were easily some of the best nachos I’ve ever eaten in my life.

Next up we shared some cafecito-rubbed brisket.  We got three huge, thick slices of USDA Prime Angus brisket, smoked for 15 hours and rubbed with spices blended with Cuban espresso (maybe Cafe Pilon or Cafe Bustelo, the Marvel and DC of Cuban coffee).  It was so tender and juicy, with great fat marbling — not too lean or too fatty — and practically melted in my mouth.  The Cuban coffee flavor really came through and blended with the rich, smoky meat.  If you ever have a chance to try this, or anything like this, like a coffee-rubbed steak, I definitely recommend it.  The brisket came with piquant, vinegary chimichurri sauce that it didn’t even need, but it was delicious anyway, as well as more of those pickled red onions and house-made dill pickle slices that were also top-notch.

I ordered a side of platanitos to share, sweet plantains (one of my favorite foods in the world) topped with more cotija cheese and a drizzle of nata.  These were even better than they look.

Smoke & Dough only serves its smoked burgers as specials on Friday, and we were lucky enough to go there on a Friday.  These are half-pound patties made out of smoked brisket, ground in-house and served on beef tallow-toasted potato buns, accompanied by a choice of fries or cole slaw.  We could not refuse!  The only question was which burgers should we get?

Well, there were so many things on the menu we wanted to sample, including pork belly and pastrami.  Luckily for us, one of the burger specials was an al pastor burger, topped with smoked pork belly, smoked pineapple, smoked gouda cheese, pickled red onion, and chipotle mayo.  Those are all things I love on their own, so how could they go wrong combined on top of a smoked burger? 

We cut it in half to share, and it was a truly inspired burger.  The al pastor pork belly was so rich and luxurious, and the sweet, crunchy pickled onions, sweet and smoky pineapple, and tangy chipotle mayo added so much depth of flavor.  Here’s a cross-section:

And here are the fries, which were fine, but better when dipped in the house ancho chile-guava barbecue sauce (which we had to ask for, but you can also buy it by the bottle).

I was thrilled to see a Reuben burger was another option, this one topped with pastrami made from smoked, house-cured brisket, Swiss cheese, thousand island sauce, and sauerkraut.  I asked for slaw with mine, to get two kinds of cabbage on one plate (practically a salad at this point!), and to try as many things as possible.  

This was another winner — a beautiful burger with all those great Reuben ingredients.  Even though corned beef is much more common on a Reuben, I will take pastrami over corned beef pretty much any chance I get when it is an option, and this was top-notch pastrami.  It was sliced thin and had plenty of peppery bark and marbled fat.  The sourness of the sauerkraut helped break up all the salty richness, and the slaw had a nice vinegary crunch to it.

I wasn’t going to bother with dessert after a meal like that, but my buddy ordered smoked flan (something that would never even occur to me to make, much less order), and it was killer.  I usually don’t even care for flan, but this was the best flan I’ve ever eaten, and it did have a light smoky flavor.  I ended up a big flan! 

If Smoke & Dough was in some trendy part of Miami, like Wynwood or (God help us all) South Beach, it would probably have lines out the door all the time.  Instead, on a Friday night in the humble ‘burbs of West Kendall, we only waited 15 minutes for a table.  But the legend is growing, even beyond Miami, thanks to making the New York Times’ 2023 Restaurant List, and here’s your friendly neighborhood Saboscrivner, boosting that signal even further (although let’s face it, probably not that much further).

This was one of the best meals I’ve eaten in 2023, and one of the best meals I’ve ever eaten in Miami.  That’s high praise either way.  Next time you’re hitting the beach or da clubs, take a detour to 4013 SW 152nd Ave (right off Bird Road), a part of Miami you never would have ventured into otherwise.  Consider making a reservation first!  By the time you finally make it down to Smoke & Dough, you might need it.

King Cajun Crawfish

It has been over five years since I’ve eaten at King Cajun Crawfish (https://kingcajuncrawfish.com/), the Vietnamese-Cajun restaurant in Orlando’s Mills 50 district, one of our best and most diverse neighborhoods for dining.  I have always loved it, being a fan of New Orleans and its culture and culinary traditions, so I don’t know what took me so long to return.  At least I’ve been there more recently than I’ve been back to the Big Easy itself (not since 2001, sadly).

You may already be familiar with the Cajun and Creole dishes of Louisiana, but I will be didactic and point out that Cajun food is rustic and rural, a spicy stewpot of French-Acadians who left Nova Scotia and settled in the bayous of Louisiana along with Southern influences, while Creole food is more continental “city food” from New Orleans, influenced by Caribbean and European flavors, especially French.

Vietnamese-Cajun is a unique offshoot — a fusion of a fusion — and we are lucky to have several Viet-Cajun restaurants here in Orlando.  I believe King Cajun was the first, so it has always been my favorite.   Food & Wine offers a nice history of the fusion cuisine, which started with Vietnamese refugees who worked in the seafood industry in Gulf Coast Texas and Louisiana.

I recently invited a beloved professional mentor and friend out to lunch, something we’ve been meaning to do for almost 15 years but never gotten around to.  She is a sophisticated and brilliant woman who hails from New Orleans, so I figured King Cajun would be a good choice.  I see it as pretty authentic, but I was glad she said the same, without any prompting.

King Cajun Crawfish specializes in seafood boils, messy pots of excess featuring crawfish, shrimp, and crab in savory, spicy broths with potatoes, corn, and Andouille sausage.  However, those are so messy, you really have to dress down for a meal like that, or you’ll ruin your clothes.  Just an FYI: a meal like that might not be the best choice for a date, unless you’re planning to disrobe later, in case it could end up being an inspired choice.  My colleague and I played it safer, selecting with other menu items less likely to splatter, splash, and stain, but for future reference, those seafood boils are delicious, especially if you go with the house specialty “ShaBang sauce” (a blend of their traditional, lemon pepper, garlic butter, and “Rajun’ Cajun” seasonings).

My mentor started out with hush puppies, seasoned dough balls fried to crispy, golden perfection, yet savory and soft inside.  These were terrific dipped into some thick, tangy remoulade sauce, and the leftovers heated up perfectly in my toaster oven later that night.

She also ordered a cup of jambalaya, which is a rice dish in a thick, tomatoey sauce with Andouille sausage, chicken, shrimp, onion, and celery.  We both liked the little we tried, and I brought the rest home for my wife, who overcame her skepticism and absolutely loved it.

I got seafood gumbo for us to share, which my wife and I both always enjoyed at King Cajun in the past, and this was no exception.  My mentor and I requested it at medium heat, because there was hot sauce on the table to punch it up if it was too mild.  I could have taken it hotter and been fine, but it was great as is, with plenty of plump shrimp, sausage, chicken, rice, okra, and the “trinity” of Cajun and Creole cooking: onion, celery, and green bell peppers, all cooked in a flavorful roux (stirring flour into butter or some other fat to thicken sauces).  Needless to say, we did not roux this day!  Gumbo is more like a soup or stew than jambalaya, just in case you have confused them in the past.  Both have similar ingredients, but gumbo always has more of a broth, with white rice on the bottom of the cup or bowl.

The hot, fresh French bread at King Cajun is awesome — perfectly crusty on the outside and fluffy, soft, and warm inside.  A small loaf, more than enough for two people to share, is only $2.  You must get it, whether you order the seafood boil or something else saucy, like gumbo, jambalaya, or crawfish étouffée (for next time).  The po’boy sandwiches come on the same bread, but when you order the loaf, it is scored to pull apart easily.

This was the fried oyster platter (my choice), which I thought was only supposed to come with six fried oysters, but it came with far more than six.  They were also fried perfectly in a cornmeal batter.  I think I prefer raw or charbroiled oysters most of the time, but these were delightful.  You can also get them in a po’boy sandwich, but we already had French bread, and I felt like getting some sides.All the fried platters come with two sides.  I chose potato salad and onion rings, so long-time Saboscrivner readers know this is also a RING THE ALARM! feature.  The potato salad was cool and refreshing, tangy with a little yellow mustard the way Southern potato salads often are.  The onion rings were breaded rather than battered, but they didn’t have those jagged crags that cut up the inside of your mouth, and the onions inside were at a reasonable temperature, not molten and scalding.  I dipped the oysters and onion rings in the included cocktail sauce, but the remoulade (not pictured) was the best dipping sauce for both.

A side of cole slaw was crispy, cool, creamy, and refreshing, but not too heavy with mayo.  Like the potato salad, it was nice to cut all the richness of the fried stuff we had been eating.

And for dessert, you can’t leave New Orleans or King Cajun Crawfish without an order of beignets (pronounced “bin-YAYS”), puffy triangles of fried dough covered with so much powdered sugar, it looks like they just left a bachelor party in Miami… or let’s face it, any party in Miami.
King Cajun Crawfish serves Café du Monde coffee, a New Orleans classic that is an ideal combination with these beignets (especially with condensed milk added), but we both passed.  I’m not a coffee drinker, and even I’ll tell you that is some damn fine coffee with its flavoring from the chicory root.  Then again, condensed milk makes everything better, and now I’m thinking about requesting some to drizzle over the beignets or dip them in it next time.

This was a long overdue lunch with one of the best people I know, and we could not have picked a better restaurant.  It made me happy she liked it and considered it authentic (better than Tibby’s, she said!), and I wondered how and why it had been so long since my last visit to King Cajun Crawfish.  Next time I return, I will have to go with a group and dress down to enjoy some boiled crawfish and shrimp in ShaBang sauce without ruining my work clothes.  I don’t think that’s too shellfish of a request.