Grocery stores – The Saboscrivner

The Escobar Kitchen

The Escobar Kitchen (https://theescobarkitchen.com/) is one of my favorite kinds of restaurants for two reasons:

It offers a really cool, creative fusion of two wildly different cuisines that you’d never think of combining, but I’m glad somebody did.
It’s hidden inside a place that you wouldn’t expect, so not a free-standing restaurant where anyone can just come along and find it. As a self-proclaimed food writer, I live for writing about restaurants like this, and I take great joy and pride in introducing people who might never find or even learn about them on their own.

In this case, The Escobar Kitchen is a food stall inside the Bravo Supermarket in Lake Nona. Bravo is a supermarket chain that specializes in groceries from different Latin American countries, aimed at a Hispanic clientele (but anyone can, and should, shop there). It has 71 locations throughout the United States, including several in the Orlando area. I work near one Bravo and live near another, and I always find great stuff whenever I go, from frozen passion fruit puree to agua fresca powder mixes to fantastic tinned sardines nobody else carries to pizza empanadas a friend recommended.

But Lake Nona, a burgeoning new community all the way across town from me, has the biggest, nicest Bravo I’ve ever seen. It took over a space that used to be an upscale Earth Fare supermarket after the location closed in 2020, at 13024 Narcoossee Road in Orlando. Just to give you some context, all the Bravo locations I’ve ever been to have a cafeteria area where you can line up and get hot, fresh food to go — usually a mix of Puerto Rican, Cuban, and Dominican dishes, in huge portions. You take your styrofoam box of food (kindly wrapped in plastic wrap to avoid leaks on the way home, because they fill it to capacity and beyond) and go eat it somewhere else.

But the Bravo in Lake Nona has a whole seating area, like a mall food court, and also features this business alongside their own cafeteria county. Locally owned and operated by Chef Lewis Escobar and his brothers, The Escobar Kitchen specializes in Latin Asian fusion — most notably sushi with a Puerto Rican twist. That’s right, you heard it here first, true believers!

You can see from The Escobar Kitchen’s online menu that they serve dishes as diverse as “tereyaki wingz” [sic], General Tso ribs, arroz enchurrascado (a delicious-looking dish of yellow rice with skirt steak, sweet plantains, pigeon peas, and chimichurri sauce, served paella-style), and beautiful tempura-fried stuffed avocados. They even offer familiar California rolls, spicy tuna rolls, and chicken rolls, for diners with a dearth of daring.

But the stars of the menu are the signature sushi rolls, inspired mashups of Latin and Asian flavors, presented in a way that I can only describe as sexy. I ordered two of these rollicking rolls on my first-ever trip to Lake Nona, where I visited a cool couple at their gorgeous house to possibly buy an elliptical machine from them. As desperately as I need to lose weight and get into better shape, of course my cross-town schlep had a culinary ulterior motive!

So here’s the hotness:
The presentation is beautiful, right? I guaran-damn-tee that some hipster chef in Miami is going to come out with a similar menu at a hard-to-find restaurant with expensive valet parking and probably charge three times as much, if not more, and it probably won’t be as good.

This is the Tropical Sexy Salmon Roll ($14), with salmon, avocado, pineapple, cucumber, fried onions, and scallions, topped with marinated salmon and Escobar sauce. You see? It’s not just me that thinks these are sexy! It’s even in the name. Holy guacamole, this was a treat. I could seriously eat this every day. But ultimately, you could probably get a roll like that at any number of good sushi restaurants. I wanted something with salmon or tuna to contrast with the next one, which is a better example of The Escobar Kitchen’s Latin-Asian fusion. And the Tropical Sexy Salmon Roll tasted as good as it looks, so no regrets here, no shame in my game.

But get a load of the Paisa Roll ($15), a magnificent mélange of yellow rice, thin-sliced grilled churrasco steak, chorizo sausage, avocado and cream cheese, wrapped in sweet plantains and topped with chimichurri, honey wasabi, and a crunchy, crackly pork rind on the top. This isn’t light, like so many sushi rolls are. This is heavy in every possible way, but also awesome in every possible way. Again, the presentation is killer-diller!

Here is a close-up of the two ravishing rolls I ordered, so you can really see the detail, all the ingredients, and the artful way everything was combined:

I hate that The Escobar Kitchen is literally across town from me, because this is the kind of restaurant I would try to drag local and visiting friends and work colleagues to, first to tempt them with the novelty and then to hook them on artful, creative fusion cuisine that satisfies, that isn’t just some Instagram-worthy hype. It doesn’t get much more out of the way for me than Lake Nona, but this is definitely a reason to return, and for all my constant readers, the stalwart Saboscrivnerinos, to plan a Lake Nona mission of their own. Tell me you’re not tempted! Convince me you’re not considering it. Maybe next time you need some groceries, skip your basic neighborhood Publix and bring your Bravo Team down to the Lake Nona Bravo, where shopping and dining can be a true pleasure.

(P.S. I made it back to Lake Nona over a month later with a rented U-Haul and bought the very cool couple’s elliptical machine, but didn’t have time to stop at The Escobar Kitchen again. I’ll just have to return another time!)

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.

Banh Mi Boy

Banh Mi Boy (https://www.facebook.com/banhmiboyorlando) is a counter in the back of Tien Hung Market Oriental Foods, a Vietnamese grocery store in Orlando’s Mills 50 district, at 1112 E Colonial Drive, Orlando, FL 32803 (directly southeast of the major intersection of Colonial and Mills Avenue. There is no shortage of places to get delicious banh mi, French-inspired Vietnamese sub sandwiches on crusty baguettes, in the Mills 50 district, but I had been hearing good things about this place for a while. As much as I love Paris Banh Mi Cafe Bakery and always sing its praises to anyone who asks (and plenty who don’t), I also love branching out and trying new restaurants to discover different takes on favorite foods or brand-new favorites.

You may notice immediately that the Banh Mi Boy Facebook page I linked to above doesn’t include any information, or even a menu, so I took the liberty of photographing the menu above the counter. Make sure you right-click both photos and open them in a new tab for larger images.

On my first visit, I bought two sandwiches. For $6.99 each, you can’t go wrong. They aren’t exactly foot-longs, but they are substantial enough (no pun intended) to get two meals out of one sandwich — although I usually eat a whole banh mi in one sitting. The top one is the #1 Tien Hung Special (banh mi đặc biệt), usually the “special combination” with a variety of cured meats: pork roll, pork belly, head cheese, and pate (I’m assuming; I could be missing one or be wrong on one of the others). If you’ve never had a banh mi before, this is the one I’d recommend, for the most interesting blend of flavors, textures, and colors. The meats may be unfamiliar to American diners, but if you like deli meats and cold cuts, these really aren’t that different from various hams, salamis, bolognas, and other porky cured delicacies.The bottom one is the #3, cured pork belly, which was also really good. You can see how they both come dressed with sliced fresh cucumbers and jalapeño peppers, fresh cilantro, and pickled shredded carrot and daikon radish, making everything taste very cool, refreshing, and crunchy. What you can’t see are the smears of creamy mayo (or possibly even butter?) that lubricate the inner baguette surfaces, plus the rich, savory pate (think liverwurst, but better). I would definitely order both in the future.

Well, I might not have returned so soon, but I forgot to photograph the menu on my first visit, and since there are no menus online, I wanted this review to be useful. And as long as I was there, I decided to get two more banh mi sandwiches for two more meals!

This was the #8, the fried fish roll. It contained slices of a processed cold cut made of fish, almost like a fish bologna. It didn’t smell or taste overwhelmingly fishy in a bad way, and had an interesting chewy texture that I didn’t expect, but liked. But then again, I’ve made no secret on this blog of my love of cured, smoked, pickled, and processed seafood.

And this was the #14, the pate banh mi. Pate is usually my favorite ingredient on just about any banh mi, but I rarely see it offered alone. I figured that if I like the pate so much, why not finally try a sandwich with just that? Honestly, I was hoping for a lot more pate because the usual meats on the đặc biệt weren’t there to accompany it, but it wasn’t spread on very thick. It still tasted good — that rich, almost livery taste that I appreciate.

So yeah, that’s Banh Mi Boy. They offer some other prepared Vietnamese snacks and foods that are unfamiliar to me — things I have yet to try — but when you go to a sandwich place, you probably want to try the sandwiches. I know I do. Like I said, I liked it enough to go two times, relatively close together, and I would definitely return again. Tien Hung Market Oriental Foods may not be Orlando’s nicest or more inviting Asian market (that would be Lotte Plaza Market on West Colonial Drive and John Young Parkway, which has an entire food court), but it’s worth a visit to try some of the great banh mi sandwiches here. And I’m always a fan of restaurants “hidden” inside other businesses, from grocery stores to convenience stores, office buildings to bowling alleys.

Lombardi’s Seafood Cafe

EDIT on 10/18/2021: Lombardi’s Seafood posted this announcement on Facebook:
“As of today we are closing the cafe at Lombardi’s seafood. We are expanding our retail market offerings to include more prepared items, salads, produce, meats and grocery items that compliment our seafood. In order to accomplish this, we need the space that is currently occupied by the cafe. We appreciate all the love and support everyone has shown to the cafe over the years. We are excited for you to see what new changes are coming to the Market!”

***

Lombardi’s Seafood, located on Fairbanks Avenue on the Winter Park side of I-4, has been the premier place to purchase fresh seafood in the Orlando area since opening in 1961. That’s a 50-year culinary tradition, which is in itself rare in our young city. Rarer still, the seafood market remains a family business, now owned by a third generation of Lombardis. That’s a special thing, worthy of recognition and support. Lombardi’s Seafood relocated to its current location in 2015 and opened a casual restaurant inside the nicer-than-ever surroundings, Lombardi’s Seafood Cafe (https://lombardis.com/#cafe). I ate there once, shortly after it opened, but hadn’t been back for a while.

Well, my wife and I had both been craving seafood the entire month we spent in the hospital, so within the first four weeks we were back home this summer, I ate at Lombardi’s Seafood Cafe a whopping three times, including twice with her. And despite finding a flawless favorite fish early on, I made sure to order something different every time, for the purpose of constructing a more compelling and comprehensive composition of comparisons and contrasts. You’re welcome, constant readers! Just keep in mind that even though you can always buy fine fresh fish for festively feeding family and friends, the cafe is closed on Sundays, even though the market is open.

On my first recent visit, I was alone, and I was hungry. Figuring I would have leftovers, I started out with the smoked fish dip as an appetizer ($8). It arrived with a beautiful presentation: a substantial scoop of the smoky stuff surrounded by a refreshing rainbow of various vegetables: crunchy carrot and celery sticks, cool cucumber slices, piquant pickled jalapeños, and my absolute favorites, crunchy pickled onions in a shade I can only describe as “Barbie Dream House pink.” These things are so tangy and sweet and delicious, I make them at home in massive quantities and put them on everything. The smoked fish dip was good, but the pickled onions, adding that vinegary tang and crunch to the smoky, creamy, melt-in-your-mouth coolness, elevated it to a next-level app.

As much as I love my cured, smoked, and pickled fish, as well as raw fish in sushi and poke and canned fish like sardines, I don’t eat nearly enough cooked fish. I’ve never dared to buy or cook my favorite fish, grouper, but I jumped at the opportunity to try Lombardi’s grouper sandwich ($18), served simply with lettuce, tomato, and tartar sauce on the side on an excellent brioche bun. I ordered it blackened (the other options were grilled and fried), and it was perfect in every way. Easily in the Top Two grouper sandwiches I’ve eaten in my life, and the other was at a place we love in Clearwater Beach that I plan to return to and review in February 2022. (Let’s all try to make it that far!)Sandwiches and baskets come with two sides, so I chose the collard greens (stewed with slices of sausage; allegedly andouille) and sweet corn fritters that I forgot to photograph, but you’ll see them a little later. Anyway, I can’t recommend this sandwich highly enough. It was everything a fish sandwich should be, and the blackened seasoning imparted terrific flavor without overpowering the taste of the fish, and didn’t make it too spicy either. Apparently a lot of restaurants sneakily sell other, lesser fish that they label as grouper and price accordingly, but this is the real deal, and you don’t see it on many menus around Orlando.

Flash forward a week, and after my regular raves and habitual hype, I brought my wife to Lombardi’s to give it another try, years after our first visit. She surmised the Saboscrivner wouldn’t steer her askew and settled on the same sandwich for herself, this time with hush puppies (she didn’t care for these, but I sure did) and sweet corn fritters (I can’t imagine anyone wouldn’t like these). She was a blackened grouper sandwich convert too — another grouper groupie, if you will.

As much as I could eat that grouper sandwich all the time, I was feeling shellfish, so I ordered a dozen oysters for myself at a very reasonable $1 each. For too many years, I trusted in the antiquated advice that you can’t safely eat oysters during months that don’t have an “R” in their names — namely, the sweltering summer. But I’ve been researching that rebop (dig my day job), and oyster harvesting methods have changed so much in modern times, it is quite safe. These briny beauties were plump, cool, luxurious, and perfectly shucked, unlike some other restaurants that don’t completely separate the oyster from the half-shell, those shuckers. No ill effects or stomach wrecks, I’m relieved to report.

I also got a sandwich with the fish of the day ($10), which happened to be black tip shark! I’ve never had shark before, so of course I had to try it, to report back to my stalwart Saboscrivnerinos about what it was like to devour the most dangerous, deadliest denizen of the deep. As a result, I ordered the shark grilled rather than blackened, to fully savor the flavor. I thought it was blander than the grouper (ordering it blackened would have probably helped), and it was a firmer fish — less buttery than the grouper, but not flaky either, like most white fish. I’d equate it to swordfish, as a point of comparison, although I think swordfish is more flavorful. I’m glad I wrapped my jaws around this shark sandwich, but I don’t know if I’d attack the apex predator again, as long as there are other fish in the sea. Note the hush puppies and collard greens as my two sides here. Still good!

I wrote this review on the eve of my third recent visit to Lombardi’s, again with my wondrous, winsome wife. You thought we were done? No, son, we’re just getting started!

Instead of raw oysters, this time we started out with an app we could both enjoy: a platter of fried clam strips ($10), served in a very light and crispy batter, not greasy at all. My wife preferred these clam strips to the ones at her family’s old seafood standard, another Winter Park landmark, Boston’s Fish House.

Since the clam strips were a platter, we chose fries (pretty standard fries) and cole slaw (nice and crunchy and cool, and not too much mayo) as the two sides. The hush puppies and corn fritters are the superior sides, for certain.

My wife’s first choice, the whole fried snapper, wasn’t available, so she opted for a platter of her own, with fried mahi ($13) and a double order of the corn fritters. These heat up remarkably well in the toaster oven, so fear not — we didn’t eat all the fried stuff in one sitting. Now I’m not a big mahi fan, but she likes it well enough, or thought she did. This mahi would probably have been better blackened or grilled, given that flaky texture that is kind of dry. It’s a generous portion of fish, that’s for sure, but it just isn’t the fish for me.

And me, despite the grouper’s gravitational pull, I opted to order the fried oyster po’boy ($15), with a handful of huge fried oysters on an excellent Cuban roll with lettuce, tomato, and remoulade sauce. I remembered to request a ramekin of those perfectly pink pickled onions to place on the po’boy. It was a sensational sandwich, with such a breathtaking blend of flavors, textures, and colors. Fried oysters are always good, and remoulade sauce is an ace accompaniment for them. But Lombardi’s sandwich game is so strong, right down to the radical rolls. The breathtaking brioche rolls from the other sandwiches really complete them, and so did this Cuban roll — so soft, yet lightly grilled for an ideal texture. It wasn’t just some tasteless white bread for pointless extra carbs, but a crucial component of this peerless po’boy.

So as you can see, 30 days in the hospital necessitated my wife and I go on seafood diets for a little while: when we see food, we eat it… as long as it’s seafood. I was saddened that we stayed away from Lombardi’s Seafood Cafe as long as we had, especially because it wasn’t for any real reason. Three for three, these were excellent meals, and so reasonably priced by seafood standards. It is worth noting that the cafe menu proudly proclaims that almost all seafood is caught locally, and even off their own boat, the F/V Bottom Line, out of sunny St. Petersburg on Florida’s west coast (y’all know it’s the best coast).

Also, for a $4 upcharge, you can purchase any of the fresh fish and shellfish available in the glass display cases and ask the friendly fishmongers to have the Seafood Cafe prepare it for you — even things that aren’t on the menu! How cool is that?

Orlando may be nestled inland, which may afford us some protection from hurricanes and flooding, but we don’t have immediate access to our state’s beaches and warm waters here. Luckily for us we have Lombardi’s, with their 50 years of seafood experience, a true mom-and-pop shop where you can buy the freshest Florida fish and cook it yourself, or seat yourself in the Seafood Cafe and leave the grilling, blackening, and frying to the experts. The Lombardi family runs a tight ship, so mullet over and give them a try, just for the halibut.

Tight Chips: Asian Potato Chips, Part 1: Savory Flavors

Orlando is a diverse and inclusive city with a huge Asian-American community, which means we are lucky to have so many terrific restaurants and markets representing our Vietnamese, Chinese, Japanese, Thai, Korean, Filipino, and Indian neighbors and their cuisines. Most of our Asian markets are located along Colonial Drive, with good ones on both the east and west sides of downtown Orlando. They are treasure troves of ingredients you can’t find at Publix and other mainstream American supermarkets, along with high-quality produce, meat, and seafood that are often cheaper than anywhere else. And of course, the snacks alone are often worth the trip.

My readers know I often review potato chips and other snacks as Tight Chips features, so this is the first of what will surely be several write-ups of potato chips with unique flavors from the Asian markets.

I chose these particular chips to review here because they are all savory flavors: various meats, chicken, and egg-flavored chips. And please note that I tried these and wrote down my opinions over the course of several months, rather than ripping all the bags open and gorging on them in one sitting, as soon as I got home from the market.

Salted egg-flavored chips have a bit of a fan following, so I had to try these salted egg Lay’s from Thailand. I believe I found these at Eastside Asian Market in East Orlando.

They were salty and eggy (mostly a yolk flavor). I don’t know what else I was expecting, but this was the only flavor that had a lot of built-up hype ahead of time.

The salted egg flavor above was much better than these other egg-flavored Lay’s, which were more of a thick, ridged chip (kind of like “Wavy Lay’s” and much thicker than Ruffles). These had a strong and very dry egg yolk aroma and flavor. I wouldn’t bother getting these again, and I even forgot to take a photo of the actual chips, so I guess the yolk was on me.

I must have gotten these Roasted Chicken Wing Lay’s on the same visit to New Golden Sparkling Supermarket on West Colonial Drive in Orlando’s Pine Hills neighborhood, because they are the same thick, ridged style, and I also forgot to take a photo of the open bag. They were savory and salty, containing “chicken powder” and “chicken oil,” but I detected soy sauce more than anything strongly chickeny. I think I just don’t care for the thicker texture of these kinds of ridged “Wavy” Lay’s.

I couldn’t resist being lured in by this eye-catching bag design, only to discover this was Lay’s Mexican Chicken Tomato flavor. Now I’ve enjoyed plenty of Mexican dishes that included chicken and tomatoes among the ingredients, but I don’t automatically match them up in my head. These were definitely more tomatoey than chickeny, and disappointingly not spicy at all.

So which came first, the chicken-flavored chips or the egg-flavored chips? I have no idea, but that sounded like a Scott Joseph joke, now that I’ve written it out.

These next Lay’s chips have a braised pork flavor. The bag has a picture of a bearded fellow who looks like most of the guys you see in comic book stores, who usually have strong opinions about nerdy topics and demand to be heard. This is the logo of Formosa Chang, a Taiwanese restaurant chain that began with a single food stall in a market, but now has 30 locations in Taiwan and a few in Japan as well. Just like Lay’s did some co-branding with American restaurants last year, with flavors inspired by their signature dishes, they must have worked out a similar deal with Formosa Chang for one of their more popular dishes.

Braised pork sounded like a really great savory chip flavor, and I love the Taiwanese food I’ve tried at Mei’s Kitchen and Ms. Tea’s Bento, both in East Orlando. But these were pretty bland and unmemorable. I would love to try the real version of this dish from a Formosa Chang restaurant.

I didn’t even look at the label on the back of this bag of Lay’s until I got them home, but even though I was expecting some kind of sausage flavor from the look of the image below, this is a “spicy stewed flavor.”

Once again, this was a nondescript flavor, and look at how light they went on the seasoning on these chips! They didn’t even taste spicy, and I was looking forward to feeling some kind of burn.

I have finally moved past Lay’s for now, to review two chips from Oishi, a very good snack company based in the Philippines. Oishi products always have good, strong flavors. These are sweet and spicy potato chips that did not disappoint, after most of the above Lay’s flavors did.

Oishi is much more liberal with the seasoning!

And finally, these are Oishi “Ribbed Cracklings” (ribbed for her pleasure?), which are salt and vinegar flavors, or as I always call them, “salty vinnies.” These are not potato chips, since they are made of wheat flour and tapioca starch. They also aren’t pork rinds, despite being called “cracklings,” but they are not vegetarian because they contain fish sauce.

These are AWESOME. I saved the best for last because they have a terrific texture — crispy but not crunchy, sort of airy, kind of a middle ground between crunchy Cheetos and puffy Cheez Doodles, if you will. If you’ve ever tried shrimp chips from an Asian market, it’s the same kind of texture. They are addictive. And if you love vinegar as much as I do, they are really intense with the vinegar powder, giving them a powerfully pungent, puckery punch. If you don’t already like salt and vinegar chips, definitely spare yourself some torture! But if you do, face it tiger, you just hit the jackpot.

Don’t worry, folks — I’ll publish a new restaurant review next week, but I like to pepper in the Grocery Grails features from time to time to keep things interesting, including the spinoffs Cutting the Mustard (mustard reviews), The ‘Dines List (canned sardine reviews), and Tight Chips (snack chip reviews). I swear I don’t go out to eat as much as you probably think I do, but I sure love grocery shopping and discovering interesting new foods at the store.

La Hacienda

La Hacienda (https://linktr.ee/lahaciendarestaurant) is a Mexican restaurant in Winter Park, on the southwest corner of Semoran Boulevard (State Road 436) and Aloma Avenue. It has its own adjoining grocery store, similar to my old favorite near work, Tortilleria El Progreso. I actually pass both going to and from work every day, but had only ever stopped into La Hacienda to pick up fresh tortillas and Mexican snacks. But after so many years of always being in too much of a hurry, I recently ate at the restaurant for the first time, with my wife — one of our first post-vaccination meals out together.

My sense of blocking sucks, but here are our complimentary chips and salsa, with my large pineapple agua fresca ($2.50) nearly covering my wife’s small horchata agua fresca ($1.49). The pineapple is one of the best aguas frescas I’ve ever had anywhere, with lots of real fruit pulp in it. The horchata was nice and refreshing too. Very cinnamony. These chips desperately needed to be salted, ideally right when they came out of the fryer, as they were pretty bland. But the salsa was terrific. It must have been made fresh, because it was much better than most table salsas I’ve had at similar Mexican restaurants, with a roasted tomato flavor. I would totally buy this salsa by the jar.

My wife suggested we get the Hacienda sampler platter ($7.99), but we were both a little underwhelmed by it. You have more of the unsalted chips, covered with refried beans and molten lava-hot queso to serve as nachos in the middle, two crispy beef flautas (which she usually likes), and then a quesadilla on the right side with seasoned ground beef in a soft flour tortilla. She wasn’t into the quesadilla at all after one bite, so I ate it. She wasn’t really feeling the queso either, so I ate everything it touched. It was kind of bland. Guacamole was okay. I would skip this sampler in the future. The menu is huge, and there are plenty of more interesting offerings to be had here.

Whenever I’m at a new Mexican restaurant that serves traditional tacos on corn tortillas, dressed with only fresh cilantro and diced onions, with multiple meats to choose from, I like to order an assortment of those tacos to sample the different meats. They are usually small and cheap, so I get a nice variety and a chance to gauge what the restaurant does best. From left to right I got birria (shredded and steamed barbecue beef; a real foodie trend of the past two years), lengua (tender braised beef tongue), pescado (fried fish), al pastor (slow-cooked pork marinated with pineapple juice and traditionally shaved off a spit), chorizo (crumbled spicy pork sausage), and carne asada (grilled steak). Each of these beauties was $1.79, except for the fish taco that was $3.49. The plate came garnished with a lime wedge to squirt over each taco, soft marinated carrot slices (delicious), and crispy sliced radishes. I ran out of steam and couldn’t eat the carne asada, but I mostly ordered that one for my wife to try, since that is usually her go-to Mexican meat.

In fact, she ordered two carne asada sopes ($2.99 each), served open-faced on thick, puffy fried corn shells that are much thicker than tortillas, that serve kind of like a shallow cup or bowl. They were topped with shredded iceberg lettuce, tomatoes, and crumbled cotija cheese.She always orders sopes at one of our favorite establishments, Tortas El Rey, and I think those remain the reigning champions for her.

I was so full that I was feeling ill, but my wife wanted dessert, so we ordered the helado frito, or fried ice cream ($4.99). It was a huge portion — a big scoop of rock-hard vanilla ice cream covered in a really nice, crispy fried breading, and served in a fried flour tortilla like the kind taco salads come in. It was drizzled with caramel sauce and served with whipped cream and sprinkles. For some reason, she didn’t like the fried breading around the ice cream, but that was my favorite part, so that worked out well for us.

I definitely liked our meal at La Hacienda more than my wife did, but she might have preferred it if she ordered different things. I definitely enjoyed the birria, al pastor, chorizo, and fried fish tacos, the marinated carrots, and the salsa that came with the chips (but the chips themselves, ehhhh, not so much). I would go back, but I think she would take a pass. With Tortilleria El Progreso so close to work, I don’t know if I could wrangle work colleagues to grab lunch here (once we start doing that again), or even drive the extra distance to pick up takeout to eat at work. But it would be a convenient stop to pick up takeout on my way home, now that I know what’s good and what is just so-so. Tortas El Rey is just so far, and our other favorite, Francisco’s Taco Madness, is never open at night or on Sundays, so it could be a nice option to have solid, authentic Mexican food near home in the future.

Tight Chips: New Aldi and Fresh Market potato chip flavors

This week I’m back with another edition of Tight Chips, a recurring feature on The Saboscrivner, where I review new and interesting potato chips and other store-bought snacks.

This time I’m focusing on some new store brand chips I purchased over the last few months at Aldi and The Fresh Market. I’ve raved about Aldi before, and for the last few years, I do most of our grocery shopping there. It’s cheaper than any other grocery store, and it mostly carries high-quality private label products — groceries and other goods produced by other manufacturers (often familiar ones), then rebranded with Aldi’s own store brands. Some of them are “Aldi Finds” that only appear for a week, or as long as supplies last, and then vanish just as quickly. Weekly ads run from Wednesday through Tuesday, so make sure you check the ads online and hit store starting on Wednesday to track down the Aldi Finds while you can.

Most of Aldi’s potato chips and snacks are sold under the Clancy’s private label, including these two delicious new potato chip flavors inspired by cocktails enjoyed at brunch: Bloody Mary and Moscow Mule. Both of these are crunchy, “krinkle-cut” chips, with thicker ridges than Ruffles, and of course they were limited-time Aldi finds.

Here is the nutrition info for the Bloody Mary chips. Bloody Mary cocktails are usually made with worcestershire sauce, a tasty and versatile condiment that adds a funky umami element to anything, in part due to containing anchovies. I love cooking with anchovies. They add even saltiness and umami, especially when you saute bitter vegetables like broccoli rabe (aka rapini) and broccolini (aka baby broccoli). I’ve never had a Bloody Mary, but I can’t imagine they would be as beloved as they are by brunchers everywhere if they tasted like salty cured fish. Seems like an instant ticket to acid reflux, but what do I know? Anyway, vegetarians don’t have to worry, because the ingredients specifically state they use anchovy-free worcestershire sauce.

These were better than I expected. Tangy, tomatoey, a little bit spicy. I love these flavors in general, and especially on chips. They are kind of like barbecue chips, but with a sharper flavor, and less sweet. They would be great dunked in a tangy blue cheese dip or a creamy spinach-artichoke dip, but I didn’t have any.

Next up, we have the Moscow Mule chips, so here is the nutrition info for those. These chips were a pleasant surprise too. I gave up drinking before ever trying a real Moscow mule, but the cocktail contains vodka, spicy ginger beer, and lime juice, and is served in a copper mug. Note that the ingredients list lemon juice powder rather than lime juice powder, as well as citric acid for a sour, puckery punch.

These really do taste like ginger and citrus! They are a little sweet, a little sour, a little spicy, and surprisingly refreshing. Even if you don’t care about the drink, it’s a nice flavor combination that makes me think of a sunny summer day.

Aldi has a different private label called Specially Selected for serious gourmet goodies — everything from fancy preserves and holiday-themed sweets to frozen meals and decadent desserts, plus occasional new chips. These are also Aldi Finds that pop up randomly, and they can be gone, baby, gone just as quickly. I found these Specially Selected Pancetta and Parmesan kettle chips back in early March:

Vegetarians, note that these contain dairy, but no pork or other meat!

These chips were savory and a little smoky, but all the flavors were subtle. They really did smell and taste like pancetta, that wonderful cured Italian meat that is like unsmoked bacon, which can miraculously improve so many recipes. They had a little bit of funky umami flavor from parmesan cheese as well.

Another good grocery store that I don’t shop at nearly as often is The Fresh Market, which is more of an upscale, gourmet supermarket, similar to Whole Foods, but generally a little smaller and a lot less “hippie-ish.” Shopping there really is a pleasure. The stores aren’t overly bright, they pipe in classical music, and they have a lot of delicious food you can’t buy anywhere else. Their groceries tend to be on the pricey side, but they run some decent sales and often put good products on clearance, so you want to be on the lookout and stock up on things when you can. The Fresh Market has its own store brand for all kinds of products, including snacks and even potato chips. I don’t recall being tempted by them before, but All Dressed potato chips recently caught my eye, and I couldn’t resist. This is a terrific flavor that is popular in Canada, but very rare here in the States. Frito-Lay has released All Dressed Ruffles before, but that’s all I can recall, until now.

These are thinner potato chips, very similar to Lay’s, which is my favorite texture and mouth-feel for chips. They went heavy with the All Dressed seasoning, and they are fantastic. The bag doesn’t lie — they are sweet, tangy, savory, smoky, spicy, vinegary, and vaguely tomatoey. They are kind of like a combination of barbecue and salt and vinegar chip flavors, and I think that’s a winning combination. If you like Zapp’s Voodoo chips, All Dressed is similar to those. Tremendous flavor. I highly recommend these!

The three Aldi flavors are almost certainly already gone, but Aldi brings old favorites back throughout the year. I’m always on the lookout for the triumphant return of their Park Street Deli atomic spicy and sweet horseradish pickles and their maple-vanilla whipped cream around the holidays. I’ve seen these chip flavors more than once, so just follow the weekly ads and stay vigilant. I even bought my record player at Aldi, a neat little Crosley knockoff that transforms into a briefcase and even has a USB port for digitizing your vinyl collection, and those tend to show up around Mother’s Day every year.

The Fresh Market All Dressed chips should still be around, and I suggest running, not walking, to get those in your life sooner rather than later… so you can burn calories and allow yourself to eat more Tight Chips!

DeGuzman Oriental Food Mart

Ever since I first tried Taglish in late 2019, chef-owner Michael Collantes’ Filipino-American fusion restaurant located inside Lotte Plaza Market‘s food court, I have been obsessed with the flavors of Filipino food. I’ve been back to Taglish several times and tried many different dishes, each more delicious than the next, but Orlando just doesn’t have that many Filipino restaurants. A former co-worker who left our workplace to marry a Filipino guy in Montreal used to bring in takeout from DeGuzman Oriental Food Mart (https://www.facebook.com/pages/Deguzman-Oriental-Food-Mart/149298135096257), a Filipino convenience store on East Colonial Drive, just west of State Road 417. Thanks to his generosity, I had sampled some of their dishes before, but never been there, so I recently decided to do something about that.

DeGuzman Oriental Food Mart is a humble convenience store connected to a Citgo gas station. In addition to the usual snacks you would expect at a convenience store, they carry an assortment of Filipino groceries, but the star is the shining steam table of fresh, hot food they prepare daily. A few weeks ago, on a busy, chilly day, I stopped in for an early lunch and decided to order a few different things to treat myself.

Unfortunately I was eating in my office, so I avoided the tempting-looking crispy fried milkfish, which I figured would be too messy to eat on the job. Next time, milkfish!

I had been craving pancit, so I got a large serving ($10.00) and made a few meals out of it. Pancit is a dish of tender rice noodles stir-fried with chicken, eggs, onions, celery, and carrots, and soy sauce. It wasn’t overly salty or greasy, which is always a relief. It it totally hit the spot.

I also got a small container of pork adobo ($5.50), a stew of large, tender chunks of pork braised in a rich, thick gravy made of soy sauce, vinegar and garlic, with plenty of whole black peppercorns in there too. Soy sauce and vinegar are common ingredients in Filipino cuisine, and I just love the vinegar-heavy flavors that bring sourness and also sweetness, complemented by the saltiness of the soy sauce. It is really nothing like adobo seasoning or adobo dishes from Latin-American countries that I’ve had.

Since this was a rare cold day in Orlando, I couldn’t resist ordering a small container of beef caldereta ($7.50) too, another rich, heavy braised dish. Caldereta is a Filipino take on beef stew, definitely spicier than the pork adobo, but still pretty mild. “Tangy” might be the best descriptor, due to the tomatoey sauce with chunks of potato, onion, red bell pepper, carrot, and even black olives in there. The meat was extremely tender, and the broth had a great flavor. I am such a sucker for braised meats, especially in the wintertime (which is just a few weeks here in Central Florida), but I love them year-round.

Don’t worry — like I said, I got three or four meals out of everything I ordered. I tried spooning the pork adobo and beef caldereta juices over the pancit — both separately and together, creating new and exciting flavor combinations. As a guy with a vinegar collection that rivals my multitude of mustards, familiarizing myself with vinegar-centric Filipino food has been a fun adventure. I have bought a few seasoned Filipino vinegars of my own — Suka Pinakurat spicy coconut vinegar and Datu Puti spicy cane vinegar — and I’ve made my own version of the dish adobong sitaw at home several times now, substituting green beans for the more traditional (and harder to find) long beans. But I haven’t attempted to recreate any other Filipino dishes. It’s intimidating, but I am more than happy to leave it to the experts in the meantime.

Don’t let the fact that DeGuzman is a convenience store connected to a gas station put you off. I have always tried to highlight “non-traditional” restaurants on The Saboscrivner, because if you’re willing to take a chance and try new things, you can find some incredible, memorable meals at food trucks, food courts and food halls, farmer’s markets, restaurants inside grocery stores, convenience stores, bowling alleys, and more. Here we are, eleven months into this pandemic, and restaurants are still struggling everywhere. Businesses like these are clever, focusing on takeout business rather than customers dining in and doing what they can to survive, and I’m glad we have options like them. Now I am really glad to have the option of amazing, fresh, homemade food at DeGuzman Oriental Food Mart, just moments from my job and easily accessible from most parts of Orlando.

Grocery Grails: A Plethora of Pickles

I spent most of my life not liking pickles, despite being a Jew who loves New York-style Jewish deli food more than just about anything. So I’ve been on a long quest to find pickles I liked, with most of them ranging from “meh” to “feh.” My long-time readers will recognize that I’ve brought this up a lot. I can’t try any pickles without commenting on them and somehow ranking them in my head.

Well, thanks to our local barbecue maven Chuck Cobb of Git-N-Messy BBQ (which I reviewed right here on The Saboscrivner last fall and have been frequenting ever since), I’ve found the best pickles I’ve ever tried, and very possibly the best pickles ever: Grillo’s Dill Pickle Chips. Don’t worry, in pickle parlance, “chips” refers to round slices, not pickle-flavored potato chips. See https://www.grillospickles.com/ for more information. But I have snacked on them like potato chips or tortilla chips; they’re that good!

The only ingredients are cucumbers, water, distilled white vinegar, salt, garlic, fresh dill, and GRAPE LEAVES. They are firm, crunchy, and not overly salty, which is always nice. There’s a slight sweetness to them, something I felt was missing from every bite I’ve ever taken of a dill pickle before, but there’s no sugar listed, so maybe it’s the grape leaves. They’re fantastic. I’d put them on just about anything.

At least at Florida’s ubiquitous Publix supermarkets, Grillo’s Pickles are in the refrigerated case above the hot dogs, where they keep the “fancier” pickles and sauerkraut. These came in a relatively small container that cost $4.99, but they’re worth every penny. Sometimes they go on sale. If they do, stock up, pickle peeps!

And of course, as a librarian and a nerd, I have to research anything I like, so here’s an article about Grillo’s Pickles from FoodDive.

More recently, I was at Target picking up a few things and found Grillo’s Classic Dill Pickle Spears in a 32-ounce plastic container in their refrigerated case. I was a little more hesitant to get full spears, rather than the sliced chips that fit so well in sandwiches, but it was a very good price: $5.99 for that much larger container. Well, even though they taste the same as the chips, I didn’t like chomping on the spear as much, compared to the perfect flatness and crunch of the sliced chips. Plus, the spears were just a little more inconvenient for fitting on a burger.

Grillo’s makes hot pickles too, so I’ll have to try those eventually. I never thought I’d be so enthusiastic about pickles, but if I could like Grillo’s that much, then normal people who have always liked pickles should really taste the difference as well. The brine is so good, I always keep it and make pickled eggs in the Grillo’s brine.

I am also a huge fan of shopping at Aldi, the discount supermarket chain that offers amazing deals on everything, including some serious gourmet shit. I buy the majority of our groceries at Aldi now — they can’t be beaten for quality and value on staples like fruit, vegetables, cheese, eggs, and salami. I check their weekly ads online every Wednesday to see their special buys for each week — interesting foods and other products that are only there for a week, or until they run out. Aldi sells a lot of “private labels” that are usually national or international products from familiar brands, just relabeled as store brands that are exclusive to Aldi.

In recent months, I’ve discovered and tried three delicious kinds of sliced pickles from Aldi — two private labels and one national brand. These were all weekly “Aldi finds” that I picked up at various times. They probably won’t be available there now, but watch those weekly ads, and be on the lookout for their return.

The two private labels are the Great Gherkins spicy maple bourbon pickles, which were new to me, and the Park Street Deli sweet horseradish pickles, which were my favorites until I discovered Grillo’s. I still like them a lot, though. Like the Grillo’s brand, the Park Street Deli pickles are sold refrigerated, and they have other varieties, including regular spears and “atomic spicy.” Suckerpunch Gourmet Pickles is a national brand, and I wanted to try their Spicy Bread N’ Better pickles too, since I was reminded of a friend and colleague’s ska-punk band I like a lot.

I recently tested out all three of these pickles on Krystal sliders, one of my favorite snacks that I’ve reviewed before. I ordered a dozen Krystals with cheese, the standard yellow mustard, and extra onions, but I asked them to hold their usual mediocre pickles.

Here are the Great Gherkins spicy maple bourbon pickles on four Krystal sliders, so I could gauge their full effect. I think the strong flavors overpowered the sliders. They have that nice crispness, but they’re a little too sweet and not as spicy as I was hoping.

The Suckerpunch Spicy Bread N’ Better [sp] pickles were also sweeter than they were spicy. They would be a perfect pickle on a larger, more substantial burger to cut the juicy richness and saltiness, but again, Krystal sliders are delicious but puny, and these pickles were overpowering.

I’ve been buying Aldi’s Park Street Deli sweet horseradish pickles the longest, so I already knew I liked them a lot, especially on homemade burgers. Of these three kinds of pickles, they were the best on the Krystal sliders, but the slices are thicker than I would like. They are nice and crunchy, not quite as horseradishy as I would like, but not as sweet as the two aforementioned pickles. These were the best of the three, but would have been even better if the slices were thinner.

Sharp-eyed Saboscrivnerinos, you can see Krystal has pretty decent breaded onion rings now. RING THE ALARM, WHAT WHAT!

But I felt like the two newer, sweeter pickles still deserved another chance, so I made my own really delicious cheeseburgers to try them. I don’t like the flattened “smash burger” style, so my burgers are thicc, juicy, and medium rare. I served these with American cheese (the best cheese for a burger), Cuban mustard, and a little ketchup. Check out these perfect golden buns, spread with garlic aioli and lightly browned in the pan:

Now with the Great Gherkins and Suckerpunch pickles:

Both of these pickles went so much better with the juicier, higher-quality burgers, with their sweetness working well to offset the saltiness of the meat and tanginess of the mustard and ketchup. Their crunch held up well, especially with the light, toasty crispiness of the pan-grilled buns. I give the edge to the Suckerpunch Spicy Bread N’ Better pickles here, but they were both good pickles that led to even better burgers.

Now I’m thinking about all the foods that pickles could go well with, and I am psyched to experiment more. I’ve already chopped pickles up in chicken and egg salads and made my own relish the last time I cooked hot dogs. (I buy the Boar’s Head all-beef hot dogs with the snappy natural casing, and they are awesome.) Salty, sour Saboscrivnerinos, which pickles do you like, and how do you eat them? Inquiring minds want to know!

But so far, the only pickles I’ve just gone to the fridge and sought out as a solo snack are the Grillo’s, which are above and beyond all the rest. In this pickle pantheon, they sit on the throne of gods.