Late night – The Saboscrivner

Pom Pom’s Teahouse and Sandwicheria

Way back in December 2005, chef-owner Pom Moongauklang founded Pom Pom’s Teahouse and Sandwicheria (http://pompomsteahouse.com/), located in Orlando’s Milk District neighborhood, not too far from downtown Orlando. Pom studied as a pastry chef, and she cooked in several trendy and high-end New York City restaurants (including the famous Nobu and also an infamous BDSM-themed French restaurant that no longer exists, but sounds fascinating) before striking out on her own here in Orlando, serving up some of the city’s most creative sandwiches and eclectic tea drinks for over 15 years. That was about a year after I first moved to Orlando, and right when I was changing careers and going back to school. Things seemed really hopeful at the time, and all food tasted better to me. I remember Pom Pom’s being one of our first really hip and cool locally owned restaurants. For me, it was love at first sight… and first bite.

The restaurant is a hip, funky space, full of artwork by local artists that is rotated regularly. All the art is displayed on consignment, so if you fall in love with a piece of artwork, you can buy it. Pom Pom’s is open until 4 AM on Fridays and Saturdays, making it an oasis for hungry and restless partiers, back when it was safe to be out partying. In addition to the sandwiches, salads, and tea drinks, there is also a breakfast menu, only available Friday night through noon on Saturday, and then Saturday night through 4 PM on Sunday.

On a visit a while back, the special tea (heh, “specialty”) of the day was strawberry-kiwi, so I impulsively ordered an iced version for $3. I’m not a big tea drinker, although I sometimes appreciate a good, strong, sweet Southern-style iced tea. I am not into hot beverages at all, but you can order any of Pom Pom’s teas hot or iced. The strawberry-kiwi was sweet, but not overly sweet, and very refreshing. I was glad that it tasted like real fruit juice, not artificial or chemically. I’m not a big tea drinker in general, but I’ve had the chocolate cream tea there before, and that’s always really good.

One one particular visit, I ordered two sandwiches, just so I could write a more comprehensive review here. I’ve been going to Pom Pom’s since shortly after Pom opened the place, and I have my favorites, so I decided to choose an old favorite and try something new too. This was my old favorite, the Woody ($9.95), with hot pastrami, Swiss cheese, honey mustard, Thousand Island dressing, Southern slaw, and red onion on pressed pumpernickel bread. I always love pastrami, and the pumpernickel goes so well with it. (You can choose sourdough, whole wheat, or rye with caraway seeds as the other bread options.) All the sandwiches at Pom Pom’s are pressed, so they’re served hot. Especially with the Woody, you get the crispiness of the pressed bread and the melty, crunchy, meaty, creaminess of all the other ingredients, warm and sliding around.

This was the new sandwich I hadn’t tried before, the Billy Chang (also $9.95). It sounded a little weird, but just weird enough to work: sliced smoked beef brisket, blue cheese, red onion, and strawberry jelly, and I got it on pressed sourdough bread. This sandwich had everything: salty, smoky, pungent, sweet, funky, crispy.
I love savory and sweet flavors together, but I think the smoky brisket and sweet jelly would have worked together with something spicy uniting them, like a pepper jelly instead. I would have also preferred goat cheese or cream cheese to the crumbly and funky blue cheese, and it also would have made for a more cohesive sandwich that held together better. But those are my own personal hang-ups, not meant to take away from the sandwich at all. There was a lot going on, flavor-wise, and it was also the messiest sandwich I’ve ever eaten, on one of the very rare days I ate lunch in my office at work. It had already soaked through the paper wrapping by the time I got it back to my desk, and eating the half I tackled at work was a multiple-paper towel job. Would I get it again? I don’t think so, not that it was bad! There are just so many other sandwiches at Pom Pom’s I either like more, or that I still have yet to try.

On a more recent visit, I got my old favorite sandwich, the smoked salmon ($11.25), with thin-sliced nova salmon, bacon, cream cheese, cheddar cheese, arugula, tomato, and and lemon caper aioli. This is an intense rush of strong, smoky flavors, and I just love it. I ordered it on pumpernickel and it came on sourdough, but I couldn’t complain because it was still awesome.

On my previous visit, I tried the daily special sandwich, a spicy mac tuna melt. I grew up eating tuna salad sandwiches, but never buy canned tuna anymore, and rarely order it out anywhere. Pom’s regular melt includes capers, celery, red onions, lemon zest, and your choice of a domestic cheese, which sounds good on its own. But I loooooove the macaroni and cheese here (more on that shortly), and I figured adding it to any sandwich would take it to another level — like hipster tuna noodle casserole, only a thousand times better. I didn’t think the combination would disappoint, and it definitely did not.

Putting their delicious macaroni and cheese in a sandwich is a recurring theme at Pom Pom’s, because here is a special from this very weekend, the Chez G, with spicy crumbled chorizo sausage and mac and cheese on sourdough. I took this one home, so the bread wasn’t crispy anymore, but it was still really good.

Pom Pom’s offers a few sides, including my absolute #1 favorite macaroni and cheese in Orlando, the spicy turkey mac and cheese (on the right; $2.25), with cheddar cheese, diced tomatoes, scallions, and that most overrated of hot sauces that nevertheless works so perfectly here, sriracha. There are always nice cubes of tender turkey in it too. When I make mac and cheese at home, this is the consistency I aim for — not a liquidy, cheesy soup, and not barely-melted cheese shreds that look like they came straight out of a bag. It’s the ideal “middle way.” Melty, not soupy, not greasy, not dry. I love it, and I would happily eat a much larger portion of it. On the left, you can see Pom Pom’s German potato salad ($2.25), which is different from most American-style potato salads, which are usually mixed up with mayo and served cold. This potato salad is served warm with crumbled bacon, scallions, and vinegar, and it’s so, so good if you’ve never had it before. I love potato salad. In fact, it’s probably my second-favorite thing to do with potatoes, after chips, and just edging out fries. That’s my spicy hot take on potato salad, that underrated side order. And as much as I love the mayo-based varieties (especially Southern-style potato salad with chopped hard-boiled eggs, pickles, and yellow mustard added), German potato salad is a nice change of pace, especially as a rich side dish in the fall and winter.

Pom Pom’s also has soups of the day that I rarely order, but I’m usually happy with the ones I try. Waaaaay back in December 2020, Pom had cooked up a pot of dark chocolate duck chili, and there was no way I was going to miss that. They were selling it by the cup for $5 or by the bowl for $7. I ordered a bowl for myself and a cup to bring home to my wife, who doesn’t like my chili at all, but sometimes surprises me by liking professional chefs’ better versions of chili. Both were served in coffee cups as part of my takeout order, and mine was topped with scallions and smoked gouda cheese. It was a rich, hearty chili with at least two different kinds of beans and plenty of shredded, stewed duck.

You can get a better view of everything here, after I caused a stir. It was quacktacular!

When I returned today, I tried Pom’s beef lasagna soup, which sounded perfect on a cooler day leading into a very cold night. It was a savory tomato broth with crumbled, seasoned ground beef, lasagna noodle sheets cut into squares, floating pools of melted mozzarella cheese, lots of garlic, and a surprising amount of chunks of zucchini and yellow squash.

So this is a review after at least three separate visits to Pom Pom’s Teahouse and Sandwicheria, even though I’ve lost count of the many times I’ve been here over the past 16 years. Follow Pom Pom’s Instagram page for daily specials, and time your visit so you can try something new that may never be seen again. But the old classics stick around for a reason — because they are loved and treasured throughout Orlando.

AdventHealth: 30 Days of Hospital Dining

Wait a minute… is The Saboscrivner really going to review the food at AdventHealth, Orlando’s largest chain of hospitals? Yes, but I have a good reason. My wife had a major surgery in May that necessitated spending nine days in AdventHealth Orlando, followed by another three weeks in AdventHealth Winter Park. It was heavy and scary stuff, and I didn’t want her to go it alone. I am so grateful that my employer allowed me to take a leave of absence from work, and that both hospitals allowed me to move in with her and spend every post-surgical moment at her side. (Both of us are fully vaccinated.) So we both lived in hospitals for 30 days — from May 11th through June 10th — and that meant eating a lot of hospital meals. This massive review may prove useful if any of my readers, or any of their family or friends, are ever hospitalized in an AdventHealth facility, or even if you end up visiting anyone there. But I hope you all stay healthy and safe and never have to come here, unless it’s for a positive reason, like having a baby or getting a cool prosthetic or something.

AdventHealth is a faith-based nonprofit that claims to have “nearly 50 hospital campuses and hundreds of care sites in diverse markets throughout nine states” (see https://www.adventhealth.com/who-we-are). Despite the health care company’s strong Christian values and mission, everyone is welcome and included — staff, patients, and visitors alike. I can say with confidence that the doctors, nurses, and therapists took exceptional care of my wife, when she needed it the most.

Now onto the food! Both hospitals have cafeterias for the staff and visitors, and there is some surprisingly good food to be had there. It tends to be more flavorful than the food served to the patients in their rooms, which tends to be blander, with less salt and fewer herbs, spices, and strong flavors. The much larger AdventHealth Orlando has a much larger cafeteria, the Welch Cafe, which puts out the most options at lunchtime, the busiest time, and far fewer things to choose from in the evening. There is an Italian station that has pizza, pasta, and rotating specials, a sandwich station where you can get a custom-made sandwich, a salad bar, a fresh sushi station, lots of pre-packaged “grab and go” options, sweets, and a lot more. With some options, there is a price per pound and you pay whatever your meal weighs, and others have fixed prices.

I should also note that AdventHealth, founded by Seventh Day Adventists, used to only serve vegetarian food, and only in recent years started serving meat. They do not serve any pork at all, though — not in the cafeterias or the in-room meals for patients, and not even at the Wendy’s across the street from AdventHealth Orlando. So you’ll see a lot of beef and/or turkey substitutions for pork products, and at least one of them ended up being really good.

My wife was in AdventHealth Orlando for a total of nine days, so I ate in the Welch Cafe a few times. Here are some of the highlights:

BWAAAAAAH! BWAH BWAH BWAAAAAAH!
RING THE ALARM! I had surprisingly great onion rings with my very first meal at the Welch Cafe, sleep-deprived and full of fear after delivering my wife to the hospital at 5 AM to be prepped for surgery. After waiting for hours outside the surgical wing, I figured I might as well keep up my strength and eat something that tasted good. These onion rings ($1.75, priced out at $7.29 per pound from the burger bar) were better than many others I’ve had around Orlando, believe it or not.

For me, pasta is comfort food, so I indulged three times with different types of penne pasta in red sauces. This first one, which I ate on Day One while my wife was under the knife, was kind of like penne in an alfredo sauce, but I also asked for a warm blanket of marinara over the top. I seem to recall some pieces of tender chicken in there too. I was worried sick about her and felt guilty eating, but I knew I would have passed out or succumbed to a stress migraine if I didn’t have something substantial.

On two subsequent Welch Cafe visits, I got different versions of baked penne with ground beef ($4.29), both of which hit the spot. You can’t go wrong with hearty baked pasta dishes like this:

This was a pre-made meatball sub (a very reasonable $4.99) that was much better than I expected.

At least during the busiest hours in the middle of the day, you can get a custom sandwich made at the deli counter. The one time I indulged, I opted for pastrami on a sub roll (a little over $7), with creamy horseradish sauce, lettuce, tomato, onions, banana peppers, and jalapeño peppers, and the nice lady even pressed it on the grill (note the grill marks in the sub roll). It wasn’t any kind of ideal pastrami sandwich like Katz’s Deli in NYC or Orlando’s own Pastrami Project, but it was savory and spicy and messy in the best possible way. That blend of flavors and textures provided a much-needed brief reprieve from the stress of that particular day at the hospital. And as far as I’m concerned, that is the main goal of pretty much any sandwich.

Yes, there is sushi available in the Welch Cafe, and yes, I had to try it. There was a sushi chef making it fresh every day, at least around lunchtime, and then they would remain in the “grab and go” cooler for the dinner crowd.

It was pretty much on par with grocery store sushi, and I figured if it gave me any problems, I was already in a hospital. This was the sushi sampler platter I chose. It looked pretty, and eating it felt luxurious, like I didn’t even deserve to be enjoying something this nice while my wife was resting and healing several floors above me.

The sampler ($10.89) included some tuna and salmon nigiri, some California rolls wrapped in tuna and salmon, and a volcano roll topped with crispy rice, spicy mayo, and eel sauce. Like I said, it was fresh, and it was luxurious. I haven’t had any sushi since then, but just looking at this picture, I’d get something similar again without trepidation.

The Welch Cafeteria even had desserts! I had to try the tres leches ($2.49), and it was perfectly fine, if not up to the standard of Miami’s legendary Cuban restaurant Versailles:

At one point, I brought this cookies and cream cheesecake (probably also around $2.49) back up to our room to share. It was also fine, but I think my wife would have enjoyed it more under almost any other circumstances:

After nine days there immediately after her surgery, she was transferred to the inpatient rehabilitation unit in AdventHealth Winter Park for almost three weeks of intensive physical and occupational therapy. It is a much smaller hospital, with a commensurately smaller cafeteria in the basement. The onion rings definitely aren’t as good there — kind of soggy — but on this day, the special was a surprisingly spicy and tender beef dish that was probably braised, or maybe even cooked in a slow cooker or a pressure cooker. I liked it quite a bit. My wife didn’t want anything to do with it.

I always crave hot dogs around summer holidays, and usually buy a pack around those times of year to cook at home. We spent Memorial Day in the hospital, so I grabbed this simple all-beef hot dog ($2.79) from the basement cafeteria that day. It tasted a lot like a Costco hot dog, but not as cheap, as big, or quite as good. With packets of yellow mustard and relish, it transported me away for a few brief bites to an imagined backyard cookout with friends, before I found myself back at my wife’s hospital bedside.

On one of the last days before she was discharged, the cafeteria offered a gyro as a daily special ($4.79). I have a hard time turning down gyros anywhere, so I had to try it. The processed, seasoned, sliced gyro meat (usually a blend of beef and lamb) was topped with shredded lettuce and sliced tomatoes, served with a tiny cup of creamy, tart tzatziki sauce, and served on a warm flatbread-style pita, it was comfort food. Nowhere near as good as Orlando’s best gyro at Mediterranean Deli, but still better than many of the other meals I had eaten over this past month. These onion rings ($2.69) were slightly better than that first bunch, too.

But the highlight of this cafeteria was the customizable 6″ personal pizzas for $3.99, made to order with the ingredients of your choice, and then baked in a tiny, powerful oven and presented to you two or three minutes later. These were better than they had any right to be from a basement hospital cafeteria! (Technically, they were underground pizzas, but a fella named Brad has built his brand around that moniker.)

I went all out with beef sausage, turkey ham, turkey pepperoni, red onion, jalapeño peppers on my pizza. When it came out of the oven, the gentleman brushed the crust with garlic butter, and upon my request, drizzled it with balsamic glaze. It was a damn fine pizza, I have to admit.

I brought a couple of those basement (not underground!) pizzas back for my wife, who preferred them to most of the daily trays from Nutritional Services. Longtime Saboscrivner scholars may remember she isn’t into tomatoey sauces, so I would order her pizzas to be brushed with a garlic butter base, and then I’d request beef sausage and mushrooms on them for her.

So that’s what hospital staff and visitors can eat, but what about patients in their rooms? Well, Nutritional Services delivers three meals a day to patients, and they offer a surprising amount of choices. I tried to figure out a pattern for weeks, and then in our final week, they brought us the actual menu, which I have photographed here. (Right-click and open them in new tabs for larger images.)

If someone from Nutritional Services manages to catch a patient in her room (between physical and occupational therapy appointments, in my wife’s case), they will take her order for all three meals for the next day, entering her choices on a tablet. If not, the patient will just get whatever the daily specials are. Since my wife really has to be in the mood for specific foods even when she isn’t distracted by chronic pain, post-surgical pain, and new pain from grueling therapy, I ended up helping her eat a lot of meals she wasn’t in the mood for and didn’t want anything to do with. Also, I obsessively saved condiment and seasoning packets in our room, much like I imagine prisoners doing to make prison food more tolerable.

Do yourself a favor — if you are admitted as a patient at AdventHealth, ask Nutritional Services for a printed menu, so you can see what all the options are at all times, since they don’t always tell you every single thing you can choose from. That way, you can also be more prepared when they come to your room to take your order.

These beef sausages, one of the Nutritional Services option for patients’ in-room breakfasts, are the same ones you can get sliced on your cafeteria pizzas. They might not look very appetizing, but I really liked these, and even my wife embraced the greatness of the beef sausage by the end of her stay. They were very savory, with a different texture than standard pork breakfast sausage, not as greasy, and not nearly as heavy with sage either. I would order these in my beloved Waffle House or at another breakfast joint if they were available, or even buy them at the store to make at home.

Sliced brisket with chimichurri sauce, always served with a soft corn souffle (I amused myself by calling it “corn pone,” a term that cracks me up for no real reason) and green beans. I make much better green beans, but I actually liked this quite a bit, and even my wife did too.

Chicken tenders. A little bland and way too small to satisfy, but perfectly adequate, especially with some Ken’s honey mustard dressing as a dip.

Macaroni and cheese and baked sweet plantains. My two favorite sides with any lunch or dinner orders. I would always try to remind her to order them for me, or request to substitute them instead of boring sides like the plain white rice pictured above. The mac and cheese was similar to what you would get at a lot of barbecue joints and Southern “meat and three”-style diners or cafeterias. Of course I’ve had better, because this is a hospital, but I’ve had much worse. These came with an eggy “spinach patty” that my wife kinda sorta liked, but it didn’t do much for me.

A cheeseburger that had that Burger King flame-broiled taste. It was a little dry and not terribly juicy, but I appreciated having the general flavors and textures of a cheeseburger for the first time in a month.

My wife also ordered several vegetarian Beyond burgers as alternatives to the daily specials, which meant I ended up finishing several Beyond burgers throughout our stay. We both used to like those, but I think we burned ourselves out on them for all time.

Lasagna rollatini, with ricotta cheese inside. Like I said, my wife famously doesn’t like tomatoey sauces, but we quickly learned these are too dry and pretty bland with sauce served on the side, or not at all. At least I thought they were definitely better with the sauce on them. With just a few days left in her stay, we learned from the brochure that she could have been requesting the lasagna roll-ups with pesto sauce all along, but we never got to try that.

Chipotle chicken breast, served with yellow rice and “fajita vegetables.” The chicken was always dry, but it had a little bit of heat, and I would eat it because she never wanted anything to do with it.

Mojo cod, served with white rice, black beans, a whole wheat roll, and more of those plantains. Not her thing at all. Not really mine either (but for the plantains), but I always ate it until I convinced her to request other stuff on mojo cod days.

In those final days, once we had the Nutritional Services menu and knew there were other options to choose from, my wife ordered me sandwiches with soups, while she drank Ensures and ate snacks I brought to the room from Trader Joe’s. She knows how much I love sandwiches.

A cold roast beef sandwich on marble rye with three-bean chili. I liked both, especially adding a bit of mustard to the sandwich. The chili reminded me of a vegetarian version of Wendy’s chili, so not the worst thing in the world. It also provided amusement for both of us later.

A cold turkey and havarti sandwich on marble rye, improved by yellow mustard and mayo, with chicken noodle soup (never my favorite soup):

I didn’t remember to photograph all the meals, but these were a few that (unfortunately) showed up more than once:

Sliced turkey with cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, and steamed carrots. She couldn’t even deal with the smell of this one, but I thought it was okay. I do stand by the controversial take that the traditional Thanksgiving dinner is bland and boring AF.

Bruschetta chicken breast (dry), covered with diced tomatoes, and served with unsauced penne pasta, underdone brussels sprouts, and splashed with balsamic vinegar. This could have been a much better dish than it was. I make pretty good brussels sprouts at home by oven-roasting them, and the few times I had this meal, it inspired me to improve my brussels sprouts game even more.

Spaghetti and meat sauce with broccoli. I ate it every time because she wouldn’t, and I can’t abide by wasting food. I love spaghetti and meat sauce. I couldn’t bring myself to love this spaghetti and meat sauce.

Pot roast. Just like a lot of people’s pot roast, you can chew it forever and nothing happens. It made me want to experiment with pot roast when we got home, to try marinating and braising and using ingredients like bold Italian vinaigrettes and jars of spicy pickled giardinera vegetables.

Nutritional Services also offered desserts and snacks. None of the baked goods were great, but I rekindled my lifelong love of orange sherbet, and now I feel the need to buy some to keep in the freezer at all times. (No, Megan Draper, it does not smell or taste like perfume!) And I taught my wife the joy of using graham crackers to scoop up vanilla pudding.

So that’s pretty much it. I also brought in takeout for us a few times, but for 30 days, we lived in these two AdventHealth hospitals and mostly ate hospital food. Some things were surprisingly good, or at least better than you would expect. Others were much, much worse. I’m glad that she was discharged just over a week ago, and now I’m able to go grocery shopping again, to cook for us again, and to take my wife out to eat wherever we want again. I sincerely hope you stalwart Saboscrivnerinos never have to spend this much time in the hospital, so you never have to try most of these meals for yourselves, but I also hoped this would be an interesting look at some of Orlando and Winter Park’s most “exclusive” dining.

Tako Cheena

My wife and I have always been huge fans of Tako Cheena (http://mytakocheena.com/), the creative and bohemian Asian-Latin fusion restaurant on Mills Avenue, north of Colonial, in one of Orlando’s finest foodie neighborhoods, Mills 50. It used to be in a tiny space in a little strip plaza on Mills, with very few parking spaces in front, to the point where we’d often have to circle the block six or ten or twenty times, or more realistically, time our visits for when the place was just opening up. There was a somewhat steep step up that limited the accessibility for my walker-wielding wife, and a tiny, cramped dining room that further limited her mobility inside once I helped hoist her up. The food was always delicious, but it wasn’t the most comfortable surroundings, despite the hip, colorful, artsy decor.

Well, I was recently craving Tako Cheena after a rough week, and to my great joy, they recently moved into a larger building mere steps from their old location. And it has an actual parking lot, plus a spacious outdoor patio. I was just picking up takeout from an outside-facing window, so I didn’t linger or even peek inside to look at indoor seating. However, the new location already looks so much more comfortable and accessible, and that is like a dream come true for us.

The covered patio overlooks Mills Avenue, and you can see it is steps away from the original location:

Since the menu on the website doesn’t have most of their newer menu additions of the last few years, or any prices, this was the best shot I could get of the posted menu. A past favorite, Mary’s Greek Lil Lamb (a gyro in taco form) has never been on their old menu on the website, so I didn’t even think to order one this time, but I was glad to see it has been added to the new menu. The pernil asado, slow-roasted, marinated pork, is pretty darn great too, but I didn’t order that either on my most recent visit.

Since I haven’t even been here since I started this blog two years ago, I ordered a bunch of our old favorites. I got us each a panko-crusted cod “tako” ($4.50), with spicy mayo, shredded cabbage, and scallions on a soft flour tortilla. This was the first time they asked me if I wanted flour or corn tortillas, but they could have started giving customers that choice at any point in the last two or three years. These are my favorite fish tacos in Orlando, and I was sad to learn they were out of the usual sweet and sour onion sauce that goes on them, but they were still delicious. My wife, who always used to love these, thought hers was too spicy, so I ended up eating most of hers too. I love spicy mayo on anything, so they were perfect for me, as usual.

Miami kid that I am, I have a hard time turning down empanadas, those crispy-fried half moon-shaped pastries stuffed with a variety of savory or sometimes sweet fillings, sealed with a crimped edge. Different cultures make different empanadas, but I always prefer a deep-fried, crispy flour pastry shell, and those are the ones they make here. Tako Cheena always offers different beef, chicken, and vegan empanadas of the day ($3.25 each), always rotating creative fusion ingredients in each one. I asked what the beef empanada of the day was, and this one had seasoned ground beef like picadillo with mashed potatoes and sweet plantains. Yes please! I could have easily eaten two of more of those crispy fried pastries, especially since sweet plantains are a top ten favorite food for me, but I stuck to one.

The empanadas come with a very small plastic dipping cup of salsa. When I placed my phone order, the guy asked if I wanted sweet or spicy. I asked if I could try both, and he said yes. Well, my bill had a “GG” next to the empanada at no charge, and an “HJ” that I was charged 50 cents for, so that’s how I learned additional salsas come at a cost. I don’t mind, because I always love trying new salsas. I could be wrong, but looking at Tako Cheena’s website and the menu above, I’m guessing the “GG” refers to ginger guava salsa, and the “HJ” is probably habanero jackfruit salsa, even though they list it as “jackfruit habanero.”

The website advertises “BURRITOS THE SIZE OF BABY’S [sic] ARMS,” and they aren’t exaggerating. I ordered the Korean burrito ($10.75), stuffed to almost bursting with sweet and savory marinated beef bulgogi, kimchi fried rice with mixed vegetables, crema, sriracha, ginger scallion oil, and cilantro. It was a really interesting blend of flavors and textures wrapped in that huge, straining flour tortilla, which is one reason I prefer burritos to tacos. (GASP!) It’s so huge, I saved half for the next day, and even the half is a generous portion. That isn’t something I normally order at Tako Cheena, but I wanted to present more of a variety of options for my baker’s dozens of readers.

Look at how much room it takes up on our now-familiar green plates!

Here’s a shot with burrito and empanada interiors:

Another one of our long-time favorites isn’t listed on the menu on the website, but Tako Cheena has incredible arepas, sweet corn patties stuffed with a variety of ingredients. Our favorite is the four-cheese arepa ($7.50) with a big fried cheese patty, topped with pickled shredded carrots and other vegetables (maybe jicama or daikon radish? Although it looks similar to Filipino atchara, or pickled papaya salad), and spicy mayo.

Picking a favorite item on the whole menu feels like being forced to pick a favorite child, for those who have more than one child, but this arepa might be it:

Cross-section. I should note that the cheese is lightly fried on its exterior, but not battered or breaded like my beloved mozzarella sticks. It’s more like halloumi cheese that way, with a similar texture.

One thing you probably noticed by now, that I definitely appreciated, was how they packed all our takeout food either wrapped in foil wrappers or placed in cardboard boxes. It was nice to see some eco-friendly alternatives to styrofoam.

Even though some restaurants are reopening for dining in, my wife and I are in no hurry to start doing that again anytime soon. But now that Tako Cheena has a parking lot of its own and that convenient walk-up window, I’ll probably order more takeout from them in the weeks and months to come. I’m glad an old favorite is more accessible than ever before, and as good as ever.

CLOSED: Big Time Street Food

NOTE: Big Time Street Food closed in May 2020, just months after I wrote this review.

Big Time Street Food (https://www.bigtimestreetfood.co/) was on my list of newer places to try for the longest time. Located in hip and pretty Thornton Park, near downtown Orlando, it is connected to Burton’s Bar and even shares a door with the neighborhood watering hole. But I emphasize neighborhood, because both places really are meant for residents of the immediate neighborhood due to a major lack of nearby parking spaces. Over the last year or so, I’ve done several “drive-bys” of Big Time Street Food, hoping to find a nearby parking space so I could finally try the food, to no avail.

But back in early January, I had a chance to see hip-hop legend KRS-One perform at The Abbey, a downtown concert and event venue located a few blocks away from Big Time. I made sure to park in a convenient garage located between the two and headed to Big Time first, to eat a giant, heavy meal before a long and late concert. (I’ve been to hundreds of concerts and totally know better, but this was my best chance to finally make it here, Saboscrivenerinos. You’re welcome!)

Big Time Street Food is a very small and casual space. You order at the counter and can then sit on one of the few stools at a counter, or go next door to Burton’s, and they bring you your order when it’s ready. I studied the menu in advance, but couldn’t decide between two things. My Constant Readers can take a wild guess as to what I did next — yes, I ordered both!

This is the Holy Chicken sandwich ($7.99). You’re staring at an extra large, fresh-fried chicken thigh, a generous amount of dill pickle slices (after a long quest, I finally like most pickles!), and lightly spicy “gochu-mayo” on a soft, lightly-griddled sweet potato roll. It’s like an artisanal version of the beloved Popeyes spicy chicken sandwich, and yes, it’s better.

Despite knowing I was going to have to stand in the same place for several hours, and despite knowing how gross club restrooms can be (especially when you’re in desperate need of one), I couldn’t stop myself from also ordering the Chorizo Montoya burger ($7.99). This beauty contains a “smash burger” patty, chorizo sausage, oaxaca cheese, avocado, grilled onion, roasted tomato aioli on the same soft, lightly griddled bun. It was a damn fine burger I’d rank alongside Orlando’s finest.

Believe it or not, I had every intention of eating half of the chicken sandwich and half of the burger, and putting the other halves back in my car, because luckily it was a cool evening. But in true Saboscrivner fashion, I devoured both while they were at their hottest and freshest. I have no regrets now, and luckily I didn’t have any regrets during the concert either.

It ended up being a really fun night. I arrived early enough to get right up next to the stage to see several opening rappers, followed by the trailblazing teacher KRS-One, who exploded out of the Bronx in the late ’80s as the star of Boogie Down Productions, before becoming a vaunted solo MC throughout the ’90s. I suspect many Saboscrivnerinos might recognize KRS-One from the closing rap verse on REM’s “Radio Song,” the first track off their 1991 album Out of Time, or maybe as the subject of Sublime’s respectful tribute to the master himself, “KRS-One.” A socially-conscious, spiritual, and political rapper, he concerned himself with educating and empowering his listeners, spitting cautionary tales that warn against crime, violence, and police brutality. I highly recommend the compilation album A Retrospective as the perfect gateway to his finest work. And I’m thrilled to report he is still teaching lessons today (when we need his voice more than ever), without slowing down or missing a beat.

And after wolfing down two delicious sandwiches from Big Time Street Food directly before the show, I was relieved to not have miss a beat either.

Tori Tori

Tori Tori (http://www.toritoripub.com/) is an Izakaya-style pub — a laid-back Japanese neighborhood bar that happens to serve amazing food. The menu has some surface-level similarities to Susuru, which I reviewed earlier this year. But unlike Susuru, with its mid-20th Century Japanese kitsch decor, Tori Tori is sleek, sexy, ultra-modern in its design. And unlike Susuru, which is every bit a restaurant, Tori Tori is a bar all the way. That means you place your orders at the bar and then sit wherever you want — either at the long two-sided bar itself that forms the centerpiece of the attractive space on Mills Avenue just south of Pho 88, or at a number of U-shaped booths or smaller tables. There is a nice outdoor patio that should be delightful to hang out on now that it’s finally getting cooler outside, with several tables out there. The whole front of the bar is open, so you can walk in and out, to and from the patio.

They seem to have a large and well-stocked bar, with pages of beers, sake, and cocktails to choose from, but I did not partake in any of those. Having missed out on the frenzy and hype of Tori Tori’s first two months, I finally made it out there this past Saturday night, with one agenda: TO EAT. Preferably A LOT.

I should note that Tori Tori doesn’t open until 5:30 and doesn’t serve lunch. I arrived about ten minutes early because I didn’t want to wait around for it to get too crowded and not even be able to park. It filled up fast, but unlike so many Mills 50 establishments, I am thrilled to report Tori Tori has its own ample parking lot! I sat right down at the bar, had the very friendly Sean (Shawn?) give me a menu and make some suggestions, and then I checked off what I wanted on a small paper menu, kind of like how many sushi restaurants take your order. Shawn (Sean?) kept my credit card like many bars do, to run a tab in case I was going to order more. I didn’t this time (due to over-ordering on my first go-around), but this is the kind of place where a group would probably order multiple rounds of food and beverages, so it’s an organized system for keeping track.

Once Shaun (Sian?) passed my selections to the kitchen, it seemed like my food flew out at top speeds — definitely faster service than I expected, especially since the ~~restaurant~~ bar filled up and got busy almost immediately. This is all traditional Japanese bar food — small plates, designed to be cooked, served, and eaten quickly, and ideally shared with your party. It was all fresh and delicious, and I appreciated that they staggered the appearance of my dishes. By the time I finished something, the next dish was arriving.

I didn’t include the terrible photo I took of the “handie” roll stuffed with delicious otoro, or fatty tuna ($9). It was similar to those cone-shaped sushi hand rolls wrapped in nori seaweed, but this one was more of a burrito shape. It held a thin piece of paper my server instructed me to pull out, separating the rice from the outer layer of nori to keep the nori crisp. (That’s a major design flaw with every other hand roll I’ve ever had — the nori gets really chewy and is often difficult to bite through.) It was really tasty, but also really tiny for the price.

Everything else photographed well:

Tender chicken hearts ($2.50), pierced on a skewer. I’m sure Charles Bukowski would have had something to say about that.

Excellent pork belly gyoza dumplings ($6), served over creamy, tangy, lightly citrus-y yuzu remoulade:

A perfect skewer of crispy, salty chicken skin ($2.50):

Crispy tempura corn balls ($5), reflecting in a pool of spicy, garlicky mayo. Hopefully nobody was burned by a Cornballer while making these.

Skewers of chicken oysters ($3; top) and thighs ($3; bottom), both brushed with tare. All the yakitori (chicken) and other skewers are grilled over binchotan charcoal, and they have that unmistakable grilled flavor I can’t duplicate at my grill-less home.

And this was okonomiyaki ($7), a very traditional dish I’ve never tried anywhere before. It was described as a “pancake” served with several toppings, but it probably looks more like a flatbread or a pizza, and the base was much less firm than any of those. It was a soft, almost sort of mushy base made of Japanese mountain yams, and topped with lots of sauteed cabbage (I love cabbage, but if you don’t, skip this dish). On top of that, it is decorated beautifully with swirls of Kewpie mayo, Japanese barbecue sauce, tangy pickled ginger, and very strong, fishy-tasting, paper-thin bonito flakes. It was a real melange of flavors and textures, but it probably tempered my enjoyment a bit that I ate it quickly while it was still burning hot — temperature-hot, not spicy-hot.

I’m glad I ordered the okonomiyaki, the tempura corn, and the handie roll, but I probably wouldn’t get any of those again. They were perfectly good, but when (not if) I return, I would simply want to try other things. The yakitori chicken, on the other hand, was amazing, and I would probably go back to those favorites on every subsequent visit.

Tori Tori is a very hip, cool place, and a great option in the Mills 50 area for people who don’t want to drive all the way out to the Disney area to go back to Susuru. While some of their menu items are similar, the vibe was very different. There were a lot of happening-looking young people here, lots of couples on dates. It’s kind of a sexy place to bring in curious diners and drinkers seeking novelty and sophistication, but most people will try anything once, your Saboscrivner included. In the end, the high quality of the food, the low prices and shareability factor (and also the drinks, from what I have been assured) will keep them coming back. Just remember: it’s a bar, not a restaurant, so get used to ordering at the bar. (And beat the inevitable crowds by being an early bird like me, but that’s my standard plan everywhere I go.)

Tortas El Rey

In Orlando, we are so lucky to have amazing Mexican food in so many different styles and price ranges. I have reviewed some of our best establishments already, like the beloved Hunger Street Tacos and MX Taco, as well as hidden gems like Tortilleria El Progreso. But with all due respect to those wonderful restaurants, my all-time favorite might be Tortas El Rey (http://www.tortas-el-rey.com/), an unassuming drive-through establishment on Orange Blossom Trail north of the Florida Mall near Lancaster Road, almost an hour from where I live. Maybe it’s because I’m so rarely on that side of Orlando that it’s a rare treat, but I dream about it often and recommend it even more often.

Housed in a former Checkers location, the small white and red building has a few outdoor picnic-style tables with large umbrellas providing a bit of shade, but other than that, it’s strictly a to-go operation. Sometimes the drive-through line can get quite long, but they make all their food fresh to order, so your patience will pay off. On top of being fresh, authentic, and amazing, it’s CHEAP. I don’t know how they do it, but I encourage you to venture out there, arrive hungry, and over-order. Try everything you can. You’re not gonna regret it!

My wife is a big fan of the sopes, thick fried shells covered with the meat of her choice, crumbled queso blanco, sour cream, and shredded lettuce. I almost never see sopes on menus elsewhere. And she’s really partial to the carne asada, marinated, chopped, grilled steak with a distinct lime flavor from the marinade.

Here is a carne asada sope ($3.95) I brought her home this past weekend:

A different sope from a different visit:

Did I mention she loves carne asada? Here’s the carne asada quesadilla ($6.25) in a soft, lightly grilled flour tortilla, served with sour cream and shredded lettuce. It’s quite large, with big wedges camouflaged underneath the ones you can easily see here.

The tacos are very small, but super-cheap, at $1.80 each. On your first visit, you might decide to try each of the meats in a different taco, and then you can branch out to other dishes once you figure out your favorite meat. They come wrapped in two soft, lightly-grilled corn tortillas and garnished simply with diced cilantro, diced onions, and a spicy red hot sauce.

This is a carne asada taco (slightly higher at $1.89, unless that was a typo in the printed menu), hold the onions and hot sauce (for my wife, of course):

I almost always drive through and get my food to go, but this past weekend, I lingered at one of the tables just to get this shot of taco nirvana to share with my Saboscrivner Squad. I ordered three tacos ($1.80 each) with the works (cilantro, onions, and hot sauce): chorizo (crumbled Mexican sausage) at the top, cabeza (tender, braised beef head) on the left, and al pastor (pork marinated in pineapple juice with a slight sweet taste) on the right. These tacos are everything tacos should aspire to be. If these sound a little intimidating, fear not, because they also offer grilled chicken, carnitas (fried pork), and that old faithful, carne asada.

I’ll almost always order al pastor when I see it on a menu, and I’ve tried it several ways at Tortas El Rey. This was an al pastor burrito I ordered on a previous visit. The burritos ($6.99 each) are huge — soft flour tortillas stuffed with the meat of your choice, seasoned rice, refried beans, and cheese, then lightly cooked on the griddle. By the time you unwrap them from their foil wrapper, they are soft, chewy, gooey, melty pillows of deliciousness. It’s almost too big and heavy to eat in one piece, especially since it will start to sag as you get deeper into it.

And this is a beautiful torta al pastor from my most recent visit, which I brought home after enjoying those three tacos al fresco. Tortas ($7.25 each) are Mexican sandwiches served on bolillo rolls, and at Tortas El Rey, they come with refried beans, shredded lettuce, sliced tomatoes, sliced pickled jalapenos, avocado, and sour cream.

I always love tortas, and I’ve tried several of them here. They even serve a Milanesa torta with steak pounded flat, breaded in cracker crumbs, and deep-fried until crispy. I associate Milanesas more with Cuban food than Mexican (as in my Rey’s Cuban Cafe review), but I always love a good crossover — or fusion, since we’re talking about food and not comic books!

All orders should come with tiny plastic cups of house-made red and green hot sauces (I prefer red, but do try both), and little plastic baggies tied up with some pickled carrots, grilled onions, and lime wedges inside. I rarely use the limes, but I’m always happy to add the onions and carrots to my torta. Make sure you ask for these, so they don’t forget to give them to you!

I didn’t photograph the large styrofoam cup of a pineapple-flavored agua fresca I gulped down in the unseasonable October heat and humidity, but trust me, grab an agua fresca when you come here. (A medium is $2.65, but be a big shot and pay $3.50 for the large; you will happily drink it all.) They are some of my favorite soft drinks ever, non-carbonated and often made with real fruit and other fresh ingredients. They are cool and refreshing and sweet, but never as sickly-sweet as sodas made with high fructose corn syrup. They also offer a tangy limonada (limeade), horchata (sweet rice milk flavored with cinnamon and vanilla, perfect for cutting through the heat of spicy food), and jamaica, a fruity, tropical-tasting red drink made from hibiscus flowers. Especially because I don’t drink, I always treat myself to an agua fresca when I visit a Mexican restaurant that offers them, and they pair perfectly with any dish I’ve ever encountered. I’m also a sucker for anything pineappley.

I am smiling just thinking back to how amazing this food tasted and smelled, and I’m smelling it now as I write up this review at 1 AM on a work night. It’s funny how closely our sense of smell is tied to memory. Tortas El Rey is definitely one of my favorite places to eat in all of Orlando. If it was closer, I’d go far more often, but maybe it’s a good thing it’s all the way across town. It makes my infrequent visits that much more special, especially since I have to plan my errands to make it the last stop before heading back home. If you’re looking for fancy, upscale, indoor seating, air conditioning — keep driving. But if you want authentic Mexican food, cooked from scratch, made with love, full of flavor, and so very cheap, it’s worth venturing out of your proverbial and physical comfort zone onto OBT and looking for the tiny white and red building. Tell the nice ladies behind the heavily fortified window that I sent you… and they’ll have no idea who or what you’re talking about. But if you like tacos (and let’s face it, who doesn’t?), you really need to experience the humble majesty of Tortas El Rey for yourself.

Chain Reactions: Waffle House

“It is indeed marvelous. An irony-free zone, where everything is beautiful and nothing hurts. Where everybody, regardless of race, creed, color, or degree of inebriation, is welcomed. Its warm yellow glow a beacon of hope and salvation inviting the hungry, the lost, the seriously hammered, all across the South to to come inside. A place of safety and nourishment. It never closes. It is always, ALWAYS faithful. Always there FOR YOU.”

Those were the wise words of the late, great Anthony Bourdain, from his Parts Unknown episode where he visited a Waffle House restaurant in Charleston, South Carolina.

The man did so much for broadening people’s views about food, between his brilliant books, like Kitchen Confidential and A Cook’s Tour, and his fascinating food shows, like No Reservations and Parts Unknown. He encouraged us to experiment and try new things in new places with new people, to step out of our culinary comfort zones, challenge our sensibilities, and open ourselves up to new, potentially life-changing experiences. As a food blogger, he is one of my greatest influences, in terms of his unique voice (both his writing style and his soothing TV show narration), his curiosity and empathy, and his sense of adventure.

Bourdain knew a good meal when he saw it, whether it was five-star fine dining or some dirty, dangerous dive halfway across the globe. I always appreciated that he spoke so highly of Waffle House (https://www.wafflehouse.com/), that ubiquitous-yet-humble chain of 24-hour Southern diners, and highlighted it on his show.

I also unironically love Waffle House. It is practically synonymous with a “greasy spoon,” and sometimes infamous for unsavory late-night antics. But the truth is, you can get a delicious, hearty, affordable meal there at any time of the day or night, prepared right before your eyes in an open kitchen. I am lucky enough to live near the best Waffle House location ever — always spotless, fast, and friendly no matter when you show up, with impeccable, satisfying, soul-nourishing food. Scoff all you want — if you’re still skeptical, that just means you’ve been denying yourself one of the greatest comfort food experiences to be had in the South.

I’ve been composing this Waffle House review and compiling photos for months, over the course of several separate visits with my wife. But today was Anthony Bourdain’s birthday, so it felt like the right thing to do to go back tonight, to reminisce about the life and legacy of one of the greatest foodies of all, to indulge our senses and think about all the entertainment and education the man provided us over the years. We were also joined by some members of the Orlando Foodie Forum presented by Tasty Chomps, a Facebook group that has also broadened my culinary horizons and introduced me to some amazing new friends. It felt right to commune with these fellow foodies and Bourdain fans, and to talk and laugh and share food with them, tonight of all nights. We learned all the right lessons.

Even if you aren’t familiar with the glory of Waffle House, you may have heard of their flawless hash browns and all the different ways you can order them:

Smothered with grilled onions
Covered with melted cheese
Chunked with grilled smoked ham
Diced with grilled tomatoes
Peppered with pickled jalapeno peppers
Capped with grilled button mushrooms (more for y’all!)
Topped with Bert’s Chili
Country with sausage gravy

I am perfectly happy to eat my hash browns straight up with ketchup, but I do love them smothered and covered as a special treat. My wife prefers hers plain, as usual. Tonight one of our dinner companions ordered hers covered, chunked, and peppered. (I hope you’re writing this down, I’m gonna test ya later!)

The All-Star Special is a bargain and also a challenge: fried eggs (you can get them in other styles), accompanied by smothered hash browns (dig the grilled onions) and buttery white toast. Tonight I was feeling like a big shot, so I got cheese on my eggs with a specific purpose in mind:

A picture from an earlier visit, this time with no cheese on the eggs, and thicker grilled and buttered Texas toast, superior to the white toast:

We both love their very crispy bacon, which is my wife’s go-to breakfast meat at any time of day:

You can choose between bacon, sausage, and ham for this All-Star Special, or pay a slight upcharge for a large cut of rich, salty, bone-in country ham, bursting with far more flavor than the “everyday” ham. The country ham is my new favorite. Obviously the texture is totally different, but it always reminds me of prosciutto, one of my favorite foods in the whole world.

As if that wasn’t enough, the All-Star Special also includes a plain waffle, which I believe is made with Golden Malted waffle and pancake mix, the best commercial mix I’ve ever found. It isn’t the hardest thing in the world to make waffles or pancakes from scratch at home, but I buy that mix now to try (in vain) to recreate the perfection of a Waffle House waffle. The outside is always crispy, the inside is always fluffy. Anyway, if I ordered this one in the photo, it would soon be doused in syrup:

Here’s a waffle topped with peanut butter chips, from another visit. You can also get chocolate chips and even pecans. They have even offered peach waffles in past summers, which is a pro-tier move from this Atlanta, Georgia-based company. I’m looking forward to peach waffle season.

Grits! Not my favorite, but my wife sure loves ’em with some butter and salt. We all know that no self-respecting Southerner would make instant grits, but I’m not sure if these are “real” or instant.

And she turned me onto the grilled, split, soft and buttery biscuits, which she likes instead of toast, with a little butter and jam. You can also order a biscuit sandwich with eggs, cheese, and the breakfast meat of your choice.

This is another one of my favorites, the Texas sausage, egg, and cheese melt, on grilled and buttered Texas toast, with added grilled onions. I like mustard on my eggs, mmmm hmmmm. Pure breakfast perfection at any time of day (or night), but I hate eating in the morning. We’re much more likely to go there for dinner.

Tonight, another one of my adventurous friends ordered something I’ve never tried before: the new Cheesesteak Melt Hashbrown Bowl, which is pretty self-explanatory: a large order of hash browns covered with melted cheese and topped with cheesesteak and grilled onions. Everything a growing boy needs, it’s the breakfast of champions, even at 8:30 on a Tuesday night.

But Waffle House is about so much more than just breakfast food! I actually love their burgers.

This is my standard: the $2 double “original” Angus cheeseburger that comes with two patties, melted cheese, and grilled onions on a grilled, buttered bun, with pickles and a packet of delicious WH Sauce, which is similar to chipotle mayo. (It is a Heinz product, and I wish they sold it in bottles!) It’s very much like an old-school diner burger, like the burger you imagine being served at a diner in a Tom Waits song. It is better than just about any fast food burgers. DID I MENTION IT IS $2? It may be the best $2 you’ll ever spend on food.

Again, a better photo from a different visit. I think American cheese is the ultimate cheese for burgers and grilled cheese sandwiches, for how nicely it melts. Yeah, come at me, bro.

Here’s one adorned with that WH Sauce:

And here’s tonight’s burger, pre-WH Saucing, side by side with one of those wondrous waffles. Don’t worry, they don’t serve them on the same plate, but we had six people at our tiny table, so I was trying to consolidate:

One day they were out of burger buns, so I asked if they could serve the burger on grilled Texas toast. They happily obliged, and I think it was even better — kinda like a patty melt. Pardon the blurriness.

My wife swears by Waffle House’s grilled pork chops, always with her beloved hash browns. These have supplanted eggs and bacon as her standard order, although she still loves the grits, waffles, and biscuits too. They are surprisingly tender, juicy, flavorful, bone-in pork chops. Ask for the “seasoning” — it is just a salt and pepper blend, but it adds a unique touch, and they aren’t the same without it.

Chops ‘n’ browns:

More chops ‘n’ browns:

And if you decide you want picante sauce for your hash browns, eggs, sandwiches, or burgers, I love that the brand is Senora Jackie’s Casa de Waffle. This was old news to us, but our table-mates got a real kick out of it.

Waffle House usually has good sweet iced tea, and I like my iced tea like I like my women: sweet, strong, cool, and with lemon. But usually I’ll get a vanilla Coke or vanilla root beer there, on top of all those other carbs. They actually squirt real vanilla syrup into the fountain beverage, which makes a nice difference. I can’t speak for the coffee, since I rarely touch the stuff.

Waffle House restaurants all have another beloved feature: a jukebox, loaded up with pop hits, golden oldies, and a surprising number of novelty songs written ABOUT Waffle House. Fun fact: Waffle House even has its own record label! I rarely indulge with the jukebox, which is odd, because I love foisting… uh, sharing my musical tastes with others. But tonight I spared our new friends and the stalwart staff, lest I be tempted to queue up some Tom Jones on repeat.

And one more fun fact about the Waffle House I think you should know: it is often the first business up and running again after hurricanes and other natural disasters! Because it stays open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) refers to the “Waffle House Index” in terms of the severity and impact of the disaster. According to this transcribed National Public Radio interview, “If a Waffle House is closed because a disaster is bad, [FEMA calls] it red. If they’re open but have a limited menu, that’s yellow… And a completely open, full-menu Waffle House is green.” A Waffle House spokesman said “If we’re opening up quickly, that’s a good sign that community is going to come back quickly. If we are on a limited menu, that’s probably because we’re – have some utilities out, so it’s going to take a bit longer for that community to come back.” So as we edge in those scary Southern summer months that occasionally bring hurricanes, maybe pay as close attention to your local Waffle House as you do to your favorite telegenic weatherperson.

The world is certainly not the same without Anthony Bourdain, and I think about him whenever I try a new dish, visit a new restaurant, or explore a new city… and also whenever I end up at my friendly neighborhood Waffle House. Tonight, over a late dinner with my winsome, wondrous wife — the person I love most in the world — and some really great new foodie friends, Bourdain was on our minds and in our hearts. That fellowship, the fact that I found my way onto a local food forum on Facebook, the fact that I started this blog just over a year ago and bother writing about food at all — I can trace all of it back to him. So on his birthday, a year after we lost him, I mourned and celebrated the man, I ate good food with good people, and I thought long and hard about how lucky we all are to be able to do that.

The New York Adventure Part 6: Katz’s Delicatessen

I promise my wife and I didn’t schlep all the way to New York to just eat Jewish deli food for our tenth anniversary trip, although that remains a huge part of The City’s culture and history, as well as its appeal for both of us. I might be a secular, non-practicing Jew, but that food fills me with nostalgia for my childhood, as well as for early-to-mid 20th Century Jewish big city experiences I feel and relate to strongly, despite not being born yet. Does that make sense?

I’ve written before about how food embodies our shared human experiences: our history, our politics, our economics, art, science, even religion. And while I rarely feel like I fit in anywhere, I feel a sense of belonging to something larger and greater than myself when I nosh on a knish, a bagel with pickled fish, or a pastrami sandwich. My wife indulges me, and she appreciates the food as well. It might not feel like as big a deal if we could get all the same food at the same quality level at home, but we can’t, so going to the iconic originals, the legendary landmarks, the places that have survived a century because they’re that damn good, is a big damn deal.

My family was not what you might call “of the travelers.” My parents, both teachers in the Miami-Dade County Public Schools, were (and still are, in retirement) hard-working, patient, generous, and awesome, but we never took many trips when I was younger. That’s why when we went to New York in the summer of 1991, it was the most profound and transformative experience of my life thus far. My dad is from Brooklyn — specifically the East New York neighborhood that hasn’t been gentrified and hipsterized like so many other parts of the borough — so I feel like New York is in my blood, despite never having lived there.

That was a whirlwind trip, indulgent for all of us. My brother and I had never even flown before. We stayed near Central Park (and even took a horse-drawn carriage ride through the Park, which I do not recommend), visited family in Brooklyn, took in museums, made a pilgrimage to the legendary comic book store Forbidden Planet (much larger back then than it is now, enough to blow my middle school mind with its two floors). On top of that, we ate at great Jewish delis of decades past that have long since closed their doors: the Stage Deli, the Carnegie Deli, and Lindy’s in Manhattan, and Grabstein’s in Brooklyn. Despite everything in the City feeling more decrepit and dangerous back then, it was an awe-inspiring and unforgettable trip that made a huge impact on my life. I had always romanticized New York from my dad’s stories about growing up, my lifelong obsession with DC and Marvel Comics, and my teenage love affairs with jazz and punk music. But after seeing, feeling, and tasting it for myself that summer, New York changed me forever. I desperately wanted to go to NYU for film school, but obviously that never happened. I spent the next 15+ years fantasizing about a return trip and everything I would do, see, and eat there.

Even though my parents would never consider themselves “foodies” (and often wonder how the hell I ended up like I did), I think our original New York trip sowed the seeds of my own desire for culinary capers and appetizing adventures. I finally made it back to New York with my wife while we were just dating, and the post-9/11 City felt much cleaner and safer than it did in 1991. That time we took in my first real Broadway shows and visited maybe the most iconic New York delicatessen of all, Katz’s Delicatessen (https://katzsdelicatessen.com/). And we returned again, to the City and to Katz’s, for our honeymoon a few years later, in 2009. Finally, a decade later, we were back once more.

Katz’s feels chaotic when you’re a laid-back Floridian. When you go in, you get a ticket, and then you can either get in line with one of the meat cutters behind the counter, or wait for a table with a waiter, who is usually cartoonishly brusque and rude (and yet, strangely charming). I told my wife to grab an open table outside of the waiters’ section, and I lined up. As you can see, it’s kind of a free-for-all. They’ve been doing this for over a hundred years, but could there possibly be a better way to get everyone in and out?When you finally get to the front of the line, if you order pastrami, the cutter will cut you a small slice on a plate, for you to sample. Make sure you have a buck on hand for the customary tip. Keep in mind, because they hand-slice the meat at Katz’s, it comes out much thicker and juicier than most sandwich shops with thin, machine-sliced pastrami. Normally I prefer my deli meats sliced thin, but there’s nothing like this.

Anyway, here it is, the finest pastrami sandwich known to man, hand-sliced right in front of me. I asked for a little fattier, juicier pastrami — none of that lean stuff for us. A little helpful hint from your friendly neighborhood Saboscrivner: When you’re at Katz’s, pay the $1 upcharge and get your sandwich on a CLUB ROLL, dig me? The rye bread they use is essentially an edible napkin, because it barely holds up under the weight and greasy juices of the copious amounts of cured and smoked meats. The club roll is delicious, and it supports the meat and condiments better. Rye is for suckas.

This was a $23 sandwich, but two healthy, hungry people can easily split it and be satisfied. I added some of their mustard to my half and even dabbed a bit in a small plastic cup of Russian dressing, meant for their Reubens, but my wife would do no such thing.

Pickles are included. Just as I did on my previous visit, ten years ago on our honeymoon, I tried both kinds, but just couldn’t get into them. I am truly trying to develop a taste for pickles, but kosher dills and half-sours just don’t tickle my pickle.

Anyway, leaving is a whole big production, because you have to present your ticket when you leave, then weave through the hangry crowd to get to the front. But here’s another helpful hint: If you’re paying with a credit card, pay in the back. We went to the front and waited to check out, only to find out they only accept cash up there. Rather than force my wife to hustle back through the hungry, hangry hordes, I was lucky I had some sock money on hand (or in sock, to be accurate), so we settled up and escaped.

Katz’s can be an exhausting experience — I definitely wouldn’t go there for a chill, relaxing meal — but there is no better pastrami sandwich to be had in New York, which means there is no better pastrami sandwich to be had anywhere else.

The New York Adventure Part 3: Junior’s

One thing New Yorkers and well-traveled foodies always warn people about is to NEVER EAT IN TIMES SQUARE. It’s tourist trap central, featuring comically-large, multi-story versions of national and worldwide chain restaurants. That’s where you have your oversized Olive Garden, your astronomical Applebee’s, your stupendous S’barro (someone once said they have the best pizza in New York!), and I swear we passed some kind of combination prodigious Planet Hollywood and brobdingnagian Buca Di Beppo. (“I’M AT THE PLANET HOLLYWOOD! I’M AT THE BUCA DI BEPPO! I’M AT THE COMBINATION PLANET HOLLYWOOD AND BUCA DI BEPPO!”)

But when we took a cab down to the Richard Rodgers Theatre to see Hamilton (only the greatest musical of all time!), my wife and I both clocked Junior’s (https://www.juniorscheesecake.com/), another one of those legendary, old-school Jewish New York restaurants. I was a little surprised to see it, because I thought Junior’s was a Brooklyn thing, and I knew we weren’t going to make it into Brooklyn on this trip. I barely gave it a second thought, because on the rare times we go to concerts, plays, and stand-up performances at home, my wife is usually too tired to go out for a bite afterwards. When I lived in Gainesville (go Gators!), I loved going out for food with my friends after a show. To this day, food always tastes the best to me at night, after doing something fun.

But after being completely blown away by the awesomeness of Hamilton, my wife said she could eat, and we both immediately thought of how close we were to Junior’s. It turns out there are two separate Junior’s locations in the Times Square/Broadway area, and they’re open late to accommodate the after-show crowd. Little did we know that we would end up taking in a second Broadway show on this trip, or that we would end up at both Junior’s locations! I’m so glad we did, though. Since this was the only restaurant I didn’t research in advance, it ended up being the most pleasant surprise.

This is the 45th Street Junior’s location, at 1515 Broadway. It looks old, but it was founded in 2006. (The original location in Brooklyn was founded by Harry Rosen in 1950.)

Like so many of the iconic Jewish delis of decades past, Junior’s served us free cole slaw (good) and dill pickles for the table.

My wife’s chocolate milkshake was good enough to bring anyone to the yard. Dig that Junior’s glasses have instructions for mixing up the perfect egg cream, with seltzer, milk, and chocolate syrup (go Fox’s U-Bet or go home).

I have to admit, I wasn’t expecting anything special when I ordered onion rings, but I am an onion ring aficionado, this is The Saboscrivner, and we have a little recurring feature on here called

[NEW YORK POLICE SIREN SAMPLE!]

RING THE ALARM!

And these were godly onion rings. I didn’t know what to expect from their thick batter coatings, but they were crispy-yet-yielding on the outside, and soft on the inside, with a slight sweetness. If I had to describe them, it was almost like a funnel cake-style batter, or like a really good old-fashioned sour cream cake doughnut, but with a crunchier outer layer — and of course not that sweet. I’ve never had their equal and doubt I ever will again.

This was the combination corned beef and pastrami Reuben sandwich we ordered to share in our post-Hamilton afterglow, and it was a winner. The rye bread was buttered and lightly grilled to perfection, as opposed to too many Reubens where the bread is toasted hard to the point of being burned, and you can’t even take a bite without the sandwich flopping apart. Both meats were sliced thin and lean, but this would not be our only pastrami experience on this trip, fear not. They served the Russian dressing on the side, which was great because my wife is always hesitant around sauces and condiments, whereas I generally love them, and I feel like we ended up with more this way. Needless to say, some of my onion rings took a dip.

And finally, the piece de resistance — a slice of Junior’s famous blueberry cheesecake. We both love cheesecake, and we both agreed this was the best cheesecake of our little lives — so much better than Florida mainstay Publix, and streets ahead of the Cheesecake Factory. It was perfect in every way, to the point where I almost feel guilty posting this pic and raving about it, knowing my dozens of readers (baker’s dozens?) can’t just pop off to Junior’s to score a slice for themselves.

Our last day in New York, we realized we didn’t have any set plans for the evening, so we decided to see Chicago, a musical we had never seen live before. We love the 2002 Best Picture-winning movie, though. Since the Chicago revival is the longest continuously-running show in Broadway history (since 1996), it didn’t have the hype that Hamilton did, and were were lucky to score excellent and affordable fifth-row orchestra tickets. It razzle-dazzled us, especially Desi Oakley, whose adorably sexy and hilarious lead performance as coquettish murderess Roxie Hart, blew away the A-list actress from the award-winning film. Plus, we’ve been digging Fosse/Verdon, the FX miniseries about the mercurial director-choreographer and his dancer-actress-muse, and they aired their making-of-Chicago episode mere days before our New York arrival. Call it fate, call it luck, call it karma, but I believe that everything happens for a reason!

Our luck just kept improving, because the Ambassador Theatre, where we saw Chicago, is right next to the other Times Square-area Junior’s location, 1626 Broadway at 49th Street, which opened in the summer of 2017. And after how much we loved it the previous night, my wife was more than up for an encore performance. This one featured the mid-century “space-age” design I love so much, that was so popular from the postwar years into the early 1960s. It was cool to see this new version of the rotating “Junior’s” sign that the original location in Brooklyn has.

My wife ordered something I probably never would have gone with, but it knocked our proverbial socks off: a brisket sandwich served on crispy-fried potato latkes, served with au jus and some of the freshest, chunkiest applesauce ever. This thing was huge! The brisket was pretty good (we’re both too used to smoked barbecued brisket, and this could have been improved by being a little fattier), but the latkes (AKA potato pancakes, goys and girls) were among the best we’ve ever had. And yes, you eat them with applesauce.

I spend so much of my life thinking “What am I, chopped liver?” that along the way I became a big fan of the stuff. I had yet to try chopped liver at any of our other NYC deli destinations, so tonight was the big night. It came served simply, two big scoops with some thin slices of bread, which could have been toasted or grilled to hold up better to the weight and creamy richness of the chopped liver. And as much as I love onions, raw red onion is a little much for me, so I left those alone.

I asked my wife if we were going to indulge in another slice of Junior’s heavenly cheesecake, but she was already enchanted by seeing a slice of red velvet cake being walked out to a nearby table. She loves red velvet cake far more than I do, but hey, anniversary trip, and who am I to stand in the way of her continuing good times? She loved it, and even I liked the bite I had. Fear not, fearless readers — even the two of us, together at this late hour, couldn’t finish the whole supersized slice.

So that was Junior’s. I hadn’t planned it into our schedule at all, but fate intervened, and we ended up there twice — two different nights, two separate locations. And Times Square or not, tourist trap or not, everything we ordered transcended our expectations.

And here’s a helpful hint from your old pal The Saboscrivner: Orlando denizens, you CAN treat yo’selves to Junior’s cheesecake locally, at Pickles Deli in Longwood, on State Road 434 right off Exit 94. They ship it in from New York and serve plain, raspberry swirl, chocolate “skyscraper,” and carrot cake “skyscraper” cheesecakes by the slice. So forget the Factory and try Junior’s for yourselves. Plus, Pickles is pretty great too. Expect a review at some point this summer!

The New York Adventure Part 2: Veselka

On our first evening in New York City in ten years, we absolutely had to make a pilgrimage to The Strand, the four-floor bookstore that puts most other bookstores to shame. We went there on our honeymoon back in 2009, and it seemed even larger this time, with a better selection. After browsing for a while, marveling (no pun intended) at how their graphic novel selection had grown over the last decade, and buying my wife some books, I knew where we had to go for dinner. After a Lyft ride we unexpectedly shared with another commuter (who seemed as surprised as we did), we ended up where we were supposed to be:

Veselka (https://www.veselka.com/), the 65-year-old Ukrainian restaurant I’ve wanted to visit since Louis C.K. took his TV daughters there for a late-night breakfast in the first season of Louie, before we knew what we now know about Louis C.K.. It was also one of Anthony Bourdain’s stops in his heartbreaking final episode of Parts Unknown, set in the East Village and Lower East Side. It’s a counterculture hangout favored by local luminaries and celebrities for many decades, a place that radiates cool without trying to be cool at all.

Veselka is an East Village institution, a diner that opened in 1954 and has been open 24 hours a day, seven days a week since 1990. The menu boasts American breakfast, lunch, and dinner classics as well as traditional Ukrainian specialties, which I figured I would stick to. They also serve beer and wine. Here are some of the specials of the week:

My wife and I both love pierogies, and Veselka is pierogi paradise. You can get them boiled or fried, and we opted for fried. They have several varieties, so we went for a platter of four different ones: meat, potato, cheese, and truffle and mushroom (that one was all her). Each one was better than the last, but I think we agreed the cheese one was the best, with a subtly sweet, creamy, farmer’s cheese filling. The pierogies came garnished with applesauce, sour cream, and my beloved caramelized onions. We didn’t expect that they would be crispy and bubbly on the outside, like old-school McDonald’s fried apple pies, since most pierogies I’ve had are sauteed in a pan with butter. These were better than either of us could have imagined!

My wife ordered chicken schnitzel, a breaded chicken breast cutlet that came with two sides. She went safe, with fries and egg noodles, although it was a little disappointing the egg noodles didn’t come with butter. They were just plain!

I had a hard time deciding, but since a lot of the Ukrainian specialties included mushrooms, I ultimately chose bigos, a hearty Eastern European dish I first tried many years ago at Hubert’s Polish Kitchen, a restaurant at the North Market in Columbus, Ohio, when there was snow on the ground. It’s a salty, sweet, and sour sauerkraut-based stew that also includes kielbasa sausage, roast pork, and onions, and it is absolutely delicious, even in May. I should learn to make this at home, I like it so much.

One of my sides was really creamy potato salad, loaded with dill and carrots, that worked well cutting the richness and saltiness of the bigos stew.

And because I know my wife always loves it, I also ordered kasha, roasted and boiled buckwheat (O-TAY!), a traditional Jewish side dish often served with bowtie pasta (kasha varnishkes). My mom used to make it a lot, when we were kids. I think kasha is just okay, but my wife seemed to like Veselka’s version a lot. We had no idea how huge the portions would be, so we had to help each other with all of this food.

My wife wasn’t blown away by her honey mint ginger iced tea. It sounded refreshing, but it had a fierce gingery bite.

I, on the other hand, loved my vanilla egg cream, a sweet drink that contains neither eggs nor cream. The chocolate egg cream, the much more common variety, is a classic old-timey Jewish New York beverage, made by stirring together seltzer, milk, and Fox’s U-Bet chocolate syrup. Accept no substitutes. Florida followers, you can find Fox’s U-Bet at most Publix stores, and it’s far superior to any other commercial chocolate syrups. We always keep a bottle in the fridge for occasional egg creams. They are like a dessert that also helps with digestion! (Altacocker alert!) But I had never even seen a vanilla egg cream before, and I’m glad I went for it. I love vanilla-flavored anything, but the kitchen is the only room I like things to be vanilla in, if you know what I’m sayin’.

And for dessert, we shared fresh blueberry pierogies, drizzled with sour cream. These weren’t the crispy fried pierogies from earlier in our meal, and we were a little surprised they contained actual whole blueberries, lightly warmed during the cooking process, rather than blueberry compote or preserves that we expected. They were tasty, but I might have preferred the crispy fried exterior and sweeter blueberry compote filling.

If I lived in the East Village, I would probably be a regular at Veselka. This was our first experience with any Ukrainian food, although I sure love Polish food and miss Polonia, the Polish restaurant that used to operate near my old apartment in Longwood (one of Orlando’s countless suburbs). But most importantly, I love all the history and atmosphere at these classic New York eateries, the places that have been around for decades and stay open late. They are primo people-watching spots, and you can tell multiple generations have shared delicious meals and happy memories there, and they’ve also survived some shit there. Very few restaurants in the Orlando area have been around this long, but whenever a place lasts this many decades, you know they’re doing a lot right. Veselka definitely is.