Michelin Award Winner – Page 2

Twenty Pho Hour

Twenty Pho Hour (https://www.twenty-pho-hour.com/) is a new “fast casual Asian fusion” restaurant that opened in the shopping center at 11951 International Drive, down by Sea World, in a part of Orlando I rarely venture to. My wife and I recently went there because a dear friend from college was in town briefly, staying nearby. I hadn’t seen him in over 20 years, but we lived down the hall from each other in the dorm our freshman year, and had caught up on Facebook, where he is as witty and insightful and as good a dude as ever. This guy (who shares a name with an infamous TV news reporter and an infamous cartoon character) had even befriended some of my completely unrelated Facebook friends, and my wife really wanted to meet him, so we had a great lunch at the eye-catching Twenty Pho Hour.

Normally you order at the counter, but since my wife and I arrived before my friend, the patient server allowed us to sit down at a table, and she took all of our orders on a tablet when my friend joined us. Then we wandered around the space, since there is a lot to look at. Twenty Pho Hour bills itself as “America’s first 2D noodle bar,” and that is due to the striking interior design and theming of the restaurant. Everything is white surfaces with black outlines, giving it the look of two-dimensional artwork that messes with your eyes and your brain by suggesting three dimensions. Generation Xers and elder Millennials, you have probably (hopefully!) seen the classic “Take On Me” music video by Norwegian band A-ha, and that is the best way to describe the Twenty-Pho Hour decor. Plus, the song is a synth-pop bop that can transport you straight back to 1985, for better or for worse.

All the books had funny, punny titles on their spines:

The “pho booth” is a popular picture-taking spot, as one could guess:

So it’s a hip, cool, ‘Grammable place, but what about the food? Well, it’s perfectly fine, especially on that touristy side of Orlando, far from the super-authentic Asian restaurants clustered around the Mills 50 district. I’m guessing for many who venture here, this could be their first taste of pho, the iconic Vietnamese beef noodle soup that lends the restaurant its name. Because it’s a pho spot, I decided to try a classic: pho dac biet ($13). This is the combination pho that comes with thin slices of rare eye round steak, beef brisket, chewy beef meatballs, tender tendon, and tripe (which has an odd texture that isn’t always my favorite), in addition to soft rice noodles, onions, and green onions in a complex, fragrant, slow-simmered beef broth. I’ve slurped, scarfed, sipped, and supped on pho dac biet all over Orlando, so I wanted to try this as pure and unadulterated as possible. I didn’t add any sambal oelek, sriracha, or hoisin sauce to my pho, just the fresh basil, fresh jalapeño slices, and a healthy squirt of lime. And it was perfectly fine. It didn’t capture the majestic magnificence of my other 2023 discovery, Pho Huong Lan, which I would still consider the best pho in Orlando by far. But it was refreshing, the way only pho can be, compared to having other hot soups during most of the hot, humid year in Florida. Later, I would describe it to my wife as “baby’s first pho,” but you know what? There’s nothing wrong with that.

My friend ordered the Trifecta ($13), a soup of beef brisket, chicken, shrimp, and udon, a thick and chewy Japanese style of noodle, in beef broth. He seemed to really enjoy his, but I did not get a picture of it. Sorry!

My wife ordered pad Thai ($13), a dish of stir-fried rice noodles with egg, peanuts, carrots, scallions, cilantro, and lime in a sweet and tangy sauce. She chose tofu as her protein, but you could also choose steak tips, brisket, chicken, shrimp, or vegetables. Note that even the plates and bowls stick to the visual theming of white with black borders, to continue the illusion and make the food pop visually even more. I’ve always felt that pad Thai is a great dish for judging a new and/or unfamiliar Thai restaurant, along with my personal go-to Thai dish, pad kee mao, sometimes known as drunken noodles. I think my wife chose wisely, because she really loved Twenty Pho Hour’s version of pad Thai. She let me try a taste, and I liked it too.

My wife also adores summer rolls at most of our favorite Vietnamese restaurants like Little Saigon and Pho 88, so she wanted to try the Twenty Pho Hour version. These were tofu summer rolls ($5) — transparent, chewy rice paper stuffed with fried tofu, mixed greens, rice vermicelli (the same noodles that were in my pho), carrots, zucchini chips, fried onion, and fried garlic. She seemed to like them a lot, but she didn’t dig on the sweet chili sauce they came with. She greatly prefers the sweet peanut sauce that most other Vietnamese restaurants serve their summer rolls with. Little did we realize, Twenty Pho Hour also serves more traditional summer rolls with that peanut sauce, but oh well, lesson learned.

My wife ordered a taro milk tea ($5) with some strawberry-flavored popping boba added (a $1 upcharge), and she really liked that. Taro bubble tea is her standard drink at any Asian tea shop or Vietnamese restaurant, but they had a few flavors to choose from. Taro always tastes like vanilla to me, but with a slightly earthy undertone that is pleasant.

And my old pal ordered an adult beverage that came with an adorable Twenty Pho Hour-branded rubber duckie, complete with the restaurant’s logo and matching color scheme. This was the spicy Tokyo mule ($12), with jalapeño-infused sake, ginger beer, simple syrup, lime juice, and fresh basil. It sounded really interesting and refreshing, and he seemed to really like it. Unfortunately, he forgot to bring the duck with him, but you can keep them.

So that’s Twenty Pho Hour. Despite the name, the restaurant is not open twenty-four hours, so that is misleading, but I understand the need for some logical leaps in service of a pun. At least it remains open until 2:00 AM Thursday through Saturday. If you find yourself down near Sea World and don’t want to schlep toward downtown Orlando for pho or other Asian food, it would be a pretty safe bet. It’s already quite popular, and I expect its popularity with increase exponentially in the weeks and months to come, so plan your visit accordingly.

Apparently it is up for some kind of Michelin dining award in 2023, to be announced later this summer. I’m assuming a Bib Gourmand award, which “recognizes great food at a great value,” or a “Recommended Restaurant.” But I’m not expecting a restaurant that has you fetch your own chopsticks and plastic utensils will get a Michelin star. Personally, I am skeptical about the entire Michelin process, and about getting restaurant recommendations from a tire company with delusions of grandeur, but here you are, getting restaurant recommendations for the past five years from an ex-librarian writing from a home office filled with action figure displays.

Sanguich De Miami (Miami)

My oldest, closest friend is a fellow food-lover and blogger, and since he still lives in Miami, the city of my birth and first 18 years on this big blue ball o’dirt, I defer to him on all things worth eating in South Florida. He is an authority on croquetas and writes a semi-regular Croqueta Diaries column on his blog. On the rare chances we get to visit each other, we try to introduce each other to our cities’ local favorite restaurants — not just our personal favorites, but the ones we are proudest of, that we think the other will appreciate the most.

It had been over two years since my last trip down to Miami to visit this guy (and also my family), thanks to the pandemic making social calls more fraught and long trips seem like less of a priority. But I missed everyone, so back in July, I schlepped down south from Orlando and tried to make the most of it. For my buddy and I, that usually meant hitting a few different restaurants to try to sample the best stuff in a limited amount of time.

Our ridiculous foodie day got off to the best possible start at one of Miami’s finest establishments, Sanguich De Miami (https://sanguich.com/). It has become famous in a relatively short time for featuring some of the finest Cuban sandwiches in the city that specializes in them — no, not Tampa, the other one! But my friend isn’t the only person who vouches for Sanguich — it earned a prestigious Michelin Bib Gourmand Award earlier this year, which is a huge honor for any restaurant. Several of my Orlando favorites won Bib Gourmands in 2022 as well, and the Michelin website explains it best: “What Bib restaurants do have in common is their simpler style of cooking, which is recognisable, easy-to-eat and often something you feel you could attempt to replicate at home. A Bib restaurant will also leave you with a sense of satisfaction, at having eaten so well at such a reasonable price.” My regular readers know I’m not the biggest fan of “fine dining,” so these Bib Gourmand-rated restaurants appeal to me a lot more.

Anyway, this is the beautiful, fragrant, flawless pan con bistec sandwich ($13.59) that we split in the car. It contains thinly sliced sous vide steak, mojo rojo sauce, fried string potatoes, and Swiss cheese on pressed Cuban bread. I’ve had several similar sandwiches at Cuban restaurants in Miami over the decades, but I can tell you that I’ve never had its equal. Look at that cheese pull! I just wish you stalwart Saboscrivnerinos could smell it.

We also ordered the pan con lechon ($10.99) to eat later. This elevated take on another classic Miami sandwich contains shredded pork, pickled mojo onions, and garlic cilantro aioli on Cuban bread. I hate to even put this in print, but sometimes the pork in these pork sandwiches is on the dry side, and sometimes it is sliced so thick that you take one bite and pull huge chunks out of the sandwich, destroying the structural integrity. Well, that was not the case with this pan con lechon! Look at it!

Here’s the half I heated up back home, and it was glorious. The pork was so flavorful, and all the elements sang together in perfect harmony. Shredding the meat made it such a pleasant textural experience to eat, and everything held together, as it should. Of course the bread was pressed to perfection, even surviving a four-hour drive and a trip through the toaster oven.

Of course we didn’t leave well enough alone! We ordered a third sandwich too, but my friend is such a mensch, he sent me packing with the whole thing, since he could return to Sanguich de Miami a heck of a lot sooner than I could. We opted for a slight variation on the classic Cubano, for only 30 cents more: the croqueta preparada ($12.79).

It contains all the same ingredients as the Cubano: city ham, lechon (the same pork that’s on the pan con lechon), Swiss cheese, pickles, and mustard on pressed Cuban bread, BUT there is one more ingredient that is probably obvious by now: two croquetas de jamon! Yes, that’s right. For a double dose of delectable decadence, Sanguich added two of those crispy, cracker crumb-coated croquettes stuffed with finely chopped ham and creamy bechamel sauce, deep fried and then pressed onto the sandwich so they turn warm and melty and gooey, almost like a super-savory Cubano condiment. This wasn’t the biggest Cuban sandwich I’ve ever eaten (that was from the former owner-operators of Orlando’s College Park Cafe), but it was easily one of the best. Top Five, for sure. Top two or three, absolutely. Of course, the croquetas added a whole new dimension of deliciousness to the classic Cubano, just like how Tampa Cuban sandwiches (like the ones at Alessi Bakery and La Segunda Bakery) add genoa salami. But I’ve never had anything like the croqueta preparada sandwich from Sanguich.

So this place is worth every bit of praise and hype, trust me (or hey, trust a tire company that also rates restaurants, which makes about as much sense). Calle Ocho in Miami’s Little Havana is full of wonderful, iconic restaurants, and I’m sure it is pretty hard to get a bad meal there. I’ve written about a couple of those establishments before, and I have one more Little Havana review from my most recent trip that I’m working on. But next time you’re in Miami, you’ll avoid a lot of damage and anguish if you practice your Spanish and manage to order a sandwich from Sanguich (or two, or three).

Bombay Street Kitchen

Hold onto your hats, true believers, because I’m bringing you a review of my favorite new restaurant to open so far in 2021. Five months into the year, I’m pleased as punch to profess that Orlando has a big hit on its hands with Bombay Street Kitchen, a beautiful new Indian restaurant located on South Orange Blossom Trail near the Lancaster Road intersection, directly next door to one of my favorite Mexican restaurants, Tortas El Rey. It takes a special schlep for me to get down to that side of town, but it’s so worth it, now more than ever before.

I can’t rave enough about this place, and I had to visit it twice, a week apart, just to try as many dishes as I could to do justice to it in a review. Bombay Street Kitchen boasts a huge menu, covering cuisine from all over the Indian subcontinent, a stark contrast against many other Indian restaurants that focus on a certain geographical area. My Saboscrivner suggestion is to study the multitudinous menu options in advance. The good news is that a lot of the dishes are extremely reasonably priced, and it is an ideal place to go with a group of fully vaccinated, like-minded, culinarily curious colleagues and compatriots, so you can order multiple dishes and share everything.

Or, you can go alone and still order multiple dishes, as I did for my first trip there this past weekend, for an early Saturday lunch. I arrived right when it opened at 11:30, and I ate like a king, or at least a man who just got out of prison. The dining room is gorgeous — modern and very colorful.

I started with an order of pani puri ($7), puffs of crispy, hollow, paper-thin fried bread stuffed with seasoned potatoes, and served with two bottles of tangy water to splash into them before eating. The brown bottle is sweet and the green is spicy. This was a new dish to me, one I learned about while watching the delightful kids’ show Waffles + Mochi on Netflix, where two puppets travel around the world learning about food. Despite being child-free by choice, my wife and I enjoyed the hell out of the show, and I never forgot Waffles and Mochi singing about a “pani puri party,” so I couldn’t resist. I’m so glad those puppets hipped me to the popular Indian street food, because it was so good! The whimsical plating in the little cart adds to the pani puri party atmosphere here. Since there were eight pani puri puffs, I was methodical and tried two plain, two splashed with the sweet water, two splashed with the spicy water, and two splashed with both. I couldn’t even tell you which one was best, because I loved every possible permutation.

When I saw keema pav ($11) on the menu under “bigger plates,” I was intrigued. The description simply read “pav bread, minced lamb, onions.” Well, I love bread (despite not knowing what pav bread was), lamb, and onions, so I was an easy mark. Then this beautiful platter arrived, with three perfect little buns, a bowl of what looked like chili, and some diced tomatoes, red onions, cilantro, and shredded red cabbage, Was it really a make-your-own sandwich kind of setup? I never would have expected that, but this was one of those rare times when I took a wild guess on a menu and was rewarded with a new take on a familiar, beloved comfort food — in this case, sloppy joe sandwiches.

The pav bread was like perfect little hamburger buns with smooth, shiny crowns, the ideal size for sliders. The cut sides were lightly grilled (as all good burger buns should be) and dabbed with what looked like a cilantro-mint chutney (the green sauce) and another sauce that was really good. The minced lamb was served as a spicy chili, not that different from the chili I love to make at home the minute Florida temperatures dip below 70 degrees. As much as I love to cook with ground lamb, I’ve never used it in my chili before, worried that the unique gamey flavor of lamb would get lost amid the tomatoes, onions, peppers, and spices I use. This wasn’t the same familiar chili or sloppy joe recipe most Americans would know, but it was a comparable dish, and the lamb flavor came through. This picture is much prettier than what my assembled “sloppy joes” would eventually look like., but they were so delicious and fun to assemble. Looking it up later, I learned that “pav” just means bread, but it comes from the Portuguese word “pão” for bread, since Portuguese explorers (colonizers) brought their bread recipes to India. I have enjoyed all the Indian breads I’ve tried before — naan, roti, parathas, and kulcha — but pav was completely new to me, and yet completely familiar.

Speaking of which, since I wasn’t expecting the pav to be familiar buns, I also ordered chilli naan ($4), the soft, warm, fresh bread baked in a clay tandoor oven, that goes so well with any Indian dishes. For some reason, I was expecting it would be stuffed or covered with chunks of spicy peppers, maybe cooked or maybe pickled, but it was just sprinkled with dried chili flakes, like what I often shake onto pizza. Still, it was great naan.

Longtime readers (The Saboscrivner Squad, aka Saboscrivnerinos) know I like to eat and review onion rings anywhere I go. I have a whole category for those reviews, accompanied in my mind by a DJ’s obnoxious air horn sound effect:

RING THE ALARM!
BWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA! BWAA BWAHH BWAAAHHHHHH!

Of course Bombay Street Kitchen doesn’t serve onion rings, but they have the Indian equivalent: crispy, deep-fried fritters called onion bhaji ($5), which featured some unfamiliar but very welcome spices in the batter and served with cool cilantro-mint chutney (green) and sweet, sticky tamarind chutney (brown). I loved these, needless to say.

I should note that I had a new, fun, cool experience on my first visit to Bombay Street Kitchen. A family of three was seated near me as all of my dishes were being walked out of the kitchen. The father asked me what everything I ordered was, and me being me, I very enthusiastically told him what I got, what was in it, and how much I was enjoying it. When the server came by to take their orders, he told her to just bring him everything I got. I felt so validated, especially when I asked them how they liked everything. I can’t speak for the mom or the teenage daughter, but the dad seemed over the moon with all of our selections. He said “You should be a food writer!” Of course, me being me, I told him I did write a local food blog. On my way out, I found a receipt in my pocket (ever the professional), wrote down http://www.saboscrivner.com, and dropped it on their table. So I says to him, I says “If you’re ever REALLY bored, you should check out my food blog!”

On my second visit today, I met two friends from the Orlando Foodie Forum, a delightful couple who are the coolest people, who make me feel cooler just by being friendly and welcoming toward me. I met them for the first time in a local French-Vietnamese bakery, Paris Banh Mi, almost two years ago, and somehow they recognized me just from being Facebook friends. Today was the first time we ever actually hung out and shared a meal, but hopefully not the last.

We started out with refreshing mango lassis ($3.50 each), and I made mine last, to help neutralize any spicy food ahead.

My friends, much hipper and more worldly than I, have had pani puri before, but I had to order it again to share the pani puri party with them, so they could try Bombay Street Kitchen’s take and check out the little cart:

One of my friends also ordered the lamb keema pav today, and they dug into making their own little sloppy joe sliders with the spicy ground lamb “chili.” As much as I liked it last weekend, I stayed out of theirs and let them have all the fun with it this time.

I had my eye on the Szechuan chicken hakka noodles ($11), but my friend ordered it and let me try it. I was introduced to Indo-Chinese food at Rasa, a really nice Indian restaurant I discovered and reviewed in early 2020, just months before it closed permanently. I’m glad Bombay Street Kitchen isn’t going anywhere, because this was one of my favorite dishes of the day. The rice noodles had just a little heat from the chili sauce they were stir-fried in, but nothing overwhelming, like I was expecting from the Szechuan designation. The chunks of chicken were crispy and savory, and there were nice, tender-yet-crunchy slices of stir-fried onion and multicolored bell peppers mixed into the dish. I always gravitate toward noodle dishes, and this is one I will remember and return to.

I had been curious about the chicken momo ($9), a Nepalese dish of pan-fried chicken dumplings. They tasted even better than they look, and they weren’t spicy, like I had been expecting.

My friend was excited to see chicken lollipops ($9), so he ordered the dish of chicken “winglets,” rubbed with chili and spices and fried until crispy. Normally I’d pass on a dish with that description, thinking that I could try fried chicken wings anywhere, but I’m so glad he ordered this and let me try one. It was so great — very crunchy, tender and juicy, and extremely well-seasoned, with the perfect amount of heat. Absolutely delicious. Much more interesting than the name let on.

But wait, there’s more! My one friend ordered the masala dosa ($9), a gigantic, crispy rice crepe stuffed with yellow curry-spiced potatoes and curry leaves. It’s hard to get a sense of scale, looking at this thing, but this dosa is the kind of thing that would draw everyone’s attention in the dining room when a server walks it out to your table. I quote the great thespian Jason Statham in the 1998 Guy Ritchie film Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels: “It’s as long as my arm. I wish it was as long as something else!”We all pulled pieces off this colossal crepe, and dipped our divided dosa in a lentil-based vegetable curry called sambar, along with coconut chutney (in the smaller cup). No double-dipping was done.

Dosas are a South Indian street food specialty I tried for the first time in 2019, at the Hindu Temple cafeteria in nearby Casselberry. As long as we were ordering so much food to share, I couldn’t help ordering a second dose of dosa, specifically the street special dosa ($11). This one didn’t arrive looking as staggeringly stupendous, because it was already neatly sliced into three equal pieces, but it was still a huge overall portion. It had the same pleasing, paper-thin, crispy texture, but it was stuffed with a variety of vegetables, not unlike an Indian burrito. This one was another hit with all of us, and new to all of us as well.

I had never heard of xacuti (pronounced “za-COO-tee”), but it is a curry dish my friends love, made with coconut masala gravy. You can order xacuti with chicken for $15, or fish, shrimp, or goat for $17. They ordered it with goat and let me try it, and for that, I was grateful. I developed an appreciation for spicy lamb curries like vindaloo and rogan josh at my usual Indian restaurant, Moghul, but never had anything like this before. The goat had a few small bones, but the meat was so tender, the bone chunks were easy to pull out.

I had to order onion-garlic naan for us to share ($4), and it went so well with the xacuti and the other sauces we shared.

I realize this has been a long review, but this was also after two visits to Bombay Street Kitchen, a week apart. And the second visit had three people ordering multiple dishes to share, so I pass all of our accumulated knowledge and experience onto you, stalwart Saboscrivnerinos. Like any good nerd, I tend to get enthusiastic about the things I love, especially when something is new and novel, broadens my horizons, brings new experiences, and changes my world for the better. Well, I hate to overhype anything, but this restaurant is worthy of every bit of hype, praise, enthusiasm, and excitement it garners. Every single dish knocked it out of the park — or the cricket stadium, if you will.

Back in 1985, before some of my dozens of readers were even born, a rock group called The Power Station sang “Some like it hot, and some sweat when the heat is on.” Well, no matter which of those you are, whether you love spicy food or hate it, you’re going to find a lot of flavors to savor at Bombay Street Kitchen. If you’re a vegetarian or an omnivore, if you crave new foods to try or take comfort in the familiar, if you’re an Indian food aficionado, the most casual of diners, or worried you’re stepping a little too far out of your culinary comfort zone, you’re coming to the right place. I give Bombay Street Kitchen one of my highest possible Saboscrivner Seals of Superiority, so come join the pani puri party!