Category: Price fixe menu

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  I unpublished it immediately, but any subscribers would have automatically received an unfinished version, and I regret that.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

***

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here’s a rare look inside a camel empanada!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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