Ring the Alarm! – Page 4 – The Saboscrivner

Se7en Bites

For many years, I have been a champion of Se7en Bites (http://www.se7enbites.com/), the local bakery and restaurant run by the delightful Chef Trina Gregory-Propst, a woman I am honored to call a friend. Ever since I first tasted her Signature Dark Chocolate Sea Salt Caramel Pecan Pie at another local establishment, Pom Pom’s Teahouse and Sandwicheria, I knew she was a master of her craft. It is, and still remains, the finest pie crust I’ve ever had. This is praise of the highest order, as I will always choose pie over all other desserts. Long before starting The Saboscrivner, long before the Orlando Foodie Forum on Facebook, I used to post about local food on the Florida forum of the website Chowhound.com, and I remember being the first to review her awe-inspiring pie on the entire Internet. As far as I was concerned, a star was born.

This was several years ago, long before Chef Trina founded her own place, Se7en Bites. It started out in Orlando’s “Milk District” neighborhood on Primrose and Robinson, in a very small space that regularly had lines out the door, especially for weekend breakfasts and brunches. Peering over the counter at the array of beautiful baked goods was like looking through a window into Willy Wonka’s factory: a world of pure imagination, crafted from sugar, flour, and love. We didn’t go as often as we liked, simply due to the crowds, but it was always a feast for the senses, as well as a great place to bring my co-workers and occasional out of town guests to show them one of Orlando’s best independent eateries.

Chef Trina became successful enough to expand to a larger location a few years ago, with much more parking. She’s still on Primrose, just south of Colonial. (And another one of my local favorite restaurants, Bad As’s Sandwich, has since opened in the original Se7en Bites location and has been absolutely killing it for the past two years.)

In 2017, she received a well-deserved accolade that some restauranteurs only dream of: Se7en Bites was featured on Guy Fieri’s ubiquitous and beloved Food Network show Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives, which only added to her status as a local legend. (That was Season 26, episode 10, “Wonder Women,” in case you’re ever lucky enough to catch a replay.) Once she started serving burgers (which are amazing!), I named her Italian Stallion burger one of my top five dishes of 2017 in a feature I wrote for the Orlando Weekly in their last issue of the year, but I’m no Guy Fieri, I get it. (However, I spent much of the late ’90s and 2000s wearing retro-looking shirts straight out of the “hipster doofus collection,” just like his.)

Needless to say, it has been a pleasure to watch Chef Trina become a recognized and respected face of Orlando’s culinary community, and my wife and I have been huge fans from the beginning! Whenever we go to Se7en Bites, we always get the friendliest service and some of my favorite food in Orlando. Whether we choose handmade burgers with ranch-seasoned crinkle-cut fries, buttermilk garlic breakfast biscuits heaped with bacon and eggs, or just have dessert because we’re grown-ass adults who can do that if we want to, we know we’re always in for a treat. Chef Trina never fails to come out of her bustling kitchen to check on us, and she always asks how my wife is doing when I pop in alone.

Unfortunately, I missed her on my most recent visit, around 1:00 on a weekend when I ordered everything to go. She was probably already hard at work at her other restaurant Sette, Orlando’s newest Italian restaurant, which I reviewed back in March 2019 and consider the best Italian restaurant in our City Beautiful. My poor wife was at home, grading papers while fighting off a cold, so I wanted to bring her a really nice lunch. When we saw photos of Se7en Bites’ weekend brunch special, the Minnie Pearl, on Facebook, she told me that was exactly what she wanted.

The Minnie Pearl ($14.75), named for the down-home hostess of Nashville’s legendary Grand Ole Opry, comes with two mini pearl sugar waffles (GET IT???), a buttermilk-fried chicken breast, and an over medium egg, although I requested the egg be cooked over hard for my wife, who doesn’t love runny eggs. It also comes with hot honey drizzle and the most amazing vanilla bean butter syrup, which they were kind enough to include in separate containers with lids. You can say “HOW-DEEEEEEE!” to that. I’m so glad my wife shared a little bite of the pearl sugar waffle with me. It was easily the best waffle I’ve ever tasted. Much crisper and denser than most breakfast waffles, including the ones from my beloved Waffle House, this one made the whole house smell like butter, vanilla, and good times.

The Minnie Pearl also included cheddar chive grits, which she is much more into than I am:

This is my favorite regular item on the menu at Se7en Bites, the meatloaf sandwich on grilled sourdough bread, with a mashed potato schmear ($9.25). I’m a meatloaf lover and make a damn amazing meatloaf, if I do say so myself. Chef Trina’s version is the only meatloaf that I think comes close to mine. And since I don’t always feel like a huge and hearty Southern breakfast, I know I can always count on this sandwich (since I always feel like sandwiches).

This is the pimento cheese and bacon sandwich, also on grilled sourdough bread ($8.75). And I opted for a crispy fried green tomato on mine, for a $2 upcharge. Pimento cheese is something else I make well, but I feel compelled to try it whenever I see it on a menu, since everyone’s version is a little different. The version at Se7en Bites is among my favorites.

Sides with the two sandwiches, creamy macaroni and cheese (a $3.25 upcharge) and the aforementioned ranch-seasoned crinkle-cut fries (a $2.75 upcharge). Sadly, the fries were cold by the time I got home with everything, thanks to hitting every light on Colonial and then again on Semoran. I’ll never order these fries with a takeout order again, but they are among my favorite fries in the city when I dine in at Se7en Bites.

To make the lines move along better, you order your sweets at a separate counter, where all the delicious, decadent desserts are on display under glass domes. Feel free to ask questions — her staff is probably used to them, and they’re always happy to tell you anything you want to know.

This is the aforementioned Signature dark chocolate sea salt caramel pecan pie ($7), which features the finest, flakiest, most buttery pie crust I’ve ever had. The whole thing is an embarrassment of richness. It looks small, but it can be easily be shared by two to four people.

I recently met one of my favorite Internet friends for the first time, along with his lovely girlfriend. He is a fellow aficionado of comic books, cats, pro wrestling, and pie, and we got together for dinner at an old Disney Springs favorite, The Polite Pig. I made sure to pick up one of Chef Trina’s signature pies for them, and I think it dazzled them the same way it always dazzles us. That crust remains unparalleled.

This is the Se7en Bites coconut cream pie ($7), one of my favorite kinds of pies, even after getting a little burned out on them judging the cream pie category at the National Pie Championship last spring. It’s another big hit in our household, to the point where after sharing small slivers when I brought our most recent takeout order home, my wife woke up very early the next morning and finished the rest of it before I got up. But what’s mine is hers, and at least I got a taste.

Most recently, when I picked up the signature pie for my visiting friend, I also noticed a new pie I had never seen before: a Samoa brownie cream pie ($7)! It looked magnificent, and I brought it home, split it evenly, and devoured it with my wife — while we were both watching each other, like something out of Treasure of the Sierra Madre. This pie has everything: a chocolate fudgy cookie-like crust, caramel, butterscotch, coconut, and the smoothest, coolest, creamiest filling. It was literally my favorite Se7en Bites dessert EVER, and I hope Chef Trina will consider adding it to the permanent menu.

And this thicc bar came highly recommended by one of the lovely and ever-patient women of the Se7en Bites staff. I believe it’s called I Don’t Give a Fudge, and the layers are chocolate chip cookie (bottom), rich fudge brownie (middle), smooth chocolate peanut butter (top), and then a soft cookie dough topping above all of that. It’s about four inches thick, and once again, meant to be shared by several people (or at least for one or two people to get several portions out of it. This one cost about $6.

Se7en Bites even serves special burgers on Fridays, which makes it difficult to catch them, but they have been among my favorite dishes there. In fact, this is an older photo of my favorite burger Chef Trina has ever crafted, the Italian Stallion. It is topped with a fried mozzarella plank, savory-sweet tomato jam, and pesto aioli, and it is one of my favorite burgers of all time. In fact, the Italian Stallion made my Top Five favorite dishes of 2017 in Orlando Weekly!
Anyone remember the Bennigan’s chain, so ubiquitous throughout the ’90s and the first half of the ’00s? They had a similar burger back then, the Wheelhouse burger, topped with a fried mozzarella cheese “wheel” and marinara sauce. That was good eatin’ back in the day, but the Se7en Bites version even leaves that fond memory behind, in the dust.

This was another special Friday burger, topped with bacon, Chef Trina’s wonderful pimento cheese, and onion rings, and I got it with a side of onion rings! That’s right — you didn’t think this was going to be a RING THE ALARM! feature, but I sneaked it in there, right at the end. I don’t remember the cute name this burger no doubt had, but I wish she would bring it back, and make those onion rings a regular menu item. Look at them! They’re the “good kind” of onion rings I always wax poetic about on this blog — beer-battered and golden brown, crispy but not crunchy, not too thin or too thick, not too greasy. These were the onion rings that dreams are made of!

Anyway, Se7en Bites is a local favorite with national renown for good reason, and between this and Sette, Trina and Va’s culinary empire is pretty well-established in Orlando. I can’t wait to see — and taste — whatever these gastronomic goddesses do next. In the meantime, if I have co-workers or out-of-town guests who are craving brunch or sweets, Se7en Bites will remain my top choice to bring them to. There isn’t much like it anywhere else, and we are so lucky to have it here. Don’t miss the Minnie Pearl with those perfect pearl sugar waffles, and be on the lookout for Friday burgers and that Samoa brownie cream pie!

Beefy King

Beefy King (http://beefyking.com/) is an Orlando legend and also a time capsule. The sandwich shop was founded in 1968 and still stands proudly on Bumby Avenue, just south of Colonial Drive, in the “Milk District” neighborhood east of downtown Orlando.

The hours are:
Monday – Friday: 10:00 AM – 5:30 PM (but the dining room closes at 3:00, so it’s drive-through only from 3:00 – 5:30)
Saturday: 11:00 AM – 3:00 PM
Sunday: Closed

It was originally a local chain of six restaurants, but this is the only one that remains. Three generations of owners later, they’re still doing things very much the same way after 50+ years: serving sandwiches of roast beef, pastrami, corned beef, barbecue beef and pork, turkey, and ham on soft, steamed kaiser rolls, alongside their legendary Beefy Spuds (think tater tots), onion rings, delicious chili, and more.

Beefy King survived an arson attempt in November, so this feels like the right time to sing its praises, now that it has reopened for business. It didn’t seem worse for the wear when I met one of my favorite fellow foodie friends there for lunch the week after it reopened. This is why YOU COME AT THE KING, YOU BEST NOT MISS!

Here’s a roast beef sandwich ($4.55) served with steamed, diced onions — the classic sandwich around here.

As you can see, it’s very juicy roast beef — much juicier and much less salty than Arby’s. I added some creamy horseradish sauce, which comes in squeeze bottles and is delicious on anything and everything, but especially roast beef sandwiches.

Here’s another roast beef sandwich with spicy barbecue sauce. (They have mild barbecue sauce too; don’t worry!) The steaming process makes the kaiser rolls nice and soft too, which really works well.

This is an extra-large two-meat sandwich with pastrami and corned beef, plus melty white American cheese and steamed onions ($8.50). I ended up adding some of that creamy horseradish to it, too. They have mustard, but only the yellow kind, and this sandwich is too good for yellow mustard, if you ask me.

I’m a huge fan of Beefy King’s chili, full of meat, beans, tomatoes, onions, and peppers. I always opt to get it with a slice of white American cheese that melts into it so nicely. If you’ve had Wendy’s chili before, this is similar, but a hundred times better.

RING THE ALARM! Beefy King has onion rings that just cry out to be dipped in the mild or hot barbecue sauces or creamy horseradish sauce.

And here are the golden-brown Beefy Spuds, also perfect for dipping.

Save room for a hand-spun milkshake! Beefy King offers vanilla, chocolate, cherry, and my personal favorite, orange. I skipped the orange shake this time, but I either regret ordering it or regret not ordering it.

Beefy King isn’t just a time capsule, despite being a real piece of classic Orlando that doesn’t have anything to do with “Mickey’s House.” It’s even more than a great place to grab a quick, affordable lunch in Orlando’s Milk District (although between Beefy King, Stasio’s Italian Deli and Market, Bad As’s Sandwich, and Pom Pom’s Teahouse and Sandwicheria, I argue the city should officially rename it The Sandwich District). It’s also a survivor. To be the last remaining location from a small chain, and to have made it all these decades unchanged, even emerging like the proverbial phoenix after an arson attempt after 51 years, means it’s a living legend, an inimitable institution, the kind of restaurant all Orlando locals should experience for themselves. When even culinary luminary Alton Brown and late-night laughing boy Jimmy Fallon know to seek it out, you know the word on the street is good.

The King is back.

Long live the King.

Paradiso Restaurant and Pizzeria

I’ve started going to a new pizzeria recently — or at least a new one for me. I found out Paradiso Restaurant and Pizzeria (https://paradisorestaurantandpizzeria.com/) had been open for four years, and I had been driving past it almost every day, on Semoran Boulevard north of Colonial Drive. (There is another, unrelated Paradiso somewhere else, but this is definitely the one at 1502 North Semoran, with the phone number 407-745-4226.) It’s very close to where I work, and I’m glad to say it’s great. I’ve been three times in the last two months, and will certainly keep returning and help spread the word. If you crave large, thin, crispy, melty, gooey slices of New York-style pizza, Paradiso serves one of the best versions in Orlando.

I brought home takeout on my first visit, and I couldn’t wait to get some of those slices ($2.25 each) back to share with my wife. A lot of the time, pizza is never the same once you get it back home, because it steams in the box and loses that crispiness. Not so with these beauties. I always like ordering a few slices because the two of us definitely can’t finish a whole large pizza in one sitting, and it’s never as good the next day, even after a trip through the toaster oven. The slices were fantastic. Definitely one of the best examples of New York pizza in the city.

I had to try Paradiso’s Sicilian pizza as well, since that is a lifelong favorite of mine, and far too rare. These slices ($2.99 each) were crispy too, but they didn’t have the doughy softness I look for, in combination with the crispiness. Don’t get me wrong — I enjoyed these immensely, but I still give Pizzeria Del Dio the edge for best Sicilian pizza in Orlando.

This was a deluxe stromboli, with pepperoni, sausage, onions, and cheese — hold the mushrooms for me. This was the small ($8.99), and it was still huge. My wife surprised me by loving it, and what’s not to love? Apologies for not photographing a cross-section of it.

On my most recent visit, I brought home the same stromboli, but a large ($16.99), which I carved a piece out of before remembering to photograph it. That’s diagonal through a box made for 20″ extra-large pizzas, keep in mind.

Excellent garlic knots ($3.99) that were soft and fluffy, not dense and hard like baseballs. You get a nice-sized order for the price, and they don’t skimp on the garlic:

At one point, I convinced a co-worker to order Paradiso with me on a workday, and I picked it up and brought it back to the office. My co-worker ordered a cheese calzone for her dinner that night (I’m assuming this is the small for $7.99):

And for her lunch, a 10″ white pizza with ricotta, mozzarella, and parmesan cheeses and garlic ($9.99) with mushrooms and black olives added ($1.25 each). She is from New Jersey, so she has high standards for pizza that are hard to meet around here. I got her into Del Dio, as one of the best local pizzerias that New York and New Jersey transplants appreciate, and I believe she liked this as well.

I couldn’t go without getting another perfect slice for myself:

But I also decided to try a 12″ chicken parmesan sub ($7.99). This thing was a BEAST! It was huge, and I could barely eat half at work. I asked them to add onions and peppers, which was a good call. It was fine, but the chicken breast was a little dry, and I probably would have been happier with a meatball parm or sausage, onions, and peppers sub instead, or a cold Italian hoagie. But don’t get me wrong, I had the whole thing eaten by the next day.

And there was indeed a next time! On my third and most recent visit, I got the meatball sub ($7.99) with onions and peppers, and I liked it as much as I expected to. More, even!

Also, it has been a while, but I have to RING THE ALARM! for Paradiso Restaurant and Pizzeria, because they have really good onion rings ($3.99). These are the kind I’m always searching for, with a beer-battered coating. They are very similar to the onion rings at Pizzeria Del Dio, in fact. It might not be the most obvious choice to order onion rings at a pizzeria, but I love the rings at both places. That’s ketchup in the little cup, though — not marinara sauce. Mental note: next time, ask for marinara sauce too. Just don’t dip my sub or pizza crust in the ketchup, because that would be nasty.

Believe it or not, I don’t eat pizza a lot. Seriously! But we have so many wonderful locally-owned pizzerias that I don’t see any point to ordering from the big national chains and wasting calories and carbs on mediocre, depressing, mass-produced pizza. I know I’ve compared Paradiso to Del Dio more than once in this review, but it’s a blessing that we have two outstanding New York-style pizzerias in the same part of Orlando, and so close to where I work. If you like Del Dio, I implore you to try Paradiso too. I don’t think you’ll be sorry. I just wish I had tried them sooner, but better late than never.

CLOSED: Chain Reactions: Twisted Root Burger Co.

EDIT: I learned in March 2024 that the Twisted Root Burger Co. location in Winter Park had closed.

***

Twisted Root Burger Co. (https://www.twistedrootburgerco.com/) is the latest fast-casual burger chain out of Texas to come to Orlando, after Hopdoddy Burger Bar opened earlier this year in the Pointe Orlando mall on International Drive. But luckily for us, Twisted Root opened much closer to where we live, in a little shopping center on Aloma Avenue and Howell Branch Road that has been brought back to life by an influx of new restaurants, including the adjoining Pho Cali and Quickly Boba, which I reviewed in 2018.

Twisted Root goes for a theme of irreverent, wacky fun, with animal head busts above the counter where you order, letting you know which ones are available to eat on any given day. From right to left:

After you place your order, you can go get drinks. There is a full bar, and more options than usual for the non-drinkers. I love hip hop and my wife loves Law and Order: SVU, so this was a delightful display:

Twisted Root serves its own fountain sodas, all made with cane sugar instead of the usual high fructose corn syrup. I sampled sips of the watermelon Ice-T, cream soda, root beer, and lemonade, and the cream soda was my favorite. A refillable drink is $2.25, by the way. I think that would be worth it for most, just to try their versions of all the different sodas and teas.

Pass the soda fountain and you will encounter the pickle bar. I’ve written before about how I’ve never been a big fan of pickles, but I’m all about trying them now, to grow my appreciation for them. Needless to say, I had to try all five varieties here, especially since they’re free! From left to right: atomic (spicy), sweet & spicy, ranch, bread & butter, and dill. I think I liked the bread & butter pickles the most, and there was only one flavor I really disliked — I think it was probably the ranch. This was a nice feature, especially because I’m not willing to shell out for whole jars of pickles I might not like, the way I do with mustards and other condiments (and new flavors of chips and sodas).

When you order, they give you a buzzer with a pop culture icon on it to alert you that your food is ready to pick up from the counter. We got Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, which was aces with me, because I used to be a huge pro wrestling fan and am slowly wading back into that pool, and also because he elevates almost every movie he’s in. Seriously, The Rock makes decent movies better and terrible movies tolerable.

When our buzzer went off so quickly, I was surprised our food was already ready, since the place was so slammed they had shut down one of their cash registers to give the kitchen a chance to catch up. But it was just my wife’s s’mores milkshake ($6).
Her verdict: it was okay. She thought the marshmallow tasted like lighter fluid. I had some and liked it fine, I think even more than she did. But I could take or leave marshmallows, whereas she is a connoisseur.

It didn’t take that much longer for The Rock to buzz us again, letting me know our food was ready. I ordered the Freedom Melt ($11), served on “Texas toast” with cheddar cheese, lettuce, tomato, fried onion straws, and brisket on top — a very “me” burger to order. Be forewarned that Twisted Root cooks all burgers MEDIUM WELL unless you ask them not to, and I’m not down with that. I asked for mine medium rare, and it came out between medium rare and medium, but still very juicy. I’ve been spoiled by too much great barbecue brisket, at our well-respected homegrown chain 4 Rivers Smokehouse, and most recently, at the fantastic Git-N-Messy Barbecue in Sanford. So I guess I was expecting shredded (but recognizable) brisket on top of my burger, instead of the finely-chopped (and probably sauced) meat I got. It was tastier than I expected and definitely tastier than it looked, nice and smoky (again, possibly from the sauce), but it reminded me of really tender chopped beef jerky even more than brisket.

I haven’t done a

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RING THE ALARM!
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feature in a while, but Twisted Root offers fried onion strings ($3), and those count! They were good — never as satisfying or substantial as thicker-cut, beer-battered onion rings, but they added a good dimension to my burger and gave me stuff to dip (more on that later).

My wife ordered a venison burger ($10), one of the special game meats, on “Texas toast,” otherwise served plain. I didn’t get a picture of it, but it looked like pretty much any other burger. She ate the whole thing, which is a good sign that she liked it. She ordered hand-cut potato chips ($2) as her side, a nice-sized order of crispy (not overly crunchy) chips that were just salty enough. I had to help her finish those, happily.

A friendly manager came by to ask us how we were liking everything, and she was really craving honest feedback. The ONLY complaint I had, and it’s a minor one, was that the “Texas toast” wasn’t what we were expecting. I really love getting Texas toast at my beloved Waffle House — thick slices of white Wonder bread, spread liberally with butter and then grilled on both sides. The “Texas toast” both of our burgers came on was just regular white bread: not thick, not square, not Wonder, definitely not buttered or grilled, and barely even toasted. I always hate to complain about anything, but she asked, and it was a minor quibble. I think thicker bread, buttered and grilled, would add so much richness to the burgers. If they don’t change it, I’ll simply order a brioche bun with my burger on my next visit.

I was already digging Twisted Root offering so many choices (sodas, sides, pickles), but their condiment game is also strong. Every table has squeeze bottles of Heinz ketchup and yellow mustard, plus these three beauties. The horseradish Dijon mustard was fabulous (I’d buy a jar), the ancho chipotle ketchup was great, but as much as I love root beer AND barbecue sauce, I thought it was a little too thin and tasted a little too much of molasses.

So this restaurant is a real “get” for our quiet, boring little area where Winter Springs, Oviedo, and Winter Park run together. It was super-busy when we were there, but that was also a Friday night on its opening week. I think they will do very well, especially since the shopping center has returned to life. I liked my burger much more than some of the more popular fast-casual contenders, and I love all the different options and how close it is to our home.

Oh, one last thing: the men’s restroom is wallpapered with silly memes and sayings about the most overrated action movie “star” of all time, which I feel obligated to point out after praising the career of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson earlier in this review. Yes, you can’t wash your hands without being inundated with tall tales of Texas’ own adopted son Chuck Norris, who I don’t think ever made a good movie or TV show. I don’t know how beatifying Chuck Norris became a thing. Sure, he was a legit martial artist, unlike many of the other action actors of the ’70s and ’80s, but Norris was a charisma vacuum, compared to Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis, Keanu Reeves, Jason Statham, The Rock, and the vast majority of superhero actors. Heck, even Jean-Claude Van Damme had two great (or at least memorable) movies in his career, and if any Saboscrivner readers think you can guess what they are, then let me know!

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!

Chain Reactions: Cooper’s Hawk

My BFF (Best Food Friend) who is actually my lifelong best friend, has been recommending Cooper’s Hawk (https://chwinery.com/) to me for a while. It’s an upscale chain restaurant, and he has raved about the location in Doral, Florida (near Miami) before. I’ve been meaning to get back out to Waterford Lakes with my wife so we could try our local location, but between the heavy traffic and the sprawling, Fury Road-invoking parking lot, we typically avoid the east side of Orlando.

But my wife was hungry, and after going through the usual litany of all our regular restaurants, we decided to try something new and treat ourselves a little. Cooper’s Hawk is a winery on top of being a restaurant, but even though we don’t drink, the menu was huge and intriguing. If you do like wine (and going through my friends’ Facebook pages, it sure seems like most people love wine!), you should definitely check it out. It looks like they offer a huge selection, all from their own label, so you wouldn’t find any familiar wine brands there. But you enter through a wine retail store with a busy bar, and I’m sure oenophiles will find something to love on the way into the restaurant, or even while waiting for a movie at the Waterford Lakes Regal theater.

It was seriously hard to choose. The menu is close to the legendary Cheesecake Factory with regard to choices. There are steaks, seafood, chicken, and pork, Italian, Asian, and Mexican-inspired dishes, burgers and sandwiches, and more. I strongly recommend studying the menu in advance, but I recommend that for most restaurants.

I’ve never been a pork chop fan. Most of the ones I’ve had are relatively bland and dry, especially compared to all the other wondrous things you can do with pork: a world of sausage, salami, ham, prosciutto, capicola, pulled pork, al pastor, ribs, cochinita pibil, roast pork with crispy skin, pork belly, pancetta, bacon, osso bucco, German eisbein, chicharrones.

But my wife loves a good pork chop because her family used to eat them a lot, so I wasn’t surprised she selected one of the two different pork chop dishes on the menu: a maple-mustard-pretzel-crusted pork chop, served with Mary’s potatoes (whipped with butter and cream), an assortment of oven-roasted vegetables (including mushrooms, my old nemesis), and crispy onion strings I knew I would be eating, because she hates onions and I love them.

When it arrived, the plating was beautiful, and the pork chop was the thickest either of us had ever seen! She thought it was the tastiest pork chop she had ever eaten, and even I, the pork chop skeptic, was absolutely blown away by the few bites she shared with me. Pure perfection, dear readers. She doesn’t even like mustard, but aside from a few bites that really startled her and cleared out her sinuses (she probably bit down on whole mustard seeds), she loved the flavor. And it was so tender and juicy, despite not being a fatty piece of meat at all. It was easily the best pork chop I’ve ever tasted, and I would totally order it myself on a future visit, as long as I could substitute the vegetables for another side. (Our lovely server assured us the kitchen can usually substitute anything, since everything is made from scratch in-house.)

As much as my wife is drawn to hearty steaks and chops, my greatest meat loves are usually cured, smoked, braised, or stewed in a sauce until rich and tender. I always love short ribs, even though I rarely cook them at home (although I should). Cooper’s Hawk offered a braised short rib dish, as well as another dish with gnocchi pasta in a short rib bolognese sauce that also included pancetta (yes!) and San Marzano tomatoes, the best tomatoes. When I make my own sauce at home, I use canned San Marzanos. It makes a difference! Anyway, they make everything from scratch here, even the pasta, so I was sold. And even though I was experiencing major cognitive dissonance by choosing that over so many other tasty-sounding dishes I love, I’m so glad I did. To paraphrase the old knight guarding the Holy Grail in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, I chose wisely.

It was a better pasta dish than most that I’ve ordered from Italian restaurants, rich and hearty and extremely well-seasoned, with nice tomato chunks (sometimes I get turned off by huge, slimy tomato chunks in sauce), fork-tender short rib pieces, a bit of additional salty richness from the pancetta (a secret weapon I use in so many good recipes), and wonderfully chewy gnocchi dumplings. The white stuff on top is creamy burrata dolce, a fresh, buttery cheese made from mozzarella blended with cream.

I saw that a few of the dishes come with buttermilk onion rings, even though they weren’t listed on the menu as a side dish. I asked our server if I could order onion rings as a side, and she said yes, but they are big, so the order would only come with three of them. But since I have a little recurring feature I like to call RING THE ALARM! (AIR HOOORRRRRRN!), I had to try them. And guess what: they were magnificent onion rings. She wasn’t kidding when she said they were big. They were the size of sour cream glazed “old-fashioned” doughnuts! If I’m lyin’, I’m flyin’.

The onion rings (more like onion bracelets!) were battered, not breaded (thank all that’s good in the universe), with a rich, thick, crispy golden crust that stayed in place, with the slightest hint of sweetness and not greasy at all. I’ve never had such puffy, fluffy onion rings, but they were a marvel to behold. They weren’t served with any dipping sauces (shame, because I’m sure Cooper’s Hawk has some good ones), just sprinkled with some kind of salty seasoning that I must admit made they way too salty. I think they’d be damn near perfect if you ask them to hold the salty seasoning. Normally I enjoy salty fried foods, but it was a little much and took away from how great they were, otherwise.

Well, we couldn’t go to such a nice new place and not order a dessert! I was stuffed and didn’t even finish my gnocchi, but my wife loves chocolate and really wanted to try the chocolate cake. It is made with Valrhona chocolate, with layers of hazelnut ganache and served with vanilla ice cream, all made fresh daily in-house. I had one bite of ice cream and one bite of cake, and even though I’d probably never order chocolate cake as my dessert, both were great. The cake was very moist and the ice cream was rich and creamy, not icy at all, and no greasy mouthfeel. My wife seemed to love it, but she finished the ice cream and brought the majority of the cake home.

A funny thing we do at every single restaurant we visit is for me to ask my wife, usually rhetorically, if her parents would like the place. Most often, I could answer the question myself with a big fat “no.” They don’t go out to eat as much as they used to, and her mom is a relatively picky eater. Great lady, I love her to pieces, but she likes what she likes, and one thing she doesn’t like is trying new foods! (My own parents and brother read The Saboscrivner, and they often comment on how they probably wouldn’t go where I go or order what I order, but I appreciate them along with all my other readers. There are dozens of us! DOZENS!)

But anyway, when I asked if her parents would like Cooper’s Hawk, we both agreed that they probably would. So a week later, when we were celebrating my wife’s birthday, we were able to wrangle them out of the house for a celebratory dinner there — the first meal the four of us have had out at a restaurant since her birthday the previous year!

My wife doubled down on the masterful pork chop, getting it as one of the Build Your Own Surf and Turf options, pairing it with pistachio-crusted grouper (one of her favorite fish). She loved both, devouring the grouper on the spot and saving most of the pork chop for the next day. It came with the same Mary’s potatoes and vegetables as last time.

My father in law ordered the same pistachio-crusted grouper and seemed to love his.

My mother in law ordered crab cakes, one of her go-to dishes anywhere, and swapped the fries and Asian slaw for Mary’s potatoes and excellent macaroni and cheese. She has high expectations for her crab cakes, and these did not seem to disappoint. They were mostly lump crabmeat, with very little filler. (She asked and they answered!)

And after recently reading an article about Nashville hot chicken, which I enjoyed so much on a trip to the legendary Hattie B’s in Nashville last year, I decided to try Cooper’s Hawk’s version, served open-faced on a buttermilk biscuit with blue cheese slaw and a side of rich, creamy macaroni and cheese, which was one of the better mac and cheese dishes I’ve enjoyed anywhere in Orlando. The slaw wasn’t creamy and intense with blue cheese like I was hoping; the multicolored shredded cabbage was mostly dry.

I think the hot chicken was perfectly good, but it didn’t have the intense crunch, flavor, or heat of Hattie B’s, so my quest continues. It was barely spicy at all, but Hattie B’s hot chicken was practically too spicy for me, so I think it would be a little much for most unsuspecting Cooper’s Hawk diners. It came with a lot of sliced pickles, and I ate them all. I’ve traditionally never been a fan of pickles, but I’m trying to develop an appreciation for them by sampling all the different kinds of pickles I can. I love almost all other pickled vegetables (peppers, onions, giardinera), so I figure it’s only a matter of time. Readers, feel free to recommend pickles, whether they’re store-bought or from certain restaurants!

I am fully aware this is an awful picture, despite bringing my “good” camera. Sorry. Mea culpa. I think my photography has been better in general lately, but pobody’s nerfect.

My wife and her parents are big dessert people, so we were all psyched to see what Cooper’s Hawk might bring out in honor of my wife’s birthday. This is what she got: a lovely chocolate-covered strawberry and a white chocolate truffle. She wasn’t really into either, so I got to enjoy both:

After that, they went to town and shared a few desserts:

The same good chocolate cake with vanilla bean ice cream:

Very good, tart key lime pie in a graham cracker crust (my mother-in-law’s choice, and I only wish I had taken more than one bite):

And banoffee pie, which is a rich pie made with bananas and a gooey toffee filling, all nestled into a graham cracker crust. Very sweet, rich, and heavy. I should note that the fresh whipped cream on all these desserts had vanilla bean specks in it, and it was delicious. I could easily and happily just eat a big ol’ bowl of that whipped cream with a spoon and consider it a swell, satisfying dessert.

Trust me, the fact that we got my wife’s parents out to dinner at a new restaurant, and that they liked it, speaks volumes right there. Dear readers, if your parents visit Orlando and they balk at anything too unfamiliar, this would be a fantastic place to bring them. It would be a great date night restaurant, a happy hour spot with friends, or a place to kill time before or after a movie at Waterford Lakes. It’s not cheap, but every single thing we tasted was remarkable, and the service was superb on both of our visits. And if you like wine, then face it, Tiger, you just hit the jackpot! If I had to compare it to anything, it would be the ambiance and upscale feeling of Hillstone with the expansive depth of the Cheesecake Factory menu (but better quality across the board). My Best Food Friend has never steered me wrong, and he was completely on the money with Cooper’s Hawk.

Boston’s Fish House

I crave seafood pretty much all the time. I don’t think it’s a shellfish impulse, but I like to say I’m on a seafood diet — if I see food, I’ll eat it, especially if it’s seafood.

While Orlando isn’t swimming in an abundance of seafood restaurants like our neighboring cities on Florida’s two coasts, we have a few local favorites. Shortly after we started dating back in 2006, my wife and her parents introduced me to Boston’s Fish House (http://www.bostonsfishhouse.com/Home). Modeled after the coastal seafood establishments of New England rather than beachy, tropical Florida seafood shacks, Boston’s specializes in fried favorites: shrimp, scallops, fresh fish (usually cod and/or haddock, but also farm-raised catfish), oysters, and clams. But if you don’t want your denizens of the deep deep-fried, they also offer broiled salmon, pan-seared mahi, and even a chilled Maine-style lobster salad sandwich, which you probably know better as a lobstah roll.

However, my in-laws always opt for the seafood combo platter, which comes with a mountain of fried shrimp, scallops, fish, onion rings, and a choice of oysters, clam strips, or whole belly clams, a rare treat that you rarely see at any Florida seafood restaurants. Oh, and you get two sides with it too! This platter comes in two sizes, the smaller Mate’s Platter and the larger Captain’s Platter. You get more than enough food for two hungry people to share if you order the Captain’s Platter, so it’s just a question of everybody being on the same page. For example, my mother-in-law doesn’t like scallops so she asks them to substitute extra fish. My wife and I agree that the fish is the blandest part, so I’ll usually ask if we could get clams AND oysters but no fish. They are always really cool and patient regarding these substitutes.

Be warned in advance: Boston’s gets REALLY crowded in the evening, especially on Fridays and weekends, especially with the “early bird crowd.” Most of the time, I’ll call in a takeout order and pick it up, bypassing the long lines that queue up.

On our most recent visit, I ordered two platters but decided to experiment a little, beyond the fried standards. No matter what, the clams and oysters are served fried, along with the onion rings. Here they are:

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the onion rings, since this is a recurring Saboscrivner feature we like to call RING THE ALARM! [Insert AIR HORN NOISE! here.] A lot of people go ga-ga over Boston’s thin, crispy onion rings, sporting the same batter as their fried seafood. I like them, I certainly enjoy eating them (usually dipped in their tartar sauce or ketchup), but I just can’t rank them among my favorite onion rings, which are generally more of a beer-battered style.

But moving past the fried stuff, you have some options with the shrimp and scallops, beyond just getting them dipped in the same old batter and fried. One of our favorites is to get them broiled in butter and topped with crushed Ritz crackers, which happen to be my favorite crackers and the not-so-secret ingredient in my favorite pie recipe. Here are those beautiful, buttery, broiled crustaceans and mollusks from my wife’s order:

I happened to be craving pasta this particular evening, so I thought I’d get the food home and make some fettuccine really quickly, then toss it with my shrimp and scallops that were broiled in garlic butter and white wine:They came out great, needless to say.

Since we ordered two platters, we got four sides between them, and my wife and I both love the broccoli salad they make at Boston’s: crispy, fresh broccoli florets tossed in a sweet, creamy dressing with bacon, golden raisins, and pumpkin seeds. It’s delicious and refreshing, and it makes us feel like we are eating slightly healthier, because broccoli.

But who are we kidding? Between the plethora of fried foods, rich shellfish, and all that butter, they also make really nice garlic bread, which I can never refuse when we indulge at Boston’s:

So that’s pretty much it. I don’t even remember the last time we ate at the actual restaurant, but we live just close enough to Boston’s that the food is still hot by the time I get it home. Always hot, and always good. Stop by, just for the halibut.

And now I feel like I’m floundering, so I will clam up.

LaSpada’s Original Philly Cheese Steaks and Hoagies

Sharp-eyed Saboscrivner readers (Saboscrivnerinos? Can I use that?) know there’s nothing I love as much as a good Italian sub. This year alone, I’ve reviewed two excellent new sub shops in Orlando: Stasio’s Italian Market & Deli (where I enjoyed the namesake Stasio sandwich) and Manzano’s Deli (where I raved about the Rocco). My Orlando Weekly list of the top five dishes I ate in 2017 included the Capone, the excellent Italian sub occasionally offered by Bad As’s Sandwich.

But my first love has always been LaSpada’s Original Philly Cheese Steaks and Hoagies (http://laspadas.com/), which I’ve been a devoted fan of ever since I first heard about it from a mechanic when I was getting my oil changed, two cars ago. Thank you, Tuffy mechanic, wherever you are! (Probably Tuffy.)

LaSpada’s is a little mom-and-pop establishment on Lee Road, just off I-4, and only ten minutes from Winter Park Village. The website lists other locations in Sanford and Orange City, which I have never been to, but people near them are lucky and should try their local ones. There are some completely unaffiliated LaSpada’s hoagie shops in South Florida, but they have their own website, different (smaller) menus, and are not connected in any way that I can tell. I went to one in Davie once, and it was good, but not nearly as good as the LaSpada’s we are lucky to have here in Orlando.

Anyway, this might be heresy, but I think cheesesteaks are just okay — I’d rather order almost any other kind of sandwich. They can be tasty, but a lot of the time they’re greasy and boiling lava hot, to the point where your tongue and the inside of your mouth are blistered beyond belief so you don’t get to taste the meat and cheese. That said, if you want a cheesesteak in Orlando, I would be shocked if you could find a better one anywhere else. I know they offer provolone and American cheese as options; I’m not sure if you can get it with the regional favorite of Cheez Whiz.

What I go to LaSpada’s for is a particular Italian hoagie called the LaSpada’s Famous, a gargantuan architectural marvel featuring genoa salami, pepper ham, capicola, sopressata, prosciutto, and sharp provolone on an overstuffed soft roll. It smells like heaven and tastes even better than it smells. Lettuce, tomato, and onion come standard, and if I had one tiny complaint, it’s that the onion is chopped rather than sliced paper-thin. You can add hot or sweet peppers for a slight upcharge, which I usually do, but I forgot to ask for them on my latest visit, when I ordered my LaSpada’s Famous hoagie to go. Since I took it home, I added my own hot pepper relish, sliced cherry peppers, and a drizzle of balsamic glaze to make a great thing even better.

This is the large, which costs $12.50 — a bargain at twice the price, given how staggeringly large it is.

I have a regular feature on The Saboscrivner called Ring the Alarm! whenever I review onion rings. I am always on a quest for good onion rings, as well as Italian subs, and LaSpada’s onion rings are among my favorites anywhere. They have a crispy beer batter coating that imparts a good flavor, doesn’t get soggy with grease, and doesn’t crumble or fall off. Remember I ordered these to go, and even though grease soaked through the bag a bit, they were still crispy and perfect by the time I got them home, 20 minutes later. These are the gold(en brown) standard of onion rings, as far as I’m concerned.

Because LaSpada’s doesn’t have dinner hours and is far from where I work, I only make it over there two or three times a year. My little tradition is to go see a movie by myself at the Winter Park Regal theater and then treat myself to a LaSpada’s Famous afterwards (although I only eat half at a time because it’s so huge). I’m so glad it’s there, and as good as it is. It’s a real treasure, and definitely one of Orlando’s hidden gems that not enough people know about.

Tampaversary Part 1: Bern’s Steak House

Trigger warning for extreme bougie content: WE DO NOT EAT LIKE THIS ALL THE TIME.

For years, my wife and I have been talking about going to the legendary Bern’s Steak House (https://bernssteakhouse.com/) in Tampa to celebrate a special occasion. It’s a long way to travel for a meal, but from all accounts, Bern’s is THE meal, the ultimate destination for foodie high-rollers or one-time wannabes like us. It doesn’t help that my wife doesn’t fare well on long car rides, but Bern’s actually owns its own hotel right across the street, the Epicurean Hotel (https://epicureanhotel.com/), to help break up the trip and give weary, stuffed travelers a chance to rest and digest.

Neither restaurant nor hotel are cheap, but we’ve been putting this off for years, we both celebrated some milestones at work recently, we had our ninth wedding anniversary to celebrate, and best of all, neither of us ended up hospitalized this year, after we both did in the summer of 2017. So for the first time ever, I was able to use some saved Marriott points and bought the rest of the points to cover a night at the Epicurean, for far less than it would have cost out of pocket. (I think I can best describe the regular room rate as “far out of our price range” or “What the hell is this, midtown Manhattan?”) And two months ago, I made a reservation at Bern’s, which gets booked up almost that far in advance. I can’t speak for my wife, but I can say I looked forward to it for weeks, fastidiously studying Bern’s voluminous menu in the meantime.

The menu is pretty much a treatise on steaks, which are the house specialty. Bern’s brags about serving dry-aged steaks, which I had never had before. With all honesty, I’m not a big steak eater, and I’d always prefer a good burger to a good steak, for reasons of taste, customizability, and value. But my wife LOVES a good steak, especially after I turned her onto ribeyes. This menu has pages and pages of steak descriptions, describing cuts of meat, cooking temperatures, thickness, aging, and so forth. I felt like I was researching engagement rings again!

But I’m jumping ahead. When we first arrived at Bern’s, the nondescript white building looked like it could have been anything but a fancy steakhouse: maybe an industrial warehouse or a factory. But stepping inside was like entering a different world, or at least a different century. The lobby looked like a set from Moulin Rouge: all red walls, dark wood, gold, giant portraits, and dim lighting, giving it all an anachronistic and otherworldly feeling, like 19th Century French brothel meets David Lynch’s Black Lodge. I was definitely feeling sensory overload, and my eyes had trouble adjusting to the low lights and everything there was to look at.

Our reservation was at 5:00, since we’re the youngest early bird diners you’ll ever meet. We met our server, Erhan, who was the best guy ever. He was our wise, patient, helpful guide through this extravagant evening, and we have never experienced better service anywhere. If we had a question, Erhan was there to answer it like the best reference librarians I’ve ever worked with (and I would know, since I am one). Apparently servers at Bern’s train for a year before they start out on the floor, and that painstaking training showed. You get the impression the man had seen and heard it all, and knew it all.

The appetizers beckoned. I love oysters, and I heard Bern’s oysters were among the best you can have anywhere. Unfortunately, my wife doesn’t care for oysters at all, and it would have felt wrong to order something she couldn’t enjoy too. Now that our weather is FINALLY getting cool, some $1 oyster nights are going to be on my agenda.

However, there was something even fancier, even rarer, even more celebratory that intrigued us both: CAVIAR. The menu has a whole page of caviar selections, ranging from semi-reasonable ($25) to ridiculous ($190). Over a decade ago, we attended the wedding of dear friends we never get to see anymore, and they had a caviar bar at their reception. I’m not sure how many of the other guests partook, but my wife and I went crazy, like cartoon cats at an all-you-can-eat bird buffet. We still talk about their storybook-perfect wedding and that caviar bar to this day, and this was our first opportunity to recreate the experience. Hey, this was a convergence of multiple special occasions, and I don’t think any Orlando restaurants even offer caviar. None of the places we go, anyway! The closest we get is masago on our spicy poke bowls.

My wife chose the very moderate (for caviar) black hackleback sturgeon, and Bern’s serves it with so many accoutrements, which I love. It came with the traditional Russian accompaniments of sour cream and the most finely-diced red onions, egg whites, and egg yolks I have ever seen, with the most perfect brioche toast points ever. It also came with six flavored foams as additional condiments, each one adding its own dimensions to the buttery, briny black pearls. I wish I could remember each one of the foams, dear Sabo-Squad, but there was definitely an avocado one (the green one), a potato and bacon foam (fourth one down), a curry foam (yellow), and a blue cheese foam (the one on the bottom, with blue cheese crumbles on top). I’m forgetting the first and third ones. Now, I am a sucker for any condiments and sauces, and they were neat, but the traditional sour cream, onions, and eggs went much better with the caviar.

This was so good, our eyes were rolling back in our heads. “Like a sturgeon! Touched for the very first time!”

What really completed the whole caviar ritual was a plate of six Yukon Gold potato blinis, perfectly soft potato pancakes that are nothing like the crispy, greasy, fried latkes I think of as potato pancakes. These blinis were lighter than air, soft and creamy, the ideal little pillows to top with a dollop of sour cream and a smaller dollop of black pearls. I am totally going to recreate them at home. They were too good, and they’d be great in place of traditional breakfast pancakes too. Imagine “silver dollar flappies” that just melt away in your mouth, and you have these blinis.

After we inhaled every single morsel of everything (my wife, to her credit, didn’t indulge in the condiments at all), Erhan returned to counsel us on steaks. At Bern’s, a party of two can split a larger steak if they want the same cut, which they recommend over each person ordering their own. We both wanted the Delmonico, which is their ribeye, and we chose a whopping 16-ounce steak to share, that is 1 3/4″ thick. Luckily, we both like our steaks rare, after a lifetime of restaurants and parents overcooking them. At Bern’s, they are so exacting that they have varying degrees of rare, but we opted for a warm red center and a slight outer crust. Erhan said they would even trim the outer fat and serve it on two separate plates, which was nice. These are all U.S.D.A. Prime steaks, by the way. You can occasionally find this highest quality meat at Costco, but rarely at supermarkets.

Best of all, all of Bern’s steaks come with a plethora of side orders, which is a million times better than most upscale steakhouses that serve everything a la carte and nickel-and-dime you to death with expensive sides (another reason I’m not a steakhouse fan). As pricey as Bern’s is (and it is), it is also a bargain if you just want a good steak dinner and some sides. The included sides are French onion soup, a house salad with a choice of housemade dressings, a baked potato that can be dressed with any combination of butter, sour cream, crumbled bacon, and chives, thin and crispy fried onion straws, and fresh vegetables from Bern’s own farm. What I didn’t realize was that ordering the larger steak for two meant we would get two of every side. I honestly thought we’d get one of each side and have to split them or decide who got what. Rube alert!

I already love French onion soup, and this was easily the best I’ve ever had. It was so rich and beefy and decadent, and came with garlic toast and spelt toast, a kind of grain we were both unfamiliar with. My wife really impressed me by digging into her soup. I love onions (and caramelize them all the time at home), but she really, really doesn’t like them (and hates the smell when I cook them). I thought it was cool that she not only took a risk by trying it, but that she ended up liking it. How could you not? Incredible French onion soup. My wife thought the spelt toast was like “teething biscuits,” and it was quite hard, but softened up nicely when dunked in the soup.

Next came the colorful house salads, with vegetables from Bern’s farm. I was very impressed that they peeled the tomatoes. WHO DOES THAT!?! I am always on a quest for good salad dressings to liven up my own salads, and I was excited by the list of Bern’s housemade dressings. My wife chose one of my top picks, a macadamia nut vanilla bean vinaigrette. I asked the ever-patient Erhan if I could sample two different dressings, and he hooked me up. Grateful, I chose maple dijon (I love mustards and anything mapley) and creamy white balsamic Italian. The salad was fine, but those three dressings were without a doubt the best salad dressings I’ve ever had, with the creamy white balsamic Italian in first place, then the vanilla bean vinaigrette. They each came in fancy little metal pitchers, and even when we were finished with our salads, I asked to keep the dressings to dip the forthcoming onion straws into. I wish Bern’s sold these salad dressings in bottles. Ken’s Steak House can do it, Bern’s! Why can’t you?

Finally, the steaks arrived, accompanied by the baked potatoes, onion straws, and two vegetables of the day, the most delicious, rich, buttery green beans and shredded carrots served with almonds. I’m not a baked potato guy, so I pretty much just ate the top part that was loaded with all the toppings. The steaks were superb, though. Cooked to absolute perfection, as you can see. Like I said, I’ve never had a dry-aged steak before, so I’m not enough of a connoisseur to tell a major difference in taste or texture. What I can say is that it was one of the finest steaks of my life. Top two, maybe, with only Christner’s right here in Orlando coming close.

I’ll also RING THE ALARM, even though the thin onion straws aren’t exactly onion rings. They were well-seasoned, crispy, not greasy at all, not overly salty, and held up to dipping in the remaining maple dijon dressing.

Well, at this point, we were pretty stuffed, but part of the iconic Bern’s experience is to go upstairs to finish your meal in the Harry Waugh Dessert Room, “built in 1985 using redwood wine casks to create 48 private rooms.” I get it — they want to clear tables in the main dining room, so ushering folks upstairs to a separate dessert room is genius. I paid our check (holy crap!), and we thanked Erhan profusely before heading off. Observant regular readers already know my wife and I don’t drink, but the bill could easily have been doubled if we did. As a result, we opted to skip the tour of Bern’s vaunted wine cellar, housing one of the largest collections of wine in the United States. To oenophiles, “cellar tour” might be the most beautiful-sounding phrase in the English language.

That said, we accepted their invitation to take a tour of Bern’s busy, bustling kitchen. (It’s not like we’re special people; they offer both tours to all diners.) The kitchen was where my wife really felt sensory overload, but the short behind-the-scenes tour was fascinating to me. I’ve never worked in restaurants even though so many of my friends did, but I’m fascinated by the process, of peering behind the curtain and seeing how the sausage is made (figuratively, in this case, as there is no sausage on the menu, nor even an awe-inspiring burger made from cuts of Bern’s fabulous steaks. What’s up with that?). The kitchen was HUGE — much larger than either of us could have ever imagined — with a gigantic, tireless staff.

Next, we took the elevator up to the Dessert Room, and they really aren’t kidding about the private rooms, except they’re more like booths. You really feel like you’re eating dessert inside of a phone booth made out of a giant wooden barrel. The quarters were tight, but intimate, and the dessert menu is also something to behold. This is where I feel like we both chose poorly (of course, we were no longer under Erhan’s protection up there), and they were the only disappointments of the evening. We heard so much hype about the housemade macadamia nut ice cream sundae, so that’s what my wife ordered. It was fine, I guess. I’m not into nuts or chocolate as much as she is, but I think even she thought it was just okay.

I guess we had a bit of miscommunication, because I ordered the Taste of Bern’s, a sampler that includes five desserts, expecting my wife would want to try all of them. It comes with Macadamia Decadence Cake, King Midas (a carrot nut cake topped with more freakin’ macadamia nut ice cream), banana cheese pie, chocolate cheese pie, and vanilla cheesecake. Little did I know that the five desserts would be literally mouse-sized portions, or that my wife would be too full to care about sampling all of them at that late point in the evening, almost three hours after we arrived. I liked the banana cheese pie morsel quite a bit (fourth one) and probably would have preferred a full serving of that. None of the others did much for me, I must admit. I love cheesecake like crazy, but I’ve had better. Oh well, we still had the experience.

Also, the Dessert Room barrel-booths all come equipped with a telephone and a series of buttons that play different music through a speaker: jazz, Broadway standards, pop, and live music from a piano player stationed somewhere on the premises. The phone is to call the piano player with requests. Well, most of the buttons didn’t work, and we didn’t want to try playing “stump the piano player” with contemporary requests, although I still wonder if he would have known any Tori Amos (for my wife), Tom Waits (for me), or St. Vincent (for both of us).

We practically rolled back to our hotel across the street, which was a godsend, and crashed for the night much earlier than usual. Aside from dessert being underwhelming for both of us, we have absolutely no regrets about going, spending the money, and finally getting the full Bern’s Steak House experience. But I asked my wife if she would ever want to go back, and she said no, it was fine, she had a great time, but she got it out of her system completely. I have to agree. I was, and am, content.

We were celebrating being married for nine years, being relatively healthy (especially compared to the last year), and feeling mostly stable and safe at our respective jobs, so it was worth a step out of our comfort zones for a night like this. I’m so grateful I was in the financial position to treat my wife to this little weekend anniversary getaway, but leaving Bern’s and checking out of the Epicurean Hotel the next morning felt like a return to reality, snapping out of this swanky fantasy and back to real life.

For better and for worse, Bern’s is a real time capsule — a piece of luxurious mid-Century Americana, at once tacky (the decor) and classy (pretty much everything else). I’m glad they have withstood the test of time and bravely doubled down on what they have always done, rather than submitting to trends, modernizing, and going more casual. This is the kind of place the Rat Pack would go if they went to Tampa back in the day, or where Henry Hill would have taken his wife (or possibly his mistress) if Goodfellas had a little side story set in Tampa. I’m imagining the interior monologues, sweeping Steadicam shots, and Scorsese’s swingin’ ’70s song choices even now. Bern’s does everything with the utmost care and the highest quality, and you get what you pay for. They certainly go out of their way to put you at ease (even though decadence and luxury make me uncontrollably uncomfortable every time) and give you an unforgettable evening.

But I promise you, fearless readers: my next restaurant review will feel more like classic Saboscrivner, with a trip to one of Tampa’s legendary bakeries that is over a century old. Stay tuned for TAMPAVERSARY PART 2!

Theo’s Kitchen

It feels like a while since I wrote my last review here, and I have a few more in the pipeline. But this one is about a hidden gem here in Orlando, on Curry Ford Road: Theo’s Kitchen (https://www.theoskitchen.com/). It’s in an older, nondescript shopping strip near a Winn-Dixie supermarket, and you might not know it’s there at all unless you’ve been hipped to its existence. Consider yourselves hipped.

Have you ever craved really good, crispy, tender, juicy fried chicken, but also been dying for Greek food? Has that ever happened to you too? Well, you’re in luck, because Theo’s serves what has to be my favorite fried chicken in the Orlando area (The Coop is very good, don’t get me wrong, but not quite as consistent as it used to be), plus they have a whole menu of Greek specialties, when you can’t decide or when you just want to treat yo’self and have it all.

I’ve been to Theo’s twice this summer since discovering it, once again thanks to the local gourmands, connoisseurs, and aficionados on the Orlando Foodie Forum on Facebook. On my first visit, I met a fellow Foodie Forumite there, a really good guy who is always visiting and recommending restaurants around town. I’ll name him if he’s okay with that, but for now, better safe than sorry. GREAT guy with good taste and a never-ending thirst for adventure, culinary and otherwise.

On that visit, I ordered a gyro (because there’s no such thing as a bad gyro, am I right, you guys?), a chicken thigh so I could sample the legendary fried chicken, and an order of onion rings, because THAT’S RIGHT, THIS IS ANOTHER INSTALLMENT OF RING THE ALARM! (AIR HORN!) My friend ordered the gyro king (same thing but with feta cheese added), a Greek salad, and chicken and rice soup. The gyro was very good, and the onion rings were the kind I love, with a nice beer batter coating, the ideal thickness and consistency.

My friend seemed to love all of his food, and the salad was definitely beautiful.

I don’t mean to downplay any of that, but the chicken thigh was excellent. The crispness was so perfect, but it was almost all in the skin, rather than a heavy, greasy layer of breading or batter. It was very moist and juicy. There wasn’t a lot of seasoning on the chicken — The Coop and even Popeye’s season their fried chicken more — but it didn’t need it, seriously. Theo’s website says “Our Special method of broasted pressure frying in peanut oil makes your Fried Chicken light, evenly cooked and full of naturally delicious flavors.” (See https://www.theoskitchen.com/menu.)

Wait a minute, Mr. Saboscrivner, Sir, you might be thinking. “BROASTED”? Is that a typo? How unlike you! Is that even a THING? No, I promise, I copied and pasted that directly from the Theo’s Kitchen website and cited my source (always cite your sources, folks), but it is a thing. It’s essentially fried chicken that is also pressure-cooked while it’s fried, prepared in special equipment made by the Wisconsin-based Broaster Company.

Because I am a serious food blogger and a researcher by trade, I dug a little deeper to investigate broasted chicken, since now I’m invested, and I’m sure you are too. Here’s a 2004 Washington Post article all about broasted chicken:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/food/2004/04/21/this-chickens-not-roasted-broiled-or-fried-its-broasted-good-luck-finding-it-though/63ba6fe5-6af4-45bc-b0c3-8a8b26d8ea87/

And a shorter Atlas Obscura article, for the “TL,DR” crowd (although I can’t imagine any of them would still be sticking around my blog!):
https://www.atlasobscura.com/foods/broasted-chicken

So anyway, it was awesome. I’ve never had fried chicken quite like it before, but I think it cracked the code for the perfect blend of flavor, freshness, texture, and lack of heavy, nasty, slimy greasiness.

I went back to Theo’s Kitchen more recently with one of my co-workers, who was kind enough to treat me to lunch, even though I had every intention of treating him that day. What a blessing it is to have good co-workers, since that can make or break so many jobs. He ordered a two-piece meal with a breast and a thigh, with some nice, crispy, crinkle-cut fries, and an order of fried mushrooms, which I cannot eat (but I was nice enough to take a picture of them for you).

I had another spot-on perfect broasted chicken thigh:

Also, because I was craving pasta and haven’t had this in years (not since my beloved Patsio’s Diner in Casselberry closed), I ordered pastitsio, which is like a Greek version of lasagna. It is a casserole of uncut ziti noodles and a rich, tomatoey sauce with ground beef and what had to be a fair bit of cinnamon. (This makes sense, because I love Cincinnati-style chili, originally a recipe of Greek immigrants that is made with cinnamon and served over spaghetti.)

The pastitsio even came with one of their beautiful Greek salads, and they were very generous with the feta:

So Theo’s Kitchen is a casual little place in a strip shopping center that looks like hundreds of others, the kind of restaurant you could drive by every day and never notice, or live your whole life in a city and never know about. It is an open room with lots of little tables and natural light from a big glass storefront window overlooking the parking lot. Maybe not anyone’s idea of a “sexy date night” restaurant, but a fine choice for any occasion. It has it all! Greek food? Check. Greek food is good, and often healthy, and there aren’t a ton of Greek restaurants. Fried chicken is good, and not healthy at all, but it’s dry and disappointing too often when you get it from fast food chains and supermarkets. Not so at Theo’s Kitchen, where you get the best of both worlds.