Romantic – The Saboscrivner

The Moderne

I guess I haven’t published a new review in about a month, since work has been keeping me so busy. Working from home, I also haven’t been able to go out to eat quite as often, which means I’m cooking more and saving money (yet not losing any weight). But this review is long overdue, from a date night about a month ago at one of the prettiest, swankiest, sexiest restaurant/bar/lounges in Orlando, The Moderne (https://www.themodernebar.com/) in the foodie dream district of Mills 50. I’m sure a lot of my regular readers have already been here, but this was our first visit to The Moderne. I had been wanting to try it for a while, since it features an eclectic menu of small plates — mostly pan-Asian dishes, but some include other international influences, ranging from Italian to Peruvian.

This was my wife’s beautiful mojito mocktail, served with a dehydrated lime slice as a garnish. I tried a sip, and it was delicious. The Moderne features an enticing cocktail menu, but we were both happy to see a few mocktail options for non-drinkers like us. I guess you could call this one a “no”-jito. My wife reminded me to mention that she first asked for a simple Shirley Temple, but the gorgeous, well-stocked bar did not have any grenadine syrup, something we both thought was odd at the time.

Our order of duck wontons came out first. These hand-folded wonton wrappers were stuffed with shredded duck seasoned with Chinese five-spice powder and fried until crispy. They were served with chili oil peanut sauce. We both wished they had been served with more duck inside, even though they tasted good and were surprisingly not that oily.

This beautiful dish was the tuna kobachi, with spicy cubed tuna, avocado, Japanese-style marinated cucumbers, scallion, red tobiko, micro cilantro, and a dish of ponzu sauce for dippin’ and dunkin’. I loved it so much. I could eat this every day of my life and never get tired of it, although I’d hate to think of what my mercury levels would be. It was my favorite dish that we tried, a perfect 10/10.

Next came our chashu quesadillas, which were plated beautifully. Quesadillas are the easiest thing to make at home, but my homemade ones never feature chashu pork, (like the kind of pork you get in a bowl of “real” (not instant) ramen), shredded cheddar and mozzarella cheeses, Japanese Kewpie mayo, chili amarillo sauce, and pickled onions. Well, mine would have the cheeses and Barbie Dream House-pink pickled onions, but that’s where the similarities begin and end.

This was another hit with both of us: yellowtail (hamachi) ceviche, with cubes of cool, refreshing yellowtail in mango wasabi lime sauce, diced onion, serrano, red tobiko, micro cilantro, all encased in perfectly thin, crispy, delicate spheres of pani puri, the Indian street food classic (see my Bombay Street Kitchen review for authentic pani puri). It was a gorgeous fusion experience that dazzled all of our senses.

My wife chose these miso cream noodles, which sounded like something she would love. The dish featured thin pasta (like angel hair or vermicelli), that chashu pork again, mushrooms, miso, fried garlic, toasted bread crumbs, parmesan cheese, and scallions. She admitted not really being into it and said it was both very rich and on the bland side — an interesting dichotomy, kind of like fettuccine alfredo from the Olive Garden (although this definitely had more flavor than that)! She picked at it and brought most of it home, where I happily finished it after picking the mushrooms out. I’m a pretty tolerant guy, but I have this unfortunate intolerance to mushrooms, and chefs freakin’ love throwing them into things.

I chose a different noodle dish for myself that seemed like another fragrant fusion feast: seafood pappardelle, with pappardelle pasta (wide, flat noodles that are wider than fettuccine), shrimp, tamarind Nikkei sauce (Nikkei being a Peruvian-Japanese fusion due to all the Japanese immigrants in Peru), carrots, red peppers, onions, peanuts, and a cilantro-heavy “Asian herb salad.” It was okay. The sauce was a little sweet and tangy, not as spicy as I had hoped, and very thin. I thought it was odd that the dish was called “seafood pappardelle” when the only seafood in it was shrimp. This was a last-minute choice when the server was already taking our orders, but I think I would have enjoyed one of the other noodle dishes more. Oh well, you live and you learn!

So that was our first experience at The Moderne. I liked it and would go back, but my wife admitted it was not one of her favorite restaurants. Oh well, people have different tastes and like different things — that is no surprise. My favorites were the two dishes with raw fish, which is usually one of my favorite things to eat. (This also explains why The Moderne’s neighbor a few doors down, Poke Hana, remains one of my favorite restaurants in all of Orlando all these years later.) I might get those again, or other raw fish options, and I would definitely try a different noodle dish on a second visit. Plus, after dinner at The Moderne, you can go next door and have some of Orlando’s finest ice cream at Sampaguita, which is exactly what we did on this date night!

Wa Sushi

Wa Sushi (https://www.facebook.com/WaSushiCasselberry/) is a real treasure in the Seminole County suburb of Casselberry, 20 minutes north of downtown Orlando. The small, serene location is located in a nondescript shopping plaza between an Ollie’s Bargain Outlet and a store called Sports & Pokemon (the two genders?), but it boasts some of the finest sushi and Japanese food in the Orlando area.

Wa Sushi used to be in another, even less auspicious location elsewhere in Casselberry, pretty far out of the way and hard to find, and our very cool next-door neighbors invited us there once. It was good, but for whatever reason, we didn’t return until recently — our first visit in years, and the first to this new location.

You can find Wa Sushi’s menu on the Facebook page above, but they had a menu of specials when I took my wife there recently, for our first real date night in a while:

This was one of the last evenings of 2022, and we saw Wa was offering another special of toshikoshi soba, or “year-crossing noodles,” traditionally meant to be eaten on New Year’s Eve to let go of the hardships of the past year (since soba noodles are so soft and easily cut). Well, we figured we could both use some of that.

Rather than try the version in broth, we ordered the toshikoshi ten zaru soba ($16), cold soba noodles served with a dashi soy dipping sauce and a side order of tempura-battered and fried shrimp and vegetables. It was beautifully plated, and really good too, although I probably would not have ordered it if the dish wasn’t associated with the tradition of letting go of the hard times of the past year.

Close-up of the tempura shrimp and vegetables. My wife ate the tempura sweet potato, and I had the onion and shishito peppers.

Here are the cold soba noodles, made from buckwheat and topped with some fine shreds of nori (seaweed). They didn’t have much flavor at all, kind of like eating plain, cold spaghetti, but earthier. The dashi dipping sauce helped immensely, as did the finely-diced scallions that also came on the side.

Something we ordered came with the obligatory wee house salad with sesame dressing and miso soup, which I enjoyed:

This was ika geso ($11), a small plate of deep-fried squid legs from the Hot Tasting section of the menu. After how tender and fried to perfection the shrimp were, we thought we would double down on the tempura shellfish. These were chewier than a lot of fried calamari we have ordered around town, but I have a feeling this squid was a lot fresher, as opposed to some restaurants that may use frozen calamari. They definitely tasted fresh.

My wife always loves a good selection of sashimi, or in this case, a beautiful portion of chirashi ($33) — select cuts of raw fish, selected by the chef. There was salmon in here, ebi (shrimp), tako (octopus, one of her favorites, whether raw or cooked), ikura (orange globes of salmon roe), tamago (perfectly cooked and sliced egg), and unagi (eel). I always love eel in sushi, but this was her first time trying it, and she liked it. I’m always impressed by her willingness to try almost anything.

And we ordered three beautiful rolls to share:

In the foreground, you can see the ultimate tuna roll ($16): spicy tuna and cucumber inside the rice, topped with tuna, wasabi-infused tobiko (fish eggs), and sweet chili sauce. This one was awesome, but I’m always a fan of spicy tuna in any form.

Here you can see the inferno roll ($14) in the front, and the mango tango roll ($13) in the back. In the very front are slices of escolar sashimi ($2.50), just for her — a big fan of the butterfish. The inferno roll features spicy salmon and cucumber topped with yellowtail, spicy mayo, and paper-thin slices of fresh jalapeño pepper. Awesome combination.
The mango tango roll in the back features tempura-battered and fried shrimp, mango, and cucumber, topped with crab salad. I believe this was real crabmeat and not surimi (processed fish sometimes called “krab,” even though I like that stuff too).

I was really impressed by Wa Sushi, once again, all these years later, in a much more convenient location. Last summer I wrote a review of Kabuto Sushi & Grill, another friendly neighborhood sushi spot close to our home, just on the Winter Springs side rather than the Casselberry side. I even listed one of Kabuto’s dishes in my Top Ten Tastes of 2022, which came out in the last Orlando Weekly issue of the year. Sadly, that very week, the last week of 2022, Kabuto announced it was closing permanently. That’s when I resolved to get us back to Wa, to support them as much as we could moving forward, to help spare it a similar fate. I know lots of local foodies already know how fine Wa Sushi is, and common consensus is that it is one of the best sushi establishments in the greater Orlando area. It absolutely is, and to have it so close to home, a true treasure in Casselberry, of all places, means we have to protect it, support it, and shout our praise from the rooftops, both real and virtual. So here’s my praise and my protection. Let’s support all of our favorite restaurants as much as we can this year, especially those friendly neighborhood favorites we are lucky to have so near and dear to us.

Jaleo

Jaleo (https://www.jaleo.com/location/jaleo-disney-springs/) is an upscale Spanish restaurant, founded by the successful celebrity chef, restauranteur, and humanitarian Jose Andres. When he’s not feeding people in international crisis zones with his World Central Kitchen charity, he runs several other restaurants, including China Chilcano, the Peruvian-Chinese-Japanese restaurant in Washington, D.C., which I ate at and reviewed in 2019. But Jaleo, featuring the tastes of his native Spain, is probably his most famous, with locations in D.C., Chicago, Las Vegas, and right here in Orlando.

The two-story Jaleo location at Disney Springs is absolute huge and beautiful. It is almost like sensory overload in there, with so much to look at even before your senses are overwhelmed by the tapas coming your way.

The design really is busy, but stunning.

Peep these gorgeous hanging hams. As Michael Jackson might have said, “JAMON!”

This location opened in March 2019, and I had been wanting to go since the beginning. But with COVID, major medical stuff, a job change, and lots of other life stuff getting in the way, I finally made it to Jaleo earlier this year, back in May, which seems like a lifetime ago. I went for a leisurely lunch with three colleagues from work, all top-notch librarians I don’t get to work directly with anymore, but I think the world of them. None of us had ever been here before, so we shared almost everything, which is the best way to do Jaleo — in a group with friends who understand sharing is caring. Each of us ordered a few dishes and paid our own way, so I will present our epic meal more of less in order of how things came out from the kitchen.

Two colleagues shared this pitcher of sangria, which they seemed to like. I don’t know how much it cost and didn’t try it because I don’t drink, but it’s Spanish red wine mixed with fruit, so I’m sure you can’t go too wrong.

This is pan con tomate ($14), toasted slices of bread rubbed with fresh tomato, which sounds too simple to be good, and definitely too simple to be worth $14. But it was worth it, even split four ways. Better than tomato-rubbed toast has any right to be! It was so good, another person in my party ordered a second portion for the table.

This was the coca Idiazabal ($10), a handmade rosemary and olive oil cracker topped with membrillo (a jelly-like paste made of the quince fruit, so rich, sticky, and sweet!) and Idiazabal cheese, grated into soft, silky strands. I had never had quince before, but it reminded me of the guava paste that is ubiquitous in pastelitos and other Cuban desserts from growing up in Miami. We cracked the coca cracker into quarters as best we could and enjoyed the blend of sweet and salty, crunchy and gooey.

This was my vegetarian colleague’s manzanas con hinojo y queso Manchego ($13), a salad of sliced apples, fennel, Manchego cheese (a Spanish cheese made from sheep milk), walnuts, and sherry dressing. I don’t remember much about the bite I got, but I do love fragrant fennel (I like to use it in pasta con la sarde, a dish of pasta and sardines) and salty Manchego. It would be a great palate cleanser to take bites of between heavier, richer, meaty dishes.

I definitely ordered this dish, which I swear looked a lot more appetizing in person: the cebolla asada ($11), a huge roasted sweet onion topped with pine nuts and funky-but-delicious Valdeón blue cheese. Everyone knows how much I love onions, especially when they are marinated and/or caramelized. This was magnificent, especially with the blue cheese on top. Part of me imagined enjoying a gigantic, juicy burger topped with this bad boy, but that wouldn’t be Jaleo’s style.

So many months have passed, I think this soup my one vegetarian colleague ordered is the gazpacho de remolacha con queso de cabra ($11), red beet gazpacho with goat cheese, oranges, and pistachios. It was the only thing on the table I did not sample, but if that’s indeed what it is, it sounds good enough to even win over Lisa Simpson’s gazpacho-mocking family at that one cookout.

Me being the connoisseur of cured meats, I couldn’t go to Jaleo and not order the jamon Serrano ($13), a platter of the most delicious Serrano ham, cured for 24 months. These paper-thin slices were served with these delightful little crispy bread twists to wrap them around. Like the best prosciutto, this jamon was salty and unctuous and could melt away in your mouth. My one male colleague seemed to like it; the ladies wanted nothing to do with it, so more for me!

This was the espinacas a la Catalana ($14), sautéed spinach with pine nuts, raisins and apples. Once again, I can’t take credit for ordering such a healthy, wholesome dish, but it was so amazing. I think we had leftovers of a few things at the end of our lunch, including this, and I took them all home because I am shameless. My wife tried it and loved it, and I attempted a copycat recipe not long after that was okay, but not nearly as good as this. I mean, look at this! I do love cooked greens, and the slight sweetness from the fruit made such a difference, especially with the tender crunch of the apples and the chewiness of the raisins (“Nature’s candy,” as my mom would say, trying desperately to convince my brother and I as little kids, and probably herself as well.)

Next up we have the gambas al ajillo ($19), or according to the menu, “The very, very famous tapa of shrimp sautéed with garlic.” I don’t really care how famous they are, but they were some of the tastiest shrimp I’ve ever had. I can’t rave enough about how perfectly every dish in this epic lunch was seasoned, and the gambas were no exception.

My mighty colleague ordered this paella of the day for himself, and our patient server warned us it would take about 45 minutes. It came toward the end of the meal, when we were all visibly fatigued, but I honorably and dutifully helped him get through it. Constant readers, I wish I could tell you what this exact paella of the day was, but that memory is lost in time, like tears in the rain. The menu narrows down the kind of rice to “Bomba rice from Valencia or Calasparra from Murcia,” and it definitely included tender chicken, some kind of pork, and also shrimp, with a swirl of garlic aioli on the plate, as if it wasn’t rich enough already. Not everything is worth the wait, but this paella was.This is where I admit I’ve had bad experiences with paella elsewhere. Usually you pay a lot and wait a long time, and the rice comes out underdone. Just disheartening experiences overall, which is why I didn’t order a traditional rice-based paella for myself, even in this temple of Spanish cuisine, with a menu created by one of the greatest chefs in the world. Because the rice was tender and everything came together, it was probably the best paella I’ve ever had.

This was the last dish I ordered myself: rossejat negra ($32), a different kind of paella made with toasted Catalonian fideos pasta instead of rice, head-on shrimp, squid ink, calamari sofrito, and dollops of creamy, garlicky aioli. The picture isn’t great, because it looks like some burnt crud on the pan, but that was actually pasta dyed black with squid ink, a gourmet treat that always impresses my wife and me whenever we see it, maybe because we are goths at heart. I cannot vouch for the placement of the huge shrimp in this dish, but I’m sure there was no ill intent. The pasta was al dente in places, but the edges that touched the pan were crispy like pegao, the crispy rice from the bottom of the rice cooker that some people dismiss but others (like my wife) love. The dollops of creamy, garlicky aioli stood out against the blackness of the pasta and the blackness of the pan, reminding me of a line Alan Moore wrote in the comic book Top Ten #8, later plagiarized by Nic Pizzolatto in the first season finale of True Detective, about seeing stars shining in the night sky, and how there is so much darkness out there, but just to see any light at all means the light is winning. Well, nobody else wanted anything to do with my rossejat negra, which means I was definitely winning!

My colleague who is a huge Disney fan ordered this dessert, and I honestly don’t remember if I tried a bite or not. It is the Selva Negra ($14), created to celebrate Walt Disney World’s 50th anniversary, lasting throughout 2022 and into March 2023. The menu describes “a decadent mousse made of Manjari 64% chocolate atop a crunchy feulletine base with black cherry chocolate sponge cake and topped with a chocolate glace.” That’s pretty impressive to me, considering my favorite dessert is a creamy citrus pie in a crust made of crushed Ritz crackers. This right here is some serious gourmet… stuff.

I don’t know why it has taken me over half a year to finish writing this review. Needless to say, the four of us ate like royalty this day. But the fact that it was four generous and mostly adventurous people made it the ideal situation at Jaleo. The tapas-style portions aren’t gigantic, but most are bigger than you think, definitely big enough to share with a group this size. And that’s the way to do tapas correctly — to order a bunch of different things and share them. Share with friends, with family, with dates and mates, even with former co-workers. A meal like this lends itself to sharing, so as many people as possible can experience the majestic flavors of Spain and the creative brilliance and love of Chef Jose Andres and his talented kitchen staff. You could go alone and order a couple of dishes, but I don’t know if that experience would be the same. That’s why it took me so long to finally make it to Jaleo, and why I won’t return until the circumstances are right, and I can bring more people I care about to share with. Sharing food (and even information about food) is one of my love languages for sure (you’re welcome!), and one of Chef Andres’ too, as he continues to lead World Central Kitchen to feed people at disaster sites and war zones around the world. He’s a true mensch, and he deserves our support. You can donate to World Central Kitchen, AND you can also enjoy a sumptuous, unforgettable meal at Jaleo next time you’re down near Disney.

Cafe Tu Tu Tango

Cafe Tu Tu Tango (https://www.cafetututango.com/) is a beautiful restaurant located in the heart of Orlando’s tourist district on International Drive, near Universal Studios and the Orange County Convention Center. I used to take my wife there for special celebratory occasions back when we were dating, mostly between 2006 and 2008. The restaurant is bright and bustling, its red walls strewn with lovely art that is all for sale. There are local artists painting and sculpting all over the restaurant, dancers are often dancing, and tarot card readers will read guests for a small fee. It’s a very bohemian place — maybe too loud to be intimate, but festive, fun, and as romantic as you want it to be. The menu matches the vibe, with small plates featuring fusion foods from around the world, ideal for sharing.

As cool as that all sounds, we fell out of the habit of going, mostly because it is all the way across town. But we had some wonderful meals and memories there, including two strips of photos we had taken in a photo booth, those completely obsolete but fun and beloved novelties of recent times past.

Well, my wife had a birthday coming up, so I asked her where she wanted to go out. It had been a few months since we had dined out anywhere together, and me being me, I sent her a list of good restaurants — some old favorites, some we had yet to go to together, and a few that we loved but hadn’t been to in a long time. She chose Cafe Tu Tu Tango, and we were both excited to return after all these years. I even wore the same shirt and tie I wore in the photo booth photos (because I hate buying new clothes), hoping to get some updated pics and maybe frame them all together.

Best of all, like its sister restaurant Mia’s Italian Kitchen just up the road, Cafe Tu Tu Tango features an all-you-can-eat weekend brunch on Saturdays and Sundays for $28.22 per person. Like Mia’s, it is not a buffet, but you just order whatever you want off the brunch menu (slightly more limited than the regular dinner menu), and as much as you want, for that fixed price. Back in the day, before I was as gainfully employed, those small plates with their pretty presentations and puny portions could really add up. It is a hell of a bargain to go for brunch and be able to go and sample anything and everything, so that’s exactly what we did.

We started with two “non-spirited frescos,” essentially mocktails, since neither of us drink. My wife ordered the $6 Pollock Punch (named for the artist Jackson Pollock, of course), with pineapple, mango, and cranberry juices, passion purée, Coco Lopez cream of coconut, and almond-flavored orgeat syrup, the necessary ingredient in mai tais and so many other tropical drinks. I ordered the $6 Lichtenstein Lemonade*, a delicious-sounding combination of house-made lemonade, muddled cucumber and basil, strawberry purée, and club soda to make it fizz. Funny enough, once we sipped each other’s drinks, we realized we each liked the other one better. The Pollock Punch (left) was too sour for her, while I love sour, and she preferred the fizz in my Lichtenstein Lemonade (right), so we switched them.
*The Lichtenstein Lemonade is named for the pop artist Roy Lichtenstein, who I DESPISE, because he swiped art from underpaid and underappreciated comic book artists, blew their panels up to giant size and got them displayed in galleries, took all the credit, and got rich and famous off their artwork. Screw that guy, but if you want an artist who specializes in Lichtenstein’s mid-century retro pop art style but is a truly iconoclastic original, check out my all-time favorite comic book artist Mike Allred.

Anyway, we went on to order A LOT of food from our sweet and patient server Chelsea, who was absolutely slammed, but had a great attitude and personality. The first thing to come out was the churro waffles (which would normally be $9 if we ordered a la carte) –perfect Belgian waffles with crispy exteriors and fluffy interiors, topped with ‍cinnamon sugar, dulce de leche, vanilla cream, cinnamon whipped cream. There were actually two of these in the order, so we each had one. This was my wife’s first choice, and it was a good one.

I ordered the butter chicken tikka masala (normally $13), a good-sized portion serviced over ‍fluffy basmati rice with pickled red onions, fresh cilantro, roasted corn, and creamy tikka masala sauce. I love Indian food, but my wife is convinced she doesn’t, because most things she has tried have been too spicy for her. I was thrilled that she loved this dish, even more than I did, since she never wants to get Indian food, and now we had a dish we know she likes. The chicken breast meat was very tender, and it wasn’t spicy at all. I tried a little, but was happy to keep it on her side of the table.Since this meal, I have researched butter chicken and chicken tikka masala, two distinct Indian dishes that use similar ingredients, but aren’t the same. We are going to run further tests to see which one my wife actually prefers, since Tu Tu Tango’s “butter chicken tikka masala” may not be the best example of authentic Indian cuisine. It was good, though!

I had never ordered any of the brick oven pan pizzas on our past trips to Cafe Tu Tu Tango, because it always seemed like there were more interesting things to try. But this time I ordered the sausage and peppers pizza (normally $9.25), with Italian sausage, hand-crushed San Marzano tomatoes, garlic, mozzarella, caramelized onions, and roasted red peppers. It was magnificent, and pan pizza usually isn’t even one of the pizza styles I prefer. Perfect crispy edges and a nice, fluffy crust. All the toppings came together beautifully. It was relatively small, like a “personal” pizza, but I always say that if you believe in yourself, any pizza can be a personal pizza.

Next up, my wife ordered the monkey bread (normally $7), a rich, sticky, super-sweet pastry with golden raisins, pecans, dulce de leche sauce, whipped cream, and enough powdered sugar to make it look like it was partying in Miami. Funny enough, the monkey bread ended up being too sweet for her, but I ended up really loving its chewy, sticky texture. It was heavy, and it probably sapped some of my strength and endurance mid-meal, but what a way to go.

I ordered these breakfast tacos (normally $8), with ‍jalapeño jack cheese, huevos rancheros, and crumbled, seasoned beef on two soft corn tortillas. My wife wanted no part of them, but they ended up being among my favorites of the brunch. I really thought the beef was chorizo sausage — it was that kind of savory flavor with just a little spice.

Next up, she ordered the grilled fish tacos (normally $11), with honey-lime escabeche sauce, cotija cheese, crunchy cabbage slaw, and more pink pickled onions on the same soft corn tortillas. We both appreciate good fish tacos, but both agreed the fish was on the “fishy” side. I ended up eating everything except the tortillas, which she wanted for herself. I wouldn’t get these again. Loved the toppings, but the fish — not so much.

Anyone who knows me at all would glance at the menu and predict I would order the Cuban sliders (normally $12), two wee sandwich halves with ‍capicola, genoa salami, pulled pork, pickles, Swiss cheese on pressed bread with a ramekin of the most delicious, vinegary mojo sauce. I’m predictable when it comes to food. I liked these, but the sauce was my favorite part! I thought about how much I might have preferred chilled Italian-style sandwich sliders with the capicola and genoa salami and some pickled vegetables. But don’t get me wrong, I really did enjoy them.

Next, I got the Tango home fries (normally $4), with sautéed red pepper and onion strips, scallions and a house spice blend. These were delicious, but I thought the potatoes could have been crispier. They had a pleasing amount of heat, but not so much that a person who likes things mild wouldn’t enjoy them. I was starting to get full, so I didn’t finish these, and I still feel guilty about that.

My wife ended her meal with one of her favorite dishes of the day, shrimp and grits (normally $12), served with corn relish and scallions. She loves grits, whereas they are not usually my favorite. I didn’t try this, but she ate it with gusto, so it must have been good. I’d say this, the butter chicken tikka masala, and the churro waffle were her favorites.

Next up came the dessert that I thought was going to be my favorite: guava and sweet plantain bread pudding (normally $7), served in a sizzling skillet and topped with Nutella sauce. I wish I had asked them to hold the sauce. Believe it or not, I could take or leave Nutella. Thanks to it, the whole thing ended up tasting like chocolate and muted the flavors of the guava and sweet plantains, two of my favorite things to eat anywhere. I could only eat one of the two pieces, and she wanted nothing to do with it.

Finally, my Southwest Caesar salad arrived (normally $10). It contained ‍romaine lettuce, avocado, crunchy fried tortilla strips, cotija cheese, salsa roja, and chipotle-garlic dressing . I make salads and eat them in my work lunches almost every day, so I rarely order salads at restaurants, but this had a lot of neat-sounding ingredients, and it was included in the fixed price for brunch, so I decided to give it a try. I’m glad I did, but I ate all the interesting stuff off the top and tapped out before I could make it through all the romaine lettuce.

So that was it for brunch, and that was pretty much it for the two of us for the rest of the day. But what a way to go. This has to be one of the best values in Orlando, folks. I crunched the numbers, and these eleven small plates we ordered would add up to $102.25 if we ordered them a la carte. Instead, we paid $56.44 for the both of us (minus our drinks) — almost half that price for the all-you-can-eat brunch deal.

Sadly, Cafe Tu Tu Tango got rid of its photo booth at some point before Chelsea even started working there, as I had feared. In this age of camera phones, selfies, Instagram, and “pics, or it didn’t happen” culture, a photo booth taking up space in a busy restaurant or bar seems like less of a sound and necessary investment, but there’s something about printing out those momentous moments on a little strip of paper to cherish forever, in a way that doesn’t seem the same when staring at images on screens. But in the end, we didn’t need new photos. We had each other, we had our memories –both old and new — and we had an epic brunch in beautiful, bohemian surroundings that would tide us over for a while. At least until dinner that evening.

The Osprey

“As I ate the oysters with their strong taste of the sea and their faint metallic taste that the cold white wine washed away, leaving only the sea taste and the succulent texture, and as I drank their cold liquid from each shell and washed it down with the crisp taste of the wine, I lost the empty feeling and began to be happy and to make plans.”

― Ernest “I Love When You Call Me Big Papa” Hemingway, A Moveable Feast

The Osprey (https://www.theospreyorlando.com/) is one of my favorite restaurants in all of Orlando, but it had been over three years since my last visit. They didn’t do anything wrong — owners Jason and Sue Chin run a tight ship, and it never disappoints. In fact, their restaurant is so good, they were recently named James Beard Award semifinalists, which is a huge honor in the restaurant industry. (And we here in Orlando feel like they were robbed of an official nomination!)

But so much had changed since my last visit, even the name! The restaurant was renamed The Osprey (it used to be The Osprey Tavern), and the menu was revamped to focus much more on local seafood. My last meal there with my wife was excellent, but that was in early 2018, before I started this blog. As a result, I never got around to writing a belated review, since most of my photos were of dishes we ordered that are no longer on the current menu (and my photos were also pretty bad back then). So I was long overdue for a return trip.

The Osprey does not serve lunch, but it opens for dinner at 5:00 PM every day of the week except for Monday. It runs one of the best happy hours in Orlando runs from 5:00 to 7:00 PM, Tuesday through Friday only. It is also open for brunch on Sundays, which was my first experience at The Osprey many years ago. I’m just not a brunch guy; it doesn’t matter where it is. But I am very much a lunch/dinner/happy hour guy.

But my favorite thing about The Osprey Tavern, and now The Osprey, was $1 oysters during happy hour on weeknights. Since I work so late, I was hardly ever able to make it over there to take advantage of one of my favorite meal deals in Orlando, so it was a rare and wonderful treat.

The $1 happy hour oysters were the main thing that recently drew me back to The Osprey in the middle of a long and exhausting recent workday where I had several classes to teach. (Since that visit, they are now $2 each.) I ordered an icy platter with a dozen fresh mid-Atlantic James River oysters on the half shell ($12), plump and juicy, from Virginia. These were much smaller and more delicate than the typical huge Appalachicola oysters I’m most used to, which come from Florida’s Gulf Coast. These James River oysters were slightly firmer in texture too, which may be a boon for those who don’t love the texture of oysters. I sipped their briny liquor and slurped them down with gusto; they didn’t need any lemon, cocktail sauce, or horseradish. I wrote about the raw oysters I enjoyed so much from High Tide Harry’s and the late, lamented Lombardi’s Seafood Cafe during the stressful, chaotic year of 2021, and I share my Saboscrivner Seal of Superiority with these oysters from The Osprey.I should have taken a close-up of that other little ramekin of sauce near the 2:00 position above. That is a mignonette, a unique condiment I tried for the first time on my previous visit to The Osprey for oysters, back in early 2018 — far too long ago — before I started this blog. I remember that mignonette was different from this one, but the menu refers to it as “seasonal” mignonette, so they may change out ingredients and flavor profiles throughout the year. I’ve never had anything like them before or since. It’s kind of like a peppery vinaigrette, with small bits of crispy shallots floating in it, and it’s a little sweet. I like my oysters straight-up to fully savor their flavor, but the mignonette was too delicious to leave behind… so I sipped and chewed it, just like I did in 2018. It’s that good.

This was the calamari ($9 during happy hour; otherwise $12). These tender, breaded squid rings and tentacles come adorned with paper-thin slices of piquant pickled peppers (a very nice and colorful touch), served on a bed of hazelnut romesco (the tangy orange sauce on the plate below, made with roasted tomatoes and peppers), and served with a ramekin of cool, creamy, slightly lemony citrus aioli. All the flavors and textures worked together perfectly for a beautiful harmony.
I usually love calamari, but some places serve you a greasy mess of chewy rubber bands, sometimes hidden under too much crunchy, overcooked, tasteless batter. Not here. If you had any doubt that a seafood restaurant as nice as The Osprey would excel at the calamari game, dispel those doubts now.

Now I come to one of the best pasta dishes I’ve ever had — certainly in Orlando, and possibly an all-time Top Tenner. It even made my list of Top Twelve Tastes of 2021 in Orlando Weekly, where it was the only dish from a restaurant I hadn’t reviewed yet. Well, here’s my full review, better late than never. This is spaghetti alla chitarra ($15; not a happy hour special), and this picture cannot possibly do it justice.

The pasta itself was freshly made in house, and it was tossed and served with shelled clams from Cedar Key, Florida, blistered tomatoes, herbs, and an ingredient I’ve been obsessed with since learning about it a few years back: bottarga. As if fresh, handmade pasta and local clams weren’t awe-inspiring enough, bottarga is the egg sacs of a fish (usually grey mullet or bluefin tuna), cured in salt, then pressed and dried until they are solid blocks of savory, salty, fishy goodness, then shaved or grated onto a dish to lend it an umami-laden intensity. If you’ve ever had bonito flakes on a Japanese dish, bottarga is like that, but more intense. At least to me, it is also vaguely reminiscent of caviar, only without the unique “popping” sensation and all the bougie attitude that goes along with caviar. As an unabashed aficionado of all cured, smoked, and pickled seafood, this is a dream ingredient, and the spaghetti alla chitarra was a dream dish.

Finally, I wasn’t sure if I’ve ever had the fries at The Osprey, but a trusted foodie friend had raved about them before. I saw the cheeseburger and fish and chips both came with fries, so I asked my wonderful, attentive server Savannah if they would consider selling me a separate order of fries, even though it wasn’t listed on the menu. She said they would, and she brought me a plate teeming with a huge “side order” of fries (only $4). Folks, these join the potato pantheon of the finest fries in Orlando, alongside other fabulous fries from the likes of Mrs. Potato, Chicken Fire, Makani, and Se7en Bites. They have a crispy, seasoned outer coating like the fast food fries I love so much from Arby’s, but they are pillowy soft and potatoey inside. Not too thick, not too thin. Just fantastic fries all around. Savannah brought them with ketchup and a house-made creamy, tangy “comeback sauce” that you absolutely have to try, whether you get fries or something else to dip in it, or just shoot it out of the little metal ramekin.

I still had to return to work and teach one more late class after that luxurious dinner, but I ordered something to bring home to my wife, who loves desserts as much as I love oysters and pasta and cured stuff. This looked like a dessert that would bring us both joy: the s’mores tart ($7), with “smoky ganache,” graham cracker crust, and toasted meringue topping. This was another standout dish, even for me. I might not be the biggest dessert eater, but I sure do love pie, especially chilled pies with graham cracker crusts, and this one was right up my alley. We both had tiny tastes that night, and my wife liked it, but I liked it even more than she did. Because of that, she was kind enough to eat a little more for breakfast the next morning, but saved me some to enjoy when I got home from work that following evening. She’s the sweetest of all, but this was an excellent dessert I would recommend to anyone. It was so rich, we were able to get four servings out of this one slice!

So that’s a long-overdue review of one of my favorite restaurants in Orlando. Even though oysters are $2 each at happy hour instead of the buck they used to be, I still strongly recommend them — even at full price. Jason and Sue Chin are building a local restaurant empire with their Good Salt Restaurant Group, and I look forward to returning to their other concepts and trying their newest place. But don’t sleep on The Osprey!

Hidden away on beautiful, idyllic New Broad Street in Orlando’s burgeoning Baldwin Park neighborhood, it feels like it exists in another world, another reality, compared to the industrial, somewhat dilapidated stretch of East Colonial Drive just minutes away (and minutes from my workplace). Making the short drive to savor a happy hour dinner on a busy, stressful workday transported me away from real life temporarily, as all the best meals should do, to one degree or another. If you like seafood, I hope you will allow yourself that experience as well.

Christner’s Prime Steak and Lobster

I’m not usually a big steakhouse person, but if you ask me, Orlando’s best steakhouse is Christner’s Prime Steak and Lobster (https://christnersprimesteakandlobster.com/ ), located at 729 Lee Rd, Orlando, Florida, 32810. Christner’s is very old-school and classy, with impeccable service and prices to match, but you get what you pay for at a place like this. When I was still just dating my wife, her parents took us all out to Christner’s, and I must admit I had never been to a restaurant like this before. I got sticker-shock from the prices, even though her generous father, a stand-up guy, treated us all. But the steak was the finest I’ve ever had in my life — even better than the steak at the vaunted Bern’s in Tampa — and the sides were all top-notch as well.

Well, we’ve returned to Christner’s a few times in the intervening years, but we’ve canceled just about as many reservations just due to a lot of bad luck — someone always getting sick or injured right around the time of an anniversary, a birthday, or some other event worth celebrating. This year we decided to treat ourselves. Our anniversary and my in-laws’ anniversary are a day apart, so a while back, we finally returned to Christner’s for the first time in quite a few years, and everyone was healthy and safe and somehow stayed healthy and safe. It was a lovely night out with three of the best people in the world, and we ate like kings.

I have made no secret of my love for oysters on this blog, and Christner’s has the absolute best fried oysters I’ve ever had. Seriously, I’ve never had anything this good. They would make a fine, filling meal in and of themselves, even if we didn’t get steaks. This sharable appetizer portion comes with tartar sauce, which is really good, and cocktail sauce, which I didn’t even bother with. But the oysters are so plump and well-seasoned, and the breading is so perfectly crispy, that they didn’t need either.

My mother-in-law ordered lobster bisque, and she was willing to share. I just got a spoonful, but wow, was it good. Lobster bisque is an all-time Top Five soup, even if it’s hard to make it look exciting in a photo. Was this the best bisque? Best believe it’s the baddest bisque, bro!

My father-in-law ordered a Caesar salad. I didn’t ask to try any of it, but those croutons looked pretty fantastic.

The croutons are probably made from the fresh-baked bread that is delivered to your table with soft, spreadable butter as soon as your party sits down. The photo I got of the bread didn’t look nearly as good as it actually is, so I left it out of this review. It is a round loaf you have to cut yourself, but it is so soft and fluffy and warm, and I challenge anyone to try it and not like it.

My in-laws aren’t used to me always playing the food photographer, so I didn’t get a chance to take pictures of everyone’s main courses. I did capture mine, though — Russ’ USDA Prime strip, a twelve-ounce steak seasoned with a nice amount of cracked pepper and cooked to a perfect rare, just like I like it. I regret not taking a photo of the red center, which meat lovers would salivate over. That would have been pure “food porn,” though. This steak is one of the cheaper ones on the menu, and I still get sticker-shock after all these years, even when someone else is generous enough to treat. But of course, at Christner’s, even the cheapest steak is relative. But that’s not all! I usually choose it because it is one of the only steaks that comes with a side item; almost all the rest come a la carte. Russ’ USDA Prime strip is accompanied by the richest, creamiest, most buttery chateau potatoes, which are just very posh mashed potatoes. Best mashed potatoes ever, though!

We also ordered the skillet potatoes and onions for everyone to share. This is one of the best potato dishes I’ve ever eaten in my life. Sliced thin and fried, these aren’t crispy-crunchy like potato chips, but more like thin, disc-shaped steak fries, seasoned with lots of good cracked pepper. As a notorious onion fan, the onions are practically caramelized and so, so perfect. Everyone loves the skillet potatoes and onions, even my onion-averse wife!

And speaking of onions, I finally got to try Christner’s legendary onion rings, which I had only stared at longingly on our previous (rare) visits. I always hesitate to request extra stuff when someone else is being generous enough to treat, but onion rings are kind of my thing. I even have a whole category on this blog called RING THE ALARM! (no air horn sound effects this time, because this is a very upscale restaurant), so here are Christner’s huge, thick, mountainous onion rings, at long last. At least my father-in-law tried some, which made me feel less guilty for asking, and even my wife (yes, the onion-averse wife again!) tried one and really liked it. You can get these rapturous rings in orders of five or nine, and I was glad everyone was okay with getting nine. These were definitely opulent, ostentatious onion rings!

Everyone enjoyed their dinners, but we all ended up with plenty of leftovers to box up and enjoy the next day. By now, we knew enough to save room for one of the most delicious, decadent desserts I’ve ever encountered: mandarin orange cake. My photo doesn’t communicate the size of the slices nearly well enough, but each one is gigantic. The icing is a “tropical pineapple-orange whipped cream icing,” and the cake is always moist and rich, with a subtle citrusy tang. It is served a la mode with a nice scoop of vanilla ice cream (quality stuff) and a little ramekin of chilled orange sauce that might be my favorite part, because it tastes like melted orange sherbet with chunks of actual orange in it. I always pour it over the ice cream and eat it first, because I’m usually pretty full at this point.
Fruity desserts are my absolute favorites, especially anything with citrus or tropical fruit. I believe Christner’s mandarin orange cake is an all-time favorite restaurant dessert anywhere, and you can easily get two or three servings out of each stupendous slice of cake.

Well, after not doing anything at all last year due to the pandemic, this year my wife and her parents were (relatively) healthy and fully vaccinated, so it was so nice to celebrate our back-to-back anniversaries with this sumptuous feast at Christner’s. Everything felt normal for a little while, and everyone left very full, satisfied, and happy. I think all the time about how lucky I am to be married to such an amazing woman, and to have amazing in-laws too, who I love and get along with, and vice versa. I know not everyone has that privilege and good fortune. And to be able to enjoy a fancy meal like this at a fancy restaurant like Christner’s speaks to our privilege and good fortune too. We rarely come here — only every few years — but each time we do, we are all reminded of how consistently excellent it is, and how lucky we are.

The Ravenous Pig

The Ravenous Pig (https://www.theravenouspig.com/) has always been one of my favorite restaurants in Orlando for a special occasion. I started dating my wife in 2006 when I was a poor grad student just starting to work in libraries. Back in the beginning, we’d go out for burgers or Vietnamese food, or a special date night for us was the Cheesecake Factory or P.F. Chang’s. So perhaps just in time (especially for us), chef-owners James and Julie Petrakis opened the Ravenous Pig in 2007. It became one of Winter Park and Orlando’s hottest restaurants, and probably our first “gastropub.” The Petrakis’ ever-changing menu was always full of creative, beautiful dishes and elevated takes on beloved comfort foods made from locally-sourced ingredients. The service was impeccable, and the atmosphere was upscale, yet warm and welcoming, never formal or stuffy (two things I hate). Luxury gives me anxiety, anything too fancy seems like a betrayal of my stoic, down-to-Earth parents. But the Pig always made me feel like I belong there — at least once in a while, when we were celebrating something.

I took my now-wife there for a date shortly after it opened, feeling so cutting-edge hipster cool after reading a blurb about the Pig in Orlando Weekly. It almost felt like something clicked for me that night, changing me forever. Maybe the Ravenous Pig was my foodie origin story — my radioactive spider bite, my lightning and chemicals, my intrinsic field subtractor. That dinner — that menu! — made me think more about food, and where it came from, and all the cool and new things you could do with it. The Pig might have been the first restaurant of its kind I had been to as a dude in my late 20s used to canned tuna and sardines, ramen and spaghetti, and Fuddruckers for a real treat — a restaurant where even a burger and fries could be high art. And since then, we’ve had some memorable meals there, often shared with friends from near and far.

But along the way, with so many great new places to eat (some of them definitely inspired by the Petrakis’ successes), a few years had passed since our last visit to the Ravenous Pig. Flash back a year to February 2020, in those innocent, pre-pandemic days. We found ourselves out on the town the evening before Valentine’s Day, arguably a much better night to go out. We decided to treat ourselves to a romantic dinner date, knowing we’d stay in and law low the next night, and I’d prepare a nice dinner at home.

This was only our second visit to the Ravenous Pig’s “new” location on Fairbanks Avenue, across the street from Fiddler’s Green and Swine & Sons, even though they moved in a few years ago. I never noticed the hostess station was a card catalog-looking setup behind glass, which appealed to my librarian’s sense of aesthetics.

It’s a stunning space.

And they cure their own charcuterie in this climate-controlled case, which is always impressive! I consider myself a connoisseur of the salted, smoked, cured, and pickled.

We started out with an order of smoked wings ($9). Believe it or not, my wife is more of a wing eater than I am, but I knew the Ravenous Pig would have wondrous wings. It’s a wonder we had never tried them before, but it’s possible these particular wings were a newer offering, considering they change their menu often and we hadn’t been in a while. These were nice and juicy, with a crackly skin and a good smoke flavor that didn’t overpower the taste of the meat. They were seasoned with garlic, parmesan cheese, parsley, and Calabrian chiles — a kind of spicy pepper I am obsessed with. But even though these weren’t spicy, I liked these wings much more than she did, and ended up eating four out of the five.

Another thing my wife always loves is octopus. There are a few restaurants that make excellent octopus dishes, including long-time favorite Pizza Bruno, but this charred octopus ($32) definitely made the grade with her. The huge tentacles were firm and meaty, grilled to perfection. I admit I’m not the biggest octopus fan, because I’ve had tiny, shiny, slimy baby octopus a few times, and I just can’t get into those. This kind of preparation, with large char-grilled tentacles, is much better.
This Spanish-style octopus was served with the most excellent papas bravas (some of the finest fried potatoes I’ve ever had anywhere), a tomato-olive vinaigrette (I like tomatoes and she doesn’t; she likes olives and I don’t), and topped with an artistic swirl of paprika aioli that went perfectly with the papas bravas.

I was torn between a few choices, but since it had been so long since our last visit, I went with my old friend the Pub burger ($18). This is a contender for Orlando’s best burger. Some of the only ones that come close are from Orlando Meats, which I named one of my Top Five dishes of 2018 in Orlando Weekly, and a recent find at Alex’s Fresh Kitchen in Casselberry, which I listed in my Top Ten Tastes of 2020, also in Orlando Weekly. But the Pub burger is the granddaddy of them all. Cooked to a perfect medium rare and served on a fresh-baked, grilled brioche bun, it is topped with melty blue cheese (sometimes too pungent for me, but perfect in these proportions), with bibb lettuce, marinated red peppers, and crisp, house-cured pickle slices. I’ve written ad nauseam about my slow quest to appreciate pickles, and this gastropub made the first pickles I’ve ever liked, the first pickles to make me think “Mmmm, good” and not “Ew, gross!”The shoestring-style fries are usually truffle fries, but I’ve also written ad nauseam about mushrooms being my enemy, and that unfortunately includes truffles too. I guess I’m just not a fungi. On this visit last year, I had the foresight to ask our patient server Tanya to ask the kitchen to leave off the truffle oil or whatever truffle seasoning they use, and everyone came through for me. They were great, especially dipped in a little ramekin of garlic aioli that you know someone whips up fresh every day. I ate most of the fries first, because we all know how fries get cold quickly, especially the shoestring variety, and how sad cold fries are.

Close-up of that beautiful burg:

For dessert, we usually default to an assortment of the Ravenous Pig’s daily house-made ice creams and sorbets (three scoops for a very reasonable $6). Tonight my wife asked for a single scoop of their incredible chocolate ice cream made with cacao nibs ($2), which is so rich and deeply, darkly chocolatey, served over crispy crumbles of shortbread. It’ll have you calling out “CACAO! CACAO!”

But we couldn’t say no to the cheesecake ($8), a special for the special night out. The soft ricotta-based cheesecake was served with fresh grapefruit, a scoop of grapefruit sorbet, crunchy honeycomb-type things that got stickier as you chewed them, and a swirl of local honey. This was small, but rich, and we made every bite matter.

I want to reiterate that even though I try to publish a restaurant review every week, we’re not bougie people who go out to classy joints like the Ravenous Pig that often. But Valentine’s Day (or the night before it) is an opportunity to treat ourselves, and more importantly, treat each other. We chose the perfect place to do that treating exactly a year ago, so I saved this review to publish now, to give my constant readers, my Saboscrivnerinos, an idea for this looming V-Day. With the pandemic still raging, my wife and I still don’t feel comfortable dining in anywhere, so I haven’t made it back to the Pig since this visit, 364 days ago. But we look forward to an end to all of this, when everyone can get vaccinated and be safe to eat out again. All that time away makes our occasional visits to one of Orlando’s all-time best restaurants that much more meaningful, memorable, and magical. When the world gets safer, safe enough to go back out to eat again, I’m sure we’ll return to The Ravenous Pig and hopefully meet up with friends to celebrate still being alive, surviving and thriving together.

CLOSED: Rasa

Get off I-4 at exit 74 in Orlando, and you’ll be on Sand Lake Road, near a stretch referred to as “Restaurant Row.” It is very close to the touristy International Drive, the Orange County Convention Center, and the Universal Studios theme parks. Many of the restaurants in the immediate area are upscale, aimed at convention-goers with generous per diems and expense accounts, but there are plenty of options — including some at lower price points, luckily. While I’m almost never out here to eat, there are some hidden gems that I continue to learn about all the time.

One of these Restaurant Row rewards is the radiant Rasa (https://www.eatatrasa.com/). The long, modern-designed dining room is gorgeous — sexy, even! — but instead of overpriced steaks, bank-breaking seafood, or mediocre Mexican, you can enjoy some of the most unique and interesting Indian food in Orlando. Rasa specializes in South Indian cuisine as well as Indo-Chinese, which is exactly what you think it is: Indian-Chinese fusion fare.

I don’t even drink, but that’s still a nice bar.

The most exclusive table is in the back, closed off behind glass, with a lush wall of verdant vegetation to put diners at ease.

I went with one of my closest friends who is a vegetarian, so we stuck to vegetarian dishes so we could sample and share everything. I had seen photos of the triple Schezwan [sp] rice, so I definitely wanted to try that. It comes with soft noodles, fried rice, fried noodles, peppers, broccoli, scallions, and my old foe mushrooms, which they gladly left out of our order. For our protein, we got paneer cheese ($14). Our server even warned us it was hot, but I’ve been practicing ordering “hot” Indian dishes at Moghul, and both of us love hot sauces, so we were brave and bold and went for it. It was spicy, but we handled ourselves with courage and honor. And it was a beautiful and delicious dish with incredible flavors and textures. I’m used to paneer cheese being much softer, cubed up with spinach in saag paneer, but the pieces on the left were thick, solid-feeling fried strips of the cheese, similar in consistency to dense halloumi cheese when it is grilled or pan-fried. The fried rice is underneath the cylindrical tower of soft noodles, and it’s worth excavating to find it. This was an awesome dish that I’d probably order every time I return, despite my constant impulse to branch out and try more things.

Last year, I was introduced to dosas, giant, thin, crispy crepes of fermented rice and lentil flour, when I joined fellow foodies at the Hindu Temple in Casselberry. I didn’t think my friend had ever gotten a dose of a dosa before, so we had to order the paper Masala dosa ($11). It definitely draws attention when it arrives at your table, rolled into a long, hollow, paper-thin cylinder. It was served with the most delicious curry-spiced potatoes, a thin red sauce that seemed to have chunks of eggplant, and tomato and coconut chutneys. The only way to attack this guy is to tear off pieces and dip it in different things. It is somehow crispy yet soft at the same time.

And this was the channa batura ($12): puffy white leavened bread, served with spiced chickpeas stewed with tomatoes and topped with sun-dried fenugreek leaves called kasoori methi. At first glance, it made me think of the puffy lavas bread at beloved Turkish restaurants Cappadocia and Bosphorous that I’ve reviewed before, but despite being puffed up with air, this was much thinner than either of those, with a completely different texture. It almost reminded me of a super-thin funnel cake or elephant ear — essentially fried dough, lightly crispy but also soft, and somehow in a completely different way than the dosa.

Not only did we love it, but since I brought home our leftovers, my wife loved it too — and I have yet to get her into Indian food. I just knew she would love this bread. And this was the sole recommendation from our server, who at one point warned us we might be ordering too much food! I really appreciated this recommendation.

Anyway, as much as I enjoy our closest Indian restaurant Moghul, the menu at Rasa is almost completely different, with the emphasis on South Indian and Indo-Chinese cuisines. I really liked trying so many new things and sharing them with my friend, and I would totally come back to Rasa. It’s a shame it is all the way across town. But if you’re visiting Universal Studios or the convention center, or if you want to have a hot date down that way, Rasa would be a great choice, and not just because some of the food is quite spicy. It’s such a cool, sexy room with ambience you don’t get at many Indian restaurants, with a really unique menu that I haven’t encountered anywhere else.

CLOSED: Bem Bom on Corrine

EDIT: I am sad to report that Bem Bom has closed, as of February 5, 2024. See https://bungalower.com/2024/02/05/bem-bom-on-corrine-has-closed/. I had not been back since before the tragic passing of Chef Chef Francisco “Chico” Mendonca in May 2021, but it was a terrific restaurant that lots of locals loved.

***

Bem Bom on Corrine (https://bembomfood.com) is a cute and cool restaurant in Orlando’s hip, foodie-friendly Audubon Park neighborhood that specializes in Mexican and Portuguese cuisines (but separate, not a funky fusion of the two). Conceptualized by Chef Francisco “Chico” Mendonça, Bem Bom (Portuguese for “Good Good”) started out as a food truck before opening its brick and mortar location in 2018. My first visit was way back in June, but since I was alone and in a hurry that night, I only ordered one dish and a drink.

They have a nice outdoor patio facing Corrine Drive, with some singular shops and other restaurants directly across the street.

This drink was listed on the menu as Portuguese Sumol Passion Fruit ($2.75), and I love passion fruit-flavored anything. I was relieved to find out it was non-alcoholic, so I treated myself. The lightly-carbonated beverage tasted good and surprisingly natural and juicy, despite having the weird, dry aftertaste that Sucralose-sweetened drinks often have. I probably wouldn’t order it again, but I’m glad I tried it once.

These were my three tacos al pastor ($13), a dinner special with marinated pork in adobo sauce, pineapple, and a sauce made with arbol chiles and tomatillos, double-wrapped in soft, fresh corn tortillas. I have a hard time turning down tacos al pastor whenever I find them on a Mexican menu, and these were excellent, garnished simply with finely-chopped cilantro, diced onion, and a lime wedge.

I finally went back with two work colleagues today, so I could try more things. We started out with excellent crispy tortilla chips, served with extremely fresh-tasting guacamole (some of the better guac I’ve had, for $9) and salsa that was actually spicy.

I’ve been hearing great things about the pasteis de bacalhau, or cod fritters ($9.95), for a long time now, so I had to try them. They came with a small arugula salad tossed in a light lemony dressing, and creamy, cooling jalapeño ranch for dipping (which wasn’t spicy at all).

These were extremely hot (temperature-wise, not spice-wise), but they had a very light, crispy exterior and weren’t overly greasy. The flaky cod on the inside wasn’t as strongly seasoned as I was hoping for (I was craving something spicy, like the devil crabs of Tampa), but at least it was pleasantly mild and not overly fishy. They really didn’t need the jalapeño ranch, which is fine, because I used it elsewhere.

One of my colleagues ordered frango de churrasco, half a bone-in chicken marinated in tangy piri-piri marinade and grilled ($13.95). It was served with a beautiful small salad and hearty fries, which I ended up eating most of, dipping them in the jalapeño ranch. I can’t let a good sauce, condiment, or dip go to waste. Awww, dip!

I don’t think he ate the croutons, but they looked house-made, and I probably should have asked for them.

My other colleague ordered the smoked chicken enchiladas ($13.95), which came with white rice and black beans. The two enchiladas included apples and onions wrapped up with the smoked shredded chicken in corn tortillas, topped with red and green chile sauces. I tried the tiniest morsel, and it was really good. I would definitely order these enchiladas for myself in the future.

She wasn’t feeling the beans, so with complete disregard for my co-workers’ welfare later in the afternoon, I had to sample them. They were pretty basic black beans.

And last, but far from least, I ordered the pork prego sandwich ($11.95): six-hour braised pork, onions, peppers, pico de gallo, radish, cilantro, and serrano sauce served on a crusty Portuguese roll. It was an incredible sandwich. Lots of good flavors and textures, saucy, and pleasantly spicy. I’ve written before how much I hate overly-hard rolls that shatter when you bite into them, spewing crumbs and cutting up the inside of your mouth, but this roll wasn’t like that at all. The delicious, spicy juices from the pork softened up the inside. It was a juicy sandwich in the best possible way. 10/10, would order again.

Some of Bem Bom’s other delicacies include highly-recommended queso dip to go with the chips, rock shrimp tacos, mango-“painted” fish tacos, duck meatballs, a lamb burger, and a pan-seared filet mignon topped with prosciutto, a fried egg, and a beer-based sauce. I’ve heard about other limited-time specials, including an intriguing octopus dish that wasn’t on the menu at lunch today. And they even serve brunch on Sundays!

As you can hopefully see by now, Bem Bom has a creative and eclectic menu in fun, funky surroundings. I would totally go back, especially because it’s only ten minutes from where we work. Plus, you have Kelly’s Homemade Ice Cream, one of my Top Two local ice cream shops, right across the street, and our first local food hall, the East End Market, moments away. That immediate stretch of Corrine Drive also hosts some of Orlando’s coolest establishments like Park Avenue CDs (my favorite local music store, even if I feel woefully uncool whenever I shop there), Stardust Video and Coffee*, which hosts the Audubon Park Community Market on Monday nights, and Big Daddy’s (a karaoke bar I can never get anyone to accompany me to).

* Who else used to rent videos from Stardust back in the day? When I first moved to Orlando, the place blew my mind. It was the first video store I had ever been to that specialized in independent, cult, and art films, and it organized them by director and/or country of origin for foreign films. Totally warmed this nerdy librarian’s heart.

Luke’s Kitchen and Bar

Luke’s Kitchen and Bar (http://eatatlukes.com/) is in a beautiful, modern, comfortable location along 17-92 in Maitland, nestled between Winter Park and Casselberry, and easily accessible via I-4. The restaurant location has been a few other things over the years, including a Steak & Ale location for the longest time. However, Luke’s owner/operator Brandon McGlamery (who also runs the tony Luma and Prato on Park Avenue in nearby Winter Park) has the business skills and culinary talent to make Luke’s a success.

I recently visited Luke’s for the first time with some colleagues, just in time for happy hour. Fun was had by all, and I would definitely return. Dear readers, please keep in mind I did not order nor eat all of this food. This was everything that five people shared.

Fresh potato chips served with a high-class version of French onion dip (that might have had a bit of bleu cheese blended in). These were a crowd-pleaser. The chips were thin, light, and crispy; not greasy at all, and not too crunchy like kettle chips.

French fries with thyme, rosemary, and sea salt. I didn’t order these. They were perfectly okay, but I will always choose chips over fries.

A mid-Atlantic take on a chilled shrimp cocktail, with the shrimp seasoned with Old Bay:

This was my wee little fried oyster po’boy. It was on the happy hour menu for the shocking price of $4, so I figured “How could I go wrong?” Well, it was delicious, but it was the size of a slider. Maybe I should not have been surprised, but it was so tasty I wasn’t disappointed.

Following the trend of wee foods, Luke’s supposedly has amazing deviled eggs. I didn’t feel like a whole order of them, so I was overjoyed when our patient server said I could order just one, to try it. It was one of the better deviled eggs I’ve ever had, garnished with excellent crispy shallots and tasty shishito pepper jam that was the shi-shit.

Roasted eggplant dip (AKA babganoush), served with cucumber, mint, and multigrain toast. I don’t think I even tried this one, but my babaganoush-loving co-worker was really happy with it.

A very good and very thicc cheeseburger, from the happy hour menu. Served simply with lettuce, tomato, PICKLED onion (niiiice), and I think there were pickles on it too (which I’m getting better at eating and enjoying). It came out a perfect medium-rare, and was extremely juicy. I offered my friends a chance to try this one, but it ended up being all mine.

I ordered these for the group, because I am a class act: outstanding fluffy Parker House rolls, served with the most delicious caramelized honey butter (spread onto the wooden serving board in the background). You can never go wrong with Parker House-style yeast rolls.

And the coup de grace: mussels, which I ordered to share with everyone, but these were most decidedly NOT on the happy hour menu, so they cost around $20. They did, however, come garnished beautifully with tomato, fennel, purple basil, and grilled, oil-rubbed sourdough bread. They were great, but we all would have been fine without them.

So Luke’s is definitely a solid choice for happy hour, or lunch or dinner if you prefer. It could be a great destination if you’re planning to catch a movie afterwards in Winter Park or at the Enzian, our beloved art-house movie theater right near the restaurant in Maitland. Luke’s location is perfect if you’re considering a romantic after-dinner stroll around lovely Lake Lily, essentially across the street. Happy hour would be ideal for that, since the park stays open until sunset.

Luke’s has a large menu, attentive staff, and my colleagues who ordered cocktails seemed over-the-moon pleased with them. Chef McGlamery and his crew seem to be doing everything right. Whether you’re there to hang out with friends, celebrate with family, impress a hot date, or just decompress after a long work week, I think you will agree. I hate to be the guy that says this, but Luke’s, the Force will be with you… always.