The Saboscrivner’s Top Twenty TV Shows of the Decade (2011-2021)

Because this is the kind of content you come to a food blog for, right?  Well, the year is ending, and I usually publish some kind of best-of-the-year lists, so here’s my first one: my Top Twenty TV Shows of the Decade, spanning from 2011-2021.  A few of them started airing in the previous decade, and I account for that below.  I’d love to know what my dozens of readers think about my choices, and what yours would be!

20. Parks and Recreation (NBC; 7 seasons; 2009-2015).
I used to love this show. It was hilarious, but also kind (most of the time, except for the characters’ horrible treatment of their harmless co-worker Jerry, which I always found off-putting). But I rank it at the bottom of the list because the first season was bad, and the second season didn’t get really good until two important characters were added at the very end. Also, it seems like such a time capsule of the Obama era now, with hard-working people in government like Leslie Knope going above and beyond for their unappreciative constituents, and also people like the rugged individualist Ron Swanson, on the surface her polar opposite, but ultimately an honorable man who could learn to be better and be persuaded to do the right thing and care about others. I don’t feel as confident in our government now, and I haven’t in a long time. This show may not have aged super-well, but I still think about all the times I laughed my ass off, and the handful of times I teared up (the proposal and the series finale).

19. The Venture Bros. (Adult Swim; 7 seasons plus a few specials; 2003-2018).
The only animated series on my list, it was almost entirely the work of two people, Jackson Publick and Doc Hammer, so there were delays of a year or more between seasons. We only got two longer specials, followed by seasons 5-7, in the past decade. Arguably, some of the finest moments of the show had already occurred, so they can’t count here, but there were still plenty of good gags, deep-cut nerd references, and complex additions to the show’s mythology in those last few years. This show could have run forever, and I would have been thrilled, but I think it ended on a good note, and I worry that any longer might have been bad for Mr. Publick and Mr. Hammer’s sanity and health. Still, Go Team Venture!

18. Warrior (Cinemax; 2 seasons; 2019-2020, but renewed to hopefully return).
A show I discovered after it ended, it was a badass martial arts-Western-historical drama from Jonathan Tropper (creator of a show that will rank higher on this list) and Justin Lin (director of Fast and Furious 3-6 and 9), so you know it’s going to be fun. Based on a concept created by Bruce Lee himself, it is the story of Ah Sahm, a skilled fighter who travels from China to San Francisco in search of his sister and gets caught up in Tong warfare. Along the way, he becomes a protector of innocent people and a folk hero in the oppressed Chinese immigrant community. Andrew Koji is terrific as Ah Sahm, who occasionally cracks jokes, letting his stone-faced persona slip. The fight choreography was always excellent – some of the best I’ve ever seen on television. Despite the ongoing plotline, my two favorite episodes were both stand-alone stories: a Western homage in Season 1, and a martial arts tournament in Season 2. But I cannot in good conscience recommend you just watch those out of context, so give it a chance from the beginning.

17. Person of Interest (CBS; 5 seasons; 2011-2016).
This looked like the kind of “dad show” I avoid – a CBS procedural about two guys who use a machine to find people in trouble or people about to cause trouble, and then swoop in to either rescue or stop them. The first season began kind of slow, but by the seventh episode, there was a twist that promised more interesting things to come, and it didn’t take too much longer for that promise to come true as enemies became allies, allies became enemies, and newer characters joined the mix. Even though the show kept the procedural aspect with a new number/person every week, it set up elaborate, ongoing story arcs, intense dramatic moments, huge action set-pieces, and became straight-up cyberpunk by the end. I like to think some fuddy-duddy CBS executives were pissed that their “dad show” evolved into something deeper and darker, but it was always fun. If you can get through the first handful of episodes, you’ll encounter major payoffs by staying patient. Also, creator Jonathan Nolan (brother of Christopher) would go on to create Westworld with his wife Lisa Joy, and he’d revisit some themes about all-powerful artificial intelligences and free will on the later show.

16. iZombie (The CW; 5 seasons; 2015-2019).
Extremely loosely based on a comic book co-created by my favorite artist, Michael Allred, the iZombie show jettisoned almost everything about the comic and improved the concept in every possible way. Rose McIver pulled off a memorable performance as Liv Moore, a woman who was bitten and turned into a zombie at a doomed boat party. In this show, zombies have pale skin and white hair, but they can retain their mental functions as long as they consume one human brain per week. To keep from going feral, Liv (a medical school dropout) gets a job as an assistant medical examiner to have easy access to brains, then discovers they temporarily give her flashes of the recently deceased people’s memories and aspects of their personalities. She uses this newfound ability to help a detective solve their murders, so it’s a case-of-the-week (or “brain-of-the-week”) procedural. However, the show also establishes some pretty complex, intertwining plots for every season. The brain-eating may not work for squeamish viewers, but it is the central conceit of the plot, and the show is all about plot rather than shock value gore. iZombie was a CW show, so everyone in the cast is ridiculously hot, and every character has multiple opportunities to be the best character.

15. Atlanta (FX; 2 seasons so far; 2016-present).
This brilliant show, co-created by actor-writer-comedian-singer-rapper-musician Donald Glover, is so exciting because you never know what it’s going to be from one episode to the next. It can be a dark, stark slice of urban life, an absurdist comedy, an exploration of race and racism, or a brutal, horrific nightmare. With director Hiro Murai around to set a strong visual element, Atlanta packs one of the best casts on television: Glover as hapless, passive underachiever Earn, Brian Tyree Henry as his cousin, up-and-coming rapper Paper Boi, Zazie Beetz as Earn’s love interest Van, and LaKeith Stanfield – maybe one of the best actors working today – as spaced-out, sagelike Darius. Atlanta has been on hiatus for what seems like forever, but Season 3 should be out in 2022, and they are already hard at work on Season 4. Whatever comes next, it will be worth watching, because there won’t be anything else like it, before or after.

14. Daredevil (Netflix; 3 seasons; 2016-2018).
This show is close to my heart because Daredevil is my favorite Marvel superhero, and I earned tenure because of a law review article I wrote about Daredevil in 2019 (download it for free at https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3389544)… so I can say without exaggeration that a superhero literally saved my career. But also, the show was terrific, with excellent casting and outstanding fight choreography. Each season had one memorable fight sequence that probably blew a chunk of the budget, but you could always see where all that money and expertise went. Just think of “hallway fight,” “stairwell fight,” or “hospital fight,” and it may come rushing back to you. The show borrowed liberally from Frank Miller’s legendary noir-tinged comics, while remixing key moments and going its own way with a lot of them. Sometimes this worked (Punisher), and other times, not so much (Bullseye). My biggest complaint about Daredevil and the other Marvel shows on Netflix were that the seasons were too long, leading to a lot of slow pacing and filler. I think it would have ended with an even better reputation if seasons were eight episodes long, or even ten, rather than 13. But I remain hopeful and optimistic that we haven’t seen the last of these characters, or the perfectly cast actors who played them, in other live-action Marvel projects. And Daredevil has been the most consistently written Marvel comic for the past 20 years, with so many more classic stories by the best writers in comics to adapt.

13. The Americans (FX; 6 seasons; 2013-2018).
A show that shifted between slow, methodical pacing and breakneck, stressful intensity (often in the same episode), The Americans may be the least-flashy show on this list, but it was always a master class in acting. Matthew Rhys and Keri Russell played two Soviet spies, living deep undercover as an all-American family in the Washington, D.C., suburbs in the 1980s, raising unwitting kids while committing acts of espionage (and occasionally straight-up murdering people), all under the nose of their next-door neighbor and “friend,” an FBI agent played by Noah Emmerich. Like I said, intense. There are a lot of dangerous missions (aided by fascinating analog technology and fabulous wigs), close calls, horrible betrayals, and the highest of stakes. A final standoff in a parking garage in the series finale featured some of the best performances I’ve ever seen, and it led to a heartbreaking conclusion. But no spoilers from me! You probably didn’t watch this show (not nearly enough people did), so what are you waiting for?

12. Black Monday (Showtime; 3 seasons; 2019-2021).
Another ‘80s period piece, this one is a comedy – ostensibly a sitcom – about Wall Street iconoclasts who engineered the biggest stock market crash in history. But as silly as it often was, it was also a smart and clever show, with intricate plotting, full of twists and turns and plenty of brutal betrayals. The ‘80s references were a treat to pick out, and the snappy wordplay was unparalleled. Plus, you had a terrific cast anchored by Don Cheadle, with some of the funniest people around: Regina Hall, Andrew Rannells, Paul Scheer, Casey Wilson, June Diane Raphael, and Ken Marino playing TWO of the slimiest characters ever. Black Monday could surprise me by returning for another season, but if not, it ended on a perfect note. Unfortunately, because it was broadcast on Showtime, I suspect that kept a lot of people who would have loved it from discovering it.

11. The Leftovers (HBO; 3 seasons; 2014-2017).
This was certainly a polarizing show, especially since Season 1 is full of unpleasant subject matter and is difficult to get through. But there are plenty of great moments along the way, and then the series was retooled for a very different second season that led to even more unforgettable television. The general concept of the show is that 2% of the world’s population instantly, randomly disappeared during a moment that would be referred to as the “Sudden Departure,” and the survivors were forced to deal with grief and loss, along with reexamining everything they thought they knew about religion, science, life, and death. Some of The Leftovers is brutally sad, but I think there is a lot of hope there too. Justin Theroux, Christopher Eccleston, and especially Carrie Coon and Regina King are incredible in this, and there are a few dreamlike episodes that come later that will fill you with awe for their audacity and ambition.

10. Hannibal (NBC; 3 seasons; 2013-2015).
People (including me) always say that it’s a wonder this show existed at all, much less on NBC for three seasons. Bryan Fuller’s artsy take on Thomas Harris’ novels redefines the relationship between sophisticated, multitalented psychiatrist/surgeon/gourmet chef/snappy dresser/cannibal serial killer Hannibal Lecter and sensitive, vulnerable FBI profiler Will Graham. Each man is fascinated by the other, and they have a bizarre mentor/mentee relationship where they constantly hunt and hurt each other, while being the only people who could possibly understand each other. Every aspect of the show is gorgeous, from sets to costumes to elaborate feasts designed by food stylist Janice Poon. Even the murder scenes staged by Lecter and competing serial killers (there sure are a lot of them in this beautiful nightmare reality) are elaborate tableaux that fascinate as much as they repulse. This show is definitely not for the squeamish, but it is so much better than it had any right to be. Mads Mikkelsen’s performance as Lecter makes Anthony Hopkins’ award-winning portrayal from earlier movies seem like hammy community theater by comparison; when Eddie Izzard appears in the show as a killer who is far more vile and depraved than the refined Lecter, he is doing a straight-up Hopkins impression.

9. Justified (FX; 6 seasons; 2010-2015).
Another crime show, and another show that could be hilariously funny. It achieved greatness on the strength of the two leads in the roles of their lifetimes, Timothy Olyphant as trigger-happy U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens and Walton Goggins as backwoods crime lord Boyd Crowder, two men who grew up in abusive, poverty-stricken homes in the hollers of Harlan, Kentucky, dug coal together, and then went in very different directions in their lives. Raylan and Boyd spend almost the entire series as “frenemies” – they hate each other and wouldn’t mind killing each other, but often find themselves in uneasy alliances against common threats and more dangerous foes. Raylan isn’t as upstanding as he appears and Boyd is much smarter than he appears, but both men are formidable adversaries and incredible fun to watch. Based on source material by the late, great novelist Elmore Leonard (who also wrote Get Shorty, Out of Sight, and Rum Punch, which Quentin Tarantino adapted into Jackie Brown), Justified always had clever, snappy tough-guy dialogue, memorable performances from the “big bads” of each season, and a real sense of place that made it feel different from every other show on television. You’ll never leave Harlan alive, but you’ll want to watch these guys try.

8. The Good Place (NBC; 4 seasons; 2016-2020).
I think this Michael Schur sitcom will age better than Parks and Recreation, due to balancing jokes with philosophical exploration of what it means to be a good person and lead a good life. Four deeply flawed people die and find themselves in “The Good Place,” an afterlife that is not what it appears to be, and this kicks off an epic saga with some major plot twists, status quo shakeups, extremely high stakes, ongoing mysteries, noble sacrifices, and more aspects that you would expect from big-deal prestige dramas, not scrappy, hilarious, underdog network sitcoms. It’s a funny show, and a feel-good show with heart, but it’s also a seminar in philosophy and ethics with a strong point of view. You will be a better person if you watch it, and not just because it’s a good TV show that I’m recommending.

7. Childrens Hospital (Adult Swim; 7 seasons; 2010-2016).
This parody of medical dramas like E.R. and Grey’s Anatomy started out as eight-minute “webisodes” that aired during the writers’ strike of 2008, then launched as 15-minute episodes on Adult Swim that got more ambitious and high-concept as the show continued, against all odds. It features so many beloved names in comedy, very few of whom would be considered “stars” or household names, but they were all amazing here, usually playing it completely straight, which made it even funnier. Lake Bell, Erinn Hayes, Ken Marino again, Rob Huebel, Megan Mullally, Henry Winkler, Rob Corddry, and Malin Akerman played the core cast, but some of the recurring characters, like Nick Offerman’s Detective Chance Briggs and co-creator David Wain’s Rabbi Jewy McJewJew, filled me with delight whenever they showed back up. And later on, we’d find out that the ”Childrens Hospital” we were watching this whole time was a show within a show, and we’d spend time with the actors playing the characters on that show, which somehow had been running for decades. It all makes sense. Kind of. Or maybe not. But it was brilliant, inspired, chaotic comedy that included everything from direct parodies to slapstick to wordplay to callbacks to gimmick episodes to changes to the entire status quo of the show. Oh yeah, and it was all set in a hospital in Brazil. Which was where they were the entire time.

6. Breaking Bad (AMC; 5 seasons; 2008-2013).
I don’t think any shows have built tension better than Breaking Bad. I’m talking edge-of-your-seat, pit-in-your-stomach, heart racing, teeth chattering tension. It makes you feel real fear for the characters, all various shades of bad people who bring their worst problems upon themselves. It’s a show about one brilliant man’s hubris, and how he poisoned his own life and the lives of everyone he interacted with. It’s a pulpy, violent, brutal show about criminals – some of the worst people you’ve ever seen – and a sad tale about how the American health care system fails people. If we had Medicare For All, this public school teacher who developed cancer could have gotten the care he needed without embarking on a life of crime that would cause untold suffering for thousands of people, and so much death and destruction. But a show about a man getting health care would not have provided the gripping drama we got. The only reason I didn’t rank this show higher was because only seasons 4 and 5 aired during this decade. But then we got a prequel/spinoff that surpassed it in some ways, so stay tuned for that!

5. Twin Peaks: The Return (Showtime; 1 season; 2017).
I was too young to watch the two seasons of Twin Peaks when they first aired from 1990 to 1991, and I would definitely have been too young to fully understand or appreciate them. But when I finally binge-watched the show in 2009, it quickly became one of my all-time favorites, and it made me a huge fan of the works of co-creator and visionary filmmaker/visual artist/musician/avuncular weirdo David Lynch. Still, it always saddened me that Twin Peaks ended on a maddening cliffhanger. When it returned for a new season of 18 episodes on Showtime in 2017, each one directed by Lynch himself, it felt like a dream come true – a chance to revisit the town, see some old friends, and get some closure. Well, as you might expect from Lynch, the dream was often more like a nightmare. It was often darker, drearier, and more dreamlike than the earlier episodes. Some things never made sense. Others contradicted things we thought we knew or dashed our hopes for happy endings. As nice as it was to reconnect with some beloved characters, the actors were so much older, so frail and infirm. Some died before this season went into production, and a few passed during production or shortly after it aired. The methodical pacing made me think a lot about the passage of time, and how time ravages us all, one way or another. But even when Lynch and co-creator Mark Frost gave us a bit of comic relief or a few happy moments, I found that a lot of the show still frustrated me, and it didn’t give me the ending I hoped for so badly. In the end, I should have known better. Lynch’s works often belie explanation, and he never gives audiences easy answers, catharsis, or finality. Why did I rank this show so high on my list, even when it ultimately left me disappointed? Because it was a gift, because it was the uncompromised vision of an auteur, and because I don’t need to love everything to realize what a damn fine work of art it was. And maybe we’ll see Lynch and his characters and the town of Twin Peaks again… just hopefully not in 25 more years.

4. Halt and Catch Fire (AMC; 4 seasons; 2014-2017).
Some people might have read a blurb about this show and thought it sounded boring. Some might have dismissed it as “Mad Men, but in the home computer industry in Texas in the early ‘80s.” Many probably never heard of it at all. But give it a chance, and I promise you’ll be impressed. You will never believe how much you’ll care about five people working in the home computer industry in Texas in the early ‘80s, or how much you’ll both love and hate them at various times, and how deeply you’ll care about all of them relatively early on. I’ve already written about shows that are “master classes in acting,” and here’s another one. None of the leads are household names, but that’s a shame, if not a crime. You should get to know Lee Pace, Scoot [not a typo] McNairy, Mackenzie Davis, Kerry Bishe, and Toby Huss, because they deserved to become big stars after this show, which should have made more of a cultural impact. It’s not too late for any of that to happen. Just like Mad Men showed this advertising agency as a microcosm of the vast societal changes of the 1960s, Halt and Catch Fire shows how much these five characters in their 1980s setting pioneered the technological advances that made our world the way we know it today, allowing you all to be reading my list right now. Watch it. I promise you’ll bawl your eyes out at least once. And they introduce a character in the final season who I really wanted to get a spinoff – let’s see if the dozens of fellow Halt and Catch Fire fans can guess who that was.

3. Banshee (Cinemax; 4 seasons; 2013-2016).
Really? He liked it that much? Yes, I did. This little-seen Cinemax series by Jonathan Tropper (who would later co-create Warrior) is on HBO Max now, so you have no excuse. The show is pure id – pulpy action drenched in sex and violence, with plenty of nudity and blood. A criminal tracking down a woman from his past finds himself in a small Pennsylvania town and finds himself thrust into the position of impersonating the new sheriff, who conveniently, nobody had met or even seen yet. He gets together with his old crew, pulls some jobs, makes a few friends and a lot of new enemies, and realizes that outrunning his past is impossible. We meet an incredible villain in the form of the local crime boss, a former Amish man who was cast out of the pacifist community and now rules the town with an iron fist (and a really scary henchman), keeping everyone in fear… except the new impostor sheriff. Like Justified, Banshee is a saga of small-town badassery that often feels like a modern-day Western, but while Justified has it beaten for cleverness and wit, Banshee wins with brutal fight choreography, hot women, and dangerous people doing very bad things to each other. The show is so audacious in what it gets away with, it almost becomes transgressive, and I love and respect it for that.

2. Better Call Saul (AMC; 5 seasons with one coming next year; 2015-2022).
With one season remaining to wrap everything up, I can say with certainty that this prequel/spinoff surpassed its original source material, Breaking Bad – at least for me. Both shows were about the criminal rises and downfalls of flawed but good men, full of potential for greatness in their fields. Walter White could have been a successful chemist, but he could never get along with others. Jimmy McGill did become a successful attorney, but he had the heart of a con artist, and he had a better time doing things the wrong way — taking shortcuts, skirting the law. He identified more with his criminal clients than the polished, pompous lawyers who stood in his way and set him up to fail when he was trying so hard to be good, until he realized he didn’t have to do things their way. Sadly, we still don’t know how Jimmy’s hubris and bad choices as Saul Goodman are going to affect his (and our) beloved Kim Wexler, the best woman on television, played by one of the best actresses on television, Rhea Seehorn. Oh yeah, Mike from Breaking Bad is in this too, and we see the origin story of how both men got involved with the cartel. This show has some of the most gut-churning, intense drama since Breaking Bad aired, but it can also be one of the funniest shows on TV. That balance is necessary to break all the tension, and there is a lot of tension.

1. Mad Men (AMC; 7 seasons; 2007-2015).
Maybe this is recency bias, because I never watched this series as it aired, but binged the entire thing with my wife earlier this year. I was skeptical, fully expecting to hate it, but it surpassed all the hype. For me, it completely lived up to its reputation as the pinnacle of prestige TV, alongside The Wire (my favorite show of the previous decade). Only seasons 5-7 aired during this decade, but those were still three impeccable seasons of television. Sometimes Mad Men was inscrutable, sometimes it was frustrating, sometimes it was funnier than most actual comedies, but it always delivered the best writing and acting on television, to say nothing of incredible sets, costumes, and general production design, as you can imagine for a show that spanned the tumultuous era of 1960 to 1970. Jon Hamm’s mysterious, suave, and deeply flawed Don Draper is an unforgettable character, but the entire ensemble was important, with Elisabeth Moss’s Peggy Olsen as the closest we ever had to an audience point of view character (and poor Ted Chaough emerging as my favorite character). I never expected I would “mark out” at so many legendary moments during what I expected would be an understated drama, or laugh so much, or be shocked, or saddened, or pissed. This show had everything. It was a carousel through one of the most important, turbulent decades in history, and it could only ever have been crafted with this much care, attention, wit, and art during these past two decades. Plus, Mad Men brought us Vincent Kartheiser’s perfectly emphasized reply while his life was falling apart and someone asked how he was doing: “NOT GREAT, BOB!”

Chain Reactions: bb.q Chicken

This past Tuesday was the grand opening of Orlando’s first bb.q Chicken (https://bbdotqchicken.com/), a Korean chain restaurant that was founded in 1995 and expanded into the U.S. in 2014, with franchise locations in 19 states so far and continuing to grow rapidly.  This was the first of many planned locations in Florida, right in our Mills 50 district, one of the best food neighborhoods in Orlando (in the old Tasty Wok location on the corner of East Colonial Drive and Shine Avenue, no less).

The restaurant name is a bit misleading, because bb.q Chicken does not sell barbecued chicken.  No grilling or smoking here!  The name is an acronym for “Best of the Best Quality” chicken, so if you go in expecting barbecued chicken, you’ll be confused or disappointed (although some of the sauces are sticky, tangy, sweet, and/or spicy, as many barbecue sauces and glazes are).  The chain specializes in Korean-style fried chicken wings and “boneless” chicken — think chicken tenders, strips, or fingers.  They are made of white meat from chicken breasts, so I appreciated them not being called “boneless wings,” which always annoys me for its inaccuracy.  Anyway, this is masterful fried chicken, with the perfect texture and so many different flavors to choose from.

The menu is on the website linked above, but I’ve taken the liberty of scanning the menu for this particular Orlando location, with prices that were accurate on the opening day: December 14, 2021:

I arrived a few minutes after it opened, after taking a while to find parking.  I met two other guys from the Orlando Foodie Forum presented by Tasty Chomps!, a Facebook group that has been my best source of local food news and reviews for many years, where I try to contribute and share all the information I can, along with asking questions of my own from time to time.  One of these guys is my local food guru — a guy who knows even more good places than I do, who never steers me wrong.  They arrived slightly before me, placed their orders, and got their lunches before I got mine, but we all shared our food — a perfect opportunity to try as many new things as possible.

These are someone else’s soy garlic boneless chicken strips — a small order of eight pieces for $12.  We all tried them and thought they were tasty, with a really nice, crispy, crunchy breading.  If you’ve never had Korean fried chicken before, it is truly fried to perfection, with a different kind of breading than Southern-style fried chicken that we automatically think of, like Popeyes or K-Fry-C.  It is both light and airy while also being really crunchy, even holding up well under sticky sauces. 

These were the Golden Original wings (an order of eight for $14), served with no sauce.   Yes, maybe that seems a little high, but chicken wing prices are much higher everywhere this year due to nationwide supply chain issues — this isn’t completely new, and isn’t unique to bb.q Chicken, either.  I didn’t actually try these at the time, because I had plenty of my own food coming, and I was all about sampling the different flavors while I could.  Just like with chips, I’ll rarely settle for plain when I can try all the different versions and varieties.   

One of my fellow diners ordered the rosé ddeok-bokki, a traditional Korean dish of chewy rice cakes and fish cakes in a spicy sauce ($12.95).  It was a huge portion, but I think I was more into it than either of them.  I’ve only ever had these kinds of rice cakes once before, mixed in with a Korean brand of instant ramen noodles I ate out of the pot while standing up over my kitchen sink, like a very civilized adult.   
As you can guess, these are completely different from the “rice cakes” you may be thinking of right now — hockey puck-shaped patties of crunchy white Styrofoam that our dieting moms snacked on back in the 1980s.  To this day, it never occurs to me to seek these out, just because when I think of rice cakes, I think of one of the worst snacks ever.  These ddeok-bokki (sometimes called tteokbokki) are very different — extremely chewy, with a texture like a cross between al dente pasta and Starburst candy, if that makes any sense at all.  They usually take on the flavor of their sauce, which is usually a bright red, very spicy sauce.  This rosé version scaled back the heat from the traditional version, but the orange sauce that resembled Italian vodka cream sauce was still moderately spicy.  I was the only person at lunch who is really into spicy food, but I don’t have a lot of experience with the spices used in Korean cuisine.  I was already curious about this dish, and so relieved someone else ordered it so I was able to try it!

The ddeok-bokki also included some tender cabbage and flat things that turned out to be fish cakes — not as chewy as the baby carrot-shaped rice cakes, but still chewy, with a pleasant processed-seafoody taste like surimi (or “krab,” if you prefer).   Oh, and there was half a hard-boiled egg in there too, as you can see, but the guy who ordered it got the egg.  He deserved that egg.

My friend also got a side order of these fried dumplings ($8.95) for us to share, which came with some kind of soy-based dipping sauce that may have been just plain soy sauce.  I didn’t get to try the sauce, but the dumpling on its own was pretty good.  You can’t ever go too wrong with crispy fried dumplings, unless someone sneaks mushrooms into them, in which case I might as well just throw them directly into the toilet, cutting out the middleman.  But I am relieved to report there were no mushrooms in these! 

These guys were kind enough to share their food while I waited for mine, and I was overjoyed when all of my stuff came out at once.  I picked up a tray from the front of the fast-casual restaurant, starting with a small eight-piece order of the galbi chicken strips ($12).  I know galbi (sometimes kalbi) refers to Korean-style barbecued or grilled short ribs, cut into thin slices across the bone, and marinated in a sweet, sticky, soy-based barbecue sauce.  So this is how these crispy chicken strips were seasoned, tossed in a galbi glaze and topped with green onions and sesame seeds, similar to how short ribs might be served.  Everyone at the table liked these.

I am not good at giving myself credit for accomplishments, but I don’t mind saying that I chose the best stuff of all of us, especially these outstanding Gangnam Style wings (an order of eight for $14.95).  I think these were the unanimous favorite at the table, tossed in “a sweet aromatic black pepper sauce sautéed with green onions, garlic, and peppers,” according to the menu.  They were sweet, savory, and just barely spicy, but they were the absolute best of the four kinds of chicken we shared.  They were definitely the most flavorful chicken we all tried, and also the crunchiest.These wings made me think of “Gangnam Style,” the one U.S. hit by Korean pop performer Psy, for the first time in many years.  It is an interesting footnote in music history that the frenetic dance-pop bop “Gangnam Style” is very likely the first song that most Americans ever heard by a Korean recording artist, a whopping nine years ago, long before K-Pop exploded here and became a major cultural phenomenon.

Oh yeah, RING THE ALARM, because bb.q Chicken also serves onion rings ($6.95), and they were terrific.  Large, firm, golden-brown, beer-battered onion rings — the kind I love — but they also had a light, airy texture and weren’t dripping with grease, no scorched spots, no rings falling apart.  Like I said, they fry everything to perfection here, even in their first hour open for business.  Even sharing my food with two other hungry guys, I had some leftovers to take home, including  a few assorted pieces of chicken and the vast majority of the onion rings!  Hey, I filled up on ddeok-bokki, which is the first time I’ve ever written that, but it may not be the last.

Finally, all of our meals came with plastic cups of pickled daikon radish, chopped into cubes.  I absolutely love most pickled vegetables, including these.  They are sweet and crunchy and cool with the slightest vinegary tang, perfect for cutting the rich, sweet, spicy flavors of Korean fried chicken.  I’ve only ever had pickled radish like this once before, from another Korean wing chain that I didn’t enjoy nearly as much as bb.q Chicken.  Those wings from the other place didn’t strike me as anything special, and the pickled radish was my favorite part!  Here at bb.q Chicken, the radish was just one more element that made this a winning lunch and a great new addition to Orlando’s dining scene.   My dining companions weren’t into these at all, so I ended up with almost four full cups of the pickled radishes to take home and enjoy later, along with the leftover wings and rings.  The next evening, I heated everything back up in the toaster oven (no fancy air fryer for me!), and they crisped back to life rather well.  Even my wife, who was skeptical because she despises anything spicy, was really impressed by the flavors (which weren’t spicy at all) and crispy fried coating on both kinds of chicken, even 24 hours in the fridge and a reheating later.

So bb.q Chicken was a big hit with me and the three people I shared my food with, and I think it will be a huge success in Orlando’s Milk District.  Score!  Or should I say: “OPPA GANGNAM STYLE!”

Chain Reactions: 4 Rivers Smokehouse

This is a review that is years overdue.  Ever since the first 4 Rivers Smokehouse (https://www.4rsmokehouse.com/) location opened in Winter Park, Florida, in 2009 (where the wonderful Hunger Street Tacos now stands), my wife and I have been huge fans.  As John Rivers expanded his barbecue empire, we became regulars, and I introduced many friends to it, both locals and out-of-towners.  It was some of the best barbecue we had ever eaten, and still is.  Even as talented newcomers have exploded onto the Orlando barbecue scene, like Git-N-Messy BBQ (RIP, Chef Chuck Cobb) and Smokemade Meats + Eats, 4 Rivers remains a homegrown favorite that remains pretty consistent, even with 13 locations throughout Florida.

If you’re reading a food blog (even this food blog, you dozens of stalwart Saboscrivnerinos!), you probably know that there are different regional barbecue styles: smoked brisket crusted with dark, peppery bark in Texas, pulled pork and ribs in Memphis, ribs with a sticky, sweet, tomatoey sauce in Kansas City, and in North Carolina your pork may come with a mustard-based sauce or a thin, vinegary sauce, depending where you are in the state.  Florida has never had its own barbecue style, but we’re already such a mishmash of cultures and cuisines from around the country and the world, it makes sense that John Rivers would take it upon himself to travel the country, try all the best stuff, and start his own restaurant to “de-regionalize” barbecue, as the 4 Rivers website explains.  It’s a great way to sample different barbecue styles, and if you don’t know the difference, then it doesn’t matter, and it’s just a great place to eat.

But even though my wife and I were regulars at the Longwood location for the longest time, we hadn’t been back to 4 Rivers in a few years, at least not since I started this blog in the summer of 2018.  The menu grew over time, and then shrank back, paring down to the essentials as the Winter Park location grew into a mighty local chain.  My wife’s favorite meats, the smoked prime rib and tri-tip steak (a California barbecue specialty) disappeared from the menu, and so did her favorite dessert, the brownie-like Texas sheet cake.  Plus, I was always on the lookout for new entrants into Orlando’s barbecue biz, trying to expand my palate and report back on the latest and greatest.

But then I saw that 4 Rivers brought back their smoked prime rib as a sandwich, just as a special for the month of December, and I knew we had to go back for it!  Even if you’ve been there before to enjoy the brisket, pork, chicken, ribs, and burnt ends, you must try the prime rib sandwich ($13.99) while you can.  It comes with thick slices of tender, medium-rare aged ribeye steak, first smoked and then finished on the grill, served on a grilled bun (like a potato bun) with melted provolone cheese, crispy onions, and creamy horseradish sauce.  It’s a masterful sandwich with a very generous portion of meat.  I got one with the works, and I got one for my wife with no cheese or onions and horseradish sauce on the side.  Here’s a cross-section of mine:

My wife and I both love ribs, and she occasionally asks me to bring home ribs from Sonny’s Real Pit Barbecue, because it’s so convenient.  But I think we had both forgotten how far superior the ribs from 4 Rivers are, because this 1/2 rack platter of St. Louis-style ribs ($20.27) was magnificent.  The meat is juicy and tender, and it easily separates from the bone.  The pork spare ribs are seasoned with 4 Rivers’ all-purpose rub (which you can buy), then smoked, then lightly brushed with a honey barbecue sauce that finishes them with a lightly sticky, shiny glaze.  They are awesome.  And even though the half-rack just comes with six ribs, each one is a good size, and we had more than enough food to get three or four meals out of everything.

Ordering the 1/2-rack rib platter on the 4 Rivers website,  it gave me the option to add additional meats for a small upcharge.  It had been so long since we had been there, I decided to add on some brisket for the very nominal price of $3.84, for a more complete review that would include another one of my old favorites.  It came with four decent slices of lean, smoky beef brisket.   I definitely prefer moister, fattier brisket, but that’s on me for not specifying my preference when placing the order.  It was still good, though. 

But that’s not all!  The platter is an amazing bargain because it comes with three sides you can choose.  At any barbecue joint, the sides should ideally be given as much care and quality as the meats, but they are too often treated as afterthoughts.  Not so at 4 Rivers Smokehouse.  I chose three of our old favorite sides: some of the best barbecue baked beans ever (made with pork and brisket!), my favorite collard greens (simmered with ham, onions, and garlic), and smokehouse corn (sautéed with smoked tomatoes, onions, and garlic and served with chopped cilantro; well worth a 50-cent upcharge).  You can always order sides separately if you don’t get a platter; the beans and collards are $2.89 each and the corn is $3.39, or you can add them onto sandwich orders for $1.75 and $2.25, respectively. But the platter is a gift that keeps on giving, because you can also choose between Texas jalapeño cornbread or  a dinner roll.  Of course I chose the cornbread, and of course I forgot to photograph it, but you can imagine what a square of cornbread looks like, especially if you’re reading a review of a barbecue restaurant on a food blog.

I remember when 4 Rivers Smokehouse was all the rage throughout Orlando — a beloved homegrown institution that always got recommended whenever locals or tourists wanted to know the best places to eat.  As it became more successful, it opened more locations and became more familiar, and I think people started to sleep on it, or worse yet, dismiss it as a monstrous chain that might sacrifice quality or authenticity as it expanded.  It was game-changing in 2009, but Orlando has grown so much as a culinary city since then, and now we have even more good locally owned and operated restaurants in the city, including some other great places for barbecue.  But just because 4 Rivers might not be Orlando’s hottest barbecue joint anymore doesn’t mean it has fallen by the wayside or rested on its laurels.  The food is still solid, and even if they took some of our old standards off the menu, the classics are still sticking around, and you can pay attention to the monthly specials for new or returning favorites.  We should not have stayed away this long, but 4 Rivers isn’t going anywhere, and now we aren’t either.  Just be aware that all 4 Rivers Smokehouse locations are closed on Sunday, so plan accordingly!

Meng’s Kitchen

EDIT: It is the year 2025, and Meng’s Kitchen currently resides inside iFresh Supermarket on the corner of East Colonial Drive and Bumby Avenue.  It moved there from its original location a couple of years ago.  Okay, on with the review from 2021!

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Meng’s Kitchen (https://www.mengskitchensorlando.com/) is one of my favorite kinds of restaurants: a bit of a secret because it’s a restaurant inside something else — in this case, inside another restaurant, U-Roll Sushi on East Colonial Drive, directly east of Goldenrod Road (which I really need to review some other time).

When you crave Chef AJ’s eclectic comfort food with origins in China, Thailand, and India, you have to place an online order on the website above, then pick it up from U-Roll Sushi or make a note that you’re going to eat it there, as I did recently.  I met one of my closest foodie friends here in Orlando, a true bon vivant who knows even more good local places to eat than I do, and also one of the most upstanding, civic-minded, honorable people I know.  He has been a Meng’s mark for a while now, and I was glad to finally catch up with him over lunch on a workday, to see what all the hype was about.  This guy has never steered me wrong, and he definitely helped me choose wisely this time.

This is Chef AJ’s famous Hainanese chicken and rice ($10) — poached chicken served over Hainanese style rice pilaf with the most amazing ginger, garlic and soy dipping sauce.  The online ordering system gives a choice of white or dark meat, and I will always choose dark meat, 100% of the time.  It came boneless and fully sliced, with the soft skin on.  It also came with a side of broth that I forgot to photograph.  It looked like plain broth, just like this looks like plain chicken, but looks are deceiving, because everything had so much incredible flavor, I was blown away. 

My wise and worldly friend chose the chicken, so I had to make a decision.  With so many intriguing and unfamiliar options, I chose the braised pork Hunglay curry ($10) — marinated pork belly and pork shoulder with toasted garam masala, slowly braised with Hunglay curry paste, shallots, pickled garlic, fresh mango and ginger, and tamarind paste.  It was one of the best things I’ve eaten all year, so I chose wisely too.  Every piece of pork was tender enough to cut with our plastic forks, and they just melted in my mouth.  I’m such a fan of saucy, braised meats, and this was an outstanding dish, full of strong flavors I wasn’t overly familiar with, but they all worked so well together.   

The online menu said this braised pork curry came with steamed jasmine rice, but I requested a substitution of the spiced yellow rice that came with some other dishes, and I noted that it was okay if Chef AJ couldn’t substitute it.  Well, he did, and the spiced yellow rice was triumphant as well.  I have a rice cooker at home, and I can still NEVER cook rice as well as Asian and Latin restaurants.  But both this rice and the Hainanese rice pilaf that came with the chicken were something really special.  Spooning some of the pork curry sauce, which was savory but not spicy at all, over both kinds of rice opened up whole new worlds of flavor.   

My friend ordered this cucumber salad ($4) for us to share — chunks of cucumber and tomato and thin slivers of red onion in Thai sweet and sour dressing.  It might not have occurred to me to order this, but I’m so glad he did, and I’d get it again.  It was crisp and crunchy and sweet and spicy and cool and refreshing, especially with the heavy chicken, pork, and rice and the rich sauces they came with.  The sweet and sour dressing reminded me of Thai sweet chili sauce, a beloved condiment, but not as thick, sticky, and jelly-like.  True to its name, there was also a sour, slightly pungent component in the dressing that played well with the cucumbers.

My friend also ordered tom kha gai ($5), a Thai soup made with coconut milk, curry paste, lemongrass, kaffir lime leaves, and big ol’ chunks of mushrooms, which I cannot eat.  Normally I like to try everything, but I am allergic or intolerant or something.  It always ends badly for me, so I passed.  But the soup looked and smelled good, and he seemed to like it. 

So far, this was my only visit to Meng’s Kitchen, but I need to return sooner rather than later for more Hainanese chicken and rice, more of that incredible braised pork Hunglay curry, and to eventually make my way through the menu and try everything else (as long as it doesn’t contain mushrooms).  It was terrific — one of those hidden gems that are all over Orlando, if you just give them a chance.

Mia’s Italian Kitchen

It has been almost two months since my wife and I enjoyed the bottomless brunch at Mia’s Italian Kitchen (https://www.miasitalian.com/), the sprawling Italian restaurant on touristy International Drive.  Fear not, startled Saboscrivnerinos — pants were worn by all.  Bottomless brunch means that every Saturday and Sunday, from 11 AM until 3 PM, diners can enjoy unlimited, all-you-can-eat food off the brunch menu for $26 per person.  It’s an excellent deal if you come hungry, ready to beat the house.  Thirsty folks can also opt for bottomless drinks for an additional $20 per person, which includes mimosas, bloody Marys, and sparklers, but we don’t drink, so we didn’t bother with that.

And just to clarify — the bottomless brunch isn’t a buffet setup.  You can order whatever you want off the brunch menu, and dishes that have standard prices next to them on the menu just keep coming to your table, all included in the flat brunch price of $26.  I’ve written before about how I’m not a big brunch fan because I don’t like overpriced breakfast food, but I sure do love huge quantities of Italian food.

I decided to start with the Italian scramble (normally priced at $13), with scrambled eggs, pepperoni, roasted peppers, caramelized onions, basil, rustic toast.  It normally comes with mushrooms, but constant readers know that I do not partake.  Anyway, this was a delicious combination, although it could have used some cheese.  I used to make simple, filling, healthy egg dishes all the time at home until my doctor told me that eggs are not my friend.  I always thought they were some of the healthier things I ate, but I have since cut back.  Like everything else this morning, these scrambled eggs felt like an indulgence.

My wife, on the other hand, loves mushrooms, so I still cook them for her quite often.  They are one of her favorite foods, so she couldn’t resist this house-made fettuccine al funghi (normally $19).  In fact, she called it one of the best pasta dishes she’s ever had in her life!  High praise indeed.  She loves creamy pasta dishes, and we are both suckers for fresh, al dente pasta, but I didn’t even taste this one.  Better safe than sorry!

I always gravitate toward pasta in tomato-based sauces, since when I think of “Italian” cuisine, my senses and memories all go to New York/New Jersey-style Italian-American food, with mountains of pasta in red sauce.  That’s what we grew up cooking at home and ordering from Italian restaurants in Miami.  So I had every intention of ordering the rigatoni alla bolognese (normally $20), with tender pasta in a slow-braised beef bolognese “gravy” made with San Marzano tomatoes, topped with a dollop of ricotta cheese.  It was terrific.  Loved it.  Whenever meats are braised until they’re tender, I’ll be there. 

And to accompany the rigatoni alla bolognese, I couldn’t attend bottomless brunch at Mia’s and not try the giant meatball (normally $13).  It’s a twelve-ounce, all-beef meatball stuffed with fresh mozzarella (or MOOT-sa-DELL, if you will), swimming in marinara sauce, topped with parmesan cheese, and served with more of that rustic garlic toast that I wished was a little softer.  I think everyone in the restaurant must order the giant meatball.  It makes a very dramatic appearance at people’s tables, and everyone is always shocked and awestruck by how giant it actually is.  It is a massive, monumental, mountainous meatball, indeed, and definitely meant to be shared.

There were plenty of sweeter, lighter options on the brunch menu too.  My wife ordered this berry waffle (normally $9), a pretty standard Belgian waffle topped with seasonal berry compote (we both would have liked much more of this) and a scoop of wonderful honey-marscarpone mousse, easily the best part.

She had also been very excited about the apple-ricotta doughnuts (normally $7), an order of six small cinnamon sugar-dusted doughnuts, which were really more like large doughnut holes, topped with rich crème anglaise.  We both liked these.  The texture was similar to sour cream cake doughnuts, also known as “old-fashioned” doughnuts, which are usually my favorite kind of doughnut.  They tasted like Autumn in the best possible way. 

And my choice for a dessert was something I always enjoy but almost never order: tiramisu (normally $7), the classic Italian layer cake of ladyfinger cookies, espresso, creamy mascarpone cheese, cocoa, marsala wine (I’ve never had it on its own, so I couldn’t detect it), and lemon (which I couldn’t detect either).  It was pretty great tiramisu, but even mediocre tiramisu is pretty great.

Believe me, we both felt like we had to roll out of Mia’s after that celebratory feast.  I don’t think we ate again that day.  Because it’s so decadent, we definitely don’t plan to make a habit of that bottomless brunch, but it was a nice way to spend a weekend morning.  It was also nice  to discover a new restaurant on that side of Orlando, since we’re hardly ever out that way.  I recommend it to locals and tourists alike, but think twice before indulging at Mia’s and then spending hours waiting in lines and riding crazy rides at the theme parks!

Tajine Xpress

Tajine Xpress (http://tajinexpress.com/) is a fast-casual Moroccan restaurant that opened earlier this year on Goldenrod Road on the east side of Orlando, south of East Colonial Drive.  It didn’t seem like the most propitious location until I noticed it is close to a mosque with a school, as well as a Middle Eastern grocery store and a Muslim clothing store.  It should do really well in that area, which is luckily close to my job as well.

By fast-casual, I mean you order at the front counter, then sit down and wait for it.  When I went with a work colleague for lunch a month or so ago, it wasn’t busy, and a nice lady walked our food out to our table.  But there is also a pickup area right in the corner of the glass section below.  As a double-Gator, I appreciated the orange and blue décor, and I really liked the rich royal blue color of the walls.  The chairs are large and made of metal.  They don’t fit terribly well under the tables, so I found myself literally on the edge of my seat as a whole new, unfamiliar regional cuisine presented itself to us.  My colleague has eaten at the Moroccan restaurant at Epcot, but for me, it was completely new.  I was excited!

She is vegetarian, so she ordered the Moroccan salad ($3.98), with diced tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, and herbs and spices dressed in olive oil and herbs.

She also got zaalouk ($3.98), a chilled eggplant and tomato salad.  She seemed to really like both of those dishes.

It came with round bread that was crusty on the outside and softer on the inside.  It wasn’t anything like pita bread, and we both agreed it didn’t have a lot of flavor.  I imagined it would have been better if she dipped pieces of it in those two salads.

We went on a Friday, so Tajine Xpress was offering its weekend-only couscous platters.  I love lamb and couscous, so I couldn’t resist ordering the lamb couscous ($15.98).  It arrived on a platter that was absolutely HUGE, with some soft, tender vegetables: potatoes, carrots, zucchini, and a squash I wasn’t familiar with.  My research shows it might have been an acorn or kabocha squash, with the green rind and tender orange flesh inside.

Underneath the mystery squash, the lamb had been stewed until it was fork-tender, and they left some bones in there to impart even more flavor.  It was salty and oniony and so delicious.  I wish there had been a little more of the lamb atop the tender, al dente couscous, but you’ll never catch The Saboscrivner wishing a dish had less meat.

Tajine Xpress makes two kinds of spring rolls called briwates — beef and seafood — and you get two per order.  OR, you can be like me and order the briwates sampler platter, which gives you one beef briwat and one seafood briwat ($9.98).  They were served with harissa, the spicy sauce that explains it all.  The briwates looked and smelled so good, but they were both stuffed with mushrooms, my old enemy, a tasty ingredient that chefs love to cook with, but I just cannot eat. 
Undeterred, I cut these open, picked out all the mushrooms, and ate whatever was left, which was not my best idea ever.  It ended up being a very long afternoon at work.  But you have to understand, my vegetarian co-worker couldn’t eat them, and I can’t stand to waste food.  I definitely won’t order these again because of the mushrooms, but you normal, non-afflicted people reading this will probably like the briwates.

It took me a while to return, but I had really wanted to try the beef with prunes tajine ($12.98), because I love savory and sweet flavors together.  I went for lunch today and ordered it to go, so it came in a round cardboard tray with separate compartments for the huge chunks of tender braised beef topped with slivers of toasted almonds, my side order of rice pilaf (mixed with tiny bits of vermicelli and topped with peas and diced carrots), and only two prunes, sticky-sweet and covered with sesame seeds.
My wife instinctively made a face when I told her I ordered beef with prunes, but I showed her the two prunes were separated in the to-go container and offered her one.  Even she liked it, but I was a little sad we each only got a single prune.  I definitely would have liked more prunes, and it would have been interesting to taste them swimming in the meat juices.  I assumed they would be cooked and served together, but what do I know?  The beef had a lot of flavor and was so tender, I didn’t even need a knife to cut it.  A couple of the pieces had thick bones attached with some tender fat, like one of my favorite meats to eat, oxtails.  But all the meat easily pulled right off the smooth bones, which is one of the joys of braising, stewing, and slow-cooking.  The rice was a little bland, so I mixed all of it into the juices the beef came with, although I would have liked more of that rich, flavorful liquid too.

Today has been a dark, dreary, drizzly day, which is a perfect day for soup.  At the last minute, I also ordered the harira soup, with tomatoes, onions, lentils, chickpeas, vermicelli, and beef ($3.98).  It was a tasty twist on a tomato-based vegetable beef soup, as I expected.

The harira came with another round piece of bread, which I made sure to dip in the soup to add some flavor and soften it up.  But I already consumed some carbs from the rice, so I realized I’m just not into this bread and didn’t have to eat all of it.

The menu at Tajine Xpress isn’t huge, but now I’ve covered the two dishes that sounded the best to me: the lamb couscous (available Friday through Sunday only) and the beef with prunes tajine.  I would recommend both of those for sure.  As I said, I wish you got more meat with both of dishes, especially because the meats are so good.  I don’t love that round bread, and I’m wondering if the other side order options of fries and beans would be better than the rice I got today.  I think they would have to be.  I just figured fries would be cold by the time I got them home, but if you go and try the fries, let me know how they were!

Cavo’s Bar & Kitchen

At this point in my food writing, I keep an Excel spreadsheet to keep track of the restaurants I want to try — and so I can always quickly send menu links to the people I eat with the most, my wife and my co-workers.  One restaurant that had been at the top of my list for far too long is Cavo’s Bar & Kitchen (https://www.cavosbar.com/) in Thornton Park, a neighborhood near downtown Orlando that I recently called “Thornton No-Park,” due to the lack of parking spaces.  I dragged three co-workers down to Cavo’s for lunch on a relatively quiet Friday not that long ago, and we definitely had to drive around a bit before we could park, but it was worth the wait.

I’ve been reading so many raves about Cavo’s cheesesteak ($13), so I had to try it, even though I often find cheesesteaks disappointing.  Usually the meat is relatively low-quality and dissolves into a pool of boiling lava-hot grease and melted cheese that never cools down, making it literally painful to eat, on top of being messy.  But this was easily the best cheesesteak I’ve tried in Orlando, and probably the best one I’ve had outside of Philadelphia.  The freshly baked soft roll, adorned with sesame seeds, held up to the heavy load inside — tasty thin-sliced ribeye (the king of steaks as far as I’m concerned), melty white American cheese, and plenty of sautéed onions, although if you ask me, you can’t ever put enough sautéed onions on anything.  It lived up to the hype and made me realize I still do like cheesesteaks; I just hadn’t had a worthy cheesesteak in a long time.

One co-worker ordered a gorgeous-looking Reuben sandwich ($13), with the usual suspects: corned beef, Swiss cheese, sauerkraut, and Thousand Island dressing (not Russian dressing, but still good) on grilled marble rye.  I know her to be a fan of Reubens, as am I, and she looked content.

My vegetarian co-worker got the vegetarian sandwich ($13), with fried eggplant, marinated cherry tomatoes, fresh mozzarella, arugula, and roasted garlic basil vinaigrette on a fresh baked hoagie roll.  It looked good and smelled even better.  I didn’t ask her to try it, but even as a non-vegetarian myself, that looked like something I would really like.

Another co-worker who tries to eat healthy got the Cavo salad ($13), with spinach and romaine mix, marinated cherry tomatoes, fresh mozzarella, artichokes, roasted red peppers, charred vidalia onions, garbanzo beans, kalamata olives, tossed with Cavo’s house vinaigrette dressing.  He added chicken for an additional $5.   He seemed to like it, and that’s what I call a salad!   

I got this plate of curly fries ($4) intending to share it with everyone.  They were awesome — maybe my favorite kind of fries, with a crispy seasoned coating and soft on the inside.  My beloved Arby’s serves fries like this, and so does Checkers.  But two of my colleagues ordered their own plates of tater tots ($4 each), leaving me with more fries than I expected.  It wasn’t a problem, though!

That night, when I got home from work, I enjoyed half of the classic Italian hoagie ($13) after it chilled in the fridge for a few hours, allowing the flavors to meld.  This beautiful sandwich included tavern ham, salami, capicola, provolone cheese, lettuce, tomato, raw onion, sweet Italian peppers, pickles, and oregano vinaigrette dressing on the same kind of soft seeded roll.  Years ago, the pickles might have ruined the sandwich for me, and even though I normally wouldn’t order them on an Italian sub, my growing tolerance for pickles has turned into an obsession, so I thought I would try them.  They only added; they did not detract.  It was an excellent Italian hoagie — maybe not reaching the great heights of the Stasio sub, the LaSpada’s Famous hoagie, the Rocco from Manzano’s Deli, or incredible new hoagies from Pizza Bruno, but it is still a top-tier Italian sandwich here in Orlando. 

I liked the space and loved the food.  If only it was easier to park at Cavo’s, I would want to be a regular for sure.  As it is, it will have to be a rare treat when I’m in Thornton No-Park, along with other local favorites Mason Jar Provisions and Benjamin French Bakery.  But rare treats may be the best, because if you treat yourself too often, the ritual starts to feel more commonplace, and less special as a result.  But that cheesesteak… wow.  That was totally worth driving laps around Thornton No-Park, or maybe even taking a Lyft down there in the future.

Build My Burgers

Build My Burgers (https://www.buildmyburgers.com/) sounds like something an old-timey Southern lady would say, as an expression of surprise or exasperation: “Well, build mah burgers!”  But no such phrase exists, although maybe it should.  Instead, Build My Burgers is a new fast-casual burger restaurant that opened in a small shopping plaza on University Boulevard, just a few minutes west of the University of Central Florida.  It is an independent, locally owned restaurant, and it could really use your support, because Build My Burgers will build you a tasty burger to your exact specifications, with dozens of options to customize it.  You can have a lot of fun here.  I sure did.

The burgers themselves are Black Angus beef, served as thin, “smashed” patties.  They might not be as thick or juicy as the patties from a burger joint like Fuddruckers or Teak, but they pack a lot of flavor and are clearly high-quality beef.  You can also choose regular or spicy fried chicken, a veggie burger, or an Impossible Burger if you don’t feel like beef.  Brioche is the standard bun, but you could also get your burger or sandwich on a thicker pretzel bun for a $2 upcharge or a lettuce bed for no additional cost, for the keto dieters out there.  (I did keto for five miserable months in 2017, and let’s just say it did not end well.)

But best of all about Build My Burgers, at least in my book, is the voluminous list of burger toppings and condiments to choose from.  I know some people’s brains short-circuit and shut down when faced with too many choices, but I love being able to choose so many different flavors and textures to make a one-of-a-kind meal, whether I’m customizing a poke bowl, a sandwich, a burrito, or a burger, in this case.

I opted for a double-patty burger ($8.99) with two slices of American cheese (75 cents each) on the standard brioche bun.  From there, I asked them to add ketchup, spicy mustard, barbecue sauce, lettuce, tomato, caramelized onions, pickles, roasted red peppers, crunchy potato sticks (making their second appearance in a row on The Saboscrivner blog), and guacamole.  Our food arrived on metal trays,  with the burgers wrapped up, fast food-style, already assembled.  Good grief, that was an insanely beautiful, messy, and delicious burger!

My wife likes to keep things simple, so she ordered a single burger ($6.49) on the pretzel bun (a $2 upcharge), and only opted to add thousand island dressing, which was a really good condiment pairing.  She ended up thinking the pretzel bun was just okay, but probably would have preferred the brioche.  I thought the denser, thicker pretzel bun would have been balanced better with a thicker, two-patty burger and more toppings and condiments. 
Next time she’ll get a burger on a brioche bun with guacamole, and next time I’ll probably get something very similar to what I got this time, but add thousand island.  We both thought the crinkle-cut fries, dusted with a peppery seasoning, were just okay.

What really sold me on finally trying Build My Burgers were people’s photos of the onion rings.  Sharp-eyed Saboscrivnerinos know I am an onion ring aficionado, and I’ll try onion rings anywhere I find them.  Those inevitable onion ring reviews get a special tag: RING THE ALARM!  And these onion rings ($4.99) are “my type,” with their golden brown batter.  Perfect size, shape, color, consistency, and taste.  Flawless onion rings, worth ringing the alarm for. 

My wife was really craving a chocolate shake ($5.99), but also asked me if I had any interest in sharing an order of fried Oreos ($5.99).  That’s a decadent double dessert right there, but I realized neither of us had ever had fried Oreos before, so why not?  Anything the Scots love has to be pretty good, right?  Well, she seemed to really like the shake, and I enjoyed the obligatory sip I took. 
Does anyone remember Pulp Fiction, one of the biggest movies to come out in 1994?  I was in 11th grade at the time, and I was absolutely obsessed with it.  Anywhere, there was a whole discussion about how a cheesy ’50s diner-themed restaurant in L.A. served five-dollar milkshakes, and what a ripoff that was.  I always think of that moment in the film whenever I encounter milkshakes, because over 25 years later, five dollars is pretty standard, and many places cost far more.  Vincent Vega would have lost his damn mind if he saw the $15.99 “freaky shakes” on the Build My Burgers menu, but those are huge, opulent, towering structures meant to be photographed and shared (but not picked up, because all kinds of stuff is stuck to the outside of the glasses).  This standard chocolate milkshake in a standard plastic cup suited my wife just fine.

And because you were wondering, here’s a cross-section of the fried Oreos.  They were actually better than I expected, in that the batter was crispy on the outside and soft on the inside, and the Oreo still had some crunch to it.  I was expecting a sad, greasy mess that would make me feel guiltier than usual, and also a little disappointed.  Well, they weren’t greasy or disappointing at all, I’m happy to report!

I don’t end up on the east side of Orlando near UCF to eat very often, but if you’re out there, you can definitely count on a tasty burger from Build My Burgers.  Any of my stalwart Saboscrivnerinos know how much I value freedom of choice, and how much I love being able to customize and trick out my meals with a variety of options.  This is the perfect place for that.  Even vegetarians would be very content.  I look forward to returning and improvising some new crazy burger combination, but in the meantime, I wanted to spread the word about a relatively new restaurant that could use every bit of support.

CLOSED: Uncle Dendog’s

UPDATE: Sadly, Denni Cha, the chef-owner of Uncle Dendog’s, moved his family to Austin, Texas, in 2022, so Uncle Dendog’s is no more.  Orlando’s loss is definitely Austin’s gain.

Ever since I was a little kid, I’ve been obsessed with comic books, to the point of making it a serious field of academic study.  Heck, this food blog is even inspired by a comic book series called Chew.  (Check the page heading, in case you’ve never glanced at it before.)  But as much as I love the characters, I focus the most on the creators who write and draw them, and I can always identify their unique, defining styles.  For example, the legendary Jack Kirby (co-creator of most of the Marvel characters you would recognize) specialized in burly, square-jawed heroes and imposing alien technology surrounded by crackling energy.  Jim Lee‘s human figures look like flawless gods and goddesses.  Arthur Adams draws huge monsters and super-cute women, always with extraordinary attention to detail.  Kevin Maguire and Steve Lieber are masters of expressive faces, who can convey so much emotion — and especially humor — with just a look.

Where am I going with this?  Well, as a self-proclaimed food writer, I don’t pretend to be the expert on food that I am on comics, but I feel like I’m at a point where I recognize the signature styles and flourishes of some of the talented chefs who prepare the food I love so much.  I can always identify the best comic creators by their written voices and artwork, whether they work on a mainstream superhero comic, a crime graphic novel for “mature readers,” or a deeply personal, autobiographical, self-published story, and some chefs stand out to me the same way, even when they transcend cuisines.

Orlando is home to some real innovators and creative dynamos who have built a strong culinary culture here, and one of my favorite local chefs is Denni Cha.  He has been cooking since he was nine years old, ever since his grandmother taught him to cook in the kitchen of her Korean restaurant.  I first discovered his food in the summer of 2020, when he ran a Japanese pop-up called Itamae Densho out of The Local Butcher, the Winter Park meat market that also hosts previous Saboscrivner review subject Swine & Sons and Da Kine Poke.  I reviewed the gorgeous, almost otherworldly looking chirashi bowls I brought home from Itamae Densho — maybe the most beautiful things I saw in 2020, an otherwise ugly and stressful year.  They were like little landscapes in a bowl — multiple kinds of fresh fish and vegetables over rice, even adorned with edible flowers and ziggurats of fractal romanesco jutting past gleaming orbs of salmon roe.

Unfortunately, Itamae Densho is no more, but Chef Denni is back with his latest venture, something far removed from chirashi bowls but still totally in character and on brand: Uncle Dendog’s (https://www.instagram.com/uncle.dendogs/), a food truck (really a trailer) that specializes in Korean corn dogs and other street foods with a foreign, fusiony focus.  Follow his Instagram page to see where he’s going to turn up next!

I was the first person to arrive at Uncle Dendog’s this past Friday night, set up outside Orlando Brewing, the brewery and taproom south and west of downtown Orlando.  Not being a drinker, I had never been there before, so I didn’t know how busy it would get later or how the parking situation would be.  But I do prefer to grab my food on the early side, especially since I was bringing it home after work. 

I have taken the liberty of posting photos of the menu, although it may change from week to week or even night to night.  I knew I had to try one of Uncle Dendog’s signature K-Dawgs, so it was just a question of choosing which one.   
But I knew he had a new special, just weeks after opening for the first time, and that was what drew me out on this rainy evening.

This was it: “Not-So Native Fry Bread Tacos.”  For many years, I’ve heard and read about Navajo-style tacos, a Southwestern delicacy of meat, cheese, peppers, corn, beans, sauces, and more, served on crispy, pillowy, salty, greasy fry bread, a traditional staple food of Native Americans throughout the American Southwest.

Fry bread may be delicious, but it has a fraught, controversial history in Navajo culture due to the lasting effects of colonialism, when the U.S. government gave the Navajo people flour, sugar, salt, and lard as they were forced to relocate onto desolate, dusty reservations where they could no longer grow traditional, healthy crops like corn, beans, and squash.  There is a schism within the Native American community, and even among Native American chefs, about whether fry bread is an unhealthy, lasting symbol of oppression or a tasty treat born out of resistance and resilience.  It is absolutely not my place to decide or judge which side is right, but I can say a few non-controversial things with certainty, though:
1.) Chef Denni Cha is of Native American (and Korean) descent,
2.) He told me a while back that he planned to offer fry bread tacos as a tribute to his Native American heritage, so I’ve been looking forward to them ever since, and
3.) They were one of the best things I’ve ever eaten.  Yes, in my LIFE.

But first things first: I asked Chef Denni’s lovely wife and partner, Monica, which K-Dawg (Korean corn dog) she recommended, and she told me to go with the Korean in Bogota ($10), a massive meat treat with the lightest, crispiest batter coating a perfect, smoky, salty sausage.  Korean corn dogs are definitely Internet- and Instagram-trendy right now because of how photogenic and eye-catching they are, and this one was no exception.  It was a true fusion: an all-beef Nathan’s hot dog lovingly skewered, dipped in a special batter, and fried until it is crispy outside and lusciously soft inside — an archetypal Korean corn dog even if I had ordered it plain.  But Colombian hot dogs and hamburgers are famous for being served with lots of condiments and toppings, so this was a tribute to those — hence “Korean in Bogota.”  More fusion.  More loving, respectful tribute.  Just like in comic books, this was a legit crossover.     
As the menu said, the corn dog is topped with shiso-cilantro garlic aioli, salsa rosada, pineapple salsa, and crunchy potato sticks, and sprinkled with sugar, for a variety of colors, flavors, and textures — salty, crunchy, spicy, creamy, fruity, greasy, soft, cool, sweet, hot.  (When I asked about the sugar, Denni said “Korean Hotdogs usually get heavily dusted in sugar. We do so much else with them that we just lightly sprinkle it.”)  Anyway, I’m glad I took this home and ate it over a table, because it would have been really messy eating standing up at the brewery or in the parking lot outside.

Next up, I brought home an order of lightly breaded wings ($9).  My wife loves wings, but as much as I appreciate sauces and condiments, she isn’t big on them, so I got these plain with her in mind.  The order came with six huge wings in crispy golden-brown batter, and they were really good.  The battered exterior was still crunchy and warm by the time I got home.  I asked, and this batter for the wings is different from the batter he uses for the corn dogs and fry bread.   

If you want something a little more exciting than plain wings, the other alternative is to get them tossed in a sweet, sticky kimchi sauce.  When Chef Denni kindly asked if I wanted a little ramekin of the sauce on the side, I said YES, which is what you say if someone asks if you are a god, or if you want some sauce on the side.  That sauce was so good, we poured it over the four and a half wings we hadn’t eaten yet, and it made them even better.  Even after saucing, they stayed crunchy and never got soggy, even after reheating some leftover wings in the toaster oven the next day!   
I don’t have a lot of experience eating kimchi, which is weird, because I love pickled vegetables, I’ll eat sauerkraut straight out of the jar or can, and I regularly cook braised cabbage at home.  I need to develop my taste for kimchi, just like I did for pickles.  But this sweet kimchi sauce made these fine wings even finer.

I saved the best for last, which speaks volumes, considering how great the corn dog and the wings were.  I ordered two of the Not-So Native fry bread tacos ($10 each), one for each of us.  They came in the same box and looked like the stuff that dreams are made of.  Topped with braised beef, beer cheese, cilantro-garlic aioli, salsa, corn, black beans, and more potato sticks, they were another amazing, astonishing amalgam of fantastic, fabulous flavors and terrific, tantalizing textures.  But what really took these from tasty street food to next-level works of art was the fry bread itself.  
Chef Denni was very forthcoming when I asked him about the fry bread later on.  He uses the same batter he uses for the K-Dawgz (corn dogs), only he lets it proof longer, for a total of 48 hours, to get to the right consistency for his fry bread.  My wife described the texture of being like a really good, really thick “old-fashioned” doughnut (those wrinkly glazed ones, sometimes called sour cream cake doughnuts), only crispy on the outside.  Denni agreed, saying he has compared them to “savory doughnuts” before, but more airy and fluffy.  I swear, you’ve never had tacos like this before, and I’m 100% sure nobody else in Orlando is making these.  The closest thing I could compare them to are sopes, but they are way better than any sopes my wife and I have ever tried.  I can’t imagine anyone not liking these, unless you keep kosher (in which case, ask to hold the warm, gooey beer cheese) or are a vegetarian (in which case, ask to hold the delicious, tender, savory braised beef).  Heck, even going to town on some plain fry bread would be a treat, maybe with some hot honey squirted on it like the best sopapilla ever.  But don’t miss these Not-So Native tacos!

And here’s a mediocre photo of Uncle Dendog himself, Denni Cha, hard at work in the trailer, packing up my takeout order in his panda sushi apron.  He actually took a moment to pose for me, but I said “Thank you!” like a boob before actually taking the picture, so he moved, and this is what I got — totally my fault.  I’m sorry, Chef.

So what does this have to do with the comic book artists?  Well, I told you I’m starting to identify local chefs from their styles, just like the artists I’ve admired for decades.  And after having Chef Denni’s chirashi bowls at Itamae Densho and now his Colombian-inspired Korean corn dogs and Native American fry bread tacos, I think the common element that identifies and unifies his style as a chef is the sheer beauty of it.  His serving dishes are the canvases of an iconoclastic visionary artist, whether they’re bowls with a base of rice or takeout boxes with paper trays inside.  And he builds these mixed-media structures, assembling them from diverse, colorful, fresh, dazzling ingredients that you might not even think belong together, but that’s only because we don’t think like he does.  Especially here in Uncle Dendog’s trailer/studio, he’s creating cross-cultural culinary mashups and remixes — appropriate, because he is also a musician — and elevating humble, familiar street food to eye-catching, awe-inspiring fine art.  You’ll know it when you see it, because you won’t forget it… especially once you taste it.

Tasty Wok BBQ & Noodle House

Tasty Wok BBQ & Noodle House (http://www.tastywok.net/) is the first Chinese restaurant I fell in love with in Orlando — before Chuan Lu Garden,  Peter’s Kitchen, and Taste of Chengdu opened.  Add in Yummy House in Altamonte (the others are all clustered around the Mills 50 district, with Taste of Chengdu recently relocated to Baldwin Park), and that rounds out my official Top Five Orlando Chinese restaurants.  I’m sorry I haven’t been back to review Tasty Wok sooner, but better late than never.

The Tasty Wok website I linked to above definitely does not include the full menu.  You could click through that website that rhymes with “help” and hope to find photos posted by randos that may not even be up to date, but I took the liberty of scanning the most recent “New” Tasty Wok menu, updated as of July 2021.  If you right-click on each image and select “Open image in new tab,” you should be able to see much larger, more legible versions.

For my first trip back in far too long, I ordered all of our old favorites to bring home to share with my wife.  From the Appetizers page, I got the three BBQ combination ($18.95), with generous portions of tender roasted duck with crispy, delicate skin, sweet char siu (sliced roasted pork), and roasted pork with fatty belly and deliciously crispy skin.  I don’t think any of the Chinese restaurants in Orlando, as much as I love some of the others, do these meats better than Tasty Wok.

This is the masterful roasted duck, which you can also order as a separate appetizer portion for $7.95, or with steamed white rice for $11.95.  Look at how beautiful it is!  My wife and I both love duck — it is one of our favorite meats.   

This is the sweet, tender char siu pork, which is also available as an appetizer portion for $7.95 or over steamed white rice for $10.95:

And I really should have turned some of these over to get a glamor shot of that crackly golden skin, but this is the fattier barbecue pork with crispy skin, also available as an appetizer portion for $7.95 or over steamed white rice for $11.95. 

I’ve been to a few local Chinese restaurants where these meats were served swimming in pools of congealing grease, or worse yet, bland and dry, like they were chopped and sliced hours ago and just sitting under heat lamps.  That’s just sad, and I never bothered to review those places because I didn’t have much nice to say after that.  But Tasty Wok has never done us wrong.  Since we love all three meats, we always get the three BBQ combination and choose these three.  (There is a fourth option, soy sauce chicken, which is probably also outstanding, but we’ve never tried it in all these years!)

We also got my go-to dish at pretty much any Chinese restaurant, beef chow fun ($14.95), with tender beef and wide rice noodles with the most pleasing chewy texture that I just love, plus onions and green onions.

This ended up being a lot of food for two people, and we had enough left over that my wife got to have the rest for lunch the following day.

Someone once described Tasty Wok to me as “Chinese soul food,” and I never forgot that description.  All the dishes I tend to like to order — these very dishes — are on the greasy side, and nobody would ever confuse them for health food.  But they are made with skill, care, and love, and they are satisfying, delicious comfort food.  They are some of the best examples of roasted and barbecued meats and wok-fried noodles around, and I recommend them all highly.  if you are a Tasty Wok regular, let me know what your go-to dishes are, since I’m always looking to expand my palate.  Run, don’t wok, to Tasty Wok!