Barbecue – The Saboscrivner

GG Korean BBQ

GG Korean BBQ (https://ggkoreanbbq.com/) is an all-you-can-eat Korean barbecue restaurant located at 5319 West Colonial Drive in Orlando’s Pine Hills neighborhood. I recently went for the first time with two good friends, including one of my inspirations as a food writer, the illustrious Amy Drew Thompson of the Orlando Sentinel. It was the first time I ever got to meet her in person, and I’m sure I made a great first impression, stuffing my face with delicious Korean food that we cooked ourselves on the tabletop grill.

This was my second time doing all-you-can-eat Korean barbecue ever, after trying it with a friend at Hae Jang Chon in Koreatown in L.A. last year. I was lucky to be dining with two sophisticated, experienced, worldly gastronomes who knew what they were doing much more than I.

GG Korean BBQ offers two options: $27.99 per person for the basic all you can eat experience (seven different fresh and marinated meats), or $39.99 per person for a more premium selection: 18 different fresh and marinated meats, plus two seafood options, shrimp and baby octopus. I was curious about the expanded option, and my friends were both kind enough to humor me and go along with it. Just FYI, your whole party has to choose the same option.

Many Korean meals start out with banchan, tiny plates of sharable side orders. My favorite thing here was the slightly sweet and crunchy yellow pickled daikon radish slices on the bottom left. I am not a fan of bean sprouts, so I left them alone, and as much as I have tried to become a kimchi fan (especially as a lover of sauerkraut and cabbage in general), it hasn’t happened for me yet. I tried a customary piece but left the rest for my colleagues. A sharp-eyed reader told me more about the yellow pickled radish: “The yellow pickle is called Takuan. It is a Japanese pickle that was invented in the 17th century by the Zen Buddhist monk named Soho Takuan. The pickle spread to Korea and very popular.” Thank you so much, bkhuna!

Both dining choices come with a variety of other sides to choose from. This was corn cheese — kernels of fresh corn heated over the grill with shredded mozzarella cheese, and probably some butter too. It looked better when it was done, and it was a decadent hit at our table.

I really liked these japchae, savory translucent noodles made out of sweet potato starch, seasoned with sesame oil. They had a nice al dente chew.

We also tried the steamed egg side, but I didn’t get a good picture of it.

Here were three dips for our barbecued meats. That was a seasoned salt on the left that accented the grilled flavors perfectly. I really liked the sauce in the middle, and the one on the right had its own spicy charm.

When you go out for Korean barbecue, the group orders a few meats at a time. Sometimes the server cooks them for you, and sometimes you get left to your own devices. There can be a lot going on, so every group needs an experienced leader to make sure the meat is cooking but not overcooking, and that everyone has something ready to eat at all times. When you’re all having a nice conversation, that can be distracting, but my friend stayed on top of everything for us.

This mixed grill included beef bulgogi on the bottom (a sweet and savory marinated meat that is a great “gateway” dish for folks who are unfamiliar with Korean cuisine), and I honestly don’t remember if the two long pieces of meat along the sides were beef rib fingers or pork belly. I’m sure we got both, though. That’s a thick slice of onion in the top right and some big slices of mushroom on the left — more for them!

Here’s a close-up of the beautiful, rich, marbled meat that was on top in the above photo. I think this was ribeye, due to that lush, lovely marbling.

More meat! Those off-white thingees on the right are large and small beef intestines. I first tried those at an all-you-can-eat Argentinian-Jewish churrascuria restaurant in Altamonte Springs called Steak in the City, similar to the Brazilian all-you-can-eat rodizio concepts (like Adega Gaucha and Texas de Brazil). Steak in the City closed abruptly over 15 years ago, taking my good friend and former roommate’s deposit for a wedding rehearsal dinner with them. (Luckily, he paid with a credit card, so he was able to get refunded, but the restaurant folks disappeared into the night with his money.) Anyway, the intestines (Steak in the City called them chinchulines) grill up with a crispy exterior, but they are mostly soft and chewy. They don’t have a strong flavor, but I’d say they are worth trying at least once, if you’ve never had them before. They would mostly take on the flavor of a marinade or dipping sauce.

Even more meat! We were all losing steam by this point.
What do you think those thin, wavy, round slices of meat on the right are?

They were fresh beef tongue, sliced almost paper-thin. As a Jewish person, I can’t go somewhere that offers tongue and not try it, whether it’s a Jewish deli, a Mexican taqueria, a Vietnamese pho restaurant, or in this case, a Korean barbecue establishment. These slices grilled up to a nondescript brownish-gray color, so they looked a lot interesting here, before cooking. But they were extremely tender!

Anyway, I’m glad I went with two experienced, worldly gourmets who had done this before, because I trusted my one friend to do a lot of the cooking for us (he’s a team player and a tireless mensch), and I followed their lead. It was a really nice lunch with two of my favorite people in Orlando, but here’s my hot take: I cook at home all the time (although I don’t grill because I don’t have a grill), but if I go out to a restaurant, I would rather rely on the chef to prepare food for me than have to do it myself. Most of the time I go to restaurants these days, I either fly solo or bring home takeout to share with my wife, and you can’t really do Korean barbecue in either scenario, so it’s a moot point anyway. I feel similar about hot pot places – fun with a group once or twice as an interactive activity, but maybe more trouble than they are worth. But if you’re going to do Korean barbecue, especially with a good group, I think GG Korean BBQ would be a fabulous place to enjoy it together.

Yamasan Sushi and Grill

Yamasan Sushi and Grill (https://www.yamasanorlando1.com/) is a beautiful little Japanese restaurant that has been around for a decade or so, in the Mills Park complex on Mills Avenue, just north of Virginia Drive. I have driven by it literally hundreds of times, but never stopped in to eat until this past Monday, a rare weekday off. My wife and I were already nearby and craving sushi, so we decided to try it, not knowing anything about the place. (Longtime readers know I usually research restaurants and study menus in advance, but not always!) Anyway, I’m so glad we did, since we had a wonderful experience.

Yamasan’s menu is absolutely huge, and they have all kinds of Japanese food, not just sushi. They have hot and cold appetizers, bento boxes, noodle and rice dishes, poke bowls, hibachi grill options, and even a Japanese/French fusion menu. The thing is, I’m a roll guy. I love ornate sushi rolls, especially with raw fish and lots of ingredients to keep things interesting. Most of the “Yamasan special rolls” are in the $15-$25 range, and some are even more expensive than that, so I figured it would be an expensive meal, but probably worth it.

However, our lovely server Maggie let us know that Yamasan recently began offering an all-you-can-eat menu, where for the price of $47.95 per person, you had a pretty large variety of selections to choose from — not the entire multi-page menu, but still a lot. There is a 9o-minute time limit, and everyone in the party must choose the all-you-can-eat option. Even my wife was on board, because if you were even thinking about ordering three rolls, you come out ahead, and we each ordered more than that! If you show up hungry, it would be foolish not to.

I took the liberty of photographing both sides of the all-you-can-eat menu, since it isn’t available on Yamasan’s website as of now:

I am going to include the regular menu prices with each description below, just to show you how much money we saved by doing all-you-can-eat instead of ordering a la carte.

I started out with the tuna carpaccio appetizer ($21.95 on the regular menu), which was very small, but it’s all good, because we had a lot more food coming. This was two pieces of lightly seared tuna topped with creme fraiche, black caviar, grated pecorino Romano cheese, fleur de sel (very posh sea salt), truffle oil, and capers, with wild field greens drizzled with raspberry dressing on the side. Needless to say, there’s a lot going on in this little app! It was so magnificent, I implored my wife to try the second piece, and she liked it so much she ordered another portion for herself (also $21.95).

She got one piece of escolar sashimi ($12 for three pieces on the regular menu), and I got three pieces of mackerel sashimi ($12 for three pieces on the regular menu). I love mackerel, because it is always lightly pickled, and I grew up eating pickled herring (one of the foods of my people).

This was the Japanese mentaiko udon ($18.95 on the regular menu), a decadent noodle dish from the Japanese/French Fusion part of the menu. These super-thick, super-chewy udon noodles were topped with salty salmon roe that pop in your mouth, finely shredded nori (roasted seaweed), more grated pecorino Romano cheese for an umami punch, and what I’m guessing was salty, punchy cod roe mayonnaise on the right side of the photo below. That’s what they put on the mentaiko fries I tried many years ago at Susuru, anyway. This was another dish that was as gorgeous as it was tasty.

I loved everything about this, and I was even considering ordering it before we discovered the all-you-can-eat menu (and that this was included in it). Again, my wife impressed me by trying it and pleasantly surprised both of us by liking it. But what’s not to like… unless you already don’t like salty, fishy flavors?

The rolls started to show up next. This was a Dynamite roll ($11.95 on the regular menu), with tuna, yellowtail, wasabi, and scallions, a nice opening act for the superstars about to arrive. It was dynamite!

And here’s a gorgeous tray with three of my selections: the Salmon Tower roll in the front, the Capitan roll in the middle, and the Unforgettable roll in the back. Lord have mercy!The Salmon Tower roll ($19.95 on the regular menu) is pressed into that rectangular shape, and it includes green shiso (perilla) leaves mixed with sushi rice, smoked salmon, salmon roe, kani (krab), mayonnaise, and eel sauce. I wasn’t sure what shiso/perilla leaves were supposed to taste like, but my research tells me the flavor is a cross between basil and mint — both good flavors to go with the salty, smoky richness in this roll.

The very traditional Capitan roll ($18.95 on the regular menu) includes fried calamari, avocado, Cajun seasoning, topped with smoked salmon, wasabi, creme fraiche, mango salsa, and eel sauce. Okay, so it isn’t traditional at all, but I love fusion cuisine, and I already said I’m a sucker for sushi with a lot going on!

I really should have turned the tray around for a better pic of the Unforgettable roll ($18.95 on the regular menu) in the back, but I forgot. Yes, I forgot the Unforgettable roll. I’m here all week, folks. Anyway, it includes spicy tuna and barbecue eel, and it is topped with avocado, seafood sauce, eel sauce, crispy fried noodles, and masago (red flying fish roe). Each of these was mighty fine.

Here were my wife’s first two roll choices, which curiously came out some time after my first three. In front, you can see the Mango Tango roll ($17.95 on the regular menu), with tempura shrimp and cream cheese, topped with mango, shredded coconut, and eel sauce. It’s always a crowd-pleaser.Behind it is the Sweet Sixteen roll ($17.95 on the regular menu), with shrimp, krab, cream cheese, and a rice paper wrapper, topped with mango and strawberries and drizzled with a “mayo sauce.” I like some sweet flavors with my sushi, like eel sauce, and I’m never sad to see mango show up, but that one was a little too desserty for me.

This was her next roll, the Lover roll ($18.95 on the regular menu), with krab salad, topped with tuna, spicy mayo, a tiny Hokkaido scallop, and red caviar (masago) on top. There was something else in this Lover roll that wasn’t listed that was brown and had kind of a funky flavor that didn’t fit. At first, I feared the chef sneaked mushrooms into this roll, because it definitely wasn’t a fish. The menu listed tempura flakes, but we didn’t see any or feel their familiar, pleasing crunch. It turned out that it was inari, also known as bean curd, or fermented and fried tofu, a common sushi ingredient which she likes, but I don’t — especially when I’m not expecting it. But once she got too full, I poked the inari out of each piece with a chopstick and dutifully finished the rest of the Lover roll.

And this was my last stand: the Dream of Dream roll ($20.95 on the regular menu), which you have to say in the old-timey newsman voice of the late, great David Lynch, as you can bet that I did. It was a fitting way to end our unexpected feast at Yamasan, with tuna, salmon, shrimp, krab, tempura flakes, regular AND spicy mayo, eel sauce, and black caviar. Back in 2009, David Lynch quoted The Upanishads on Twitter, in those days before it became one of the worst places on the Internet: “We are like the dreamer who dreams & then lives in the dream.” Later, in his brilliant third season of Twin Peaks in 2017, Lynch’s character Gordon Cole had a dream in which Monica Bellucci repeated the line. And that’s all I could think of while I ate the Dream of Dream roll.

So if you add up the prices of everything we got, had we ordered a la carte:

Two tuna carpaccio appetizers ($21.95 x 2) +
Escolar sashimi ($12 for three pieces, since we would not have been able to order just one piece) +
Mackerel sashimi ($12 for three pieces) +
Japanese mentaiko udon ($18.95) +
Dynamite roll ($11.95) +
Salmon Tower roll ($19.95) +
Capitan roll ($18.95) +
Unforgettable roll ($18.95) +
Mango Tango roll ($17.95) +
Sweet Sixteen roll ($17.95) +
Lover roll ($18.95) +
Dream of Dream roll ($20.95) =
A whopping $232.45 (plus tax and tip)!

We would never run amok like that if we were ordering off the regular menu… or would we? I always say we know how to party, and why doesn’t anyone ever party with us?

But instead, we paid $47.95 x 2 = $95.90 (plus tax and tip, of course). YOU’RE WELCOME. And thank you to Yamasan Sushi and Grill!

Well, stalwart Saboscrivnerinos, I am thrilled to report that our first visit to Yamasan surpassed my wildest dreams (or dreams of dreams). I would happily go back, because even if it isn’t a cheap dinner, you will eat like a king and go home satisfied and ready to crash for the night. I feel like we got our money’s worth, and then some. And it’s such a nice little restaurant (with comfortable booths!), I would recommend it even if you don’t go with the all-you-can-eat option, even though I personally think it’s a no-brainer. Ask for Maggie — she was the only server on duty, so she was slammed, but she will take the best care of you, as she did for us.

Smokemade Meats + Eats (revisited)

EDIT: I first published this review on August 29, 2021, but this is an updated, expanded version for May 2025. A lot has changed since Smokemade Meats + Eats was just doing pop-ups, especially in the past month! Read on…

***

Sometimes my parents joke that they have no idea why I like so many different kinds of food that my family never ate when I was growing up. I got curious and wanted to try new things once I was on my own, out of their house, taking the advice of cultured, worldly friends or the Internet hive-mind. Not my dad, though! He likes what he likes, he’s set in his ways, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t on a constant quest for the best too! Just today I reassured my dad that he is a big reason I appreciate food as much as I do. He used to drive all over Miami to find the best Chinese buffets, hot dog carts, New York pizza (by the slice!), bagels, Cuban bistec milanesa, and pastrami sandwiches. He’d schlep up to an hour for a good meal, so that’s where I get it from. We had a heartfelt conversation where I told him that I love all the same foods he loves, but along the way, I just figured out I like to eat other things too. We had one of those “We’re not so different, you and I” moments over the phone.

Well, another kind of food my dad actually likes is barbecue… as long as it is not too saucy or spicy, that is! He got me into barbecue at the legendary Shorty’s in Miami, and we ate there together countless times. Barbecue is a reliable crowd-pleaser and a timeless and true American art form, like jazz, blues, and comic books. Most people have strong opinions and great loyalty to barbecue, but even when we find a ‘cue joint we like, we’re always scanning the sky for scintillating smoke signals, seeking something equally good or even better. And today I think I found that place.

Smokemade Meats + Eats (https://www.smokemade.com/) is a pop-up restaurant that started pitching a tent and serving up Texas-style barbecue at local breweries around Orlando earlier this year. I’m back at work with a heavy teaching load, so between that and the pandemic worsening in Florida, I’ve been laying low, avoiding crowds, and not exploring as much as I would like. But after several months of frustration, I finally made to a Smokemade pop-up at Whippoorwill Beer House & Package Store in Orlando’s Milk District and met Tyler Brunache, the sorcerer supreme of smoke and mystical maven of meat. Tyler, an FSU graduate (which I’ll forgive) started barbecuing in Washington D.C. before returning home to Orlando, and we should all be glad he made that decision. You have to follow Smokemade on Facebook or Instagram and find out where he’ll next appear, so you can try this delicious food for yourselves.

I hated crowds and long lines before social distancing was cool, so I was smart and made it to Whippoorwill Beer House on the early side, before it got overrun with Milk District hipsters. I parked right in front of the establishment (a very pleasant surprise), and Smokemade was already set up in a tent in the parking lot with Tyler, three associates, and a very tenacious bee flying around inside the tent, occasionally landing on them but going unnoticed. Everyone was friendly as they were taking and assembling orders, and nobody seemed perturbed about the bee, even though I warned two of the guys to watch out for it. Those guys are nonchalant AF. I would have gotten the hell out of that tent until the bee got bored and took off. He must have been there because of all the positive buzz online.

Anyway, even with the curious bee, I was one of the first in line, so I was able to order and get my food packed up within ten minutes. Keep in mind that proper barbecue is smoked low and slow — low temperatures for hours at a time. Tyler’s beef brisket is smoked for 16 hours, his pulled pork is smoked for ten hours, his pork spare ribs are smoked for six hours, and his scratch-made sausages are cold-smoked for four hours. Then all the meats have to rest for hours before serving to be at their best, kind of like me. So even though I got my order quickly, it took over 24 hours to get ready behind the scenes. What looks like a pop-up to us takes days of planning, prepping, and perfecting. And looking at drool-worthy photos of Smokemade’s food online over the past few months, it sure looks like Tyler Brunache has perfected his process.

So what did I get?

Well, whenever I try any new restaurant, I always like to order something where I can sample as many different flavors as I can. Here, that was the Texas Trinity Platter ($29), featuring a half-pound of beef brisket, a half-pound of pork spare ribs, and two sausages. Keep in mind, I was bringing all of this home to share with my wife!

When I got home with this massive takeout order, I opened the heaviest box first to reveal the Texas Trinity Platter, and this is what we saw. WOW. But you’re not even seeing all of it here!

The first thing I did was remove that half-pound slice of brisket to portion it out. Look at that gorgeous color, that bark, that marbling! My photo fails to describe just how thick and substantial it is. But it’s magnificent, masterful meat. I asked for our brisket to be a little more moist and fatty, rather than lean. Trust me, it’s better. Texas-style barbecue is never served drenched in sauce, but even though we got several small cups of barbecue sauce, none of the meats really needed it. This brisket stands on its own just fine.

By the way, you can also order a brisket sandwich on a roll for $15, and they look huge.

Underneath, you can see what is essentially a double-order of spare ribs, since I added on an extra half-pound ($9). Hey, my wife and I both love ribs, and I knew she wouldn’t want any of the sausages. The ribs are magnificent. The sweet, sticky, peppery glaze adds tremendous texture and fabulous flavor. These ribs are so tender, not only do they fall off the bone, but I swear I chewed up part of one of the bones, since it was as tender as the meat surrounding it! Today, Tyler offered two different kinds of sausages, his popular cheddar jalapeño sausage, and a hot gut sausage. I requested one of each in the Texas Trinity Platter, and they are both coarsely ground in natural casings (hence the “hot gut” moniker) that give you a satisfying crispy crunch sensation when you bite into them. They were both heavy and dense sausages, and with everything else we tried, I could only eat a small segment of each. The cheddar jalapeño was my favorite of the two, with pockets of oozing orange cheddar and a pleasant heat throughout.

Since I can’t always make it to these ephemeral pop-ups around town, I ordered what I could, while I could. This here is a half-pound portion of pulled pork ($10), not included in the Texas Trinity Platter, but well worth trying. It is much more understated than the brisket, ribs, and sausages, but I’d still totally recommend it. You can also order a pulled pork sandwich on a roll for $11. They were generous with the scratch-made barbecue sauce, which is thin and vinegary, not the usual thick slurry of ketchup, high fructose corn syrup, and artificial smoke flavor like too many sauces.

Barbecue focuses on the meats, but sides are part of the experience. I couldn’t leave without trying three of Smokemade’s sides: coleslaw made with red cabbage and apples, jalapeño dill potato salad, and pinto beans that are spicier and more savory than the typical sweet “barbecue” baked beans served with Southern BBQ. Each of these sides cost $3.50. I liked the beans the most, but the meats are the real reason to chase down Smokemade.
Honestly, my favorite among all these pictured sides were the pickle slices and pink pickled onions in the top left corner of the box, and those actually came with the Texas Trinity Platter! I already love pickled onions (I make my own), and I am starting to consider myself more of a pickle aficionado, but I really liked these. Their puckery, pungent punches complemented the salty, smoky meats very well — even better than the actual separate side items, in my opinion. I asked Tyler, and he said they make everything from scratch except for the slices of white bread that came with the platter.* I don’t know if he would consider selling his pickles and pickled onions in larger portions in the future, but if he offers them, run, don’t walk.

Finally, I couldn’t come home to face my wife without a dessert, so I chose bread pudding over key lime pie (I love it but she doesn’t) and banana pudding. Each of the three desserts costs $4. This was a nice-sized chunk of sugary-sweet, soft, moist bread pudding, featuring cinnamon and caramel flavors. We thought it might have been made with challah bread, as it did taste somewhat eggy. We each had a nice-sized portion earlier tonight, and there is still some bread pudding left for tomorrow (with my wife’s name on it). I’d love to try the banana pudding and key lime pie on a future visit.

You might have noticed this was a lot of food for two people, but I fully expected we would get multiple meals out of it, especially with me packing lunches for work to wolf down between classes and reference interviews, and her being home for the time being. And it was all so good, neither of us will mind eating amazing Texas-style barbecue for another couple of days.

Five years ago, I was lucky enough to attend an annual conference for my professional organization in Dallas, Texas. Of course I had to try the local barbecue, so I sought out the famous and highly recommended Pecan Lodge. It was amazing — easily some of the best barbecue I’ve ever eaten. Maybe the best. I’ve never had anything quite like it in Florida, until now. I never forgot that meal, but I can tell you that Tyler Brunache’s food from Smokemade Meats + Eats looks, smells, and tastes just like that real-deal Texas ‘cue I enjoyed so much in Dallas and dreamed about ever since.

Seriously, don’t sleep on Smokemade, and don’t write it off as a logistical nightmare just because there isn’t a permanent, brick-and-mortar location. Follow the social media, figure out where Smokemade Meats+ Eats will pop up next, get there early so they don’t sell out of what you want, and go with friends so you can sample a little bit of everything on the menu. But be careful out there, and drink responsibly at all these breweries!

Back in 1996, the great singer/songwriter/actor/Texan Lyle Lovett sang “That’s right, you’re not from Texas, but Texas wants you anyway.” Well, I’m not from Texas, and neither is Tyler, and statistically, most of you stalwart Saboscrivnerinos probably aren’t either. But take it from The Saboscrivner: you want this Texas barbecue anyway! Heck, even my dad would.

***

Hey, my longtime readers know I almost never return to published reviews to edit them, but this is one time an exception must be made. In 2024, Smokemade Meats + Eats moved into a permanent location on Crystal Lake Road in Orlando’s Hourglass District, and Chef Tyler Brunache’s food was even better than ever. I have been a few times recently, always for takeout, and I always go out of my way to try all new things to bolster my original review of the pop-up location.

This brisket cheesesteak sandwich was such a treat — not nearly as drippy, greasy, and cheesy as the traditional Philly version, but the chopped brisket was a lot more flavorful and higher-quality than the fatty ribeye that a lot of cheesesteak slingers use. I would have liked more cheese, but no matter what, I would always like more cheese.

Pardon this blurry photo. Smokemade’s smoked cheeseburger deserves so much better. It is a smash-style double cheeseburger with American cheese (the best burger cheese), caramelized onions, and their house-made burger sauce, served on a brioche bun (that steamed and got kind of wrinkly in the foil takeout tray), and it is in my Top Five burgers in Orlando. Easily near the top of the Top Five, if that helps. Magnificent. Even better than the brisket cheesesteak.

Crispy fries were very good too, especially when barbecue sauce is applied to them.

Collard greens were on point. I liked these so much more than any of the original sides I tried and wrote about earlier. They are NOT vegetarian, though, but the smoked meat helps make them so special. I like adding a lot of pepper vinegar to my greens. These didn’t even need it, but it didn’t hurt, either.

Smokemade’s smoked oxtails were also amazing — so much better than the photo below. This was a special on a Saturday, and I considered myself so lucky for showing up while they were available, since it isn’t part of the regular menu, and I didn’t even know what the specials were going to be that day. I love oxtails even more than I love steak — that’s how much I love oxtails. They are definitely one of my favorite dishes, no matter the culture or the cuisine. I’ve always wondered why barbecue places don’t serve smoked oxtails, but I know they are time-consuming to do right. But then again, so is barbecue in general!

And finally, the bombastic beef rib — a favorite of both mine and my wife’s, to the point where we order them anytime I see them on a menu, which is all too rare. Beef ribs are huge, and their prices are usually huge too, but she can get two to three meals out of a single one. Me, not so much. But it is some of the most tender, luscious, fat-marbled, unctuous meat there is, to the point where the bone slides right out, and Smokemade’s beef ribs are no exception. Like the smoked cheeseburger and oxtails, these Black Angus beef ribs are a weekend special, but get there early, because they always sell out.

This was my most recent beef rib that I brought home for my wife a few Saturdays back. I went there on a whim (same day I found the oxtails), and I got the very last beef rib. It was meant to be! I would have been heartbroken if I had missed them.

*In the first part of my review, I mentioned Smokemade used commercial white bread in their pop-up era, but I am thrilled to report that in their brick and mortar location, they bake their own bread now, and it’s brioche, biatch! They serve two slices of soft, buttery brioche with a beef rib, although they get sticky and greasy and juicy, as one would expect, making it even tastier. But the bread is really damn good on its own, y’all. They sell whole loaves of the brioche, pre-sliced, and it is spectacular on its own, or for sandwiches, toast, FRENCH toast, you name it. It’s the best thing since… well, you know.

And finally, Chef Tyler makes the best tortillas I’ve ever had in my life, and I’ve had Mexican food throughout Florida, as well as in San Jose, San Diego, and Los Angeles in California and Dallas and San Antonio in Texas. These are flour tortillas made with beef tallow, and I’ve never had their equal. Chef’s kiss, 10/10, perfect in every way, no notes. You can buy a ten-pack for $10, but as you can imagine, they go quickly. I was all set to make tacos at home with some lean ground turkey, but after trying a solo tortilla, warmed in a hot, ungreased pan for about 30 seconds per side, I thought they were too good to enjoy any way but on their own. Look at this beauty, starting to puff up in the pan:

And here’s the flip side, Daddy-O. Best tortillas ever! Nothing else even comes close. My wife and I have been rolling our eyes and saying “DAMN, SON!” and other even more vulgar phrases to indicate our enjoyment as we nosh on these. Imagine making sopapillas out of them! I guess we could do that, but they are the best tortillas ever and deserve to be tried on their own, at least before you do anything else with them.

I would be remiss if I didn’t report that in April 2025, Smokemade Meats + Eats won a coveted Michelin Bib Gourmand award, meant for “good quality, good value cooking.” That tire company only awards stars to high-end, upscale dining (think steakhouses and Japanese omakase joints), so I am even more impressed when the casual, everyday restaurants I love win a Bib Gourmand. Smokemade got a write-up on the Michelin website, just in case my two-part review here didn’t already make you want to race over there. Heck, I’ve been writing this update over the past few weeks, and now I want to return this weekend! Maybe I’ll see you there, stalwart Saboscrivnerinos!

Kai Kai

This week, I want to talk about Kai Kai (https://www.instagram.com/kaikai.bbq/), Jerry and Jackie Lau’s stall that serves up Cantonese barbecued meats, as beautiful as they are delicious. Kai Kai is located inside Mills Market, the new Asian food hall on East Colonial Drive between Mills and Thornton Avenues in Mills 50, arguably Orlando’s best foodie neighborhood. Last week’s review recipient UniGirl is one of Kai Kai’s neighboring stalls inside Mills Market, and so is former favorite Banh Mi Boy, that Vietnamese sandwich stall sandwiched between UniGirl and Kai Kai.
Before Mills Market opened last year, Kai Kai was located inside of iFresh Supermarket, the Asian market on the corner of East Colonial and Bumby Avenue (next door to Chicken Fire and Lam’s Garden!), but since then, Meng’s Kitchen has moved into the former Kai Kai space inside iFresh Market.

I swear I’m going to move on, but I feel the need to say that Kai Kai is not to be confused with Michelin-recommended Kai Asian Street Fare, one of my favorite restaurants in the Orlando area (just over the Casselberry border in Winter Park). Everybody still with me?

Well, I dare you to walk up to Kai Kai and not be entranced and enthralled by the barbecued ducks and chickens hanging on display… unless you’re a vegetarian, that is.

I appreciate that they have photos of all their dishes on display. I honestly wish more restaurants would do this.

Something else I appreciate about restaurants is when they offer some kind of sampler plate with two or three items to choose from so you can try a few things. I will almost always choose this option, whether it’s an American barbecue joint or a Cantonese restaurant like Kai Kai. If you order a “rice box,” you can choose two or three of the six house specialty meats. I, of course, went with three meats, which only costs $2 more than the two-meat option, so it seems like a no-brainer. I treated myself to roast duck, honey barbecue char siu pork, and soy sauce chicken (from top to bottom in the photo below).

The sliced meats are served over white rice with some garlicky sautéed bok choy, but you can pay a small upcharge for either fried rice or Hainanese garlic rice. I chose the garlic rice, and I have zero regrets. I strongly encourage my readers to do the same. But look at this gorgeous plate of food! It is huge and heavy, so much so that even *I*, chronic overeater that I am, easily got two and a half meals out of it.

Just because this is a feast for all the senses, including the eyes, here is a close-up of that lovely roast duck with crispy, crackly skin, and the tender, sweet, slightly sticky char siu pork beneath it:

And here is that soy sauce chicken, with lightly crispy skin as well.

They also offer honey barbecue chicken, honey barbecue ribs, and “crispy pork,” either in these rice boxes or by the pound or half-pound, but I feel like I made great choices. I’ll have to try the ribs next time, though!

I also brought home an order of beef chow fun — chewy, wide, flat rice noodles (made from scratch by Jackie Lau herself!) wok-fried with tender sliced beef, onions, and green onions in a savory brown sauce. Forgive me for not snapping a “noodle pull” pic, but I ate it too quickly. This is one of my go-to dishes at any Chinese restaurant, especially as a way to evaluate places that are new to me. If they have beef chow fun on the menu, I consider it a good sign, and if they do a good job of it, I feel more confident that anything else that comes out of the kitchen will be equally solid.

Spoiler alert: they did a great job of it.

On top of everything else, Kai Kai also serves Singapore rice noodles (another dish I love, the spicier the better), char siu pork lo mein noodles, young chow fried rice with shrimp, chicken, and pork, duck fried rice, and Chinese sausage fried rice, which I love so much that I will definitely try their version next time. But that’s not all! They also have an entire scratch-made dim sum menu featuring siu mai, multiple dumplings and bao buns, spicy Szechuan wings, and even cucumber salad (regular or spicy) that is probably super-refreshing to balance out all those heavy barbecued and roasted meats and fried noodle and rice dishes.

Obviously I enjoyed the food at Kai Kai, but I’m far from the only one. The latest round of Florida Michelin awards were announced on Friday, April 5th, and Kai Kai received a vaunted Michelin recommendation, alongside its Mills Market neighbors UniGirl and Banh Mi Boy, which both received Bib Gourmand awards. Congratulations go out to Jerry and Jackie Lau, who are absolutely killing it at Kai Kai. I look forward to returning, but in the meantime, there is magic happening in the stall kitchens of Mills Market. Whatever restauranteurs Johnny and Jimmy Tung of the Bento Group are doing to build their brands and spread the word, it is paying off!

Smoke & Donuts BBQ

Not to be confused with the similarly named Smoke & Dough in Miami, Orlando’s Smoke & Donuts (https://www.smokeanddonuts.com/) is a relatively new restaurant that started serving excellent barbecue and beautiful, festive cake doughnuts just over a year ago, right in one of the best foodie neighborhoods in the city, the Milk District.

My wife and I recently had our first meal at Smoke & Donuts, and me being me, I made sure we could sample as many things from their eclectic menu as possible. The restaurant is open from 11 AM to 9 PM on weekdays, but on weekends, it opens at 9 AM for a brunch menu in addition to the full regular menu. We figured that would give us even more options to choose from, especially with my weird work hours that prevent us from going out to eat during the week. Luckily, there was plenty of parking and no wait shortly after 11 AM on a Saturday.

Once you arrive, you take a paper menu to study as you walk down a line where you can see those dazzling, decadent doughnuts on display, then the stations where the staff assembles barbecue bowls, sandwiches, and “boards” (really metal trays). My wife sat down at an open table while I took the walk toward an extremely patient woman who took our large order at the end of the line. It’s a familiar setup — you pay at the register, take a number, and then someone delivers your food to your table.

Before I reveal everything we ordered, here are the sauces diners will be able to choose from, since sauces are such an important part of the barbecue experience. They are all in squeeze bottles over by the self-serve soda fountain, and there are plenty of tiny plastic cups with lids to fill with the six sumptuous sauces. Over here you have toasted guajillo pepper, KC (Kansas City) sweet, spicy vinegar (it’s a North Carolina thing), and a marvelously thick hot sauce with visible spicy pepper seeds and a touch of sweetness.

Next to them, kept on ice, are Lowcountry SC (South Carolina) mustard sauce (kind of a creamy, herby, tangy mustard, not like bright yellow mustard or overly sweet honey mustard at all) and AL (Alabama) white barbecue sauce, which is creamy, tangy, and sweet. You KNOW I tried them all!

Here’s my sauce lineup. Before our food even arrived, as I was assembling our sauces, they brought us each a sample of a perfect, delicately seasoned, crunchy pork rind, which we both liked. Pork rinds can be heavenly or a pointless waste of calories, and the seasoning usually makes all the difference. But this one was very light, which was also nice.

My wife ordered a blueberry “MOCK-jito,” a delightful mocktail with fresh mint, lime, and fresh muddled blueberries. She said it was so refreshing, and it was one of the highlights of this epic brunch. I am so glad to see more restaurants offering interesting mocktails made with the same love and care as their alcoholic cocktails. Thank you, Smoke & Donuts!

It wasn’t long before our meals were walked out to the table. My wife and I each chose a Pit Sampler board, which comes with a choice of three meats and either one side and a piece of cornbread or a glazed doughnut (one of the more basic doughnuts, not the fancier ones). She chose pork belly (on the left; smoked and prepared in a sous vide water bath), pulled smoked chicken slathered in the Alabama white barbecue sauce, and sliced brisket for her meats. When I was given a choice of ordering her brisket lean or marbled, I chose marbled, which we both prefer. With steak, brisket, or pastrami, when in doubt, go for the marbling!

Instead of a side, she opted for a cinnamon sugar cake doughnut. Those pink strips are pickled red onions, something I love a lot (and make myself at home), but she has no interest in onions at all, or anything pickled. Needless to say, I got them for myself, along with the rest of the house-made pickles and pickled onions in the top right corner of her tray.

For my Pit Sampler board, I purposely chose three different things, knowing we would offer each other samples of ours anyway. I got chopped brisket (doused in TG sauce, the toasted guajillo pepper sauce), chorizo sausage, and St. Louis ribs (rubbed in “red chile and brown sugar slather”).
I chose baked beans for my side (see above), which included Kansas City sweet barbecue sauce, caramelized onions, sorghum, and stout. And you can see my cornbread up there too. But wanting us both to have a chance to try more sides, I also ordered a side sampler with three additional sides:

French fries, a necessity for dipping in the six different sauces:

Crunchy cucumber and cabbage slaw, shredded and tossed in a sherry and rice wine vinaigrette. I didn’t even try this until later, when we got home with multiple boxes of leftovers, but I liked it a lot. What a gourmet, nontraditional take on cole slaw. It was a bit dry, even with the vinaigrette, but a little Alabama white sauce perked it up.

Rich macaroni and cheese, featuring cheddar, Swiss, Chihuahua, and cotija cheeses and a little lager. This is definitely one of the best versions of mac and cheese in Orlando, and my far-and-away favorite of all the sides we sampled.

Here’s a close-up of my chopped brisket, which was good, although I think I would definitely opt for the sliced, marbled brisket in the future:

I had no idea how many ribs came in the sampler, but I have to be honest, I only expected one rib (making me think of Chris Rock in I’m Gonna Git You, Sucka, a movie I made my wife watch for the first time recently, still as funny as it was when it came out in 1988). Imagine my surprise when the guy delivered the trays to our table, and there were three ribs, although he told me he accidentally gave me an extra one. So normally you would get two in the Pit Sampler, and even that would have been great. The ribs were my favorite of the three meats I ordered, by far. They were so tender and smoky and sweet and spicy, easy to pull off the bone, but not exactly “falling off the bone” (barbecue mavens try to avoid that texture).

And from the brunch menu, my wife really wanted to try the biscuits that came with a trio of different flavors of soft, spreadable butter. It looks like they change these flavors all the time, but today we got mango, cilantro-jalapeño, and strawberry-basil butters. My wife really loved the two fruity ones, and I liked all three. The biscuits weren’t huge, but we also shared my cornbread and still had plenty of these rich, creamy, velvety butters left to bring home in the tiny plastic sauce cups. Thank goodness for the lids!

We were as interested in those stunning doughnuts as we were in the barbecue, so we ordered more to take home and parcel out over the next few days. On the left is a blonde blueberry doughnut we intended to share, with vanilla glaze, oat streusel, blueberry compote, and a chewy, buttery blueberry swirl blondie (the triangle “hat” on top, definitely a fascinator). In the middle is a red velvet doughnut my wife chose, with chocolate glaze, red velvet fudge, and a lightly crispy meringue on top, like a little beret sitting at a jaunty angle. On the right is a passion petal dancer, the most butch-sounding dessert name ever. I chose that one as soon as I saw it includes passion fruit cremeaux (I don’t even know how to pronounce that), lemon pavlova, and a dehydrated strawberry.

And this was one last doughnut for me, back at home: the key lime doughnut, with candied lemonade glaze, ginger snap streusel, key lime pavlova, and meringue. Good grief, this was so good. All the doughnuts from Smoke & Donuts BBQ are cake doughnuts, so they are really dense, heavy, and on the drier side, but not crumbly. If you’re craving the light airiness of yeasty Krispy Kreme doughnuts, then go to Krispy Kreme. But you’ll miss out on these lovely, luxurious, cakey creations.

We were lucky enough to meet Smoke & Donuts’ chef-owner Ian Russell, a graduate of the only CIA that makes the world a better place, the Culinary Institute of America. He worked as an actor (appearing in at least one local production with my wife when they were both a lot younger!) and some other interesting careers before founding Smoke & Donuts as a food truck. After building a reputation there, he then moved into the current space, directly next door to one of Orlando’s most famous and beloved restaurants, Se7en Bites. I was impressed that Chef Russell went around from table to table, introducing himself and asking his guests how everything was, and that’s when my wife recognized him from when they were in Cyrano together. Then the lady who had so patiently taken my large order introduced herself as his mother, and she stopped by to check up on us and kvell about her successful son.

I would be proud too. Chef Russell and his entire staff (including his mom) were wonderful. We felt very welcome and had a terrific brunch/early lunch that ended up being the only meal we needed for the rest of the day, with plenty of leftovers for the next couple of days. The ribs and mac and cheese were definitely my favorites of everything we tried, but I would return just for a big ol’ order of fries so I could use them as sauce delivery devices, the sauces were that good. People are intense (and intensely loyal) when it comes to barbecue. Orlando is lucky to have some good options (along with Briskets in Oviedo and Smokemade opening a permanent location soon), and Smoke & Donuts is definitely among the best. The Milk District has another winner, and since they have lasted over a year in this location, I’m sure they aren’t going anywhere. Come try them when you’re craving meat and sauce, and they even offer smoky jackfruit for vegetarians!

Briskets BBQ Shack & Grill

Briskets BBQ Shack & Grill (https://www.brisketsbbq.com/) is a literal shack in quiet Oviedo, Florida, slightly off the beaten path but well worth the schlep. I met some of the nicest, sweetest people — a true family operation — serving some of the best barbecue I’ve ever had in the Orlando area.
Needless to say, just discovering a new barbecue joint is pretty exciting, especially since I work odd hours now and rarely get out to eat during the work week. Briskets opens at 10 AM, and since I don’t start work until noon (the joys of working on Pacific time), I made sure to be there right when it opened to bring home plenty of delicious takeout. My wife and I got several meals out of this barbecue bounty from Briskets.

You order inside the small shack, where you can see everything ready to be portioned and served. Briskets serves two kinds of house-made smoked sausages, wrapped in natural casings for that perfect snappiness that causes momentary happiness. Did I try them both? Have you ever read this food blog before? What do YOU think?!?!

Sides are on display: elbow macaroni in the front left with creamy smoked cheddar cheese sauce behind it for mac and cheese, green beans topped with crumbled bacon in the back right, and in front of that, awe-inspiring cornbread casserole. (More on these soon enough.)

Here we have smoked corn and the best baked beans I’ve ever had in the back (more on dem beans in a bit), and something else next to sweet potato casserole in the front right — possibly loaded mashed potatoes topped with cheese and bacon? I did not try that one, so apologies.

These are savory brisket and cheese hand pies, with a nice, flaky crust. Of course I had to try one! I don’t have a picture of it cut open, but it was really good, like everything else from Briskets. They also offer pulled pork hand pies sometimes, but not on the day I visited. I would have preferred that, because pulled pork was one of the only meats I did not bring home, but the brisket pie was excellent. (I didn’t detect any cheese inside the pie with the shredded brisket, but it came with an additional ramekin of the smoked cheddar cheese sauce for dippin’, so maybe that’s where the cheese comes in.)

This was the highlight, the glorious beef rib, something my wife and I have both craved for far too long. Charismatic barbecue boss Chuck Cobb blessed Central Florida with Git-N-Messy BBQ before passing away in early 2022. In in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, back in the spring and summer of 2020, when Chuck served his barbecue out of a convenience store in Winter Park, I brought home many flawless beef ribs that each lasted us multiple meals. They were one of the only highlights of those weeks and months of isolation, fear, and uncertainty. Finding out Briskets served wonderful beef ribs of their own was my main impetus for visiting it in the first place. There is so much meat, you won’t believe it if you’ve never had one. If you’ve had “kinda big” pork spareribs, forget it. Those don’t even compare. While this is not the cheapest item on Briskets’ menu, one rib is more than enough for a meal, even for Chris Rock in I’m Gonna Git You, Sucka. The beef is so tender and juicy with lots of marbling from fat and a nice outer bark made from rubbed spices, and the rib easily pulls off the Brobdingnagian, brontosaurus-sized bone in one piece. Briskets serves their beef rib with whole smoked jalapeño peppers and a mound of really good bread and butter pickle slices, all atop three slices of white bread that soaked in all those juices and flavors. We both loved this beef rib, and I loved everything else that came with it.

Beyond that, I selected a Texas three-meat plate, which came in those great plastic containers that are dishwasher-safe and microwave-safe, with a clear lid that snaps on. I wish more restaurants would use those.

For our meats, I selected brisket (you have to try the namesake meat!), pork spareribs (excellent in their own right, just don’t expect them to equal the beef rib in size), and the smoked sausage. I mentioned there were two kinds of smoked sausage on the day I went: Texas beef sausage and jalapeño cheddar sausage. I would have had a hard time choosing, but they were kind enough to let me try both together as one of my meat choices! Of course, both were excellent, and that snappy bite you get from the natural casing really elevates them above and beyond most other sausages.The brisket also had some nice marbling — not too lean nor too fatty — and was very tender and packed with flavor from smoking it low and slow. The pork spareribs had a slight sweetness from the sticky glaze to counterbalance their salty smokiness. Every single one of the meats amazed and astonished, but that’s not all! The Texas three-meat platter came with two sides, and because this was my first visit, I brought home a couple of others, too.

Here is the macaroni and cheese. The smoked cheese sauce ladled on right before packing it up in the to-go container really sets it apart. I think adding something else to it might put it over the top, like diced pimentos or other peppers for some acidity to balance out the smoky richness, or a seasoned bread crumb topping for a bit of crunch with all that silky smoothness.

I loved the creamy potato salad, which had a slight crunch from bits of celery(?) and tanginess from yellow mustard. Yes, this was a Southern-style potato salad, and it was damn fine. My constant readers, the stalwart Saboscrivnerinos, may be noticing that I try to sample potato salad and macaroni salad wherever they are available, and this one did not disappoint.

These are Bob’s country beans, and they were the most perfect, most glorious, and most beautiful barbecue baked beans I’ve ever had in my life. Just from one glance, you can see they aren’t your typical brown baked beans, swimming in a sweet, sticky sauce. There are multiple varieties of beans at play here, and my wife and I could not identify all the different shapes, colors, and sizes. I took to Facebook to ask what kinds of beans were included, and someone from Briskets (Bob himself?) told me “it took oh maybe half my life to figure that particular recipe out I’m not too quick to share it if that makes sense. I’ve had a lot of people make a lot of guesses of what’s in there and none have gotten it yet.” I get it, and I appreciate that. Unless you are Penn and Teller, most magicians don’t reveal how their tricks work either, and I am perfectly happy to be caught up in the mystery of it all.

I chose this sweet potato casserole for my wife specifically, although I ended up eating most of it after she first tried some. (She doesn’t dig on leftovers quite as much as I do.) It was your typical Thanksgiving style — very rich and sweet from butter, brown sugar, and pecans, but no marshmallow topping here.

And this was the magnificent cornbread casserole, which was topped with a drizzle of honey. It was sweet — not savory at all — to the point of it practically being a dessert, and so rich and satisfying. This was a huge hit with both of us.

I also had to get some banana pudding for us to share back at home. It was creamy and cool and refreshing, and I strongly recommend it. Banana pudding goes so well with barbecue, Nashville hot chicken (it might have saved my tongue at the legendary Hattie B’s in Nashville), and so many other Southern meals. This one was no exception.

While I have every intention of returning to Briskets BBQ Shack & Grill and becoming a regular, I feel like I definitely tried enough menu items on my first visit to write a comprehensive review. This is still a new business (and did I mention it’s a small, family-owned business?), and I want word of mouth to echo from computers and phones, resonate from the rooftops, and spread throughout the Orlando area. We are two weeks out from Christmas, and Briskets is even offering a special Christmas menu for feeding huge parties. In the cooler months ahead, you may want to trek out to Oviedo and enjoy your food al fresco, at those picnic tables they provide, before the humidity becomes unbearable (in March). But Floridians love good barbecue year-round — I know I do — and at this moment, I can’t think of any better barbecue around here. Trust me, you need to discover this place for yourselves before everyone else in town does, because long lines of loyal customers are inevitable. Why not join me in becoming a loyal customer before the lines get out of hand? You won’t regret it!

Smoke & Dough (Miami)

I try to visit Miami at least once a year. I always enjoy it a lot more as a visitor than I did growing up down there. On my last trip down in late July, my BFF (best foodie friend) and I went out to two different restaurants, which were both great. But I could not wait any longer to rave about Smoke & Dough (https://smokeanddough.com/), which just this week made the New York Times’ 2023 Restaurant List, “the 50 places in the United States that [its reporters, editors, and critics are] most excited about right now.” It was one of only three Florida restaurants to make the prestigious list, so it is in rarified company.

Smoke & Dough (not to be confused with Smoke & Donuts BBQ, a newer Orlando restaurant) is located in West Kendall — hardly the “cool, fun, sexy” Miami you are envisioning, but a pretty typical suburban area. However, it is totally worth the drive from wherever you may be staying (or partying) in South Florida. It is a barbecue restaurant first and foremost, but like so many things in Miami, it blends Latin and Caribbean flavors together to set it apart. Owners Harry and Michelle Coleman opened its doors in January 2022, next door to their previous venture, the acclaimed Empanada Harry’s Bakery and Cafe, serving savory empanadas from Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Venezuela, and Peru, as well as gourmet signature empanadas, vegan versions, and sweet ones too. Unfortunately, Empanada Harry’s was closed when we went to Smoke & Dough for dinner, or we would have tried it as well.

But Smoke & Dough was a marvel, a singular restaurant that amazed and astonished in every way, and not just because I had just driven down from Orlando and was starving. We started out with ultimate loaded nachos, topped with smoked pulled pork, avocado-cilantro sauce, pickled red onions, pickled jalapenos, tomatoes, cilantro, salty cotija cheese, and nata, a Brazilian dairy product that is similar to sour cream, but is a little sweeter on top of being creamy and rich. The tortilla chips were freshly fried, and all the ingredients sang in hot harmony, backed up by spicy Latin rhythm. These were easily some of the best nachos I’ve ever eaten in my life.

Next up we shared some cafecito-rubbed brisket. We got three huge, thick slices of USDA Prime Angus brisket, smoked for 15 hours and rubbed with spices blended with Cuban espresso (maybe Cafe Pilon or Cafe Bustelo, the Marvel and DC of Cuban coffee). It was so tender and juicy, with great fat marbling — not too lean or too fatty — and practically melted in my mouth. The Cuban coffee flavor really came through and blended with the rich, smoky meat. If you ever have a chance to try this, or anything like this, like a coffee-rubbed steak, I definitely recommend it. The brisket came with piquant, vinegary chimichurri sauce that it didn’t even need, but it was delicious anyway, as well as more of those pickled red onions and house-made dill pickle slices that were also top-notch.

I ordered a side of platanitos to share, sweet plantains (one of my favorite foods in the world) topped with more cotija cheese and a drizzle of nata. These were even better than they look.

Smoke & Dough only serves its smoked burgers as specials on Friday, and we were lucky enough to go there on a Friday. These are half-pound patties made out of smoked brisket, ground in-house and served on beef tallow-toasted potato buns, accompanied by a choice of fries or cole slaw. We could not refuse! The only question was which burgers should we get?

Well, there were so many things on the menu we wanted to sample, including pork belly and pastrami. Luckily for us, one of the burger specials was an al pastor burger, topped with smoked pork belly, smoked pineapple, smoked gouda cheese, pickled red onion, and chipotle mayo. Those are all things I love on their own, so how could they go wrong combined on top of a smoked burger?

We cut it in half to share, and it was a truly inspired burger. The al pastor pork belly was so rich and luxurious, and the sweet, crunchy pickled onions, sweet and smoky pineapple, and tangy chipotle mayo added so much depth of flavor. Here’s a cross-section:

And here are the fries, which were fine, but better when dipped in the house ancho chile-guava barbecue sauce (which we had to ask for, but you can also buy it by the bottle).

I was thrilled to see a Reuben burger was another option, this one topped with pastrami made from smoked, house-cured brisket, Swiss cheese, thousand island sauce, and sauerkraut. I asked for slaw with mine, to get two kinds of cabbage on one plate (practically a salad at this point!), and to try as many things as possible.

This was another winner — a beautiful burger with all those great Reuben ingredients. Even though corned beef is much more common on a Reuben, I will take pastrami over corned beef pretty much any chance I get when it is an option, and this was top-notch pastrami. It was sliced thin and had plenty of peppery bark and marbled fat. The sourness of the sauerkraut helped break up all the salty richness, and the slaw had a nice vinegary crunch to it.

I wasn’t going to bother with dessert after a meal like that, but my buddy ordered smoked flan (something that would never even occur to me to make, much less order), and it was killer. I usually don’t even care for flan, but this was the best flan I’ve ever eaten, and it did have a light smoky flavor. I ended up a big flan!

If Smoke & Dough was in some trendy part of Miami, like Wynwood or (God help us all) South Beach, it would probably have lines out the door all the time. Instead, on a Friday night in the humble ‘burbs of West Kendall, we only waited 15 minutes for a table. But the legend is growing, even beyond Miami, thanks to making the New York Times’ 2023 Restaurant List, and here’s your friendly neighborhood Saboscrivner, boosting that signal even further (although let’s face it, probably not that much further).

This was one of the best meals I’ve eaten in 2023, and one of the best meals I’ve ever eaten in Miami. That’s high praise either way. Next time you’re hitting the beach or da clubs, take a detour to 4013 SW 152nd Ave (right off Bird Road), a part of Miami you never would have ventured into otherwise. Consider making a reservation first! By the time you finally make it down to Smoke & Dough, you might need it.

Pig Floyd’s Urban BBQ

Pig Floyd’s Urban BBQ (https://www.pigfloyds.com/) is a beloved, locally owned and operated restaurant in Orlando’s Mills 50 district, filled with some of our best local dining options. A lot of people credit it as being the best barbecue place in the city, despite not being the most traditional barbecue style. Proprietor Thomas Ward has combined Latin, Caribbean, and Asian culinary influences with delicious meats smoked low and slow, and that sets Pig Floyd’s apart from the crowd.

Earlier this year, I met a friend from the Orlando Foodie Forum out there for lunch on a weekend, which was admittedly my first visit to Pig Floyd’s in several years. I was happy to see there was a large, covered outdoor patio, which made me feel more at ease hanging out to eat there.

My friend ordered the banh mi sandwich ($11.99), which comes with a choice of oakwood-smoked pulled pork, tender char-grilled chopped chicken thighs, or deep fried pork belly with “lucky dragon” sauce, pickled vegetables, jalapeño, and garlic ginger aioli on a toasted baguette. It is about double the price of the excellent, traditional banh mi sandwiches available at so many great Vietnamese restaurants in Mills 50 district, but you get what you pay for, since none of those other places are serving meats of this quality.
His banh mi came with a side order of apple fennel slaw that he raved about.

I ordered the Mills 50 sandwich ($12.99), with oakwood-smoked brisket, house-made pimento cheese, caramelized onions, and red peppers served on a hoagie roll. It was a terrific choice, full of ingredients and flavors I love. The side order of sticky-sweet maduros (sweet fried plantains, one of my favorite dishes) was a perfect accompaniment to the rich, heavy sandwich.

Despite getting a sandwich featuring beef brisket, I couldn’t help myself from ordering a pork al pastor taco ($3.99), featuring pulled pork with roasted pineapple, onion, cilantro, and tomatillo sauce. It was so good — even better than it looks below.

I couldn’t believe I had stayed away from Pig Floyd’s for so long. It was even better than I remembered, so I intend to make my next visit a heck of a lot sooner, and to eventually work my way through Thomas Ward’s meat-centric menu.

Chain Reactions: Buc-ee’s

We were somewhere around DeLand on the edge of I-4 East when the Beaver Nuggets began to take hold. Luckily, Doctor Professor Ma’am and I didn’t encounter any bats on our drive to or from Daytona Beach, but we shared a truly exhausting, truly American experience at Buc-ee’s (https://buc-ees.com/), the colossal convenience store just off I-95, a unique shopping experience as vast, overwhelming, and occasionally maddening as its home state of Texas.

Imagine Wawa, Cracker Barrel, and Walmart Supercenter twisted into a sweaty, throbbing throuple, and that comes close, but still doesn’t quite capture the sensory overload of Buc-ee’s. I counted 43 locations on the website, but there are only two in Florida, both new: off the highway in Daytona Beach and St. Augustine. We didn’t even bother to fill up the car with gas there, given the surprising crowd at lunchtime on a Friday. Instead, we hustled inside to see what food and snacks awaited us in the sprawling superstore.

They say everything is bigger in Texas: the deserts, the hats, the trucks, the cattle, the churches, the guns, the belt buckles, and unfortunately the intolerance (see recent news for far too many examples). Well, Buc-ee’s goes big in every way as well. Once we made our way through sections of the store devoted to kitschy casual clothing, folksy home décor, and touristy novelties (the “schlock and awe” department), we made it to the the real draws: stacks and stacks of snacks and snacks.

Here is the wall of jerky, which is the kind of wall Texas should focus on building. There is also a jerky counter, where you can get any of the jerky varieties you want, by the pound. It was easier and faster to grab bags off the wall for $7.99 each.

I chose cherry maple, Bohemian garlic, and sweet and spicy beef jerky. So far, the cherry maple was disappointingly bland, but the Bohemian garlic was packed with strong, garlicky flavor.

Doctor Professor Ma’am is more of a fan of gummy candy, and she was faced with overwhelming options, here at the wall of gummies.

She went with hot cinnamon gummy bears (I think that smell, taste, and texture are all gross, but more for her!) and chamoy-flavored peach rings, pictured below with three different flavors of Rice Krispy Treats she chose (regular, salted caramel, and “Fruity”), plus fried pecans.

I’m not really into nuts. I just buy them for her, and I almost never snack on them myself. But when we busted into these fried pecans back at home, all I could say was “GOOD LORD.” Even with the hell-squirrel armed with a sharp fork on the bag, “GOOD LORD” is the appropriate response. I couldn’t believe how good they were. At $14.99, that was the most expensive single item we bought, but it is a good-sized bag, and they are so rich, they should last quite a while.

As an unabashed fan and collector of condiments, sauces, and preserves, Buc-ee’s had a staggering selection to tease, tantalize, and tempt me.

I went a little mad, but we all go a little mad sometimes. I couldn’t resist (I’m your) huckleberry and blackberry preserves, peach-chipotle and mango-pineapple-habanero salsas, prickly pear cactus jam, candied jalapeños, sweet and spicy ghost pepper hot sauce, and pickled quail eggs!

I fully admit I haven’t tried most of these yet, since our fridge door has only so much space (and it is already stuffed with interesting things in bottles and jars, as one would expect from me). But I did just bust open the pickled quail eggs, after letting the jar chill in the fridge overnight, and I liked it a lot! Very spicy and tangy from the vinegary brine, which includes garlic and jalapeños. “What, you egg?” [I stabbed it.]

It was even hard to choose a soft drink, with dozens of options. This is only one of the three huge soda fountain setups. I grabbed an extra-large cup, avoided anything I could find elsewhere, and sampled sips of the Buc-ee’s-specific flavors. Favorites included pineapple cream soda, piña colada soda, orange Creamsicle soda, sarsaparilla, strawberry lemonade (non-carbonated), and my big winner, the cream soda on the far right, which I ultimately filled our shared cup with for the schlep home. Doctor Professor Ma’am said it tasted like pecan pie filling as a soda, and she wasn’t wrong. It was too sweet to be refreshing, but a very tasty cream soda nonetheless. We also tried the blue cream soda, which I thought tasted like banana-flavored candy. She liked it until the chemically aftertaste hit. We both really wished some of those sodas were sold in bottles or cans, since we would have definitely bought a few different ones to savor later, but alas, they were fountain drinks only.

There were multiple stations to get hot, fresh food, including a station with barbecue sandwiches already wrapped in foil. I grabbed us a pulled pork sandwich that was delicious. Doctor Professor Ma’am was tired and hungry by this point, so we split it in the car in the parking lot on the way out to keep hungry from approaching hangry. Forgive my freestyling, but we savagely ravaged this sandwich, and its richness fixed us from being sad bitches. The barbecue sauce was sweet, but it didn’t overwhelm the smoky savoriness of the pork.

There were also touch-screen kiosks for ordering other food, including tacos, burritos, chicken fingers, and a few other sandwiches that get freshly assembled. I was really hoping to get a pastrami Reuben on a pretzel roll, which came highly recommended, but they weren’t available! I was so disappointed, which is a quintessentially American take, to bemoan the loss of one option in this land of abundance. So I chose a “Chopping Block” sandwich that came with sliced rare roast beef, horseradish, Swiss cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, red onions, and I asked to add jalapeños for a 50-cent upcharge. We had to wait a while for that one, since the sandwich-makers were slammed due to 20 busy touchscreen kiosks all beaming in constant orders, but it was worth the wait. The roast beef was tender, flavorful, and rare, the way I like it, the hoagie roll was nice and soft, and the sandwich was still warm by the time I got it home. To the right is a chopped brisket sandwich that was also really good — pre-wrapped in foil like the pulled pork sandwich, and mixed up with sweet sauce. I liked it even better than the pulled pork.

She was disappointed by the fresh potato chips, but I thought they were fine. Just plain, crispy, salty, slightly greasy chips, as expected.

A fried apple pie was yet another impulse buy. She enjoyed it in the car (eating it over the open bag to catch the cinnamon sugar cascade), and the one bite I took was really good. The flaky fried crust was terrific. We hoped it would be like the bubbly, crackly McDonald’s fried apple pies of our ’80s childhoods, but it turned out to be so much better than those.

Here’s half of the brisket sandwich I saved for Doctor Professor Ma’am back at home, along with a cream cheese kolache (left), a strawberry cheese kolache (right), and a sausage, cheese, and jalapeño kolache (bottom). Kolaches are pastries that Czech immigrants brought to Texas. There are sweet and savory varieties, and as you can see, the sweet ones look a lot like danishes. The sausage inside that bottom one was hot dog-shaped, but much chewier, like a Slim Jim. It was okay. The pastry itself is just like chewy white bread.
I also got a boudin kolache that looked almost exactly like the one on the bottom in this photo, stuffed with the savory Cajun pork-and-rice sausage, but that one didn’t last long enough to get photographed.

They had a fudge counter with nearly 20 different varieties of fudge, all neatly divided into squares. You could buy any combination of four and get two more free, so how could we refuse? My wife chose the different fudge flavors, and there is a chocolate one for sure, a chocolate pecan, a “gooey pecan,” a “tiger butter” in the top left (vanilla, chocolate, and peanut butter), and a blueberry cheesecake fudge (bottom left). The sweet fudge lady would cut off little sample slivers, and I sampled key lime pie and banana pudding fudge. Both were good, but too rich to get entire slices of, on top of everything else. She warned me I might not like the banana pudding fudge, but I sure showed her!

Anyway, these are ridiculously rich, so I know we will make them last. We might even freeze some, forget about them for a while, and then have a pleasant surprise when we rediscover them days or probably weeks later.

The very first thing that tempted Doctor Professor Ma’am was a box of six pecan pralines. I suggested we do one loop around the store first to get the lay of the land before we start grabbing everything, and that’s when she found individual pecan pralines at the fudge counter. She was thrilled to be able to just get one, rather than a six-pack, with all the other stuff we chose. I broke off one little morsel, and it was almost cloyingly sweet and intensely rich.

Since I regularly review chips in my series of Tight Chips features here on The Saboscrivner, I couldn’t resist grabbing a few small bags of classic, barbecue, and hot Buc-ee’s chips. I don’t know how they’ll be, but I got ’em.
A sample guy was giving out samples of the barbecue-flavored Baked Chees-ee Curls, the Buc-ee’s version of Cheetos, and they were good enough to bring home a small bag. I’m surprised Frito-Lay hasn’t come out with a barbecue Cheetos flavor, in all these decades.

And we couldn’t go all the way to Buc-ee’s without grabbing a bag of Beaver Nuggets, one of the most famous (infamous?) and recommended snacks from fellow travelers. These things are unbelievably good. Crunchy, toffee-sweet, buttery, salty. Imagine Corn Pops cereal, but a million times better in every possible way. Neither of us had ever tried them before, but I figured she would love them, and I was right. As for me, I can eat a whole bag of chips standing up in my kitchen without even thinking about what I’m doing, but the Beaver Nuggets are so much richer, heavier, and more substantial than chips, I was perfectly content after just crunching on a few of them.
The Buc-ee’s Nug-ees on the right are a “Bold ‘n’ Spicy” version of the sweet, crunchy Beaver Nuggets. Their texture is softer, though — more like puffy Cheez Doodles that you can easily crush between your tongue and the roof of your mouth. They are well-dusted with spicy, cheesy orange powder that is spicier than regular Cheetos or Cheez Doodles, but much less spicy than Flamin’ Hot Cheetos. I can only imagine combining the two varieties in a bowl as some kind of decadent snack mix.

Finally, I grabbed two large boudain [sp] sausage links from a freezer case, and I got the small package of sliced smoked venison sausage at the jerky counter. Those were $5 and $4.40 respectively — cheaper than I expected. I haven’t tried them yet, but my hopes are high.

Our first trip to Buc-ee’s was both physically and mentally draining. It is a lot to process, and if you arrive hungry and like to try new foods and snacks, you can get yourself in a bit of trouble there, as we did. But it’s such an overwhelming experience, somewhere between the food halls in cosmopolitan cities like Philadelphia or Seattle and a Southern Walmart on Black Friday. I suspect that if we ever return, the novelty and mystery will have worn off, so we can quickly grab a few favorites and rush out, without feeling the need to see and try everything, like we did this time. Trader Joe’s definitely feels like that now, after breaking the bank on my first-ever visit so many years ago, but now just running in and out for a few staples while dodging the mobs. Novelty fades. Newness wears off. That’s why I constantly seek it out and share it here, with YOU.

But beyond the novelty of new sandwiches, snacks, and sodas, Buc-ee’s also felt like the kind of roadside attractions that used to line America’s highways and byways — bemusement parks that drew cross-sections of society away from their homes and out of their cars, those in-between places that made the journey so much more interesting (and often weirder) than the destination, before every highway exit started to feature the same corporate fast food restaurants and chain stores.

Being in a new job in academia where I no longer work directly with our diverse student body, and generally avoiding crowds and social situations for the past two years, this was the most people I had been around in a while — and such people! There were exhausted families, bored teenagers, leather-clad bikers, swaggering cowboy types, beachgoers, retirees, active-duty military men and women in uniform, actual Goths (in broad daylight, in Daytona Beach!), a guy who looked like Gung-Ho from G.I. Joe, and so many tattoos, with a particularly large amount of spider webs on elbows. The two of us only noticed one guy in an overtly political T-shirt, and we seemed to be the only two people still wearing masks. Stefon would have had a field day. But everyone was passing through Buc-ee’s on their way somewhere, fueling themselves up before or after they fueled up their cars, or stopping to use the gleaming, spotless restrooms (which are indeed glorious, living up to all the hype).

I wondered where that sea of sweaty people was off to, and how many had made the pilgrimage to Buc-ee’s as their ultimate destination, as we had, rather than just a rest stop along the way to someplace else. Well, stalwart Saboscrivnerinos, I can tell you that Buc-ee’s is definitely worth a stop — at least once — but don’t expect to get any rest there.

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!