I went to a movie at the new theater in the Plaza in Downtown Orlando. Although the theater serves actual food rather than the normal popcorn and candy, I passed on eating here. Instead, I went to Bento Cafe on the ground floor of the building. I ordered the Basil Shrimp Bento Box. The shrimp were really good with plenty of basil. The rest of the box was filled with green beans, lo mein, salad, rice, and a butterfly cookie. Although the sides tasted good enough, I thought they could have been improved. There wasn't really enough of the sides to fill the box, so there was lots of empty plate below the food. Most bento boxes that I've had come with a California Roll too. Regardless, I'd definitely return to Bento Cafe!
I ate lunch at the T-Rex restaurant in Downtown Disney. The restaurant has been open for just over a week now so it's still very new.
I ate their Triassic Tortellini. It was basically tri-colored tortellini topped with sun dried tomatoes, peas, lots of basil, various cheeses, and alfredo sauce. It would normally come with mushrooms, but I asked for them to be left out. The Triassic Tortellini also came with a hunk of bread which was way too hard. I thought it tasted pretty good overall, but it wasn't worth the $17 that the restaurant charged for the pasta. But then again, it is a restaurant in Disney, and everything on Disney property is overpriced. If they gave you something with the pasta it would have been better though. Include a side salad and the price wouldn't seem as bad. This goes the same for the sandwiches on the menu here too. For a $13 sandwich, they don't even include fries. Fries are cheap, and people would be much happier getting fries than potato chips. Similar to the neighboring Rainforest Cafe, T-Rex was filled with animatronic dinosaurs, sea creatures, and prehistoric mammals. I was actually kind of disappointed with the animatronics. Robotic dinosaurs have been around for years. I would think that a restaurant in Disney would invest in some robots with more realistic and fluid movements. Most of the animatronics here reminded me of construction equipment covered in rubber skin. Here are a few pictures of the animatronics and the rest of the restaurant: The pictures below are of a section of the restaurant called the Ice Cave. Notice the walls are a bluish ice color. Here, the same walls in this Ice Cave have now changed to red. The color change is due to the simulated meteor shower that happens every half hour in the restaurant. That's right, every half hour in a restaurant that is very kid friendly, they simulate the event that killed off most life on earth. Whoever decided to include this in the restaurant is very demented...
Although way overpriced, the food tasted okay. The restaurant with all of it's creatures making lots of noise was cool to see once, but it isn't a place that I'll probably be returning to anytime soon. I've seen it, and there's plenty of other restaurants in the area that I haven't tried yet.
I ate at Carmela's in Longwood, FL for lunch today. Carmela's is Sbarro's version of a sit-down restaurant, and it seems like sometimes they are good, yet horrible other times. This was a good day.
I started off with some garlic knots. They hardly had any garlic on them, and weren't anything special. I ordered a Grandma Pizza for the main course. I've had other experiences with trying Grandma Pizzas up on Long Island, where they originated, so this was somewhat of a comparison. This pizza was thicker than the other Grandma's that I have tried, and it had large clumps of sauce and basil on the top of the pizza. Unlike other Grandma Pizzas, the crust wasn't perfectly square so I don't think the pizza was cooked in a Sicilian pizza tray. It actually a very good pizza, despite it being a bit too thick. Apparently Carmela's had a pizza cook today that knew what he was doing because this pizza was a big improvement over the last time I tried pizza here.
