Twistee Treat in Orlando, FL (International Drive)

I noticed a new Twistee Treat recently popped up on International Drive and I ended up giving them a try. Located in the parking lot for a British pub and miniature golf course with a view of Wet 'n Wild, this giant fiber glass ice cream cone fits right in with the tourist trap atmosphere of International Drive.

I had a vanilla-strawberry twist in a cone dipped in chocolate. It was a bit melty on the warm summer night, but otherwise it was pretty good soft serve. Although, I think most of the novelty about Twistee Treat comes from the fact that the ice cream is being served from a building shaped like ice cream...

Starlite Diner in Daytona Beach, FL

Starlite Diner in Daytona Beach is located on A1A, just across the street from the Ocean Walk shopping area/hotels. This restaurant is in one of those great prefabricated diner buildings that aren't seen too often in Florida.


Inside, the restaurant continues the classic diner look...

I've visited Starlite Diner several times on my visits to Daytona Beach. Some meals have been better than others, but the food has always been pretty good as far as Florida diners go.

This Philadelphia Chicken Cheesesteak wasn't the best sandwich I've had here. The sandwich was filled with grilled chicken, peppers, onions, and cheese. It tasted very plain and really could have used some sort seasoning. It took lots of mustard to give the sandwich more flavor...

The Turkey Club that I ordered on another visit was much better. The triple layer sandwich was filled with turkey, cheese, and mayonnaise on the lower level, followed by a slice of bread, then topped with an upper level of lettuce, tomato, and bacon. The sandwich was generously filled and was a whole lot to eat. Homefries and pickle slices were served on the side. It was a relatively simple, but yet tasty sandwich, leaving me with no complaints about the meal!


After dark, the neon lighting on Starlite Diner blends in nicely with the illuminations on the Oceanwalk hotel across the street. It all looks very retro...

Twistee Treat in Lakeland, FL

When you want to eat ice cream, what better place to get it from than a giant fiberglass ice cream cone?

I stopped at the Twistee Treat in Lakeland, FL late one night and got soft serve strawberry ice cream in a waffle cone. The ice cream didn't taste very much like strawberry, but I've noticed this is often the case in ice cream shops that can make several flavors out of a single soft serve machine. It seems they add more color to the vanilla ice cream than actual flavor.

Although the strawberry ice cream tasted like pink vanilla, it was still pretty cool ordering ice cream from a piece of classic roadside architecture...

Meers Store & Restaurant

I ate at the Meers Store & Restaurant in Oklahoma. The restaurant was way out in the middle of nowhere in the tiny town of Meers, nestled in a valley between the Wichita Mountains and an army of windmills. The restaurant was a hole in the wall type of place with all sorts of levels and obvious additions. It's apparently built on a fault line too, hence the seismograph in the lobby that the huge line for tables wrapps around.


I ordered a Barbecue Chicken lunch special which came with a salad bar. I never realized how tasty pickled okra is.



My barbeque chicken consisted of a quarter chicken, beans, potato salad, coleslaw, and Texas toast. The chicken was good, covered in plenty of barbecue sauce. It was messy, that goes along with the territory. The potato salad and coleslaw was were both really spicy for some reason, but I'm not complaining. I found the beans to be kind of tasteless, but I liked everything else.


Meers Store & Restaurant is also famous for the huge hamburgers. Someone that I was eating with ordered one of the smaller burger choices. I'm not a burger person, but that thing looks disgusting to me. The person that ordered it claimed the burger was completely tasteless...


Interestingly enough, someone a few table over was taking lots of pictures of her food. Another food blogger perhaps?

Comfort Suites Breakfast

I ate the included breakfast provided by the Comfort Suites that I stayed at in Marshall, TX. I had scrambled eggs, eggs with some sort of meat, a biscuit, and a waffle. These hotels don't seem to do much fruit in the breakfasts.

Free Sonic Root Beer Float

On June 2, from 8:00 pm until midnight, all Sonic Drive-in stores gave out free root beer floats. I don't like root beer very much, but for free, I'd gladly try a float.

I went to the Sonic in Longwood, FL at 9:30pm and there were probably a few hundred people waiting for the free food. The parking was overflowing out into the neighboring bank and Walgreens, so I decided it wasn't worth the wait. About 11:30, I returned to Sonic and most of the crowds had disappeared. I got my float which consisted of soft serve vanilla ice cream and root beer in a styrofoam cup filled 3/4 of the way from the top. It was okay, but I really don't like the aftertaste that root beer leaves.

Unrelated to free root beer, I recently took a trip to Oklahoma and visited the History Center in Oklahoma City. While I was there, I learned some interesting trivia about Sonic. The chain started in Oklahoma and it seems every small town in the state has a Sonic rather than a Mcdonalds or Burger King. One one of their original menus, Sonic once sold a sandwich called The Whopper. It was a fish sandwich rather than a burger, but everyone knows who owns the copyright to that sandwich name now. Sonic official stopped the employees from riding roller skates in the 1990s, but yet the Sonic employees at the Longwood location are always on skates. From what I overheard another museum visitor, roller skates no longer happen in Oklahoma.

Stop 20 Diner

I ate lunch at Stop 20 Diner in Elmont, NY today. I ordered the Chicken Souvlaki Pita lunch special. It came with soup, a side Greek salad, the sandwich, dessert, and a drink.

There were several choices of soup to choose from, and I picked lentil. The soup was good. A basket of challah bread and crackers was brought out at the same time as the soup.

The soup and bread was followed with the side Greek salad. It didn't come with the wonderful items that make Greek salads from these Greek diners special such as the stuffed grape leaves or anchovies, but these generally don't come with side salads. It consisted of lettuce, tomato, onions, feta cheese, and olives. It tasted good enough, although it would have been much better with some stuffed grape leaves...

The Chicken Souvlaki pita came out next and was the biggest disappointment of the meal. The pita was filled with lots and lots of grilled chicken, chopped green peppers and onions, and chopped tomato. It was served with a cup of tzatziki. The sandwich was way too much chicken, and not enough other stuff. Each bite was almost all chicken and was way too much and lacked enough flavor. I've had much better chicken souvlaki sandwiches elsewhere...

I ordered a cheese danish for the included dessert. It was tasty enough, and had some currants in it which was a nice touch.

The lunch special was a great deal with the amount of food that was given for the money, but the quality of the food could have been better. My souvlaki had room for improvement. Two of the other meals ordered at my table was a spinach quiche and a spanakopita (spinach pie). The spanakopita and the quiche were exactly the same thing, only the quiche was served as an upside down spanakopita. A quiche is more than a spinach pie turned upside down.

The food here has been better in the past...

Ralph's Barbecue...

Continuing yesterday's trip up I-95, today I ate lunch at Ralph's Barbecue in Weldon, North Carolina. It was a buffet, filled with mostly older people, giving the place somewhat of a retirement home look. The food was tasty enough though and had some unique items on the buffet. Some hush puppies were placed on the table to start...

From the buffet, I started out by trying a plate of pulled pork with a vinegar based barbecue sauce, cabbage, black-eyed-peas, salad, and a roll. The pulled pork was the best thing on this plate...

I tried a second plate of cole slaw, macaroni and cheese, mashed potatoes, beans, and a bit more pork...

I ate a plate of banana pudding, a slice of a beet, and some pickled watermelon rinds for dessert. I have never heard of pickled watermelon rinds before, but they are a very interesting food. They are sweet, but also have a tart vinegar taste. They are translucent and look like jello, but are much more solid. They were very interesting. They tasted good too...

Ruby Tuesdays on the Road...

Went on a road trip today! From eating at a dinner show in Orlando one day to eating dinner in South Carolina the next day. It's amazing how that happens.

After eating a packed lunch of peanut butter sandwiches and hummus, the dinner plan was to find a barbecue restaurant to eat at. Some barbecue restaurants were found in Florence, South Carolina, but it seems like they were all closed on Mondays. Here is one of closed restaurants I stopped at with a very cool sign.

Not having much luck finding a unique place to eat, I ended up at a Ruby Tuesdays, also in Florence, South Carolina. I ate a chicken pot pie served with a tomato and mozzarella salad with the salad bar included. Here is my plate from the salad bar...

And the chicken pot pie...

It wasn't bad...