Flakowitz Bagel Inn in Boca Raton, FL

I had breakfast at a restaurant called Flakowitz Bagel Inn on my last visit to Boca Raton. This place has apparently been around for quite a long time and is very popular. It is a New York style bagel place with a really large dining area. Most of these type of places in Boca seem to be always filled with senior citizens, but this one was a bit different. Most of the people in here were young to middle aged, with most everyone in my hearing range having very obnoxious New Jersey accents.

 

A basket of bagels was delivered to the table with everyone's food. I had an everything bagel that was very good.

Beside the bagel, I ordered their Two Egg Breakfast. This came with scrambled eggs, homefries, and two slices of bacon. It was a very basic breakfast, but it did the job!

Umberto's of Long Island in Boca Raton, FL

I had lunch one afternoon at Umberto's of Long Island in Boca Raton. I am assuming that this restaurant is connected with the nearby Umberto's in Deerfield Beach, although I wonder how much connection there is to the actual Umberto's restaurants in Long Island. We had asked our waitress which Umberto's in Long Island the restaurant was connected to and she seemed very confused and didn't know. Uniformed waitress or a restaurant in Florida trying to get New York snowbirds to come to their restaurant because of the name? Not sure, but I would hope they really are connected if they have awards from Long Island Press hanging in their windows.

I had the lunch special of two slices and a drink. To keep it interesting, I had a slice of grandma pizza and a slice of plain cheese. Both were okay, definitely much better than the messy slices from the Deerfield Umberto's. The grandma slice was my favorite of the two. Although the slices were okay, they did have a somewhat burnt taste. I think Umberto's needed to desperately clean their ovens.

Overall, the pizza here wasn't bad. It would have been better without the sooty, dirty oven taste, but otherwise this Umberto's served some pretty decent pizza. Besides, anywhere that serves grandma pizza can't be bad!

 

Boca Skewers in Boca Raton, FL

While in search for dinner in Boca Raton, we made our way to the Mizner Park section of town. There, we found a middle eastern restaurant called Boca Skewers.

Following the instructions that were on the tables, we were able to get a free appetizer by signing up for their mailing list on our phones. Everyone agreed to share the hummus. This was soon followed by our main courses. I had a falafel & hummus pita. The sandwich was filled with lots of falafel, hummus, lettuce, and tomato. A salad was served on the side.

I had no complaints about Boca Skewers. I hope they do better business than the night we were there though. We were the only customers in the restaurant on a Saturday night for the majority of our meal. It seemed the Greek restaurant two stores down in the same strip mall, probably serving similar food, was doing much better business than this place. Too bad, because the food here was really tasty too!

Casa L'Italien in Boca Raton, FL

Casa L'Italien is a little restaurant in the same shopping center as Doris' Italian Market in Boca Raton. Besides pizza (which I hear good things about), I thought the menu was somewhat limited and prices were unusually high for the food served.That being said, I ordered an Eggplant Banzini. This was basically your standard eggplant parmesan hero with the addition of ricotta cheese. It tasted good and was a good sized sub.

Next time I'm down in Boca, I'll have to try the pizza at Casa L'Italien...

Miller's Ale House in Boca Raton, FL

I had dinner at Miller's Ale House in Boca Raton (or Boca Ale House as the sign outside read). Somehow, I had never been to any of the restaurants in this chain so they were new to me. They had a typical menu for this type of place and I ordered the Seafood Medley. This dish consisted of shrimp, scallops, calamari, mussels, and clams tossed with tomatoes, cheese, and pasta. Overall, the seafood was pretty good with everything tender rather than chewy. Unfortunately, the sauce was very bland though and I ended up adding lots of salt.

Although my pasta was good, there were a few things about the restaurant as a whole that seemed a little off. Our waitress seemed to be very distracted and someones salad didn't arrive for a good fifteen minutes after the rest of the table's food was served. I also kept on getting strong whiffs of mothballs. Don't know if it was coming from something in the restaurant or perhaps one of Boca's numerous senior citizens sitting at a nearby table, but regardless, the mothball smell is never a good thing in a restaurant..

Brewzzi in Boca Raton, FL

Brewzzi is a restaurant in Boca Raton that seems liked it has ambitions and potential to become a big chain. Right now they only have two restaurants in that area of South Florida, but the menu and look of the restaurant reminded me of a chain for some reason.

I had the Caribbean Grouper Sandwich. The sandwich was fried in a coconut and corn flake crust and topped with lettuce, tomato, onion, pickles, and tarter sauce. Onion straws were served on the side. Overall, this was a pretty tasty sandwich...

Ms. Cheezious in Miami, FL

I shared a sandwich from Ms. Cheezious at the Boca Raton Gourmet Truck Expo. Since this was a grilled cheese truck, we decided to go classic and get cheddar on rye bread with a side of fries. It was cheesy, greasy, and good!

The Original Pancake House in Boca Raton, FL

I had breakfast/lunch at The Original Pancake House in Boca Raton on a few occasions now. I was under the impression that this is a local South Florida chain, but they are much bigger than that with stores all over the country.

On one visit, I ordered the Greek Omelet filled with spinach and feta. This huge omelet was different from most, with the egg surrounding the fillings being very thick and dough-like. Pancakes were served on the side.


I've had crepes on other visits. I tried both the broccoli & cheddar as well as the spinach & feta. Both were served with hashed browns. Although I had no issues with the fillings, the crepe itself wasn't the best. Both times it was thicker than the normal crepes served in restaurants and was made from a sweet batter. With savory fillings, the sweet batter didn't make the best combination of flavors...


While it is a big breakfast chain and the food isn't the greatest in the world, it's still several steps above Denny's or IHOP. It wouldn't be my first choice, but I would return to The Original Pancake House...

Peace-A-Pizza in Boca Raton, FL

I had lunch at a restaurant called Peace-A-Pizza in Boca Raton. This was a chain that utilized a conveyor belt oven. Normally, conveyor belt pizza ovens equal horrible food, but in this case the pizza here was surprisingly good. Peace-A-Pizza had a huge selection of pizza by the slice, much like what is common up north but almost non-existent in Central Florida. With all the choices, I had finally narrowed it down to two different types of pie...

First up was the Mediterranean Salad Pizza. This slice was very topping heavy with spinach, tomatoes, artichokes, onions, feta cheese, roasted red peppers, and kalamata olives. It was good, but wasn't my favorite of the two slices I tried.

The Pesto, Fresh Mozzarella, Plum Tomatoes and Basil slice was my personal favorite. It had pesto rather than the normal tomato sauce and lots of fresh mozzarella. The crust was thin and crispy, and overall had really good flavors...

I generally don't frequent chain pizza restaurants all that often, but I personally wouldn't mind if a Peace-A-Pizza opened somewhere in the Orlando area. That is, if they could keep their pizza quality up to what was served in their Boca store...

Bagel Wit a Schmear in Boca Raton, FL

The missing H in the name of Bagel Wit A Schmear in Boca Raton bothers me. As I'm writing this, I'm finding it very unsettling to write the word "wit" rather than "with." To prevent myself from dwelling to long on restaurants with funky spellings in their names, I'll talk about food now...

I got a bacon, egg, & cheese sandwich on an everything bagel when I stopped into Bagel Wit A Schmear for breakfast. As far as everything bagels go, this particular specimen could have used some more seeds. They did put a whole lot of cheese and bacon on the sandwich though, so that definitely overpowered the lack of seeds. Overall, this was a good, cheap sandwich coming in at about $3. I'd come back, regardless of the lack of H in the name...

Russian & International Food Market in Boca Raton, FL

I found a place called Russian & International Food Market in the shopping center at the intersection of Glades and Lyons Road on my last trip to Boca Raton. The store was filled with all sorts of interesting Eastern European foods, but what really drew me in was their case of pierogi. For $2.50, I had a huge potato pierogi. Unlike other pierogi I've had elsewhere, this Russian version of the food was more akin to a knish rather than a dumpling.

This huge pierogi had a flaky crust wrapped around a mound of mashed potato. It was quite different from other pierogi that I've had in the past, but was still very tasty...

I also bought this Poppy Seed Danish. Pretty good, although nothing compared to the freshly baked poppy seed rolls I've had in the past...

Brooklyn Boys Pizzeria in Boca Raton, FL

I went searching for a late night dinner upon arriving in Boca Raton on a recent evening. My initial idea of getting take-out Turkish food didn't go over well with the picky eater that I was bringing food back for, so Turkish food suddenly turned into pizza. I found myself at a restaurant called Brooklyn Boys Pizzeria and picked up a few slices to bring back. I love how most South Florida pizzerias serve good NY style pizza by the slice. It seems like just about every pizzeria you go into down there always has slices ready to go, and the slices always seem to have a really good turnover too.

Brooklyn Boys served some good pizza. Nice thin crust, good amount of cheese and sauce, and very tasty. The crust could have been a little crispier, but otherwise I have no complaints!

Dominic's I in Boca Raton, FL

I've always liked Dominic's II in Boca Raton but I had never been to Dominic's I just off the Florida Turnpike. That all changed when I stopped for lunch at the restaurant during some of my travels. They had some good lunch specials going on and I ordered this Spinach Stromboli for $3.50. The stromboli was comparable in size to what other Italian restaurants serve for full price and was overflowing with spinach and cheese. This was definitely a really good deal for lunch...

BagelWorks in Boca Raton, FL

I decided to get breakfast at one of Boca Raton's bagel places and ended up at BagelWorks.

BagelWorks was very popular with Boca's senior citizens. They had a line for tables that queued up along BagelWorks' deli cases. It was kind of like waiting for a ride at Disney while watching a preshow of cream cheese and Kosher smoked fishes and listening to people complain about the wait.

It was eventually our turn to be first in line and were seated. I decided to get a spinach & feta omelet, served with homefries and an everything bagel. The omelet was okay, although the cheese could have been distributed throughout the omelet better. There was lots in the center, but none at the two ends of the omelet. Homefries were good, but the bagel was horrible. At a restaurant called BagelWorks, I was expecting good bagels. Unfortunately, every bagel served to our table had an extremely hard outer crust. So hard that I couldn't bite into the bagel. I couldn't break through the crust with the utensils at the table either. Whatever caused the bagels to have this outer crust was definitely not good. I don't think I'd go back to BagelWorks because of their rock hard bagels. With the majority of the customers in BagelWorks above the age of 65, I wonder how well these bagels fare with dentures?