Boteco in Orlando, FL

Boteco is a Brazilian restaurant along International Drive, located right across the street from Festival Bay. Their menu wasn't strictly Brazilian food, with many items that seemed more appropriate for an Italian restaurant. This was also the first Brazilian restaurant I've visited with a sushi bar. 

I ordered the Breaded Fish with Shrimp Sauce. The menu described this as fried breaded fish topped with shrimp tomato sauce and peas served with mashed potatoes and the vegetable of the day. When I got my food, the shrimp sauce was served separate from the fish in it's own bowl. It was more like a shrimp soup, with lots of shrimp floating with peas in a tomato based broth. I started by pouring some of this over the fish, but then ended up eating them separately. The huge piece of fish was nice and moist in a tasty breading. Mashed potatoes were good, and the vegetable of the day turned out to be slices of grilled zucchini and yellow squash. Everything I tried at Boteco was tasty and I'd return...

The After Party Food Truck in Orlando, FL

It seems like I've been on a bit of a kick of trying the International Drive food trucks lately. Not long after I tried the Kosher on Wheels truck, I visited The After Party.

The After Party parks in a strip mall at the intersection of International and Carrier Drive, not far from Magical Midway. As implied by the name, The After Party opens in the evenings and serves food until the early morning hours. This truck apparently serves Brazilian style hamburgers and other sandwiches. Their logo on the side of the truck featured a picture of a burger and the tagline Best Sandwiches in Town. I was about to find out if that was true.

I ordered a sandwich called the Chicken Xtravaganza. This consisted of a huge variety of ingredients, including shredded chicken, ham, sausage, cheese, fried egg, lettuce, tomato, onions, corn, peas, and potato sticks. I could be forgetting some of the components of this sandwich too. With everything on this sandwich, it definitely lived up to the xtravaganza name. More importantly, it was very tasty as well. I would never think to put peas or corn on a sandwich but it definitely worked. I will definitely return to The After Party at some point to try some more of their sandwiches...

My visit to The After Party reminded me once again how much fun dining at random food trucks at the side of the road can be. Food truck events are one thing, but when there's just one truck, all by its self, the experience is very different and very enjoyable...

Camila's Restaurant Superbuffet in Orlando, FL

I decided to try some Brazilian food after a visit to one of the International Drive outlet malls. Not really knowing what to expect, I turned into Camila's Restaurant before realizing that it was a buffet. I had a feeling this would be very different from Texas de Brazil up the street...

The restaurant was pretty quiet when we first arrived, but about half-way through the meal, buses started to pull up and I found out where you are taken to eat if you're part of a Brazilian tour group. At that point, every table was filled with Portuguese speaking people. That is, with the exception of us and the Japanese tourist seated next to us (they were taking pictures of their food- my type of people).

I liked the food. I'm not going to try and identify it all since I'm no expert on Brazilian food, but I'll do the best I can. On my trip to the buffet, I tried some soup, noodles, and a potato dish.

My second plate included black beans and rice, beef, some sort of fish, and more of the potato dish from the previous plate.

Trip number three to the buffet was for dessert. I had a sort of pudding/flan type of dessert...

I did enjoy the food at Camila's. It was definitely different compared to most of the other I-Drive buffets and way cheaper than the churrascaria style Brazilian buffets. Still, I don't know if I'd return due to the tour groups. Before the buses pulled up, eating here was nice and pleasant. Once they showed up though and people started pouring in by the hundreds, getting food from the buffet was much more of a chore, especially since there was suddenly huge lines for buffet tables that were previously empty. If you do decide to try this place, make sure you get there before the tour groups...

Lunch @ Orlando's Texas de Brazil

I ate lunch at Texas de Brazil on International Drive in Orlando, FL. Texas de Brazil is a Brazilian Churrascaria where waiters come around and slice various meats off of swords onto your plate.

I started at the salad bar. Besides from the normal salad, they had lots of good stuff like various cheeses, olives, crab cakes, meats, tabouli, and soups. They also had some really interesting stuff that I had never seen before such as caper berries (left side of the plate between the pasta and chorizo). Capers are one of my favorite salty foods, so I really liked these. Apparently normal capers sold in supermarkets are immature when they are pickled. If they continue to grow, they become caper berries, which were served here. It was a good salad bar, although it seemed like they had room to serve twice as many items with the amount of space between each dish. Maybe that's for dinner (not that I'm complaining).

I finished my salad and returned to my table to get served meat on swords. My favorite choices were the chicken wrapped in bacon, the sausages, pork ribs, and sliced pork. I'm not a big fan of beef, and when it's not well done, I get grossed out by the blood dripping out of what I am about to eat. It seemed like the majority of the steak and beef served wasn't cooked to my liking, and I only got one piece that was close to being cooked throughly. I have tried a Portuguese Churrascaria in the past, and it seemed all of the meat was automatically cooked to well done, including the steak. I wish they at least came around with some skewers of cooked steak here to give you a choice on how well the meat was cooked. With the exception of the steak being served dripping in blood, I liked everything else. I'd go again...