Firebirds Wood Fired Grill in Orlando, FL

I received an email offering a meal at a new restaurant in Orlando called Firebirds Wood Fired Grill while they trained their staff. The restaurant is located on Mills in the new Fresh Market shopping center. This appears to be a good sized chain from Firebird's website, but this is their only location in Florida. I decided to take Firebirds up on their offer and recently dined at the restaurant for lunch. The meal started out with bread:

We had an appetizer of Ranch Rings. These were onion rings breaded in panko served with a garlic ranch dressing. I liked the onion ring structure that was constructed on the plate.

I ordered the Salmon Encrusted Salmon as my main course. The fish was topped with mustard aioli, served with Parmesan mashed potatoes and fried spinach. I liked the salmon. The mustard aioli was spicy which was a bit unexpected. Chains seem like they tend to avoid this level of spice, especially when unmarked on the menu. I could see others objecting to the heat, but I liked the spiciness. The fried spinach was also interesting. It was my first time trying crunchy, oil-drenched spinach. It wasn't bad, but I don't think I'd go out of my way to have fried spinach again.

My dining companion tried the Filet Mignon. It came wrapped in bacon and was served with steak fries.

For dessert, we tried the Big Daddy Chocolate Cake. It came with a bowl of vanilla ice cream.

We also tried the Creme Brulée Cheesecake. I preferred this out of the two cakes that were sampled.

I enjoyed my meal at Firebirds Wood Fired Grill. I can't really give too much of an opinion since everyone working in the restaurant was being trained, but I didn't have any complaints!

Bruster's Ice Cream in Lake Mary, FL

Bruster's Ice Cream gives some of the biggest servings of ice cream in Central Florida. This is a so called single scoop of Blackberry Cheesecake in a waffle cone from the Bruster's in Lake Mary. I couldn't finish the cone. It was probably at least a pound of ice cream, which is a good thing if you want to split the dessert into several servings, but not so good if it's 96°F outside and the ice cream melts all over before you get half way through. They do have some of the tastiest ice cream out of the Central Florida chains regardless, so how can I really complain?

Cone Heads South in Deland, FL

Cone Heads South is a small ice cream shop in downtown Deland. I recently gave them a try while driving though the town.

I had a small cup of strawberry cheesecake ice cream. I'm assuming they didn't have any small cups left since they put my serving of ice cream into a large cup, making the portion look very small. Regardless, the ice cream was tasty and actually tasted like cheesecake. Sometimes I've ordered cheesecake flavored ice cream elsewhere and it just tastes like vanilla, so this gives Cone Heads a few points in my book...

T.G.I. Friday's in Orlando, FL (International Drive)

At about 12:45 am, I found myself at the T.G.I. Friday's on International Drive for a very late dinner (or really early breakfast).

Luckily, their kitchen was still open. I decided to go with one of the three course meals that they offered. For my appetizer, I had the Pot Stickers. These pork dumplings were served on a long, rectangular plate over a bed of cabbage. I really wasn't sure what to expect since I was ordering Chinese food from a big chain, but these pot stickers were surprisingly tasty. For an appetizer in a three course meal, it was a lot of food as well. I could have stopped eating after this...

For the main course, I had the Key West Shrimp. It came with two skewers of about six blackened shrimp each. A pile of broccoli was served on the side. The shrimp were tasty, but the broccoli was cold and overcooked. I think I received the last batch of broccoli of the day, since soon after delivering the food, the waiter had announced the kitchen had closed.

I had cheesecake for dessert. The slice of cake was quite large, consisting of about half cheesecake and half frosting with a graham cracker crust. It was good, but at this point I really didn't feel like eating more food. Like I said earlier, I was sort of full from the appetizer, so I was really full when dessert came.

T.G.I. Friday's is a very strange chain. Normally, chains are really consistent from one location to another, but I've found Friday's has huge quality differences between it's stores. Sometimes the service and food in certain stores are just plain horrible, and on return visits to that location, nothing has improved. Then other Friday's, like this location, seem to have consistently good service and the food is always up to par with what I've come to expect for food from T.G.I. Friday's. I really can't think of any other national chain like this that differs so much from store to store. Very strange...

Strawberry Cheesecake Waffle Cone from Deltona Ice Cream

I had a huge scoop of Strawberry Cheesecake ice cream in a waffle cone from Deltona Ice Cream. Apparently the ice cream is homemade and getting it in a waffle cone results in a giant portion.

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Publix Cheesecake

This is a chocolate covered cheesecake that came from the bakery in the Publix Supermarket in Lake Mary, FL (on Lake Mary Blvd). The cheesecake itself was good, but the chocolate covering wasn't that good. Since the cake was refrigerated, the chocolate got nice and hard. This didn't work too well since cutting the first slice of cake caused the hard chocolate to shatter on the whole cake. At the same time, the chocolate pieces pushed down into the cheesecake, squishing and crumbling the good part! It was tasty though.