California Tortilla in Washington DC

Another Washington DC restaurant. I ended up at a Mexican chain called California Tortilla for this meal. I ordered the Havana Chicken Burrito. As described by their menu, this was flame-grilled mesquite chicken, black beans, our spicy low-fat Havana sauce (with a touch of lime), Mexican rice, romaine lettuce, and fresh salsa. As far as fast food burritos go, this was tasty but nothing exceptional. I enjoyed the burrito but it was forgettable as to it wasn't anything I couldn't get at countless other burrito places. I ordered the combo, meaning the burrito came with tortilla chips and queso. 

Rocco's Tacos in West Palm Beach, FL

I was in West Palm Beach and had dinner at a restaurant called Rocco's Tacos. I didn't realize this was a chain before eating there, but they have several locations throughout Florida with one opening soon on Sand Lake Road in Orlando. The inside of this Mexican restaurant looked pretty nifty with all sorts of cool metal lights and old brick walls. It was also very loud and very cramped, with hardly any room between tables.

We started with chips and salsa. It sort of rubs me the wrong way when Mexican restaurants charge extra for chips and salsa when so many other restaurants include them in the price. Rocco's had higher prices than most other Mexican restaurants and they still charged extra for the chips. That being said, the chips were pretty tasty. They were topped with some sort of seasoning that made them really flavorful, even without the salsa. Dipped in the salsa, they were only made better.

I had the Enchiladas Rojos for my dinner. This consisted of two corn tortillas filled with pulled pork and topped with cheese and a guajillo chile sauce. Refried beans and rice were served on the side. I found the enchiladas to be very average. The pork was a little dry and tasted very bland. The sauce seemed to provide all the flavor in the enchiladas. They tasted okay, but weren't anything worth going out of my way to return for. At $13, they were also kind of pricey for very typical enchiladas.

Rocco's Tacos seemed to be an upscale Mexican restaurant that served basically the same food that you could get at any other dumpy Mexican restaurant. The only big differences seemed to be higher prices and fancy lighting fixtures. Based on the amount of people in Rocco's though, it seems like people really like them. I hope it isn't just because of those lights...

Mamacita's Mexican Bar & Grill in Hollywood, FL

On a cold winter evening, I made my way to the boardwalk in Hollywood, FL to find dinner. After a short walk, the scary mannequin outside of Mamacita's Mexican Bar & Grill drew me in for some food.

Like most meals at Mexican restaurants, tortilla chips and salsa came first. The salsa had a nice kick to it...

I ordered the Torta al Pastor for my meal. Mexican tortas are something I was completely unaware of until a few months ago. Once I was conscious of tortas though, I've been coming across them everywhere and it was about time that I finally try one of these Mexican sandwiches. The Torta al Pastor was filled with spicy pork, sliced avocado, lettuce, tomato, and mayonnaise. Technically, it was the typical fillings found in a taco (except the mayonnaise) with a more substantial baked good holding everything together. I had nothing bad to say about the sandwich. It was cheap, filling, and delicious. The ocean view didn't hurt either.

Jetblue Snacks

I recently flew up to Syracuse on Jetblue. They seem to be one of the few airlines that still give any sort of snacks during their flights. Giving a nice choice of snacks and their willingness to give seconds on the food is only one of the reasons that makes Jetblue my favorite airline!

Blue potato chips and Dunkin Donuts tea.

Linden's chocolate chip cookies!


Coming up next: Food in the JFK Jetblue Terminal!

Pipo's Cafe in Lakeland, FL

I ate lunch at a Cuban restaurant in Downtown Lakeland called Pipo's Cafe.
I ordered their lunch special that included a half sandwich, rice and beans, plantain chips, and iced tea. For my sandwich, I chose a classic Cuban sandwich, or the Cuban "The Real Deal" as they called it. In addition to the normal roast pork and ham, there was salami and mortadella on this Cuban sandwich. The pork was topped with cheese, pickles, and mustard, and then pressed. The sandwich was a little dry, but was still pretty good.

I got the impression that Pipo's Cafe was part of a large, franchised chain from the way it looked on the inside. After checking for other locations on their website, it turned out they are a local chain and aren't that big with only four stores in the Tampa area. Interesting...

Black & Brew in Lakeland, FL

I ate lunch at the Black & Brew Coffee House in Lakeland, FL. I'm not always happy with the food from coffee shops, but I enjoyed my sandwich at Black & Brew. The restaurant is right in the middle of Downtown with a nice view of Munn Park across the street. I ordered the Spicy Thai Peanut Panini. The sandwich consisted of chicken, red peppers, green onions, carrots, and a side of peanut sauce. It also came with a bag of salt and vinegar potato chips and a pickle. The sandwich was made fresh and tasted good. I had no complaints!

Trinity in Floral Park, NY

The original plan was to eat dinner at a diner, but after discussing how expensive most diners on Long Island became, we decided to try something new and go to a nicer restaurant (hopefully in the same price range). We ended up at a good Irish Pub in Floral Park, NY called Trinity.

The meal started out with a basket of Irish Soda Bread, crackers, and really good scones. Someone at the table ordered a beer, and somehow they put this clover design in the beer head. I've never seen anything like this in beer and have no idea how it's made.

I ordered Fish & Chips for my meal. I normally don't go for the fried fish, but this was pretty good. Drenching everything on the plate with lemon juice and malt vinegar makes it so much better though!

Someone else at the table ordered a Chicken Pot Pie. I traded a piece of fish for half of the pie and really liked it. It was one of the best chicken pot pies that I have eaten in a long time.

Another person at the table ordered Bangers and Mash. They didn't finish, so I tried one of the leftover sausages. It had a somewhat unique taste that I couldn't quite place, but was still good. Not as good as the Chicken Pot Pie though.

I really enjoyed Trinity and I'm glad I found it. It was way better than a diner!

Jerk Chicken Sandwich from Millie's Jamaican Cafe

I had lunch at Millie's Jamaican Cafe in Orlando near UCF. I had a Jerk Chicken sandwich that consisted of chicken, lettuce, and cheese on a roll. The spicy jerk chicken on the sandwich was really good, but it wasn't easy eating. There were still some bones in the chicken, so it wasn't exactly conducive to eating as one would normally eat a sandwich. Every few bites I had to spit out some bones. If I wasn't eating a sandwich and had just ordered plain jerk chicken, I wouldn't have issues with the bones, but sandwiches shouldn't be filled with non-edible parts.



The sandwich tasted really good, but the bones in a sandwich were sort of a turn off. I probably would return to Millie's, but I won't be getting a sandwich next time.

Weekend Trip: The Official Snack of Jetblue at 35000 Feet

After my early breakfast at Dunkin Donuts, I arrived at the Orlando International Airport, went through security, rode the people mover, and boarded my flight with no problems.

After about an hour of flying, somewhere over North Carolina or Virginia, snacks were served while at a height of 35,522 feet and a speed of 583 mph.

I asked for orange juice as my beverage. I received a can of Welch's Orange Fusion drink which was a mix of orange, apple, and pineapple juice. It wasn't the orange juice that I was expecting, but it's no big deal. For the food item, I decided to go with the Official Snack of JetBlue and got Terra Blues Potato Chips. The chips were actually made from blue potatoes and tasted halfway between a normal potato chip and a sweet potato chips.


I had my snack and I had my window seat, so I was happy.

Soon enough the plane landed in JFK, and after getting yelled at by another passenger sitting in the row who was accusing us of sticking gum on her seat while she used the restroom, I was ready for lunch.

Habanero's Mexican Grill

I ate at Habanero's Mexican Grill in Casselberry, FL. The meal started with chips and salsa. I liked how they gave everyone their own individual bowl of salsa with a pitcher of salsa on the table for refills. This way, each person at the table could double dip to their hearts content.

For my dinner, I ordered the Enchiladas Supreme. This included four enchiladas, each with a different filling. One was filled with refried beans, another was cheese, the third was beef, and the final enchilada was filled with shredded chicken and peppers. The four enchiladas were topped with sauce, lettuce, tomato, and sour cream. I could have done without the beef enchilada, but I liked the other three.

My only complaint was that it would have been nice if they served the enchiladas with a side of rice or beans like other Mexican restaurants often do.

Chicken & Eggplant from Imperial Dynasty

I ate at Imperial Dynasty in Longwood, FL for lunch. I ordered the Chicken & Eggplant with Garlic Sauce lunch special. It came with the chicken, rice, and a choice of a side.

Fried noodles were served first.

They were followed by the side. I went with some Wonton soup. In the past, I've always been happy with the soup from Imperial Dynasty, but on this visit I found it to be way too salty.

The soup was followed with the main dish. The Chicken & Eggplant was pretty much what the menu described it to be. There was lots of chicken and lots of Chinese eggplant, and not much else. There was a side of brown rice, but I felt the meal needed more variety. There was way too much of the same thing, and it would have been better if there was some other types of vegetables in with the chicken and eggplant. Just something to mix up the monotony of the meal a bit.

It did taste good though, so I guess that's all that matters for the most part.


Like Sanford's China Wok, Imperial Dynasty also had posters hanging up to be one of the Top 100 Chinese Restaurants. The 2008 contest is over, it looks like Imperial Dynasty made it into the top 100 on the winners list. I don't see China Wok...

Sterlings Family Restaurant in Astor, FL

I ate at Sterlings Family Restaurant in Astor, FL. I was eating with some people who had eaten at this restaurant in the past and thought it was so good, they had to go for an hour long car trip just to eat here again.

When I was looking at the menu, Sterlings had their normal menu, as well as an inserted Mexican menu. Something told me that I should have ordered some Mexican food, but the catfish on the normal menu was also tempting me. The menu didn't specify if the fish was grilled or fried, so that was going to be my decision maker between that or enchiladas. The fish normally came fried, but the waitress offered to have it grilled, so I agreed.

Tortilla chips, salsa, salad, and rolls came out first.



And then the main courses were served, except for my catfish. It finally came out about ten minutes later, and was rather sad looking. It was just two fillets sitting alone on a plate, and they were completely tasteless. If they put any type of seasoning on the fish, it wasn't enough.

I should have gone with the enchiladas. Someone else ordered a chicken burrito, and it looked like the best meal to be served to our table.

Hard Rock Park

While traveling up the East Coast of the United States, I made a stop in Myrtle Beach, SC. While I was here, I went to the recently opened Hard Rock Park. It's a small theme park, but the few attractions that the park has are pretty good. This is a food blog, but before getting to the food, I'm going to post some pictures and thoughts about the park.

Here's the Hard Rock Park Parking Lot on a Thursday morning during the summer. There were probably twenty cars in the parking lot when I got there. When I left later in the afternoon, there may have been about a hundred, but that may be pushing it.

The front entrance to the park. It's very reminiscent of the entrances to both of Universal's Orlando parks. It was here that the signs started showing up announcing that the park is closing at 11:00 PM rather than the 1:00 AM that was advertised everywhere else, including the Hard Rock website and the park maps handed out that day. They really should update those things...

Once inside the entrance, you see some more Universal similarities with this bridge with an entry and exit quote. Only a bit like Islands of Adventure? The entry quote was by Nirvana and the exit was The Beatles. The underside of the bridge had a rock & roll themed recreation of Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel ceiling...



After passing under the bridge, you walk along a giant guitar paved into the sidewalk until you reach the lake. Across the lake is the park's centerpiece, the giant Gibson Guitar. Notice the guy standing on the top of the roller coaster's lift in the background. That's an obvious sign that it's not open for riders at the moment.

The main attraction in the park seemed to be the Led Zeppelin Roller Coaster. It was a good ride, but nothing too exceptional. To start out, the preshow that you need to sit through doesn't quite work. They show you some Led Zeppelin interviews and concert footage, and then are free to board the ride. The problem with the preshow is that nothing really happens in it, and I found it quite boring, especially when riding a second time. With the preshow, they should have added a story to go along with the ride (think Rockin Roller Coaster) rather than concert footage. Building some sort of tension in the show would have been a good thing to get you excited about getting on the ride, but the only thing I was left wondering was when the preshow would be over.

The music playing along with the ride was nice, but I didn't feel it really added too much. The first drop was very nice, but after that the coaster seemed to get a bit generic. The whole sequence of events that happened on the ride didn't feel like anything original. I actually thought the first half of the ride was quite similar to Sea World's Kracken. Once hitting the brakes halfway through the ride, the coaster seemed to fizzle out, and nothing much happened worth noting between there and returning to the station. Like I said, it was enjoyable to ride, but wasn't a ride that will stand out when compared to other roller coasters.

One last comment about the ride that I have is about the Zeppelin that the station is located in. They build a big blimp building to go along with the ride, but the problem is that you can't really see enough of the building from inside of the park to really tell what it was. King of a waste in my opinion...



The next big ride I came to was the Maximum RPM roller coaster. It was located in the British Invasion area of the park, and when I got there I found that it wasn't open yet for the day. I am guessing because of the lack of people in the park, they didn't open this ride up until noon. I returned later and gave it a ride. It's a really unique roller coaster, with it's ferris wheel lift. The whole lifting process was the best part of the ride in my opinion, watching the tracks lock into place, and all of that cool stuff. The ride itself was way too short, and then they slowed it down with brakes halfway through the very short ride. There was music playing on here as well, but again, I didn't find it did much for the ride. It was definitly a fun ride, but it needed to be longer.



The next big ride was Moody Blues: Nights in White Satin- The Trip. This was the park's only dark ride, built inside of a former shopping mall. You walk into the building, and you are immediately handed 3D Glasses. Unlike most parks where you are told not to wear your glasses until seated, here you were encouraged to wear them all the way through the line. The whole building was set up like a 3D Haunted House with black-light lit walls causing the brighter colors to pop out at you. Everyone walked through a nice vortex tunnel and then arrived at the ride vehicles. Since the park was so empty, it seemed the ride operators were only filling every fourth train, which actually took some time. I'm not entirely sure of my opinion of the ride itself, but I think I liked it. The ride consisted almost entirely of moving past more black-light lit objects, some moving, and some stationary. There were some other scenes past movies, but there wasn't much else. There were no animatronics or anything of the sort on the ride. There wasn't much of a story, besides from having something similar to a drug induced hallucination. But it was a dark ride, and I like dark rides. I have to give Hard Rock credit for attempting a ride like this, even if it didn't come out perfect...




The Hard Rock had a carousel as well. Nothing special actually. I want to know why they required EVERY rider, even the adults to wear seat belts on the horses. They even went around to make sure everyone was wearing theirs before starting the ride. I can't think of any other carousel anywhere that makes everyone wear a seatbelt. Yes to the kids, but not the adults as well...



Slippery When Wet was the next coaster I rode here. This was another ride that didn't open until later in the afternoon. It's a nice little coaster and is also pretty unique. I've never seen this type of ride before, but apparently they have been around for a while. Small cars of 4 riders are lifted up a vertical lift and go around a track through various water features. It seemed the people in the forward facing seats got very wet, while the people in the back maybe got a slight spray. It was a cool little ride...


The last major ride in the park was The Eagles: Life in the Fast Lane Roller Coaster. This was a small mine-train roller coaster. Out of all of the coasters in the park, this was my least favorite. It was bumpy, and nothing much happened on it worth noting. It lacked theming that can make mediocre mine-trains good, so that didn't help much either. At the end of the ride a statue burst into flames, but that was about it. The name "Life in the Fast Lane" really didn't seem to match this rather slow coaster either.



Throughout the park, there was a whole bunch of details that were all pretty cool. I found them to be mostly random and put wherever they were without much reason, but they were still pretty cool. The ones that did have reason were even better...










I think I may have gotten carried away with writing about Hard Rock Park because this is a blog about eating. Time to get back to the focus. While I was there, I looked at a few of the restaurants in the park. Most of them seemed to have standard theme park food, with slight variations at each to meet the theme of the restaurant. The restaurant I ate at was their Carnaby Street Cafe.


It was in the British Invasion section of the park, so the Hard Rock served their version of British food here along with the standard food that was at every other restaurant. Going with the unique food to the restaurant, I tried the Fish & Chips and the Bangers & Mash. The fish wasn't all that great, but at least it was recognizable as an actual fish rather than a fish stick type product. The Bangers & Mash was the better of the two dishes with sausages served over mashed potatoes, all topped with gravy.





Hard Rock Park was a nice place, but I foresee problems in the future really soon for them. There definitely wasn't enough people in the park for them to be making a large profit for the day, or even breaking even. My main problem was that there really wasn't enough to do there for the price charged. Admission was $45, and that is really for four good rides and a couple of shows. The whole park could have been seen in a few hours if rushed (and if everything was open in the morning). Hard Rock definitely needs to add another large attraction (and not necessarily a coaster) sometime in the near future, or I don't see them lasting more than another year or two.

UPDATE: It turned out my predictions were correct and the Hard Rock Park has since closed since I originally wrote this post. The future for the park seems to be uncertain at this point on whether they will reopen again. The park is up for sale, but there were no bidders on the park in it's entirety. The park may be split up and have it's ride sold off one by one, or there is always a chance that someone will take over and operate it with or without the Hard Rock name.