Orlando Food and Wine Festival

On November 13, I visited the Third Annual Orlando Food & Wine Fest. It happened on a section of Robinson Street next to Lake Eola Park. The festival featured food samplings from a multitude of Orlando's restaurants, cooking demonstrations, and live music.

While I was there The Redcoats were playing Beatles covers.

I watched a cooking demonstration with John Zimmerman of Ruth Chris Steakhouse.

Moving on to the food for sale, Kobe was cooking up their hibachi chicken.

Sushi was also well represented at the festival with Shari Sushi, CRAVE, and this Spicy Tuna Hand Roll from Orlando Sushi House.

There were several restaurants serving ribs. O'Charlie's had big slabs of ribs and The Boheme at the Grand Bohemian Hotel was offering Beef Ribs with Mango BBQ.


Dexter's was serving up pulled pork sandwiches.

Cityfish had huge Jalapeno Hush Puppies and some delicious looking Gumbo.

Champion's Gate was grilling kabobs that smelled great!

The larger restaurant chains were also at the festival. Panera Bread was serving soups and P.F. Chang's had rice and lettuce wraps.


Anatolia Mediterranean Cuisine was one of the booths that I choose to try. I had a gyro, served with tzatziki, hummus, and pita. The lamb in the gyro was very tasty!


I also tasted the food from Caribbean Sunshine Bakery. I tried the Jerk Chicken with a side of rice. The chicken was nice and tender and had a great kick to it. Out of all the food at the festival, it seemed like Caribbean Sunshine Bakery was giving some of the most generous portions.


I had a good time at the Food & Wine Fest! I was able to eat delicious foods, but my only wish was that I could have tried a bit of everything! There was so much to choose from at the festival, there was no way to sample it all! I suppose it's a good excuse to go visit the restaurants represented at the festival and try what I missed...

Vegfest in Orlando, FL

I'm not a vegetarian, but that didn't stop me from ending up at the Central Florida Vegfest in Lock Haven Park to check out the food choices! Most of the local vegetarian/vegan restaurants had booths set up, along with a few more that were new to me. Places to try I suppose...






Was I inspired to eat a vegan diet after my trip to the Vegfest? Later on, I ended up eating dinner at Keller's BBQ if that answers your question...

Palatka Blue Crab Festival 2010

I visited the 2010 Blue Crab Festival in Palatka, FL that happened over Memorial Day weekend. I had the full intention of eating crab prior to going, and it sounded even better when the price of blue crabs at one stand was lowered to $1.

When I went to buy the crabs, I found out they were putting the cooked crabs into plastic bags and handing them over. None of the normal crab eating equipment was supplied at the festival. There were no mallets, crackers, or little forks. If I wanted to eat the crabs as a late lunch/early dinner as I had planned, it would have required the removal of crab meat from the shells with my bare hands. This seemed like far too much work to make it worthwhile, so I gave up on my idea of having crab for dinner.

It was decided that rather than buying the evening's seafood from the festival, we would go to a nearby restaurant instead. Before leaving the festival though, I did buy a tray of these fresh cut potato chips, topped with sriracha. There were no hard shells that needed to be removed on these potatoes, thus making an ideal festival food.

I liked the Blue Crab Festival. It was in a great location along the St. Johns River in historic downtown Palatka. They had plenty of tents set up with people selling their wares and even a small carnival midway, but the food part just confused me. It was a blue crab festival, but yet only a single vendor was selling blue crabs, and they didn't supply the tools normally associated with eating the namesake seafood. Seems a bit strange that you can't physically eat blue crabs on the premises of a blue crab festival...

Zellwood Sweet Corn Festival 2010

I visited the 2010 Zellwood Sweet Corn Festival on a rainy afternoon for all you can eat corn. Needless to say, I had far too much of the butter soaked vegetable while I was there.


I also bought a cup of fresh squeezed lemonade to wash down all the corn...

The Corn Festival was a fun event, but the $15 admission was a little steep in my opinion. Besides the corn, everything else inside the festival had an additional cost. Since multiple ears of corn can be bought in a supermarket for under a dollar, a whole lot of corn had to be eaten to make it worth the money. I guess that $15 allows the bragging rights that I got to eat corn at the Zellwood Corn Festival...

Taste of UCF

I like food tasting events. My personal favorite that I've been to is Taste of Altamonte. You get more food than you can ever possibly eat at these events from restaurants all over the area. The only downside is that many of these food events can get somewhat pricey. New events seem to be starting this year as well, such as Taste of Sanford. Another new one is the Taste of UCF, and the best part was that it was all free!

I started with a Mango Smoothie filled with tapioca balls and jellied coconut from Boba Tease. It was good, especially in the heat!

Peppino's was giving out three different food items. By the time I got to them, all they had left was this baked ziti. I was one of the last one to be served before they ran out of this too. They were all out probably twenty minutes after the event started. The people at this booth wouldn't make me want to eat at their restaurant either. The person serving the food was chain smoking cigarette after cigarette. I'm sure some of those ashes got onto the food.

A barbeque caterer somehow connected to Wackadoo's was giving out these pulled pork sandwiches:

Random cotton candy from an unknown source. This is all I got before the machine broke.

Qdoba Chicken Burrito Bowl:

Domino's served Buffalo Chicken Pizza. I would never think of getting pizza with these toppings, but it was better than I expected. I liked it better than Domino's plain cheese pizzas.

There were a few other food vendors as well, but they all seemed to run out of food before I got to them. Silver Mine Subs is one of these restaurants that comes to mind.

Taste of UCF was good for a free lunch, but it can't compete with Taste of Altamonte!

Greek Food in Uptown Altamonte

Lots of art shows/craft fairs were going on this past weekend. There's the Longwood Crafts Fair. Deland had some sort of similar event, and Altamonte Springs had the Art on the Boulevard in Uptown Altamonte Festival of the Arts event. I walked around this art show the day after I walked around Longwood's event. I liked the selection of art being sold here much better than what Longwood had, but don't forget it's all about the food.

Unlike Longwood, I actually ate something in Uptown Altamonte. I had a chicken gyro from the Sparta Greek Food stand. It was tasty, with chicken, lettuce, tomato, onions, peppers, and tzatziki, all wrapped in a pita. My only complaint was that the chicken was a little burnt in spots, but otherwise I had no complaints. I ate the gyro sitting on bleachers overlooking the lake in Cranes Roost Park...

Food @ the Longwood Arts & Crafts Festival

I went to the Longwood Arts & Crafts Festival on November 22, 2008. It was a good time walking around Downtown Longwood, looking at the old houses and what people were trying to sell. Much of it was actual handmade arts/crafts, while a lot was also mass produced junk made in China that people were trying to pass off as their own. This is a food blog though, and that's why I took lots of pictures of the food stands at the festival. The food always seems to be very photogenic at events like this, and although my visit to the festival involved no actual eating of the food being sold, I'm posting the pictures of the food stands anyway.