Chick-fil-a Express at UCF

The very second post here on Watch Me Eat consisted of my thoughts on a Chick-fil-a Chicken Sandwich. Since then, a few people have posted comments and I've received several emails of people pointing out how to improve this sandwich or what I should order at Chick-fil-a instead. I received a coupon for another free Chick-fil-a Chicken Sandwich, so I decided to give them another try. I went to the Chick-fil-a Express at UCF and this time got some sauces to go with the sandwich. Adding sauces to the somewhat dry fried chicken on a bun with a pickle was somewhat of an improvement, but the sandwich still does nothing for me. If it wasn't free, I definitely would be ordering something else from Chick-fil-a. I've been told the grilled chicken sandwich is a whole lot better than this.

Still, I really don't get the appeal of Chick-fil-a. It seems every Chick-fil-a I pass is always crowded, but I have tried nothing there that I like. Except for their waffle fries. Chick-fil-a does make good waffle fries.

Gatorland's Gator Hallow

I went to Gatorland for their Gator Hallow Halloween event. Since no visit to an alligator farm would be complete without tasting gator meat, I ordered some Fried Gator Nuggets from the snack bar before tour left (it turned out Gatorland doesn't actually raise alligators for meat). I really liked the deep fried alligator, especially with hot sauce. The saying goes that gator tastes like chicken, but the truth is that it really does. In terms of taste, consistency, and look, gator tail and chicken does look a whole lot alike. Not too surprising though since reptiles and poultry aren't that far off. Chickens are a close living relative to the Tyrannosaurus Rex...

Once I finished eating my alligator, the tour started. While I was disappointed by Halloween Horror Nights at Universal this year, I was surprising pleased with Gator Hallow. For $10, they gave a really entertaining tour that was really well done. Having a tour with different guides along the way to move the story along definitely adds something to the experience that you don't get in the standard Halloween maze where you just wander through while people jump out and shout boo. Gatorland had plenty of hoards of zombies, aliens, bigfoot, and of course, gators...


I'd gladly do Gator Hallow again next year...

Pepper Market at the Coronado Springs Hotel

I went to eat dinner at the Coronado Springs Hotel in Walt Disney World. I walked through the hotel and reached a restaurant called The Pepper Market.


There were some animals baked out of bread outside of the restaurant. Here is a turtle and an alligator.

The restaurant is set up where a hostess brings you to a table, and a waiter gets your drinks. Everyone is then given a card which is taken to various food counters and is stamped with whatever is ordered. There are various counters in the restaurant, including Mexican, Italian, American, Asian, and dessert. On this visit to the restaurant, I decided to go with Curry Chicken with Pineapple from the Asian counter. The only problem was that nobody was working at this counter. I went over to the Italian counter and asked the employee working there to get someone to make me food. He acted surprised and asked me "You want that Oriental Food?" as if customers ordering from that particular counter was a rare occasion. When someone finally came over to cook my food, the worker seemed really annoyed that he actually had to do his job. As he begrudgingly cooked my food, he added pre-cooked fried chicken, pineapple, carrots, peppers, sauce, and other various ingredients into his wok, and then served all of this over steamed rice.

My biggest complaint with the meal was the actual chicken. I wasn't expecting fried chicken, but I can't complain if that's the way they do it. The problem was rather than using white meat chicken, they seemed to use cheap chicken parts. I saw some dark meat. I saw some black areas. As I was eating, there was occasionally an unedible hard piece in the chicken. I really didn't want to know what parts of the chicken were served, and just swallowed it down. For the $15 that the Pepper Market charged for this rather small portion, I want white meat. A chicken breast would be nice, not the leftovers. Maybe they figured that since the chicken is fried, nobody would notice what the meat looked like under the batter.

I also noticed that overall, the menu of this restaurant changed very much since my past visit. Prices went way up, while the menu size and portions went way down. The Mexican counter seemed to be their showcase in the past (makes sense in a Mexican themed hotel), with lots of options, huge portions, and it all tasted good. On this visit, the Mexican menu was down to only two items. I saw someone ordering the fajitas, which cost a few dollars more than my chicken, and it included one tortilla filled with meat and peppers. The quesadilla wasn't much better.

The Pepper Market made some changes for the worst, and I don't think I'll be returning anytime soon.

After eating, I took a walk around the hotel and saw the duck topiarys and the swimming pool surrounding a Mayan pyramid.

B.B. King's Blues Club at Pointe Orlando

B.B. King's Blues Club is one of the newer restaurants in the Pointe Orlando Mall on International Drive in Orlando, FL. When someone mentioned that they wanted to give the restaurant a try, I pulled out a coupon book that I recently acquired and found this:

We made our way into the touristy section of Orlando and reached the mall, and then followed the signs and paintings of Blues musicians into the restaurant.



When we walked in, the restaurant was mostly empty at about 5:45 on a Saturday night. I ordered a Catfish Po Boy as well as the free fried pickle appetizer. Not long after ordering, a band started playing up on stage.

The pickles were soon served, and the portion was enormous. If I were to estimate, they probably used at least three average sized cucumbers to make all of these fried pickles. This was my first experience eating fried pickles, and I don't know what to think of them. I love pickles, but deep frying them is just weird. They tasted okay, but I'll take normal un-fried pickles over these any day. I suppose the weirdness of deep fried pickles is probably similar to deep fried pizza.

My Catfish Po Boy followed not long after the pickles. The sandwich consisted of fried catfish, lettuce, tomato, tar tar sauce (how they spelled it), and French fries. It all tasted okay, but was nothing all that great. Overall, the entire meal consisted of way too much fried food. Everything was fried, starting with the appetizer to the sandwich. I'm not used to eating like that.

While paying, there was some issues with the check, and nobody seemed to be able to explain the problem, so make sure you look twice on what you're paying while eating here.

On a trip that took me to Memphis, TN a few years ago, I encountered another B.B. King's Blues Club (I didn't eat there). At that location, they had someone outside of the restaurant who was probably the dining equivalent of a sideshow barker. The Orlando location could probably use someone like this to lure in customers. Although the restaurant started to fill up later on, it still didn't seem like enough people. Perhaps it's better crowd later on in the night.

Osaka in Lake Mary, FL

I ate at the Osaka Japanese Steakhouse in Lake Mary, FL. I had the Hibachi Chicken, which started out with some soup and salad. They ruin that soup in my opinion by putting all of those dried Chinese noodles in it.

The chef soon came out and cooked at the table, serving up mixed vegetables, fried rice, noodles, and the chicken. It was tasty, and it was much more reasonably priced compared to the nearby Kobe or Yokohama.

Downtown Disney's Planet Hollywood

I ate at Planet Hollywood in Downtown Disney on January 30, 2008. The restaurant at Walt Disney World is the biggest Planet Hollywood that I've seen. Compared to the Planet Hollywood in Myrtle Beach, this restaurant is humongous. The whole restaurant is housed inside of a giant 5-floored globe filled with tables and lots of movie props. Not only is this Planet Hollywood larger than Myrtle Beach's restaurant, it also has a larger menu, and everything costs a few dollars more.

My meal was started with an appetizer of Chicken Crunch. It was basically fried chicken strips dipped into a sweet batter. Sweet and chicken don't go together in my opinion.

For the main course, I had the Garlic Shrimp. This consisted of soba noodles topped with shrimp, sugar snap peas, onions, peppers, garlic, and ginger in a slightly spicy sauce. I liked it, but at a price of $19.99, I didn't feel it was the best value for the food given. A few hours after I ate the meal was a problem though. Something in the Garlic Shrimp caused me to repeatedly burp out a horrible smell that reminded me of salami, meatballs, and Pepsi, all combined into one foul smelling gas. Beware...


After eating, I took the steps down from my 5th floor table and looked at some of the movie props. Before heading downstairs, this was my view from where I sat:

And here are some of the movie props I took pictures of. Here's a witch from Hocus Pocus:

Woody from Toy Story:

A giant moth from the original Dr. Dolittle:

A robot from some science fiction movie that I don't recognize:

One of the buildings from The Nightmare Before Christmas. Much of the sets and puppets from this movie used to be on display at MGM Studios. Rumor is that when Disney decided to update their exhibit, a few of their minimum wage employees got very lucky when they found a slew of Jack Skeleton puppets and most of Halloweentown in a dumpster somewhere on Disney property. Imagine what that stuff would go for on ebay...

And then there was this saw blade from a David Copperfield TV Special:


And finally, in the pond outside of Planet Hollywood was The Jenny from Forrest Gump:

Bayridge Sushi Shrimp Tempura Bento Box

Last time I ate at Bayridge Sushi in Longwood, FL, I ate their Salmon Lunch Bento Box. I returned to the restaurant, and this time I ordered a Shrimp Tempura Lunch Bento Box. Miso soup and salad came out first, both of which were good. The box soon followed and consisted of shrimp and vegetables fried in tempura batter, California Roll, dumplings, rice, pineapple chunks, and a maraschino cherry. The tempura itself tasted okay, but I don't eat deep fried food that often, so fried taste got to be a bit much by the time I finished the shrimp and vegetables. Deep fried broccoli is a bit strange to me though. It kind of defeats the purpose by taking something healthy and sending it to the other side of the healthy spectrum.