Earls Kitchen + Bar in Orlando, FL

I had lunch at a newish restaurant called Earls Kitchen + Bar in the Mall at Millenia. They are one of the strange outer restaurants that are in the main mall building, but aren't accessible from inside the mall itself. I'm not sure what Earls replaced. I had never eaten at whatever it was.

I had the Chicken Pibil Tacos. The two tacos were served on corn tortillas with nicely marinated chicken, topped with cheese, radish slices, pickled onions, and cilantro. The tacos came with a side and I choose the caesar salad.

The tacos were pretty tasty, but a bit pricey at $14. I've been to plenty of other actual Mexican restaurants in town where I can equivalent, if not better tacos for under $3 each. The caesar salad didn't make up the value difference. I guess they have to make that money for expensive mall rent somehow...

Tijuana Flats Flat Outrageous Menu

Tijuana Flats has added a new section to their menu. They call it Flat Outrageous. This new Flat Outrageous menu features street tacos, flautas, and tostadas. I was recently invited to one of the newest Tijuana Flats locations in Orlando near Millenia to sample some of the items from the new menu.

Tijuana Trio: Chips, salsa, queso, and guac. Not from the new Flat Outrageous section of the menu, but chips and dips are always a standard.

Crispy Baja Fish Street Tacos: Crispy fish, chipotle crema, shaved cilantro cabbage, and pineapple salsa.

Jerk Chicken Street Tacos: Crispy jerk chicken, MoreFire! hot sauce, shaved cilantro cabbage, pineapple salsa, and cotija cheese. Of the street tacos, this one was my favorite. It had much more heat than I'd expect from tacos in a chain restaurant.

Lime Steak Street Tacos: Grilled garlic-lime steak, avocado crema, shaved cilantro cabbage, pico de gallo, and cotija cheese.

Philly Cheesesteak Flautas: Cripsy tortillas stuffed with shaved sirloin steak, mozzarella cheese, grilled onions & peppers served with queso.

Bangin' Chicken Tostadas: Cripsy corn tortillas with Smack My Asss Bangin' Chicken, refried beans, cheddar jack cheese, grilled onions & peppers, tomatoes, and ranch dressing. Another item that I really enjoyed. I think this is what I'll be ordering on my next visit to Tijuana Flats.

Cookie Dough Flautas: Chocolate chip cookie dough in a flour tortilla, lightly fried and topped with powdered sugar. Served with a side of chocolate syrup.

Ikea Orlando's Julbord Holiday Buffet

I was invited to visit IKEA and try their Julbord Holiday Buffet. According to IKEA's website, Julbord is a classic Christmas dinner in Scandinavian countries. The word “Julbord” is made up of two parts: “Jul,” meaning Yule (synonymous with Christmas) and “Bord,” meaning table. 

The all-you-can-eat smörgåsbord happened in the Orlando IKEA on December 11, 2015 in their restaurant. The center of the restaurant was transformed into an abundant spread of delicious foods.

There was assorted breads and crackers.

Cheese:

IKEA served some of their standards including their meatballs.

Mashed potatoes:

Prinskorv sausages were new to me. According to Wikipedia, the name translates to prince sausages.

Red Cabbage:

There was a huge spread of crawfish to choose from.

I really like IKEA's Red Beet Salad. I first tried this at another IKEA media event last year. It was delicious this time around too.

Swedish Potato Salad:

Hard Boiled Eggs:

This was a type of potato casserole. This was interesting by having a sweet aftertaste.

Gravad lax is one of my favorite foods from IKEA. I helped myself to far too much of this delicious cured salmon.

Christmas Ham:

IKEA served lots of assorted desserts, including cakes, cookies, rice pudding, and chocolates.

Glögg:

With that overview of the Julbord Holiday buffet, here's my two plates of delicious foods. Plate #1 was loaded up with crawfish, salmon, cucumber salad, meatballs, sausage, carrots, and mashed potatoes.

Plate #2 had ham, gravad lax, assorted salads, cheese, and the potato casserole.

I really enjoyed trying the Julbord Holiday Buffet. I had tried going here a few years ago but ended up trying to get my tickets too late and it was sold out. For future reference, buy your tickets early! I'm glad I finally had the chance to visit this year and sample all the delicious Swedish Christmas foods!

Krispy Skremes at Krispy Kreme Doughnuts in Orlando, FL

I went to the Krispy Kreme Doughnuts in Orlando near Millenia Mall to try their Halloween/Autumn doughnuts. They have all sorts of doughnuts known as Krispy Skremes decorated for Halloween, including Jack-o-Lanterns and spiderwebs. They also have Ghostbusters doughnuts to celebrate the movie's 30th anniversary.

I liked their Pumpkin Cheesecake Doughnut. It was stuffed with a pumpkin cheesecake filling, topped with creme cheese icing and gingersnap cookie crumbles. Also pictured is the Pumpkin Spice Doughnut.

The Stay Puft Marshmallow Man Doughnut and Ghostbusters Doughnut were also tasted. The Stay Puft Marshmallow Doughnut was a marshmallow Kreme-filled shell topped with white icing, decorated with Stay Puft Marshmallow Man’s familiar face and a sugar piece hat. The Ghostbusters Doughnut consisted of a marshmallow Kreme-filled shell topped with white icing, a decorative green “splat” inspired by Slimer, and a Ghostbusters logo sugar piece.

Jack-o-Lantern Doughnut!

They had a doughnut decorating station set up and I created this Ghostbusters Doughnut. Should I be proud of my slime placement on this doughnut?

Now for the important part! Everyone likes free food. Make sure you wear a costume to Krispy Kreme on Halloween. It will get you a free doughnut!

Burger 21 in Orlando, FL

I had dinner one night at a restaurant called Burger 21 near Millenia Mall in Orlando. This is a chain with a few locations in the Orlando area. I started out the meal by sharing an order of Half & Half Fries. This was a basket of half regular fries and half sweet potato fries. The fries by themselves were okay. Nothing exceptional, but the fun part was dipping them in all of the sauces that were available at their sauce bar. My favorites were the Chipotle Mayo, Cajun Mayo, and totally unexpectedly, the Toasted Marshmallow.

I saw they had seafood burgers on the menu and that caught my attention. Seafood burgers seem to be a bit more unusual than then normal alternatives to beef burgers (turkey, veggie, etc). I decided to try the Spicy Thai Shrimp Burger. This is how the menu described the burger: Lightly-fried shrimp burger, lettuce, tomato, Sriracha aïoli, hot chili slaw, pure Sriracha, toasted sesame bun. The way the menu described the burger made it sound good, but the reality was very bland. The shrimp burger patty itself was deep fried on the outside. The interior of the patty appeared almost completely homogeneous and I had trouble telling what was shrimp and what was breading/filler. All that sriracha and hot chili slaw that topped the burger seemed to lack the normal spiciness of sriracha. The entire sandwich was very indistinct and flavorless. The sauce bar came to the rescue to add some taste to the burger...

The person I ate here with ordered a plain cheeseburger and wasn't all too happy either. He ordered it medium-well, but it was served very pink. Apparently this was a theme because I noticed a couple more people sending their food undercooked food back.

Overall, Burger 21 seemed to have potential but they didn't do a very good job to meet that potential. Fries and a sauce bar shouldn't be better than your burgers if burger is in your name. This area has other places around that serve much better burgers/sandwiches. I don't think I'll be rushing back to Burger 21...

NaraDeva Thai Restaurant in Orlando, FL

A couple weeks ago, the local food bloggers were invited to a dinner at NaraDeva Thai Restaurant in order to sample many of their delicious foods. I'm honestly not an expert on Thai food by any means, and I've actually been disappointed lately with many of the other local Thai restaurants that I've tried. Because of this, I happily accepted the offer to try NaraDeva in order to find better Thai food. They are located near the Mall of Millenia in the SuperTarget shopping center, in a space once occupied by Bear Rock Cafe.

Once I arrived at the restaurant, I quickly spotted the group of food bloggers congregating on the restaurant's patio for drinks. I tried the coconut water and Thai iced tea. The iced tea was my personal favorite of the two.

Once we were inside and seated, the feast began as plate after plate of food started arriving at the table. Appetizers came first with chicken curry puffs and chicken satay. The chicken curry puffs reminded me somewhat of Indian samosas, filled with potato and chicken. The chicken satay was served on skewers with a peanut dipping sauce.

The next plate of appetizers included shrimp rolls and steamed pork dumplings. The shrimp rolls were interesting, consisting of a whole shrimp wrapped in pork and a spring roll wrapper.

After the initial two plates of appetizers, various types of salads started arriving at the table. One of my favorites was the crunchy shrimp salad. This mixed green salad was topped with several large fried shrimp, drizzled in a creamy dressing.

Another highlight was the laab. Ground spicy pork was mixed with roasted rice, onions, shallots, dried chili and mint leaves. I had never heard of laab previously, but it was surprisingly good for something as simple as a ground meat mixed with a few other ingredients.

The spicy beef salad was topped with thinly sliced pieces of grilled steak with cucumber, tomatoes, scallions, and cilantro in a spicy & sour dressing.

Another one of my favorites was the spicy crispy duck salad. This was similar to the beef salad, only with delicious duck rather than steak. The duck was nice and tender and had a wonderful crispy outer crust. The spice wasn't that apparent at first, but the spicyness eventually culminated after a few bites.

On to the main courses, the pork fried rice was different from the typical Chinese restaurant fried rice (I'm not always a fan of Chinese fried rice). This was somewhat sweeter and had a whole lot more flavors involved. Way better than I was expecting!

I definitely wasn't expecting the beef jerky. The first thing that comes to mind when I hear beef jerky is gas station snack food that I tend to avoid. This beef jerky shared little resemblance to a a Slim Jim. The beef was crispy but was still moist. It was served alongside rice soaked in pandan sauce which was completely new to me. Bright green rice is very cool!

The prawns in tamarind sauce were served over a bed of vegetables. I love the garnishes on almost every plate. A pile of shaved carrots topped with an orchid makes always makes food more interesting!

Crispy duck in red curry sauce was another one of my favorites from the night. The duck had a nice crunchy outside and was really tender inside. Many times I've had duck where it had so much fat that it was almost too much trouble to eat. Nara

It was a while since I had soft shell crabs, so I was happy when these were delivered to the table.

The deep-fried whole snapper was very impressive. It's not very often that I get to eat from a whole fish. Figuring out how to best break into the fish to get to the meat was a little intimidating at first, but was a minor difficulty. The crispy skin of the fish was very flavorful while the inside was moist and flaky.

Just when I thought the feast would stop, desserts started coming out of the kitchen! The black sticky rice with coconut and palm sugar caramel was interesting. I've had black rice a few times before, but never as a dessert. The coconut cream sauce topping was very nice. The sticky rice with pumpkin custard was also fun. I never really thought of pumpkin as an Asian vegetable with it's association with Halloween/Thanksgiving, but why not? Pumpkin is good on everything!

The sticky rice with red beans was served wrapped in banana leaves. This was my favorite dessert of the night. Not only is unwrapping food from steamed banana leaves a whole lot of fun, it also smelled great, sort of like black tea. The rice/beans were very moist, not too sweet, but the coconut cream dipping sauce made it a dessert.

The Thai coconut custard was served in tiny ceramic cups and sort of reminded me of a coconut flavored flan.

And finally, there was the Thai doughnuts with pandan coconut custard dip. The doughnuts by themselves weren't very sweet, but they were definitely made into a dessert with the green pandan sauce.

The event was organized by NaraDeva Thai in conjunction with Traveler Foodie, and I really appreciate being invited. I was definitely not expecting the feast that I was treated to, with all of the food being some of the best Thai I've had lately in the Central Florida area. I'll definitely be back!