Savannah, GA Food (Franklin's, Flying Monk Noodle Bar, and Leopold's Ice Cream)

I went on a trip to Savannah, GA. Here's where I ate:

Franklin's:

When I found out my hotel didn't serve complementary breakfast like their website promised when booking, that meant I had to go out on an adventure. That brought me to a coffee shop called Franklin's. I had the Breakfast Bowl, filled with bacon, grits, egg, potatoes, salsa, and toast. Had a latte to drink. It was good, but the food, coffee, and tip ended up being the most expensive meal on my trip.
 

Flying Monk Noodle Bar:

Dinner was at Flying Monk Noodle Bar. I had the Drunken Noodles. It was insane how quickly these were prepared and served. Pretty tasty.

Leopold's Ice Cream:

I saw the line for Leopold's Ice Cream and decided there was no way that it was worth the hype. I walked by again after dinner and the line was much more reasonable right before they closed. I had a scoop of Lemon Custard (hidden in the bottom of the cup) and a scoop of Peach, which was one of their specials. It was perfectly fine ice cream, but I'm glad I didn't wait an hour for the dessert.

Long Island Asian Food (Chaba Thai Cuisine and Tony's Sushi)

Here's a couple more restaurants from my travels. Today we're going to be visiting a couple restaurants in Long Island, NY serving Asian food. We'll start in Long Beach for some Thai food...

Chaba Thai Cuisine in Long Beach, NY:

Chaba is located in downtown Long Beach. They were a small restaurant but they were very busy with both people dining in and take out.

I had the Chicken Curry Noodles. I was a little afraid that this might be a boring dish of chicken, noodles, and sauce from how the menu described it. Luckily, this turned out to be a beautiful bowl of deliciousness. There was plenty of variety with lots of vegetables mixed in, arranged in a very structural fashion. The sauce was very tasty. No complaints about this meal.

Tony's Sushi in East Moriches, NY:

I had dinner on another evening at a restaurant called Tony's Sushi. They had the menu split into three different sections. One each for Japanese, Chinese, and Thai food.

I had the Singapore Mei Fun. There was a nice presentation with an orchid served alongside the mound of noodles, but the portion was a bit small for the price. The noodles tasted fine, although there really wasn't anything that made them stand apart from other noodle dishes I've had either. The annoying part of this meal was the employee's apparently urgent need to clear the tables. From the beginning of the meal when we were served noodles with duck sauce, all they wanted to know if they could take that away for us. Someone else ordered soup and salad with their meal. They were delivered at the same time, and the servers wanted to take away the soup before it was touched while the person was finishing up the salad. They did eventually take away someones plate before they were finished with it. It was strange. It seemed like they wanted us out really quick, but there wasn't a wait or lack of empty tables. Some manager probably told the servers to make sure they clear the tables and they really took the advise to heart...

Kyoto Sushi & Grill at UCF

Kyoto Sushi & Grill is one of the newer restaurants to open in the shops surrounding the UCF Arena in Orlando. It is a semi-fast food restaurant, where you order your food with a cashier, and then the food is brought out to your table.

I ate here once previously for lunch and had a California Roll. On my second visit, this time for dinner, I had the Hibachi Chicken. Miso soup and salad were served first. The soup was good and the salad had the typical ginger dressing that everyone loves.

Soon enough, the main course, a huge plate of chicken, vegetables, rice, and noodles was served. It was mostly good. The chicken was tasty, but I found a bit too much of it to be fatty. They offered an upgrade to all white meat, and I should have gone for it. Regardless, I shouldn't need to be spitting out an unedible bit every few bites. Rice and vegetables were good, although they were a bit stingy with them. Looking at the picture below, it's hard to even spot the vegetables on the plate, and they are one of my favorite parts of the meal! The menu stated the chicken was served with soba noodles, but instead, we got the typical Japanese Steakhouse noodles. Still good, but not soba...

Besides the unedible chicken bits, I liked Kyoto. The food is mostly tasty, the prices are pretty reasonable (especially for lunch), and the portions are quite large. I think next time I'll either try a bento box or the hibachi shrimp.

Happy Teriyaki in Longwood, FL

I had dinner at Happy Teriyaki in Longwood, FL. This place has been here for a really long time, as long as I have lived in the area. They never seem busy, but must be doing something right to still be around after all this time. Their menu is mostly Japanese/Sushi with some Chinese items mixed in.

I had a bowl of Udon Soup. This huge bowl of soup came filled with chicken, shrimp, fish cakes, a fried egg, assorted vegetables, and udon noodles, all in a clear broth. It was really tasty and was way too much food! The egg was a bit too runny for my liking, but otherwise I had no complaints!

P.F. Chang's in Westbury, NY

I ate at the P.F. Chang's in The Source Mall in Westbury, NY. I ordered the Singapore Street Noodles. It consisted of chicken and shrimp with assorted vegetables, all served over noodles. I liked it! Interestingly, this dish was not marked as spicy on the menu, but it ended up having a nice kick to it. Someone else at the table ordered something that was supposed to be spicy, and it had a really sweet sauce. I could see people sending their food back over an issue like that, but I liked my noodles the way they were!

This stone warrior was looking over our table. I decided he was worthy of having his photo taken...

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...

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:

Yokohama Japanese Steakhouse

I ate at the new Yokohama Japanese Steakhouse in the Super Target Shopping Center in Sanford, FL. It's a hibachi style Japanese Restaurant where they cook at your table. The first thing I noticed in the restaurant was that the chairs were too low for the table. I'm an average height, and the table was kind of high, so I imagine it would be much worse for a shorter person. The second thing I noticed was that for some unknown reason, they dressed their chefs up as cowboys. Someone must have thought it would be a good idea to put the chefs in cowboy hats and bandannas, but it just caused the chefs to look silly.

As for the food, it tasted good, but was overpriced. My Hibachi Chicken was a few dollars more than what the already overpriced Kobe charges. For that extra money, the portions here seemed to be smaller and they didn't include the noodles that most other Japanese Steakhouses serve. I have issues with most Japanese restaurants that serve these noodles, assuming the stupid Americans think they are eating something exotic like soba or udon, when in fact it's just a box of spaghetti. When the noodles don't come though, I miss them. Yokohama should move above all of the other Japanese Steakhouses nearby and actually serve a more traditional noodle.

The meal started with some soup and salad. The menu said miso soup, but they served the normal steakhouse onion broth. I don't like it when places switch menu items without telling you.

The cowboy chef came and cooked the food soon after. Everything was good, but something I especially liked was the mustard sauce. It's rare to find a Japanese Steakhouse that serves this and it's very tasty. The other thing I liked was that the shrimp were already cleaned and they didn't make a show out of cleaning them. This meant that they were really clean and weren't covered in those strings of shrimp guts like you get at Kobe.

After the meal, Yokohama gave a plate of sectioned oranges for dessert.

Overall, most of the food tasted good, but I don't think I would return to the Hibachi part of the restaurant. It cost a bit too much, and giving less of basically the same food as their cheaper competitors isn't an incentive for me to return. I did notice that most of the people eating here were sitting in the non-hibachi area of the restaurant, so this may be the way to go if I do return. From what I saw while glancing over the menu, it seemed you could order similar food for a lower price without the show. And the sushi looked good too!

Ethos Vegan Kitchen

I ate at Ethos Vegan Kitchen in Orlando, FL. I am not a vegan, but it's fun to venture into the non-meat, non-dairy, animal product free world of vegan food.

I ordered the Udon Asian Odyssey, which was supposed to be Udon noodles with assorted vegetables. If you look at the picture below, those definitely aren't Udon noodles on the plate. Udon noodles are thick, round noodles that somewhat remind me of fuzzy worms when cooked. What was served were wide, flat noodles that seemed more along the lines of chow fun. I wouldn't have had a problem with the chow fun noodles if I was told that is what I was ordering, but I was expecting some udon. I'm guessing either Ethos was out of the udon and made a substitution without informing the customer, or they are assuming that the average vegan doesn't know much about Japanese noodles. I really don't like it when I order one thing, and get something else.

I also found the noodles to be way too salty. I love salty foods, but the amount of salt in here was over the top. Besides from the type of noodle problem, the pasta seemed like it would have been really good if it wasn't for the salt. Instead, I had to eat some bread and drink lots of water to counter out the overpowering salty taste.

While I have my complaints, I did think Ethos was better than some of the few other vegan/vegetarian restaurants in Orlando that I've tried. They have a long way to go before they can compare to Angelica Kitchen though...