Firebirds Wood Fired Grill in Orlando, FL

I received an email offering a meal at a new restaurant in Orlando called Firebirds Wood Fired Grill while they trained their staff. The restaurant is located on Mills in the new Fresh Market shopping center. This appears to be a good sized chain from Firebird's website, but this is their only location in Florida. I decided to take Firebirds up on their offer and recently dined at the restaurant for lunch. The meal started out with bread:

We had an appetizer of Ranch Rings. These were onion rings breaded in panko served with a garlic ranch dressing. I liked the onion ring structure that was constructed on the plate.

I ordered the Salmon Encrusted Salmon as my main course. The fish was topped with mustard aioli, served with Parmesan mashed potatoes and fried spinach. I liked the salmon. The mustard aioli was spicy which was a bit unexpected. Chains seem like they tend to avoid this level of spice, especially when unmarked on the menu. I could see others objecting to the heat, but I liked the spiciness. The fried spinach was also interesting. It was my first time trying crunchy, oil-drenched spinach. It wasn't bad, but I don't think I'd go out of my way to have fried spinach again.

My dining companion tried the Filet Mignon. It came wrapped in bacon and was served with steak fries.

For dessert, we tried the Big Daddy Chocolate Cake. It came with a bowl of vanilla ice cream.

We also tried the Creme Brulée Cheesecake. I preferred this out of the two cakes that were sampled.

I enjoyed my meal at Firebirds Wood Fired Grill. I can't really give too much of an opinion since everyone working in the restaurant was being trained, but I didn't have any complaints!

Terra Mia in Longwood, FL

I had dinner at the new Terra Mia in Longwood. This is the same Terra Mia that has a location in Lake Mary and was formerly located in a strip mall right around the corner until they moved here. This new Longwood location now serves pizza, unlike their store around the corner. Upon arriving, our meal started out with some good bread with nice crust.

I ordered the Deliziosa pizza. The pie was topped with salmon, mozzarella, capers, and onions. I've tried other seafood on pizzas in the past, but I think this may have been my first time having salmon on a pizza. I did enjoy it, although they weren't very generous with actual amount of salmon on the pie. The combination of capers and onions went well with the salmon. The crust was nice and crispy.

I enjoyed the pizza regardless of the slightly skimpy amount of salmon on the pie. I still think Terra Mia has some of the best pizzas in the area. Word of warning though: Other two people I was eating with both ordered the lasagna and weren't very happy. The tiny portion of a mess that somewhat resembled a typical lasagna was totally not worth what Terra Mia was charging for the dish...

Cafe D'Antonio in Celebration, FL

It seems like I always end up at Celebration around the holidays. Perhaps the fake snow is a draw. Maybe it is the over the top Christmas lights synchronized to music. Whatever causes the magnetism to Disney's planned community at this time of year, food is generally involved in Celebration's downtown. This year's visit to Celebration happened on Christmas Eve and dinner was had at Cafe D'Antonio.

Celebration was packed and Cafe D'Antonio was booked solid all night. That is, except for at the bar. I've neglected to try any of the Antonio restaurants in the area until now, so we took those bar seats for our Christmas Eve Italian food. The meal started with a crusty bread dipped in olive oil, and the main course was served fairly quickly. I tried the Pappardelle al Salmone con Piselli e Mascarpone. This consisted of a bowl of wide noodles with salmon and peas in a brandy and mascarpone cheese. Wide noodles, salmon, and mascarpone was a different combination but it was very tasty.

I also split a Prosciutto Pizza with someone. The 14" pizza was topped with a thin slices of prosciutto with red onions. The pizza had a nice, thin crust with a good sauce/cheese ratio. This was a very respectable pizza in the land of theme parks.

Overall, I enjoyed my food at Cafe D'Antonio. The food was good and the menu was a bit more creative than the typical spaghetti & meatballs Italian restaurant. After the meal, the entire Celebration Christmas experience was had with getting covered in soap, watching people attempt to skate on teflon, and finding the obsessive home light shows. Relive with me in this video:

Cayo Esquivel in Miami, FL

Continuing my weekend in Miami where I decided I really need to improve my spanish language skills, I found myself at a seafood restaurant called Cayo Esquivel...

One of Cayo Esquivel's daily specials was Salmon with almonds in pineapple sauce. It sounded interesting, so I decided to give it a try. Dinner rolls came out first along with a large plate of lime slices for the fish. Soon enough, the main course was served. The flavor combination on my salmon was interesting. I can't remember ever having pineapple sauce, especially over fish. The sauce was very smooth with the almonds adding a bit of crunch and wasn't quite as sweet as I was expecting. It was really good...

The salmon came with rice and a salad made mostly of cabbage with a great dressing. Kind of like cole slaw, only better...

Another diner at the table ordered this Avocado Salad. I guess non-seafood items aren't ordered here often because the waitress seemed surprised and kept on asking ¿No pescado? repeatedly when taking the order...

Logan's Roadhouse in Sanford, FL

I had dinner at Logan's Roadhouse in Sanford. I ordered the Mesquite Wood-Grilled Salmon and picked a Caesar salad and mashed potatoes as my sides.

The salmon was good, especially with the garlic-dill sauce served on the side. I'm not exactly sure what was in that sauce, but it was one of the best sauces I've had with seafood in a long time!

Taste of Tandoor

Driving home from New York, after sitting in almost non-stop traffic all day long, we stopped and ate some Indian food at Taste of Tandoor in Woodbridge, VA.

The meal was started with a garlic naan appetizer. They called it garlic naan, but I didn't taste any garlic.

I tried the Tandoori Salmon for my main course. The salmon was brought out on a sizzling skillet and was transferred to another plate by the waiter. I had never tried seafood from an Indian restaurant and I was pleased. The salmon was really good in it's orange yogurt sauce, cooked with onions and lime.

I wonder how many other people traveling along I-95 during an 1800 mile trip stop to eat Indian food?

The Smokehouse

I ate at the relatively new Smokehouse Restaurant at the Route 46 Exchange in Sanford, FL. I had a coupon for a free appetizer or dessert for any of the restaurants in the complex, so I decided to check out my options besides deciding exactly where to eat. I looked at their other restaurants like Monroe's and The Saloon, but they were expensive and completely empty at dinner time. That left the Smokehouse. Everyone that I know that had eaten there didn't like it, but I decided to give them a try anyway.

The Smokehouse follows the same semi-fast food format as Bubbalou's Bodacious Barbecue where you order your food at a counter and it is brought out to you. For the free appetizer, I had a pulled pork quesadilla. It had way too much really dry meat in the tortilla. Barbecue sauce was definitely required to help swallow all of the dry pork.

I also had a Smoked Salmon wrap with sweet potato fries. The wrap had the same smokey flavor as the pork in the quesadilla. I might as well have been eating all of the same menu item because it all tasted the same to me. This leads me to believe that they use artificial smoked flavoring rather than actually smoking the meat. I could be wrong, but that's what I'm assuming based on how the flavor was so overpowering and was in all of the food.

The sweet potato fries were really good though!

The employees here were also kind of strange. There were far too many workers in the dining room and none of them seemed to be assigned to any specific section. This caused them to constantly come over and repeatedly ask the same question that someone else asked only minutes before. You know they need to come up with some sort of system when someone comes and asks if you need to-go boxes about thirty seconds after the food is brought to the table by another employee.

On a side note, what's the proper way to tip in a situation like this? It's basically a fast food restaurant, but then employees bring out the food and constantly offer to do stuff for you?

Cedar Seared Salmon Pasta from T.G.I. Friday's

Due to a large buildup of coupons to the restaurant, I ended up at the T.G.I. Friday's in Lake Mary, FL. I ordered the Cedar Seared Salmon off of the Right Portion, Right Price section of the menu, basically meaning the dish was under $10. The pasta tasted really good. The presentation, not so much. The salmon was placed on top of the lopsided pile of pasta with the ugly skin side up. Since the pasta was all piled on one side of the plate, the cheese that was sprinkled on top melted to the plate instead of the food. In a big chain like Friday's, you would think they would make a big deal about their food always looking and tasting the same from visit to visit and from restaurant to restaurant. I guess this isn't the case.

Salmon from Hibachi Express

I returned to Hibachi Express in Casselberry, FL for a second visit. This time I tried their Teriyaki Salmon. It consisted of pieces of salmon served over stir fried vegetables with steamed rice on the side. I had no complaints, but if I come back and eat here again, I think I will ask for them to leave out the mushrooms in the vegetables.

I took a look at Hibachi Express' website and found some of the stuff on the Welcome page kind of amusing. The place has the typical setup as a Chinese Takeout, so it seems very deceiving how the restaurant is described. I think anyone who calls up to make reservations at Hibachi Express without seeing the restaurant will be disappointed when they arrive.

Weekend Trip: Dunkin Donuts

Due to an unfortunate circumstance, I had to fly up to New York for the weekend. On the way to my very early flight out of Orlando International Airport, I stopped at this Dunkin Donuts in Longwood, FL at 6:00 am. I had a sesame bagel with smoked salmon cream cheese.

I also noticed that Dunkin Donuts now serves hash browns so I decided to give them a try. They resembled the hash browns served at Burger King for breakfast, only these tasted better. I saw a little brochure that said they were baked, but with the amount of grease on the potatoes, they sure didn't seem like it

Shrimp & Salmon From Captain D's

I ate at Captain D's in Sanford, FL. As far as fast food seafood chains go, Captain D's surpasses Long John Silver's or Arthur Treacher's Fish and Chips, but it still can be disappointing. The one thing that sets Captain D's apart from the other major chains is their alternatives to the normal deep fried fish. Captain D's has a rather large selection of non-fried seafood, and that's what I ate on this visit.

Walking into the restaurant, I saw the poster in the window advertising their Big Easy Shrimp & Salmon Platter. It looked good, so that's what I ordered.

The actual food served didn't look exactly like the picture. I ordered fries and a salad for the two sides. The shrimp were much smaller that what was shown. The salmon was overcooked and chewy. The salad was a bit wilted, but I have had much worse from fast food restaurants in the past.

Bagel Tree in Boca Raton

Bagel Tree in Boca Raton, FL seems to be the restaurant of choice for the retirees living in Century Village to have breakfast. I've eaten here in the past when visiting a Century Village resident, so this particular visit was no different.

I ordered a sesame bagel with Nova cream cheese and homefries. Now, I don't want to sound like I'm complaining about food like the average senior citizen, but my homefries were served on the plate with someone's omelet. Their omelet was supposed to come with grits, and they weren't served at all until the waiter finally returned and was reminded. Once the homefries were transferred over to my plate, I found them to be really tasty. Moving on to the bagel, I asked for it to be toasted, and it was kind of burned around the edges. The Nova cream cheese seemed really stingy with the actual nova. There wasn't enough smoked salmon in there to justify the extra charge in my opinion. So in the end, I liked the homefries. Will I return? On the next visit to a Century Village resident, most definitely!

Dinner at Bayridge Sushi

I had dinner at Bayridge Sushi in Longwood, FL. I've never been here at dinner time, and it was even more packed than the place gets for lunch. It seemed like all you could eat sushi was the thing to get, with the sushi being made at a lightning fast speed. There was no question here whether the fish was out too long.

The unlimited sushi cost a bit more than I wanted to spend at $20, so I went with some individual rolls and miso soup.

I ordered a Wasibi Roll first. It was filled with half tuna and half salmon, along with cucumber and avocado. It was topped with orange and green fish eggs. I liked it, although the salmon kept on sliding out of the roll. It was a little spicy, but not too bad.

While everyone else ordered their second rounds of all you can eat sushi, I ordered a California Roll so I'd have something to do. It tasted like a California Roll should.

Bayridge Sushi Bento Lunch Box

I ate lunch at Bayridge Sushi in Longwood, FL. Bayridge Sushi has very good priced bento boxes for lunch, with most of them under $7. I ordered the Hibachi Salmon Bento. Miso soup and salad came out first.

The actual bento box soon followed, filled with salmon, rice, California Rolls, dumplings, and fruit. It was good, but my only complaint was about the salmon. It tasted fine, but should have been cut into smaller pieces. The pieces of fish given were very hard to eat with chopsticks, especially the pieces of salmon with lots of skin. Besides from this minor complaint, Bayridge Sushi's lunch bento boxes are very good!

IKEA Chicken & Salmon Pilaf

I ate lunch at the IKEA near the Millenia Mall in Orlando, FL. I ate the chicken and salmon pilaf with a cup of lingonberry juice. The pilaf was very good with the chicken and salmon mixed with rice and lentils. It had a nice flavor of citrus and dill mixed in with the meal. I liked it better than the meatballs that I had here last time...