Outback Steakhouse in Orlando, FL (International Drive)

I was invited to a menu tasting at the new Outback Steakhouse that recently opened on International Drive. This Outback is located in the I-Drive 360 complex, anchored by the currently half built Orlando Eye ferris wheel.

I attended one of their lunch tasting events. These menu tasting events were used to train Outback's staff in exchange for free food. The meal started with Signature Baked Potato Soup - Creamy potato soup topped with melted cheese, bacon, and green onions.

I had the Baby Back Ribs - Smoked, wood-fire grilled and brushed with a tangy BBQ sauce. Served with Aussie Fries.

Sirloin and Grilled Shrimp. Served with a baked potato and asparagus as sides.

I had their homemade watermelon soda made from ginger ale, watermelon, and lime for my drink.

Sangria:

Outback Steakhouse was fun. This new Outback Steakhouse was pretty much exactly what I was expecting. Like most chains, the food here was pretty much equivalent to what can be had at any other Outback. Still, I think Outback Steakhouse should fully embrace their Australian theme and start serving kangaroo meat. I'd totally try kangaroo if it started being served at Outback. It could be a place for people on kangatarian diets to go eat!

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!

The Cattle Ranch in Sanford, FL

The Cattle Ranch is a restaurant in Sanford in a mostly windowless building. The location is on a stretch of Sanford Avenue with no nearby restaurants in the immediate vicinity. Those two points gave the restaurant a somewhat creepy appearance from the outside, but creepy looking restaurants normally have good food. The Cattle Ranch did indeed have good food...

My meal started out with a salad with the house dressing. This was pretty much what I would have expected from an old-fashioned steakhouse salad. It was nothing exceptional, but it got the job done with iceberg lettuce, onions, tomato, pepper slices, carrot sticks, and croutons.

Even though the Cattle Ranch was a steakhouse, I didn't order any beef. Instead, I went with the coconut shrimp. These large shrimp were butterflied and fried in a coconut batter, then served with a baked potato and apple sauce. I've had coconut shrimp in the past where the coconut flavor was completely absent, but in this case, each shrimp was bursting with coconut! I would gladly get these again.

Also worth noting for all you big eaters out there is The Cattle Ranch's Six Pound Challenge. If you eat a six pound steak, along with all the sides, you get the meal for free and your picture hanging on the wall! Being that I'm not a big beef eater to begin with, I don't think this particular eating challenge is for me...

Outback Steakhouse in Sanford, FL

Several months ago, I ate at the Outback Steakhouse in Altamonte Springs. My meal there was lacking in more than one way. I wrote about it here, and since then, I've received some of the angriest feedback out of anything I've written on this blog. That post was published last April and I still get the occasional very emotional email defending Outback. Recently, I gave Outback Steakhouse another chance and tried their location in Sanford, so it will be interesting to see the response this post gets.

There was a wait, but unlike my last Outback experience, the buzzer rang without any glitches when our table was ready. We started out with a Bloomin' Onion since it comes free for AAA members. Originally, this promotion was set to go through the end of 2009, but it seems it was extended into 2010.

For my dinner, I had the Atlantic Salmon. The fish came served with a side of very salty vegetables. Besides from the overly salty vegetables, I didn't have any complaints about the salmon, nor the Bloomin' Onion. It wasn't the greatest food I've eaten, but was average tasting food that I would expect from a chain restaurant like Outback.

I still don't like Outback's menu though. I am not a big steak eater, and not getting something along the lines of slab of cow meat on a plate really limits your options here. The non-mammal meat items are really limited. The menu has two chicken items (neither of which sound very appealing), four seafood items, and one pasta dish. Forget this place if you're a vegetarian, even all the salads on the menu have meat in them. I know it's a steakhouse, but compared to all of the other chain steakhouses that I've visited, Outback has the worst selection when it comes to food that doesn't derive from a cow.

Outback Steakhouse in Altamonte Springs

I ate at the Outback Steakhouse in Altamonte Springs, FL. It's been years since my last visit to an Outback so I really didn't know what to expect. The dining experience started out with a wait. I had called ahead to make reservations, and Outback said the wait time would be cut in half. We got there and were given a buzzer. After about a half hour of waiting, it turned out that our buzzer never went off, so we had to wait even longer. They said we were probably out of range, but if that's the case, then Outback needs a new system because we were right outside of the front door, probably twenty feet from the receiver. We finally sat down, and I wasn't impressed with the menu. I don't really like steak, and the non-steak choices are very limited at Outback.

I ended up ordering the Shrimp en Fuego. After a long wait, the food finally was served and I wasn't exactly pleased with my shrimp. They were deep fried, and the way the menu and the waitress described the dish put a different image of the shrimp in my head. Once I got over the deep fried part, the shrimp weren't all that bad. They were covered in a spicy buffalo wing type sauce, and served in a cheese covered potato skin of all things. A side of green beans were served on the side.

Outback is supposed to serve Australian food, but I'm assuming actual traditional Australian food is way different, and most likely way better. I think a Watch Me Eat field trip should be arranged to sample real Australian food...

Kobe in Longwood, FL

I ate at the Kobe Japanese Steakhouse in Longwood, FL. They offered a deal where two people eat for for $25.00 after 9:00 pm, and that was my reason for visiting the restaurant. For this price of $12.50 each, each of the two people had to agree to order the same menu item. We ordered the chicken and shrimp. While waiting for the meal to be cooked on the hibachi grill, soup and salad was served.


The chef finally came out and started cooking. There weren't very many customers at 9:30 on a Thursday night, so we had the table to ourselves.

The food was plated as it was cooked, and included stir fried vegetables, noodles, shrimp, rice, and chicken. In the end, the dinner for two deal was kind of disappointing. It seemed Kobe just took one portion of food and split it up into two half portions. There was still lots of food, but there was definitely a quantity difference between this meal and a single meal. In a shrimp and chicken dinner, they served me only two shrimp. And while all of the other food tasted good, I do have issues with these shrimp. The shrimp that Kobe serves aren't deveined. I personally don't enjoy eating shrimp guts, and for the price Kobe charges, they should definitely serve cleaned shrimp. So in the end, this dinner for two thing really wasn't much of a special. Two people going to Kobe for their early birds seems like it would provide a whole lot more food for only a few dollars more.

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.

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!

Return to the Chop Shop

I had eaten at the Chop Shop Restaurant in Deltona, FL once before just after they opened. The restaurant was up to par last time with decent service and good food. Tonight I returned to the Chop Shop to eat dinner for a second time and it seems the restaurant has developed some problems.

It initially took a while for the drinks to be brought to the table, and then took an even longer time for the waitress to come back to take our food order. I ordered their Jambalaya. Another person dining with me ordered something called the Seafood Trio, which included shrimp, scallops, and mahi-mahi. Someone else at the table ordered a mahi-mahi dinner. The waitress was asked if some substitutions could be made in the meal involving the side dishes. These involved replacing a baked potato for French fries and changing the vegetable side from zucchini to broccoli, both of which were on the menu as sides. The answer was a firm no. According to the waitress, the owners made it very clear that there are absolutely no substitutions on their new menu.

After an insane amount of time, the food finally came. Someone at the table noted the time after we had already waited a while. It took our food an hour to come from that point.

I had no complaints with my Jambalaya. It was actually really good coming from a restaurant that didn't specialize in Cajun food. There were nice big shrimp and a generous amount of sliced andouille sausage. It wasn't so spicy where it would leave you wanting a drink, but it wasn't bland either. There was a nice heaping portion on the plate, almost too much to eat.


My Jambalaya may have been good, but there was another issue at the table. Remember the Seafood Trio that was ordered and the whole no substitutions thing? It turned out that the Chop Shop was all out of scallops, so they substituted the scallops with a few extra shrimp. Instead of doing the right thing by telling the customer that the restaurant was out of a major component of the meal, they made this substitution without asking. It seems a bit hypocritical to me that customers don't have the right to ask for a substitution on a side item, but the restaurant can substitute a major component of the main dish without asking first. The person that ordered this Seafood Trio, which was actually an unannounced Seafood Duo for the night complained about this stating that scallops were the highlight of the meal, and the waitress was vaguely apologetic. She agreed that what happened was wrong, but she passed the blame on to the kitchen and said something should have been done about the situation. The manager/owner of the restaurant was requested, and the waitress announced that she was the manager. She did not offer to do anything about the situation...

I don't think I'll return to the Chop Shop anytime soon. My food may have been good, but the service was pretty bad...

Lunch @ Orlando's Texas de Brazil

I ate lunch at Texas de Brazil on International Drive in Orlando, FL. Texas de Brazil is a Brazilian Churrascaria where waiters come around and slice various meats off of swords onto your plate.

I started at the salad bar. Besides from the normal salad, they had lots of good stuff like various cheeses, olives, crab cakes, meats, tabouli, and soups. They also had some really interesting stuff that I had never seen before such as caper berries (left side of the plate between the pasta and chorizo). Capers are one of my favorite salty foods, so I really liked these. Apparently normal capers sold in supermarkets are immature when they are pickled. If they continue to grow, they become caper berries, which were served here. It was a good salad bar, although it seemed like they had room to serve twice as many items with the amount of space between each dish. Maybe that's for dinner (not that I'm complaining).

I finished my salad and returned to my table to get served meat on swords. My favorite choices were the chicken wrapped in bacon, the sausages, pork ribs, and sliced pork. I'm not a big fan of beef, and when it's not well done, I get grossed out by the blood dripping out of what I am about to eat. It seemed like the majority of the steak and beef served wasn't cooked to my liking, and I only got one piece that was close to being cooked throughly. I have tried a Portuguese Churrascaria in the past, and it seemed all of the meat was automatically cooked to well done, including the steak. I wish they at least came around with some skewers of cooked steak here to give you a choice on how well the meat was cooked. With the exception of the steak being served dripping in blood, I liked everything else. I'd go again...

Charlie Brown's Steakhouse

I ate at the Charlie Brown's Steakhouse in Garden City, NY. I ordered a combo dinner that included shrimp and snapper, as well as a salad bar. The salad bar was good. Lots of good stuff was there for the taking, like several different types of olives. The feta stuffed olives were especially good for a salad bar...



I believe the fish I ordered was herb encrusted snapper. It was okay, but wasn't anything exceptional. The cilantro shrimp were much better than the fish. This was served with mashed potatoes as a side.

It was way too much to eat...