Ginther's Swirls Ice Cream in Orlando, FL

Today is apparently National Ice Cream Day. Hurray for made up food holidays! To celebrate, here's a Dole Whip from Ginther's Swirls located on International Drive near Sea World. Pineapple soft serve ice cream floating on a pool of pineapple juice. It's was just like getting the must overhyped Dole Whips at Disney without dealing with the Disney crowds!

Tin Roof New Menu in Orlando, FL

I was recently invited to come sample some of the selections off the new menu at Tin Roof Orlando. They are located on International Drive at I-Drive 360. I've visited Tin Roof several times in the past, once to try the menu when they first opened. I've always enjoyed the food here, so I was looking forward to trying Tin Roof's new menu. Here's what Tin Roof has to say about the changes to their food:

ORLANDO, Fla. (Sept. 28, 2016) - Tin Roof, Orlando's favorite live music joint, has rolled out a new menu featuring a slew of new dishes.

But this isn't your average run-of-the-mill bar grub; these are house-made, slow-smoked, hand-rolled additions that you'll only find at the 'Roof. The new offerings include:

Pub BoardsStep one: choose from Tin Roof's new House Smoked Brisket, signature Nashville Hot Chicken, Candy Pig Mac & Cheese (includes brown sugar bacon and jalapeno queso), BBQ Pulled Pork, or Voodoo Shrimp.

Step two: choose a couple sides, including new Street Corn, Fried Pickles, Tots, Squash Casserole, Spicy Giardiniera and more.

Step three: enjoy the heck out of it all. All Pub Boards are served on - you guessed it - a wooden board.

Street TacosPerfect with a cold beer, Tin Roof's new Street Tacos include Carnitas, Chicken Tinga, Pepper Beef (featuring the house smoked brisket), Left Coast (vegetarian, featuring tempura avocado) and Loco Pez (Korean battered grouper).

Starters and Small Plates
In the mood to share? Try Tin Roof's new Poppers (bacon-wrapped peppadew & pimento cheese croquettes), Chili-Brown Wings or Dixie Biscuits (there's that brisket again, slider-style on biscuits with bacon, peach jam and cheddar cheese).

Room for dessert?
Those who have saved room can finish it off with the new Cast Iron Cookie, a salted caramel-pretzel-chocolate deep dish cookie topped with ice cream.

In addition to the new menu items, Tin Roof Orlando is still serving up the best local and regional bands and musicians on the Tin Roof stage.

On this visit, I started out by sampling the Chicken N Waffles - Buttermilk fried chicken nuggets, waffle pieces, bacon-maple glaze, and ancho chili chocolate. There was a change in the presentation from the last time I tried these, with the Chicken N Waffles now being served in a waffle cone. I liked the continuation of the waffle theme.

 

Candy Pig Mac & Cheese - Elbow pasta, brown sugar bacon, jalepeno queso, aged cheddar, herb bread crumbs, and scallions. 

 

Street Corn:

Nashville Hot Chicken - Buttermilk fried chicken rubbed with cayenne, served on texas toast with ranch potato salad and fried pickles.

BnC Medley - House smoked brisket, carmalized onions, cheddar cheese, and spicy pickles

House Smoked Brisket - served with pickeled red onion and hot sauce

Shake Shack (International Drive) in Orlando, FL - New Summer Menu

Shake Shack recently launched several new summer menu items. This blog was invited to attend a Blogger Meet-Up at Shake Shack's International Drive location to sample the new foods. The following is some of the food highlights from their new summer menu:

Bacon CheddarShack Burger & Fries:

Chick'n Stack: Crispy chicken breast with lettuce, pickles, and buttermilk herb mayo.

Raspberry Lemonade:

Shack Sandy: A blend of Shake Shack's ShackMeister Ale and Shack-made Lemonade.

Chocolate Cookies & Cream Shake: Chocolate frozen custard blended with chocolate cookie Crumbles and topped with whipped cream.

Polar Parlor at Sea World Orlando

I found myself at Sea World one evening and decided to get some ice cream. I was going to get the ice cream from a location in the back of the park but they didn't have waffle cones. I made my way up to Polar Parlor near the park entrance, and found that their waffle cones were cheaper than the regular cones elsewhere in the park. Weird.

I had strawberry and mint chocolate chip in a waffle cone. The portion of ice cream was huge, overflowing over the edges of the large waffle cone. Out of the two flavors, I preferred the mint chocolate chip. The strawberry flavor wasn't as pronounced as it should have been, while the mint chocolate chip tasted like I expected.

Dragon Court Super Buffet in Lake Buena Vista, FL

Dragon Court Super Buffet is a Chinese buffet located right off Disney property. I've assumed it catered towards tourists, meaning overpriced bad food. Dragon Court has been around for as long as I can remember, but I recently ended up eating there at lunch for the first time. I was pleasantly surprised.

They had some items not typically found on other Chinese buffets in the area and the majority of the food was pretty tasty. On my first trip to the buffet, I tried the curry chicken, fried rice, Chinese eggplant, beans, lo mein, tempura vegetables, pork dumplings, and a crab rangoon. The stand out dishes were the eggplant and curry chicken.

Second plate had a few more items. There was some baby bok choy, chow mei fun, boneless spareribs, chicken and broccoli, and some sort of spicy pork. 

I did enjoy the food that I ate on my first visit to Dragon Court Super Buffet. Hopefully their quality stays consistent.

Sugar Factory Media Preview in Orlando, FL

I was recently invited to the media preview of Sugar Factory in I-Drive 360. With the Sugar Factory name, I didn't exactly know what this restaurant would be serving. Would the menu consist of all sorts of sugar filled desserts, or would the sugar be more of a name? The answer would be yes to both. Sugar Factory did serve plenty of sweets, but there were savory food items as well. To quote Sugar Factory's press release, "Upscale dining classics are served all day long from brunch to late-night, ranging from decadent crepes to flavorful milkshakes and gourmet burgers to ice cream sandwiches and more." Sugar Factory has several other locations throughout the country and has pictures of various celebrities dining in their restaurants hanging on the walls. This was the first I've heard of the chain.

The media preview event started with us sampling some Meatballs:

Fried Mac & Cheese Pops: Homemade macaroni and cheese, battered and deep fried and served with creamy tomato-herb sauce.

Red Velvet Pancakes: Fluffy pancakes, white chocolate chunk, orange zest, whipped cream, and warm maple syrup.

Bolognese Rigatoni: Rigatoni in a slow simmered ground beef and sausage meat sauce.

Four Cheese Pizza: Mozzarella, feta chese, gryere, swiss cheese, garlic, and fresh basil.

Here's a couple other menu items that we didn't get to taste. There was chicken and waffles and crepes that looked tasty.

For the featured drinks, there was the Ocean Blue (filled with gummi sharks), the Lollipop Passion, Mai Tai, and White Gummi. These 60 ounce drinks were all available with or without alcohol.

On to dessert, we tried three milkshakes. There was the Very Berry Blast, the Make a Wish, and Chocolate.

World Famous Sugar Factory King Kong Sundae: 24 scoops of ice cream covered with hot fudge, caramel, and strawberry sauce, sliced bananas, toasted marshmallows, Reeses's Pieces, chocolate chip cookies, crushed waffle cones, gummi bears, white chocolate strawberry shavings, and toasted walnuts with whipped cream, giant lollipops, and sparklers on top! Serves twelve people.

Strawberry Cheesecake Overload: Three scoops of strawberry ice cream with New York cheesecake chunks and fresh strawberries topped with strawberry sauce, vanilla bean whipped creame, and white chocolate straberry shavings.

Sugar Factory had an attached candy store and ice cream shop separate from the dining area.

I helped myself to a little too much candy...

I'm going to have to go back to Sugar Factory soon and dine there as a regular customer. With the addition of Sugar Factory, I-Drive 360 is getting a nice collection of restaurants. Hopefully that trend continues!

Copper Canyon Grill in Orlando, FL

Copper Canyon Grill has been located in Pointe Orlando on International Drive for years now. I had been warned multiple times from different people about how horrible the restaurant is and to avoid Copper Canyon at all costs. I finally decided to ignore those warnings and give the restaurant a try. 

I was there for lunch on a Sunday. These lunch specials were advertised outside the restaurant and it must have worked. I ordered the Korean Pork Belly Tacos.

The food took quite a while to be served. The restaurant was mostly empty. They had an open kitchen and the guy cooking was getting loudly upset at something and yelling at some of the servers. If you have angry cooks, don't put them in an open kitchen where the guests can see and hear them. Once the food did come out, I had no complaints. The tacos were delicious. The pork belly was tender rather than rubbery (I've been served rubbery pork belly one too many times at other restaurants). The sauces were delicious. The side of kimchi was unexpected, but I graciously devoured it.

Prices at Copper Canyon Grill were a bit too high for most of the food which was served, but I suppose most of their business is from the convention center with people with expense accounts. Besides the high price point and the angry cook, I have no complaints about the food itself. Copper Canyon definitely didn't live up to their reputation as a horrible restaurant...

Oreganatta in Orlando, FL

I tried an Italian buffet on International Drive called Oreganatta. They are located in a new building near Wet n' Wild. There was another Italian buffet nearby on International Drive several years ago that was above average. They ended up closing and a CiCi's Pizza took over the space. Perhaps my memory of this long gone buffet gave me hopes for Oreganatta that were slightly too high.

Oreganatta was almost completely empty except for another couple eating there. That's a bad sign for a buffet, but it was still early for the lunch hour so I gave them the benefit of the doubt. I started out by trying their pasta. The pasta was custom made by a cook where you picked out sauce, type of pasta, and a choice of BBQ or spicy chicken. I had penne with pesto and spicy chicken. The pesto was okay. The chicken had a weird, slimy consistency and I didn't eat most of the meat. The option to add vegetables into the pasta as well would have been a big improvement.

I tried some of Oreganatta's salads next. I had some Caesar salad, pasta salad, and a chickpea salad. No complaints here. The salads were the best tasting food I found on the buffet.

The pizza was similar to what could be found at CiCi's, only without the big selection of pies. It was cheap conveyor belt pizza. There was a cheese and pepperoni pie on the buffet table. One of the employees offered to make another with my choice of toppings, but I passed.

They had lots of mini dessert cups on the buffet as well. I tried some sort of chocolate dessert, rice pudding, and a custard. I liked the rice pudding the best, but the desserts were mostly forgettable.

I don't think I'd return to Oreganatta any time soon. I was not impressed overall. The salad was okay. The pasta bar has room for improvement, and CiCi's would be a better option for the pizza, just based on ready made buffet selection (and I wouldn't recommend CiCi's). I personally don't see Oreganatta surviving long...

Mei Asian Chinese Buffet in Orlando, FL

Mei Asian Chinese Buffet is located on International Drive in Orlando. It shares the shopping center with King's Bowl and is right next to the Orlando Eye. Going to a Chinese buffet in such a touristy area was a potentially dangerous choice (not to mention the restaurant has a horrible 34% Liked rating on Urbanspoon), but I ended up enjoying the restaurant more than I was expecting. I arrived at the restaurant during lunch time and they had a good selection of foods. To me, their buffet choices were better than other Chinese buffets in the area and most of the food was pretty tasty. There also seemed to be a good turnover with the buffet tables constantly being refilled. 

The first plate of food consisted of bean sprouts, green beans, dumplings, tofu, mei fun, and an egg roll.

Plate #2 had some salmon, lo mein, crawfish, shrimp with broccoli, and some sort of meat filled dumpling.

The third plate had a little more of some of my favorites that I tried earlier (dumplings, tofu, and veggies), along with a butterfly cookie for dessert.

I've had far worse buffets than Mei Asian, but yet those have had much higher ratings on online review sites such as Urbanspoon and Yelp. I'm sure the poor ratings for this restaurant are coming from somewhere though. I hope they either saw all the horrible scores and drastically improved their food, just in time for me to show up, or perhaps I just caught them on one of their better days.

NY Food: Jekyll & Hyde Club

Someone recommended that I try the Jekyll & Hyde Club while in New York. The restaurant is advertised as the club founded by Dr. Jekyll for explorers, philosophers, biologists, and other men and women whose exploits into science and adventure was deemed too unorthodox by their colleagues in accepted society. They filled the club with artifacts and trophies from their adventures. Basically, it sounds like a restaurant for people who's favorite holiday is Halloween, which potentially could be awesome.

Jekyll & Hyde Club is located near Times Square. Its theme is spooky stuff. Think Rainforest Cafe themed to Halloween. There were skeletons playing organs. Busts came alive and talked. Mounted heads of werewolves and elephants started moving. A Frankenstein type monster was brought to life in an hourly show with a live actor.

I ordered the Cheese Tortellini. Way overpriced for what it was, this pasta consisted of a plate of tortellini topped with tomato sauce. It wasn't meat sauce, at least I don't think it was. Still, I occasionally got a bite of ground beef in the sauce. Either way, it means the vegetarian tomato sauce got cross contaminated with beef belonging to someone else or this was one of the most disappointing meat sauces I've ever been served.

In theory, this restaurant sounded like it could have been awesome. I unfortunately came away disappointed. I wanted to like Jekyll & Hyde, but something about it just seemed off. The effects seemed too in your face and annoying when they would have worked much better if they were more atmospheric. Rather than one thing happening at a time accompanied by an audio track played throughout the restaurant, I think it would have worked much better if everything was more subtle and happening all the time. Make it so you have to notice things happening in the building rather than making it obnoxiously obvious. Jekyll & Hyde has a second location and was recommended to me, so maybe I'm being overly critical since everyone else seems to like this touristy restaurant. Perhaps I've worked in one too many haunted houses and take the details in a place like this way too seriously. Perhaps living in Orlando has spoiled me with Disney and Universal quality attractions. Eating here did remind me a bit of Disney's old Adventurers Club in Pleasure Island and how a similar concept was executed much better there. As I finished my meal at Jekyll & Hyde, I couldn't help but think about how I could make a spooky themed restaurant so much better than this one. That is, except for the bathrooms. The bathrooms were the coolest thing about this place. I'm not giving any spoilers and will let you find them yourself...