Spoleto in Orlando, FL

I was invited to try a new Italian restaurant called Spoleto. They are located across the street from UCF in a very new shopping center at the corner of University and Alafaya. This is Spoleto's first location in the United States, with two more stores opening soon in Winter Park and the Florida Mall. They are already a good sized chain with over 380 locations in Brazil, Mexico, and Costa Rica. I always find it interesting when an international restaurant chain chooses Central Florida as its stepping off point into the US market. I wonder how much market research went into deciding that UCF would be the ideal spot to begin expanding into this country?

Spoleto is a quick service style restaurant. You go up to the counter and pick your pasta, sauce, meats, and toppings. Everything was then tossed and cooked together by a chef, and then you pay and bring your food to a table to eat. The same thing goes for flatbreads, salads, or desserts.

I ordered the Potato Gnocchi in pesto with spinach, sundried tomatoes, caramelized onions, kalamata olives, roasted garlic, and an Italian cheese blend. All this was topped with a house-made giant meatball. It seems like restaurants like this find the need to yell something as something happens. At some places you get a "Welcome to Blank" as you enter. Other places get you bad singing if you leave a tip. At Spoleto, the entire kitchen would yell out "Polpette Grande" whenever a meatball was ordered. I enjoyed my gnocci!

Brick Oven Baked Lasagna.

I also tried the Artichoke and Goat Cheese Focaccia. This flatbread was topped with artichoke hearts, tomatoes, red onions, mozzarella, goat cheese, and B&W Farms baby arugula.

I tried the Nutella Bread with fresh strawberries for dessert. Nutella and fruit is delicious, but an entire flatbread of Nutella was overwhelming.

Spoleto was an enjoyable dining experience. I found it to be a notch above some other of the fast food Italian restaurants that have opened recently in the Orlando area, so that's a good sign for them.

Balagan Mediterranean Cafe in the UCF Arena

Today we're talking about Balagan Mediterranean Cafe in the UCF Arena. This Middle Eastern/Kosher restaurant is located on the first floor of the arena right inside of the main entrance. They have a menu that features falafel, shawarma, kababs, and standard arena snack bar fare like burgers and hot dogs. Their Middle Eastern foods are very tasty and the best part is the price. For the price of a bag of cinnamon nuts up a single flight of stairs at an official arena snack bar, you can get an entire sandwich at Balagan.

I ordered the Schwarma pita. This was filled with turkey and chicken, lettuce, cabbage, onions, hummus, tahini, hot sauce, and whatever other toppings were available. I basically had them load up my schwarma with everything! Although not the most photogenic sandwich, it was still very tasty. Way better than an overpriced hot dog or nachos from the snack bars right up stairs.

Jeremiah's Italian Ice in Orlando, FL

Everyone seems to love Jeremiah's Italian Ice, and for good reason too. For the longest time they were the only place to get Italian ices is town. Although there's much more competition for them now, their ices are still really good. I visited the always popular Jeremiah's across from UCF, sandwiched between Lazy Moon and Millie's Jamaican Cafe. On this visit, I decided to get a gelati with half black raspberry ice and half strawberry-lemon. Besides melting really fast on the horribly hot summer day, this Italian ice lived up to my expectations!

Here's a hint too: Jeremiah's does buy one-get one free coupons pretty often. Keep an eye out before you go.

Lucky Buffet in Orlando, FL

Looks like Lucky Buffet has closed at some point since the original publication of this post...

The last time I was paying attention, there was a Chinese take-out in the strip mall off of Collegiate Way near UCF. I guess somewhere along the line, Los Chinitos Chinese Fast Food decided they would be better off as Lucky Buffet...

Lucky Buffet was on the small side as far as Orlando Chinese buffets go, but was equivalent to others in the immediate area. They had two tables of hot food and one dessert table. In terms of what's expected from Chinese buffets, I thought the food here was a little above average. I didn't taste any food that was so explicitly bad that I left it on the plate. They were constantly refilling the foods so the turnover was pretty good too.

Lucky Buffet had some unusual items not often seen on Chinese buffets, such as the baby bok choy, salt & pepper squid, and the awesome desserts filled with red bean paste.

Overall, not the best Chinese food around but better than other buffets in the UCF area.

Hong Kong Buffet in Orlando, FL

I ate dinner at Hong Kong Buffet located in the shopping center with Boardwalk Bowl on 50 in Orlando. The food was average as far as Chinese buffets go, but the restaurant was pretty empty so the turnover wasn't great. Hong Kong was okay to try once, but I don't think I'd make a point to return. Too many other Chinese restaurants around here with better food...

Mix Frozen Yogurt in Orlando, FL

Mix Frozen Yogurt is one of the newest self-serve yogurt shops in Orlando. They are located near UCF in a shopping center at the corner of Colonial and Alafaya. They are sort of hidden back there and I never noticed Mix until they were kind enough to invite me to try their yogurt! Now that I know where they are, I'll definitely be back!

They had a very nice selection of sixteen different flavors of frozen yogurt.  

They also had a large topping bar filled with fresh fruit, candies, cookies, and everything else imaginable that you could possibly want on yogurt.



I tried four different flavors of yogurt. I had pumpkin, red velvet cake, strawberry, and tart yogurt. Pumpkin was my favorite out of the bunch, tasting like pumpkin pie.

I topped my yogurt with kiwi, raspberries, strawberry flavored boba, and some candy corn. With Halloween coming up soon, I had to add the candy corn to go with the pumpkin yogurt...

Mix Frozen Yogurt is a great addition to Orlando's collection of places serving frozen yogurt. With the large selection of yogurt, big topping bar, and only costing $0.39/oz, how can you go wrong?

Tacoberfest at Del Taco

The Del Taco restaurants in Oviedo and Orlando are putting a spin on one of Germany’s most famous events – Oktoberfest. From 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. on Oct. 20, both restaurants will be offering 29-cent tacos (limit of 10) at a “celebration worthy of tacos” – Tacoberfest.

The Oviedo Del Taco is located at 3551 Dovera Drive, and the Orlando Del Taco is located at 12025 Collegiate Way.

I recently stopped into the Orlando Del Taco near UCF. Putting aside the twenty minute wait for my so called fast food, I sampled two different tacos. I had a Shrimp Taco and a Chicken Taco del Carmen. The shrimp taco was average and was about what I would expect from a fast food restaurant. The Taco del Carmen was better than I was expecting with lots of onions and cilantro with really flavorful chicken on a corn tortilla. I'd definitely get it again.

iKiwi in Orlando, FL

More self serve frozen yogurt in Orlando! This time, it came from iKiwi near UCF. I got a few flavors, topped with mango, blueberries, and kiwi. Very tasty frozen yogurt!

Wackadoo's Grub & Brew in Orlando, FL

Wackadoo's Grub & Brew is a restaurant/bar in the UCF Student Union. Because of the location, I wasn't expecting the best food since the restaurant caters to a somewhat captive audience, especially on weekends when it's the only restaurant open in the Student Union. I guess I was wrong because the food I had here was actually pretty good. I ordered a pulled pork sandwich with a side of fries.  The pork was all very lean with a nice smokey flavor. A cup of spicy barbecue sauce was served on the side, but the pork had enough flavor to where it really didn't need it.  The fries were pretty standard as far as fries go.

I really wasn't expecting good barbecue from Wackadoo's, so my sandwich was a nice surprise. I wonder if they smoke their own meat?

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.

Tailgaters Smokehouse at UCF

I ate at Tailgaters Smokehouse in the shopping area surrounding the UCF Arena in Orlando. Tailgators is a sports bar, and the as my meal progressed, the restaurant fit perfectly into the stereotype of sports bars having bad food. But it wasn't just the food, service was bad here too.

I ordered a Chicken Cheesesteak sandwich, served with tater tots. After a very long wait with a very inattentive waitress, our food was finally served. The sandwich was a bit smaller than I was expecting and was very bland. Couldn't taste any seasoning whatsoever on the chicken and the bread reminded me a bit too much of a hot dog roll than what cheesesteaks are normally served on. I did like the tater tots though.

While the sandwich wasn't all that, definitely not worth the $12 it cost me total for the meal, it was edible and I finished the food. I really shouldn't have finished though because the food left some sort of coating on the inside of my mouth that I could not get rid off. It was a slimy feeling and tasted sort of bitter. Drinking water would not remove it. Eating something else didn't get rid of the coating, and brushing my teeth (multiple times) didn't help either. Whatever this was, it was very unpleasant and I can't say I've experienced a bad taste in my mouth that was so persistent elsewhere. Interestingly enough, I kept this to myself until a few hours later when a friend brought up the bad taste in her mouth from her grilled chicken sandwich...

Moral of the story: Avoid the chicken from Tailgaters.

Qdoba at UCF

I had a pulled pork burrito from Qdoba in the UCF Student Union. I've had pork tacos before, but never a pork burrito, and never from a big chain. The burrito was stuffed with pulled pork, peppers, onions, black beans, rice, salsa, sour cream, and cheese. The pork did taste okay, but I don't think I would order it again. Too much meat in a restaurant where my favorite menu item is the vegetarian burrito. The lack of guacamole is what really killed the burrito for me, but it wasn't worth $1.50 in my opinion to have a little scoop of mashed avocado added.

Chick-fil-a Express at UCF

The very second post here on Watch Me Eat consisted of my thoughts on a Chick-fil-a Chicken Sandwich. Since then, a few people have posted comments and I've received several emails of people pointing out how to improve this sandwich or what I should order at Chick-fil-a instead. I received a coupon for another free Chick-fil-a Chicken Sandwich, so I decided to give them another try. I went to the Chick-fil-a Express at UCF and this time got some sauces to go with the sandwich. Adding sauces to the somewhat dry fried chicken on a bun with a pickle was somewhat of an improvement, but the sandwich still does nothing for me. If it wasn't free, I definitely would be ordering something else from Chick-fil-a. I've been told the grilled chicken sandwich is a whole lot better than this.

Still, I really don't get the appeal of Chick-fil-a. It seems every Chick-fil-a I pass is always crowded, but I have tried nothing there that I like. Except for their waffle fries. Chick-fil-a does make good waffle fries.

Asian Chao at UCF

I tried the Asian Chao in the UCF Student Union for lunch one afternoon. I ordered the two item combination and went with Kung Pao Shrimp and Beef with Broccoli. These were both served with a side of lo-mein. Although nothing great, it all tasted okay and was equivalent to the Chinese restaurants in the mall food courts. Being that the same franchise is in several of the local malls, I suppose that's how it should be.

The same dishes are so much better from many independent local Chinese restaurants though...