Cafe Murano in Altamonte Springs, FL

I ate at the newly opened Cafe Murano in Altamonte Springs, FL. This Italian restaurant was formerly Gina's Lakefront and has a nice view of Cranes Roost Park. After waiting about ten minutes, we were seated. We ordered our food and then waited. The food took a very long time to be served, about an hour. During that wait, I took notice of my surroundings. The restaurant had way too many TVs in the room, all playing something different. In the environment that the restaurant seemed to be trying to create, the TVs really didn't fit in. There was a very loud and drunk birthday party on the other side of the room, and then a DJ took over the TVs and started playing music videos.

Finally, the food was served. I ordered the Rigatoni Broccoli Rabe, which consisted of large rigatoni noodles topped with Italian sausage, garlic, and broccoli rabe. It was good, but reminded me too much of something I would make myself at home. It was a really simple dish, and truthfully, I ordered it for the broccoli rabe because I don't see that on menus very often. I'd get it again!

Someone else at the table ordered a brick oven pizza topped with meatballs. They couldn't finish the whole pie on their own, so I tried a slice. I wasn't expecting much since the restaurant didn't seem to specialize in pizza, but I was pleasantly surprised. It had a nice thin, crispy crust. There was a perfect amount of cheese and sauce on the pie, and I liked the meatballs too. Sometimes the meatballs on pizza taste like plain ground beef, but these had plenty of flavor. The edge of the crust was a little burnt in spots, but besides from that, I had no issues. If I return to Cafe Murano, I think I'll definitely be getting the pizza too!

Cafe Murano had really good food, but that hour long wait for food that generally doesn't take that long to make was a bit of a turnoff...

Tuna Sub from Subway in Uptown Altamonte

I shared a $5 footlong tuna sub from the Subway in Uptown Altamonte. Somehow there was bacon mixed in with the tuna, and they were stingy with toppings, so that's not good. Rather than eating in the restaurant, we walked across the street to Cranes Roost Park and ate outside there. It was cold...

Free Ice Cream from Cold Stone

Something funny is going on with the Cold Stone Creameries in the Central Florida area. They all seem to be closing up, and then reopening again a few months later. I noticed this happened first in Altamonte Springs at the Uptown Altamonte location. February 21 was their Grand Reopening, and to celebrate they gave everyone free ice cream between 12:00 and 4:00 (plus free ice cream for a year to the first 50 customers) as told by this newspaper advertisement:

I had strawberry ice cream with actual strawberries mixed in as my topping. I do have a few issues with Cold Stone's ice cream and their whole system of mixing in toppings, but I am going to ignore them for now because this ice cream was FREE!

It seems the same thing is now happening with the Cold Stone in Lake Mary. They closed up a while ago, and now has opening soon signs in their windows. I wonder if they will give out free ice cream as well?

Greek Food in Uptown Altamonte

Lots of art shows/craft fairs were going on this past weekend. There's the Longwood Crafts Fair. Deland had some sort of similar event, and Altamonte Springs had the Art on the Boulevard in Uptown Altamonte Festival of the Arts event. I walked around this art show the day after I walked around Longwood's event. I liked the selection of art being sold here much better than what Longwood had, but don't forget it's all about the food.

Unlike Longwood, I actually ate something in Uptown Altamonte. I had a chicken gyro from the Sparta Greek Food stand. It was tasty, with chicken, lettuce, tomato, onions, peppers, and tzatziki, all wrapped in a pita. My only complaint was that the chicken was a little burnt in spots, but otherwise I had no complaints. I ate the gyro sitting on bleachers overlooking the lake in Cranes Roost Park...

RedBrick Pizza

I ate a pizza at RedBrick Pizza in Altamonte Springs, FL. RedBrick Pizza seems to be a relatively new chain that has been popping up in the Central Florida area. This was the first one to open in Uptown Altamonte, and others have since opened in Sanford and in UCF. I ate here when the restaurant first opened, but the pizza wasn't worth returning for. Someone I was with wanted to eat here though, so I agreed to give RedBrick Pizza another try.

I noticed something kind of ironic about the name. It's called RedBrick Pizza, but there are no bricks of any color in the restaurant. There are some red tiles on the wall, but no bricks.

The last time I ate here, I had a cheese pizza which was pretty bad. This time, I figured I'd try a pizza with plenty of toppings to see if they improved the pie. I ordered their Greek Pizza, which was topped with ham, peppers, onions, kalamata olives, and feta cheese. I'm not the biggest fan of ham, and I completely missed that part when reading the menu, but it really didn't taste too bad on pizza. The toppings really did improve the pizza, and without them, the pizza would have been pretty bad. The crust was nice and crispy on the outer edges of the pizza, but was soggy in the center of the pie. It didn't seem undercooked, it just seemed very damp. This wet spot caused some difficulties when pulling the slices apart. The pizza here was really overpriced too. They started at $13 for a 14 inch pizza (the largest size offered), and went up from there.

One thing I really didn't like in here was the TVs. There was a TV and remote at just about every table. I really didn't want to watch TV while I ate, so I choose one of the few TV-free tables. It may not have been a good choice though, because I got a clear view of the large, slow-moving, sloth-like people dining here as they slowly lifted (and dropped) slice after slice into their mouths with one hand, while controlling the TV remote with the other hand. It was kind of sad.

The building that RedBrick pizza occupies wasn't always here. It was once a normal strip mall before Altamonte Springs rebuilt the area into Uptown Altamonte. Before the new construction, almost exactly where RedBrick Pizza now sits, was a restaurant called Presto Pizza. Presto had the best pizza I've tasted in Florida. It was the whole New York pizza deal, with really thin large slices. Besides normal pizza, they had the more exotic varieties like stuffed pizza that you normally don't see in Florida. I haven't found another restaurant in Florida that has as good pizza as Presto had, but RedBrick Pizza definitely doesn't cut it...