Nha Trang in Orlando, FL

When the recent Orlando Weekly article on the Vietnamese sandwiches called banh mi was published, I decided it had been far too long since I had eaten any sort of Vietnamese food. The next thing I knew, I found myself at Banh Mi Nha Trang in Orlando's Mills-50 District.

The banh mi is this restaurant's specialty. For $2.50, you get a large sandwich that's ingeniously packaged. With it's paper and plastic bag secured with a rubber band (and pepper), it keeps the banh mi held together while collecting any juices that might drip out. All sandwiches should be packed like this.

The banh mi came on a toasted baguette with a very nice crust. Roast pork, cucumber, cilantro, onions, various pickled vegetables, mayonnaise, and fish sauce filled the sandwich. There was potentially a few more banh mi fillings that I couldn't quite identify, and I'm not going to try. All I know is that this was a delicious sandwich!

I'm going to make a point to try some more of Orlando's banh mi. These sandwiches are really good, and are perhaps some of the best food values in town...

More Food Aboard the Grandeur of the Seas

I already put up lots of fancy food pictures from the Great Gatsby Dining Room aboard the Royal Caribbean Grandeur of the Seas from last August. Since I have pictures of more cruise food aboard the ship, I figured why not do another post on it!

The ship had a buffet called The Windjammer. I enjoyed the breakfasts here. You can't go wrong with a buffet with smoked salmon on it.


Lunch and dinner here wasn't as good. Except for the day when they had all sorts of Asian foods, the majority of the food was mediocre. Many times, they served variations of what was being served in the dining room without the fancy presentation.




The Grandeur of the Seas was sort of disappointing when it came to late night foods. Other ships that I've been on have 24 hour snack bars that have pretty good food. This ship had a single snack bar that had very limited hours and a very limited menu. The choices here consisted of frozen pizza, hamburgers, hot dogs, or fries...


The midnight buffet aboard the Grandeur had all the fun stuff like ice sculptures and carved watermelons. The sandwiches, cheeses, and desserts were good, but the rest of the food was seemed to come from a supermarket's frozen food section. Bagel pizzas, bad burritos, beef pattys...

Great Gatsby Dining Room on the Grandeur of the Seas

Back in August, I went on a cruise on the Royal Caribbean Grandeur of the Seas. The trip provided some opportunities for short food adventures in Key West and Cozumel, but let's not forget the food on the ship. The Great Gatsby Dining Room was the main restaurant on the boat and I enjoyed the food here for the most part. Some dishes were really good, others not so much. For mass produced meals feeding about 1,000 people at a time, overall I thought the food was pretty good.

Day 1 Dinner: The first dinner in the dining room of the trip. I started with a smoked fish tapenade appetizer

My main course was a Potato and Cauliflower Curry, served with rice, roti, and a yogurt sauce. I wasn't expecting Indian food on a cruise ship, and it was really tasty! They had a variation on this dish every night as a vegetarian option.

Dessert:


Day 2 Dinner: Started with an appetizer of Escargot. How can anyone not like these little gastropods soaked in butter and parmesan cheese? This was not the only plate of snails I ate on the trip...

I also had a bowl of Oxtail Soup.

My main course was Shrimp Ravioli. This was my least favorite dinner on the cruise. It didn't necessarily taste bad, but it reminded me too much of something that could be bought in a supermarket's frozen food section...

Strawberry Cheesecake for dessert...


Day 3 Dinner: Roasted Garlic Soup came first.
I also had Scallop Risotto for an appetizer. Very tasty with huge scallops.

The Garlic Tiger Shrimp were served over rice with assorted vegetables.

Chocolate cake for dessert.


Day 4 Breakfast: The forth day of the cruise was the boring day at sea where there's no stopping in any port, so the entire day pretty much consists of moving from restaurant to restaurant to fill time. I ate breakfast in the Great Gatsby Dining Room rather than the buffet for the first time on the trip. Luckily, I was traveling with a large enough group to fill up a whole table in the restaurant for dinner. Because of this, the awkwardness of being seated with other random people on the ship was avoided for the most part, with the exception of this meal. I had the Smoked Salmon Benedict. Lox and runny eggs were served on an English muffin, topped with hollandaise sauce and asparagus. Hash browns were served on the side.


Day 4 Lunch: I also did lunch in the Great Gatsby Dining Room. They had a very nice salad bar set up where you selected your ingredients and a chef tossed the salad. I ended up with lots of fresh mozzarella and thinly sliced prosciutto in my salad.

They had a Greek Salad on the menu topped with Octopus salad. It sounded good, so I ordered a side of the marinated octopus. A little chewy, but still tasty.

And here's a lamb sandwich. Tasted just like pulled pork on a pita to me.


Day 4 Dinner: Caesar salad...

Shrimp Cocktail

Shrimp & Mahi Mahi Tempura

a slice of Key Lime Pie for dessert.

And that's it for the pictures of my fancy cruise food. Overall, I enjoyed the cruise food. I thought the majority of the food was good, although some of my fellow travelers disagreed. It was definitely better than the dining room food on the Carnival ship I traveled on a few years ago...

La Bella Luna in Baldwin Park, FL

I ate dinner at La Bella Luna in Baldwin Park. Last time I ate here, this restaurant was a Pizzeria Valdiano. Somewhere along the line, I guess ownership changed.

The pizza definitely tasted much better than it looked. When the pizza was delivered to the table, I was a little disappointed. It was messy and a bit cheese-heavy. Upon tasting my slice, I changed my mind though. The cheese and sauce were both tasty. Crust was average. While it wasn't the best looking pizza, it did definitely taste way better than it looked! I'd get a pizza here again.

Grillwise in Deerfield Beach, FL

I stopped for lunch at a Middle Eastern/Burger restaurant called Grillwise in Deerfield Beach.
I ordered the Falafel Pita. The contents of the sandwich were kind of interesting, filled with the fried chickpea balls, tzatziki, and french fries. I've honestly never seen a falafel sandwich with french fries wrapped in the pita.

According to the menu, the pita was also supposed to come with tomato and onions. Since my pita didn't come with these, I borrowed the missing ingredients from a fellow diner's burger.

The falafel at Grillwise was tasty, although I would have preferred more vegetables and less french fries. The falafel balls were nice and crispy while the tzatziki had great flavor. Good enough for $4...

Kelsey's Pizzeria in Port St John, FL

I took myself to Port Canaveral to get an up close view of a recent Delta IV rocket launch. The rocket went up right around dinner time, so it was a great excuse to try a new restaurant in the area. The winner for the night turned out to be Kelsey's Pizzeria in Port St. John.

If a restaurant is called pizzeria, perhaps I should have tried their pizza. Instead, I decided to get their version of Eggplant Parmesan. This dish consisted of breaded and fried eggplant rolled around ricotta cheese, topped with melted mozzarella and marinara sauce. The eggplant tasted good, although the eggplant slices still had skin which ended up being pretty chewy in spots. Also included in the price was a side salad, garlic bread, and a huge plate of spaghetti.

Overall, it was your average, middle of the road Italian food. Nothing creative or exceptional, but nothing bad either. The food was pretty much what I was expecting when I ordered...

And for those interested, here's my video of the rocket launch...

Crowne Plaza in Syracuse, NY

I had breakfast on the twentieth floor of the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Syracuse, NY. It was a buffet serving all the normal breakfast foods. Eggs, homefries, bacon, sausage, french toast, fruit, and pastries were all eaten...

Being on the twentieth floor not only provided a good breakfast, but also had a great view of Downtown Syracuse...

Friendly's in East Syracuse, NY

While in Syracuse, I visited a chain that was never discussed on this blog. That chain is Friendly's...

I had a Ruben sandwich. The sandwich consisted of corned beef, sauerkraut, cheese, and thousand island dressing on rye bread. The sandwich's ingredients seemed pretty benign, but somehow massive amounts of grease kept on magically appearing. The sandwich was sitting a puddle of oil when I picked it up, and more oil kept on dripping out as I was eating. With all this dripping oil on a sandwich that shouldn't be dripping oil, I can see how Friendly's got it's reputation of having some of the unhealthiest chain food around.


I'm not going to go rushing back to a Friendly's any time soon. The amount of grease was scary and their sandwiches were the price of dinners at some other restaurants. To me, Friendly's remains in the same category of restaurants to me as Denny's and IHOP. Places you go when you can't find anywhere else...