Viet-House in Altamonte Springs, FL

Orlando has a really nice selection of Vietnamese restaurants in the Mills 50 District. That's good since Vietnamese food is generally really tasty. Once outside Mills 50, Vietnamese food gets a bit harder to find. I can only think of a couple Vietnamese restaurants in Seminole county, so I was happy when I saw that a new restaurant had opened in Altamonte Springs called Viet-House.

The tiny restaurant is located in a building behind a gas station at the intersection of 436 and 427. You order at the window and eat at some nearby picnic tables. There isn't an inside here. Viet-House seems to specialize in banh mi but also offer soups and appetizers. I found out the hard way on my first visit that they close at 4:30. When I returned on another day to give them a try, I had their combination banh mi.

The sandwich consisted of various types of sliced pork products (I'm going to hide my ignorance of Vietnamese meats by leaving it at that), pate, pickled vegetables, lettuce, tomato, and cilantro on a French baguette. The banh mi was good and was very filling for under $5.

I also shared these summer rolls, filled with shrimp, pork, noodles, bean sprouts, cucumber, and basil. They were somewhat messy to eat, but tasty.

Eating Vietnamese food in a gas station parking lot is definitely a different experience than eating in one of the nicer Vietnamese restaurants in Orlando, but the food was good regardless. A banh mi sandwich does seem like a perfect type of street food, so perhaps this is actually an ideal location for the food!

Gyros in Orlando, FL

This little fast food gyro place near the fairgrounds in Pine Hills seems to be popular with postal workers. The restaurant was filled with mostly mail carriers on their lunch breaks when I visited. 

I ordered a gyro, filled with sliced lamb, lettuce, tomato, onion, and tazitiki. The sandwich was really tasty and they were generous with the toppings.

Brick House Tavern & Tap in Orlando, FL

Brickhouse Tavern and Tap is one of the newer restaurants on International Drive near the convention center. This place was definitely a chain, but this is the only Brickhouse I've ever come across. The restaurant is modern looking inside with long couch-like booths leading up to a large fireplace. The clean design of the restaurant was sort of offset with the multitude of TVs hanging overhead all playing the fishing channel, but let's talk about the food instead of poorly placed TVs.

 

I had the Italian sausage hoagie. This was a good sized sandwich, stuffed with sausage, peppers, onions, spicy tomato sauce, and topped with cheese. Tator tots were served as a side. For the most part, the sandwich tasted good although I did have an issue with the bread. The bread was really soft and mushy, similar to a hot dog bun. So much so that the bread got soggy really quickly from the sauce on the sandwich. The soggy roll fell apart when I tried picking up the sandwich, thus defeating the normal sandwich eating method. The rest of the hoagie was good, but the bread was bad.

 

Someone else at the table ordered chicken & waffles. Perhaps this would have been a better choice!

Like many of the restaurants on International Drive that come and go, the food at Brickhouse Tavern was okay but wasn't something I'd go rushing back for. The restaurant was actually pretty void of customers when I ate there, so I actually wonder if they'll be around if I get the urge to give them another try sometime in the future...

 

Asia Skewers Food Truck in Orlando, FL

Late one night I was driving along University Boulevard in Winter Park and noticed a food truck called Asia Skewers sitting in the parking lot of a Citgo gas station. Suddenly my mind was filled with memories of exploring Flushing's Chinatown and getting skewers of delicious meat from the Xinjiang BBQ Carts. I quickly turned around and pulled in to try Orlando's version of Asian meat on sticks.

Asia Skewers had menu consisting of skewers of chicken, beef, shrimp, pork, wings, or veggie. Each was under $2 and were also available as combos coming with fried rice or as sandwiches. They didn't have any of the exotic meats that the Chinatown skewer carts have, but I wouldn't really expect it in the suburbs of Orlando.

Since I had already ate dinner earlier in the evening, I decided to just get a couple of individual skewers, namely chicken and shrimp. After a few minutes of cooking, I received these two boxes along with two sauces.

I went for the chicken first. The thin strip of chicken impaled on a stick was very tasty, not needing any of the provided sauce. It sort of reminded me of the chicken skewers sometimes found on Chinese buffets, only better. Unlike the Chinese buffet skewers, this chicken was actually edible rather than chewing on a piece of leather on a stick. I would by all means get the chicken skewer again.

The shrimp skewer was also good, consisting of four mid-sized shrimp. Again, these had plenty of flavor and I didn't touch the sauces that came along with the skewers. It seemed like the chicken provided more food for the priced, but regardless, two skewers for three dollars and change is still a good deal.

I would definitely stop by Asia Skewers again. They are apparently open from 5 pm to 5 am, so I'll need to keep them in mind if I'm looking for a really late night/early morning dinner when I'm on that side of town!

Seashore Sweets' in Disney's Boardwalk Hotel

Yesterday was National Peanut Butter Cookie Day. I couldn't find how or why June 12 was assigned to peanut butter cookies, or why it is only national rather than international, but the holiday is a good reason to eat a cookie. I happened to be at Disney's Boardwalk Hotel and decided to find a peanut butter cookie to celebrate.

We tried the Boardwalk Bakery first. They had a nice cookie selection, but peanut butter was nowhere to be found. Not that easily defeated, we moved a few stores down to Seashore Sweets'. On the top shelf of their pastry case, they had a giant Mickey Mouse shaped peanut butter cookie. It was horribly expensive for a cookie at $5.49, but this was in a Disney hotel and it was a cookie holiday, so the cookie was purchased.

The cookie was huge, but it was also a bit disappointing. It was horribly dry in the part not covered in chocolate. The person who I shared it with described the cookie as being similar to eating a dog biscuit. Not sure how many dog biscuits she has eaten to know this, but I was expecting better from a Disney bakery. Our local supermarket chain has better peanut butter cookies.

Regardless of this cookie being really dry, it still served served the purpose of celebrating National Peanut Butter Cookie Day. I highly doubt I'd get one of these cookies again, but I hope the rest of the baked goods from Seashore Sweets' are better...

Umberto's of Long Island in Boca Raton, FL

I had lunch one afternoon at Umberto's of Long Island in Boca Raton. I am assuming that this restaurant is connected with the nearby Umberto's in Deerfield Beach, although I wonder how much connection there is to the actual Umberto's restaurants in Long Island. We had asked our waitress which Umberto's in Long Island the restaurant was connected to and she seemed very confused and didn't know. Uniformed waitress or a restaurant in Florida trying to get New York snowbirds to come to their restaurant because of the name? Not sure, but I would hope they really are connected if they have awards from Long Island Press hanging in their windows.

I had the lunch special of two slices and a drink. To keep it interesting, I had a slice of grandma pizza and a slice of plain cheese. Both were okay, definitely much better than the messy slices from the Deerfield Umberto's. The grandma slice was my favorite of the two. Although the slices were okay, they did have a somewhat burnt taste. I think Umberto's needed to desperately clean their ovens.

Overall, the pizza here wasn't bad. It would have been better without the sooty, dirty oven taste, but otherwise this Umberto's served some pretty decent pizza. Besides, anywhere that serves grandma pizza can't be bad!

 

Le Macaron in Winter Park, FL

Macarons, not to be confused with macaroons, are a type of French cookies that were completely new to me. I always knew macaroons as those coconut cookies that seem to cross all cultural boundaries, found everywhere from Kosher food stores to Vietnamese markets to Latin-American markets. It seems like the whole world loves those little mounds of coconut, so when I first heard about French macarons from Droolius at a Foodspotting dinner, I assumed these were the same type of cookie. Apparently the difference is more than one less 'o' in the name...

 A couple months later I visited Le Macaron in downtown Winter Park to finally try a French macaron. Le Macaron is a little shop tucked away in an alley off Park Avenue. Macarons are the main focus of this shop, but they also had a very limited selection of chocolates for sale as well. There was a gelato case too, but it was empty on the day I visited.

At $1.80 each the macarons were a bit expensive for the small size of the pastry. Regardless, I got a box of six macarons. Picking out the flavors got a little weird though when the grumpy employee helping us interrupted filling our box to offer her friend that had walked in after us a free sample of a macaron. Besides being a little sour that we didn't get offered any free cookies, our macarons were soon taken home to be tasted.

I tried several flavors and the Pistachio, Basil & White Chocolate, and Raspberry macarons were my favorites. The cookies had a crispy outer shell surrounding a gooey inside that almost reminded me of marzipan. These were definitely some tasty little cookies and were not that macaroons that I've known. With all the different flavors that were offered, I really wanted to try more but $1.80 per cookie is a bit pricy to go crazy. Perhaps another visit is eventually necessary...

If you haven't tried a macaron, definitely pay this place a visit. They're desserts that most people seem oblivious to. Because of that, you must try these expensive little cookies...

Oceanside Grille in Satellite Beach, FL

Oceanside Grille is a restaurant in Satellite Beach. It is located in a rather plain looking shopping mall along A1A and I probably would have never noticed the restaurant on my own. A friend knows the owner of Oceanside Grille, so after finishing a project we were working on, he arranged a multi-course dinner/wine tasting at the restaurant to celebrate. Turns out Oceanside Grille can put together a pretty awesome dinner...

The meal started with a huge scallop in a shiitake mushroom sauce. The presentation was really nice, with the little jalapeno and parsley garnish. 

 

Salad was the second course. It was an arugula salad with goat cheese, artichoke hearts, and strawberry. These three ingredients aren't something that I would think of to put together in a salad, but it worked really well. 

 

The third course was Chilean Sea Bass served Oscar style. Although Chilean sea bass has been one of the top fish to avoid for years according to various seafood watch lists, my conscious didn't hurt too much as I ate this tasty piece of fish topped with crab meat.

Next was a Duck and Brie Pot Pie. I've never had duck in pie before, and this was a good one. The duck was nice and tender and lacked the fatty pieces that gives the bird a bad reputation.

The fifth course of the meal was wagyu beef in a peppercorn sauce. This was my first time trying wagyu and I was a little skeptical before tasting the meat. There's the whole controversy on whether or not restaurants are actually serving anything besides normal beef at a higher price when they sell wagyu or kobe beef. Upon tasting, that skepticism quickly went away as I realized this beef was indeed better. People that love steak have always told me about how the meat will almost melt in your mouth. I can honestly say that this wagyu was the first time that I've ever experienced this with beef. Perhaps I've just had really bad luck every time I've had beef in the past, but to me, this wagyu was a foodie epiphany of understanding how good beef can potentially be. The spicy peppercorn sauce made the beef even better...

Finally, it was time for dessert. We ended up having two desserts, the first being a chocolate creme brulee. It was very chocolaty and good.

The second dessert, the strawberry fettucini, was definitely the winner. I've never had anything quite like this, and it was delicious. Strips of crepe made up the fettucini, served in a creamy sauce that had a slight cinnamon flavor, then topped with strawberries and walnuts. I love it when restaurants do unique desserts!

Oceanside Grille was one of the best meals in a while. I can't remember the last time I've had a fancy multi-course like this. The taste and presentation of the food was wonderful. I got to try some new foods and was introduced to the wonder that is wagyu beef. You should definitely visit Oceanside Grille!

Eau Gallie River Crab House in Melbourne, FL

I had lunch at the Eau Gallie River Crab House in Melbourne. Located in a repurposed Burger King building, this restaurant has a very nice view of the Eau Gallie River. They have plenty of outdoor seating overlooking the river, but it was very warm on the afternoon we choose to eat there, so our meal occurred in the air conditioning.

Although crabs may have been the thing to order here, I instead had the Blackened Mahi. Served with two sides, I choose the onion rings after seeing them be delivered to a nearby table and the steamed vegetables, which turned out to be broccoli. The fish had a nice spicy flavor and was nice and flaky. I don't know if it was meant to go with the fish or the onion rings, but I also liked the honey mustard dipping sauce that was served on the side.

I enjoyed the food here, but service was kind of lacking. There was one waiter for the entire restaurant. Although they were only about a quarter full, he definitely seemed overwhelmed. Taking drinks to be refilled and never returning them is never a good thing. Overall, food was good and hopefully the bad service was a fluke...

Island Pasta Company in Melbourne, FL

Island Pasta Company is located in Downtown Melbourne. They specialize in all sorts of pasta, with many of their dishes having a tropical influence.

The first pasta dish on the menu caught my attention. It was called The Mediterranean and was a tri-color rotini topped with feta cheese, scallions, basil, garlic, roasted red peppers, and sun dried tomatoes in a marinara sauce. I'm not entirely sure why, but I pictured this dish differently from the menu's description. It definitely was a tasty pasta, but perhaps because everything except the basil and feta disappeared into the sauce, I found it a little boring. Next time I'm going to have to go with something more out of the ordinary like their Trenchtown Tortellini, served in an alfredo sauce with tropical fruit...

Osteen Diner in Osteen, FL

Osteen Diner is one of the few restaurants in the small town of Osteen, FL. Before a Wal-Mart shopping center opened nearby, the diner was perhaps the only real sit-down restaurant in Osteen.

The Osteen Diner is a cross between a classic diner and a Cracker Barrel (only better). It has that porch out front just like a Cracker Barrel, only the Osteen Diner has the southern comfort food chain beat with their chicken coop in the parking lot. The whole restaurant has a southern feel, and this southern theme is also apparent with some of their menu items.

I had breakfast on this visit to the Osteen Diner. I kept it simple and ordered two scrambled eggs. I had a choice of grits or home fries as a side, and I went with grits. A biscuit was also served on the side. The eggs and grits both were good, as they should be with a simple dish like I ordered. I've had better biscuits elsewhere though.

The Osteen Diner may not be fine dining, but anywhere that has a chicken coop in their parking lot is worth a visit!