→ March 17, 2019
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Florida eats, 2019 edition.

I reached out to readers before my trip last week to the Palm Beach area and got far more suggestions than I could try in just over 48 hours there before I drove north. There were two very big hits in my opinion, the first one the unassuming Mediterranean Market and Deli in West Palm Beach, which is indeed a market of foods from the Levant that also offers wraps and platters to go (there’s no seating) at absurd prices. The shish tawook platter (chicken marinated in lemon juice and turmeric) was really too much food – more than a serving’s worth of chicken, plus large portions of rice pilau and hummus, a thin pita (closer to lavash), and a small salad like a fattoush without the bread. The chicken was superb, bright, tart, and not overcooked (also not Nimmo-cooked), and, as silly as it might sound, the rice was also just delicious. White rice can be so bleh, but this not only had flavor (prepared in broth, perhaps?) but was perfectly cooked, and had strands of vermicelli pasta as is traditional in cuisines like that of Lebanon. The hummus was probably the least interesting part of the platter in part because it was too thin.

I met a friend for dinner at Grandview Market in West Palm Beach, a food hall – get used to that term in this post – with a slew of options for dinner and desserts, so I partook of both. We each got sandwiches from El Cochinito, which of course specializes in slow-roasted pork; I got their namesake sandwich, on crusty bread with maduros and some sliced onion. It’s also too much food, and almost too inexpensive at $10. The original El Cochinito is in LA on Sunset Blvd, between Night + Market Song and Intelligentsia Coffee. For dessert, I followed my friend’s tip to get the rolled ice cream at Crema, which has an intimidating array of combinations on the menu, so I asked the guy who took my order what he’d recommend to someone who likes chocolate, coffee, and mint ice creams. He didn’t hesitate to push the Cafecito, which has ground coffee mixed right into the ice cream with a fudge swirl and some graham crackers on the site. Those were kind of superfluous – maybe that would work better if they crumbled on top – but the ice cream itself was rich and tasted like a sweetened caffe latte.

Many people recommended Leftovers, part of a trio of local restaurants run by the same family, but my meal there was disappointing for a simple and entirely preventable reason: They didn’t salt the fish. I ordered what is apparently their signature dish, the fresh fish of your choice (I went with triple tail on my server’s suggestion) coated with julienned sweet potato and then pan-fried until crispy, served over a giant kitchen-sink of a salad. The problem is that the fish wasn’t seasoned at all beneath the coating – not just undersalted, but unsalted, and you can’t recover from that mistake. It felt like such a waste of a beautiful piece of fish, and the coating itself was delicious (crispier than I would have guessed, since sweet potatoes don’t fry up as well as white potatoes do), but even with the coating and a rich key-lime garlic sauce, the fish itself was still just bland. I also tried their fried tuna and basil roll – wrapped like an egg roll and deep fried, so the tuna ends up cooked as if it had been seared – which was interesting, mostly because of the wasabi dipping sauce, because the fish itself was kind of bland despite being of high quality.

Avocado Grill was another reader recommendation and had the advantage of being very close to the Nationals/Astros’ park, where I was headed on Saturday night but didn’t have a long window for dinner. (They have two locations; this was the one in Palm Beach Gardens.) I ordered a beet salad to start and fish tacos for my entrée, and both had the same issues: very good inputs, very little flavor. The salad had no dressing on it, and the fish was underseasoned itself so it relied on the other toppings, including a lime-ginger dressing and a fruit salsa, to give it any taste. Again, as with the Leftovers meal, someone here is buying the right ingredients, but the technique here is lacking.

I had coffee both mornings I was in the area at Subculture, which you can also get at the Nationals/Astros park; the pour-over coffee was fine, but I’d skip their espresso, which I thought was overextracted. I ordered a macchiato, my preference for espresso drinks, but it was just a double shot with some overfoamed milk spooned on top, not poured in so it integrates a little with the coffee.

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I did better in Orlando, fortunately. Hunger Street Tacos was the best place I visited, even with their beef-heavy menu. I went with the chicken and chorizo taco, the hibiscus and avocado taco, and the elote street corn (shaved off the cob, so it’s better for sharing). The chicken and chorizo was the better of the two, but the hibiscus taco was certainly the most unique I’ve ever tried: the flowers are shredded and sautéed, so they look like dark red cabbage but have a profile like that of sweet red wine – not quite as sweet as a port but in that vein. Their fresh limeade is not short on the lime juice, either.

Swine and Sons is a spinoff of local stalwarts The Ravenous Pig, having taken over a nearby storefront when they first opened before moving into one of two local food halls I visited on this trip, this one inside a Meat House that’s across a large Winter Park intersection from the Pig’s location. Their focus, as you might imagine, is pig, including house-made charcuterie, but I was there early for breakfast (served all day) and got the very simple “eggs on a bun” – fried eggs, house-made bacon, and tomato jam (cheese optional) on a very good bread. The bacon was the star, as you’d hope, and this was worth more than $7 when you consider the quality and craft behind it. They also offer chilaquiles and avocado toast as breakfast options, and their weekend breakfast menu is twice as big.

Se7en Bites offers to “fill your pie hole,” if you were unclear on their concept; this food is not for the literally faint of heart. They also serve breakfast all day, and while I’m not normally a big fan of benedicts (mostly because Canadian ‘bacon’ is just bad ham), their house benedict is something else: a buttermilk garlic biscuit with a medium egg, a slice of fried green tomato, a few strips of bacon, and a peppery hollandaise sauce poured over the top … and then poured again over the top half of the biscuit. I ordered extra bacon, because we’re all going to die soon anyway so why not enjoy it. (I didn’t actually finish the biscuit, which is good but so heavy.)

Pizza Bruno does Neapolitan style pizza with some other small dishes from the wood-fired oven (including garlic knots with “too much garlic,” as if such a thing were possible), with a traditional dough and both traditional and very non-traditional (cheddar cheese? pineapple?) toppings available. I stuck with the traditional because I’m not a fucking savage, getting a margherita with mushrooms, and would put a 50 or solid-average grade on it, with the dough the best part but the pizza overall too salty, I think because they grate quite a bit of pecorino romano on it right out of the oven.

For coffee in Orlando, I went back to Foxtail in Winter Park, a favorite of mine from a few years ago, and also tried Lineage’s location in the East End Market, a wonderful food hall with a patisserie, a cheesemonger, a juice bar, a ramen place, and more. Lineage is a third-wave roaster and had a few single origins, including a Rwandan coffee from the Kigeyo washing station from near Lake Kivu. Their description promised floral and green apple notes but I tasted a warm spice in the finish, both cinnamon and clove.

Finally, for anyone headed to Walt Disney World during the Flower & Garden show, I can offer a few suggestions on the food at the kiosks this year, since I ate dinner that way one night while also doing some shopping for my daughter, niece, nephew, and some friends’ kids. The best dish I ate was from the Travel & Trellis kiosk: a farm ‘meatball’ wrap, made with Impossible lab-grown meat and served on a lentil-flour bread, which is probably not selling the carnivores among you … but I would really not have been able to tell you this was a meat alternative had I not known that going in. The chocolate pudding at the same stand was the worst thing I ate, so maybe give that a miss. The tuna tataki (Citrus Blossom) was fine, although I think I’d have liked that better raw than seared, and the duck confit with tomatoes and olives with a tiny square of polenta (Fleur de Lys) was also solid. The better choice for dessert was the warm chocolate cake with bourbon-salted caramel sauce and spiced pecans from the Smokehouse, by the USA pavilion. I didn’t care for the karaage, Japanese fried chicken, from the Hanami stand by Japan – I know what karaage is, but this didn’t match up – and never got to a few more things I wanted to try because by then I was very full.

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→ April 8, 2017
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Sarasota and other Florida eats.

Florida spring training kind of sucks, in my professional opinion, because the sites are so far apart and several are wastelands for decent food. I found a handful of decent spots in my week there this year, along with a lot of mediocrity, but I’ll just focus on the good here, including the fact that Sarasota of all places has a decent little food and coffee scene happening.

Baker & Wife is a farm-to-table type of place in Sarasota, recommended to me by a friend who lives nearby, and I was impressed by both the vegetable dishes and, as you’d expect from the name, the dessert. I went with two starters rather than a main, a salad of roasted yellow beets with goat cheese, pesto, and pine nuts, along with crab cakes with a spicy green papaya slaw; of all of that, the only aspect I didn’t care for was the slaw, which tasted too much of fish sauce. The beets were really spectacular, although I am a fan of roasted beets in any form, but I think they pair so well with goat cheese, any kind of nuts, and the salty, bright punch of the pesto. Dessert, I had the “baker’s bannoffie pie,” and I’ll let the menu describe it: “pecan and graham cracker crust, house made banana & vanilla bean pudding, chocolate chips, caramel, cream.” It was that good and then some. It all worked so well together.

Perq is a new third-wave coffee bar in Sarasota, using beans from various artisan roasters around the country, and offering numerous cold-brew and single-origin espresso options along with the usual. It’s a sizable cafe too, unlike a lot of third-wave spots, and they appear to rotate through various roasters – they had a number of I knew from my travels and when I chatted up one of the baristas, he mentioned several other great roasters they’ve used, like heart, Sightglass, Four barrel, Counter Culture, and more.

I had half a decent meal at Selva, a Peruvian restaurant downtown, where the ceviche was very good and the entree I had was not. The ceviche isn’t truly traditional; they have numerous combinations that include various fruits, acids, and types of fish, and the tuna/watermelon ceviche I got had larger pieces of fish than I’m used to seeing in ceviche. It came with a spicy lime sauce for dipping or pouring to taste, and I would recommend using that if you end up here. But the main course was kind of a mess – a duck breast that was cooked very inconsistently, and served with a risotto that was anything but.

There’s also a tiny Buddy Brew location right near Selva, at the entrance to the parking garage downtown not far from Tamiami Trail. I would go to Perq before this, but Buddy Brew is solid.

Elsewhere in the state, I discovered the brand new Foxtail Coffee in Orlando’s Winter Park neighborhood thanks to a scout’s recommendation, and both times I went there was a line out the door. They had four coffees available from different countries; I tried their espresso one day and an Ethiopian Yirgacheffe pour-over the next, the latter of which came with a roasting demonstration from Iain, one of the owners and a baseball fan as well. It’s right near the old location of the Ravenous Pig, which has moved into the old Cask & Larder space but which I can report is still some of the best food to be had in the Orlando area.

Near the Jupiter complex is a very unassuming little coffee shop and roaster called Oceana, which does a lot of single origins as well but roasts most of them darker than I tend to like. Their pour-over options are the way to go – I had an Ethiopian the first day I was there, and I’ll be honest in that I was so in need of the caffeine I don’t remember much beyond the sheer pleasure of feeling it hit my bloodstream. Pass on the espresso as their extraction rate is way too high and the result is watery.

Merritt Island’s Cuban Island Cafe is worth a stop if you’re in that area, which I’d never visited before; I went for my standard choice, lechon asado, which in this case came with some amazing black beans, one maduro, one tostone, and well over a half-pound of pork.

I’ll also mention Harry’s Pizzeria in Miami, which appeared on a list of the best pizzerias in the U.S. a few years ago that I’ve kept on hand for my travels, hitting more than half of the 48 places they listed. The pizza itself was just average, but I had an escarole salad to start that was tremendous – lemon, anchovies, parmiggiano, and bread crumbs. It hit a little of everything, adding salty, sour, and umami notes to the slight bitterness of the raw greens. They have a few non-pizza options that might be worth trying if I ever go back to have that salad again.

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→ March 13, 2014
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Florida eats, March 2014.

Recent posts over at ESPN: on young Dodgers players, on Jose Abreu and other White Sox, and on Nick Gordon and other Florida prep kids. I also held a regular Klawchat this morning.

After I posted my dining guide to Arizona, I was asked – as I am every year – when I’m going to do a similar one for Florida. The answer, of course, is never. Here’s why:

* I lived in Arizona for just under three years. I have never lived in Florida.

* All of the spring training sites in Arizona are located within about 30 miles of downtown Phoenix. The biggest gap between any two parks is a 75-minute drive. It might take you that long to get through Tampa, never mind far-flung sites like Fort Myers or Viera.

* Arizona has a wonderful, thriving culinary scene. Florida has oranges. Actually, the food scene in Miami is supposed to be pretty good, but there are no teams there.

So this is more of a quick round-up of where I ate on last week’s trip, not an exhaustive guide to eating in the state where you shouldn’t even bother going for spring training unless your favorite team is there. And even then you should think twice.

In the greater Orlando area, I had two meals of note at off-Disney sites (I stay at WDW because they own us and it’s cheaper to stay there than anywhere else), but also wanted to mention two others. One meal was at 4 Rivers, a wonderful Texas-style barbecue joint in Winter Garden about which I’ve waxed poetic many times. Get the moist brisket, the corn, and the collard greens. The smoked sausage is pretty good too, although it’s not always that hot. Their “burnt ends” aren’t my idea of burnt ends, so I haven’t ordered them again. There’s another location of 4 Rivers in Longwood.

I also ate at Prato in Winter Park, a trattoria focused on pastas and pizzas located on a cute, expensive-looking street well off I-4. I had dinner with a scout, so we split their meatball appetizer – three small, moist meatballs, firm enough to hold their shape, served with just a coating of tomato sauce on a bed of creamy polenta with some sauteed onions. I had to get the pizza, because I’m pizza-obsessed, and it was solid-average – good crust, a little doughy without much char, but with great toppings, including mixed mushrooms and arugula. I wouldn’t go well out of my way again to eat here, but if I were in the Winter Park area to see a player I’d consider it worth visiting again.

The Ravenous Pig was the best meal I had during the winter meetings, but I never had the chance to write the meal up afterwards and won’t dare to do it the injustice of writing it up now. I’ll just say that it’s the best restaurant in greater Orlando in my own experiences, and I want to try its sister restaurant, the more casual Cask and Larder, the next time I’m in the area. There’s a focus on local fare, artisanal ingredients, house-made charcuterie, and cocktails. You can’t lose.

I had to see a prep pitcher in St. Petersburg and went to Bella Brava, which has a little bit of a chain-restaurant feel (think Carrabba’s) but better food than that would indicate, other than the use of dried rather than fresh pasta. I had their slow-braised pork belly (which apparently is also smoked) rigatoni with pepper/onion confit, fresh rosemary and fennel, and crispy lardons, with the jus from the meat serving as the sauce. It was as good and rich as it sounds other than the dried pasta, which seemed flat and incongruous next to the powerful flavors of the meat and the sweetness of the pepper confit.

With two games in Dunedin, I took the chance to visit some old haunts but had mixed results. Eli’s BBQ Shack disappointed; Eli passed away a year ago of leukemia, and unfortunately the chopped pork wasn’t the same, coming out dry and tough with no bark. Casa Tina in downtown Dunedin was just as good as I remembered, solid-average to a tick above, serving authentic Mexican food with great attention to detail in the food; my entree was good but it was actually the salsa that blew me away, as the tomatoes tasted like they had just been picked that morning. The Whistle Stop Cafe in Safety Harbor still had good food, although the menu has changed and is now much bigger with more upscale (expensive) fare as well as the old sandwiches and salads, but the service – never good – was unbelievably slow.

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