Category: burgers

lemon cotton candy

we spent yesterday sleeping, picking up the house and recovering from the workweek.  About 4:45 Z asks if we should cook or go out.  We opened up the list of Orlando to-do’s and landed on Banana‘s, a diner in the Mills 50 district downtown.  Opentable confirmed a table although for the hour of 6, it wasn’t a problem.  It isn’t a diner in the strictest sense of a counter and a few tables but has the red and black checker vibe going for it.  The drinks menu was backlit and it had the effect of drawing me to the technology and away from the content and I ended up with a glass of water.  Z ordered a handspun dreamsicle milkshake – it was only mildly orangey but had some nice orange zest on top.  He had a buffalo burger and I had the patty melt.  They were really both only just average and we were mildly disappointed.  We expected more boldness.   I think they forgot the cheese on my melt and the burger was way too thick for the bread.  A lemony cone of cotton candy came with our bill and this was the highlight of our meal.  I think this is really a latenight (post drinks) place or a brunch spot and would hit that note better than it hit us.

 

looking for something to do last night and I said, “We should go to the whopper bar.”  I wasn’t really thinking I would be taken up on that one.  The BK Whopper Bar in theory is a high end Burger King-only Whopper Bar at Universal City Walk.  But Z was pretty much like, ‘my mind’s made up, we’re going’.  So, we drove over to check it out.

What it isn’t:

• high end
• clean
• a bar

What it is:

• unique-to date, there are only 3 others and this one was first
• food court-y (next to Moe’s and Panda)
• reasonably tasty

I had a build your own Whopper with A-1, peppered bacon and blue cheese that was pretty good and Z had an Angry Whopper with limpy jalapenos, pepper jack and supposed Angry Sauce that was a little non-existant.  We also had funnel cake fries which had a nice tub of glaze and sort of did taste like funnel cakes.  Homemade burgers are better but this was fun to check out.
City Walk itself is mostly restaurants which a few shops and lots of walk up bars for slurpee-like cocktails.  It is host to Jimmy Buffet’s Margaritaville, Hard Rock Orlando, Bubba Gump’s, Emeril’s, you get the picture.  We also found out that City Walk parking is only $3 after 6pm which is good to know for evening’s out.