orlando – Page 3 – My Urban Pantry

Harry & Larry’s

February 25, 20141 Comment

Our friend Karin has had a rough couple of weeks. You can see more about why on her blog. I urge you to go there actually and be either entertained or inspired or just engaged. She’s en route to Manila for work now. Z couldn’t go because the doctors didn’t think it would work for his health. He’s been kinda sick at home so I can’t imagine how he would’ve done but it tends to all work out one way or the other.

So, back to this. On Friday night Karin & I had been texting back and forth with what we could do and Z suggested Harry & Larry’s BBQ whose deep fried pickles Karin has been praising for months. Not their BBQ, but their pickles. Alright, a 40 minute drive later to what must be the other end of the state we hit Winter Garden. It’s kind of more old town central Florida. A walking community where people have lived there a while and are happy with their comfortable community. Harry & Larry’s is a tiny windowed storefront with a deep hallway of bright red booths. It looks kinda old but has only been around for five or so years While we were perusing the menu board outside I asked someone sitting outside with a big baskety pile of dinner what he was having, ‘Man Salad’ he said. So, I happily ordered that only slightly less ‘Manly’. A big old basket of fries (instead of lettuce) usually covered in beans (I skipped those) and then smothered in cheese and brisket just waiting to be sauced up by one of the three options, sweet, hot or XXX. I had the hot and had to switch to the sweet which isn’t my usual but I liked it a lot. Z had the XXX on his pulled pork sandwich and I really can’t imagine how that felt going down. A man salad. Awesome. It was fun to eat. No way I could finish. The meat was alright. I’m not ashamed to say i probably like 4Rivers better but the pickles. Karin’s right about them. They are so great. Dill pickle rounds dipped in some kind of cornmeally breading and deep fried served with some pinkish sort of sauce thing. They were so good. I was sharing or could have easily forked my way through there. It’s a fun local place filled with friendly staff and the prices are very fair. We shut the place down talking -although Winter Garden pulls in the sidewalks pretty early. You should go, even if just for the pickles and conversation.

**Oh, btw, that pig ride up at the top sits outside. I think it should be painted like a boar as it has tusks and looks fierce.

Brown Derby Lounge aka What I did on ‘Big Game’ Sunday…

February 5, 2014Leave a comment

so, let’s just say I was born in Seattle and lived there until I was almost in high school (Go Seahawks!) and moved to Denver after college and Z was born there and lived there for about 25 years (Go Broncos!) and maybe, just maybe, we don’t care about watching football. We decided we didn’t even care if we watched the commercials. So, finding out that the parks (as in Disney parks) would be less than busy and it was the first warm day in weeks (hello 85, welcome back!) we headed out to Hollywood Studios. Before joining some recent South Africa to Orlando transplants to ride the rides we stopped in for lunch at the new Hollywood Brown Derby Lounge. It is a tiny little patio lounge serving a small menu of tapas style food and cocktails alongside two fun non-alcoholic drinks. We both ordered one of these drinks, the Mimi Kaboom. I guess Mimi is a ‘citizen’ of Hollywood Studios who fancies herself an actress. Her namesake mocktail is made of lime, agave, pineapple and fresh mint along with a few soda bubbles. It was really bright and refreshing and I really enjoyed it. At $4.49 for a glass it carried the Disney tax but for a mixed drink sans alcohol I thought it was pretty good. We ordered two items to share-a plate with two fairly good sized sliders, one Wagyu beef with avocado, bacon & gouda and one chorizo and Manchego. I liked the beef quite a bit better because I don’t care for warm Manchego but both were tasty. The real piece de resistance was the Charcuterie board. It was about $20 but was probably really enough for 3-4 people who were just there for a snack and a cool drink. It had almost too many items on it. Two small pots of ‘meats’, one a faux gras that was a whipped creamy chicken and one of duck rillettes. Z liked the chicken but it weirded me out with it’s smoothness. The rillettes I found tasty and savory on the small buttered toasts they provided. There were also three cheese selections, a goat, a blue & a brie. The blue was really nice-salty and earthy. The brie had truffles embedded which I don’t love-but it was triple cream and very dense. The goat was unusual, a hard cheese that was tasty. There were four cured meats as well, a serrano ham-good. A salami picante-nice and chewy, salty. A Chorizo (Spanish style)-Loved it. And then a creepy (to me) Salami Toscano-way too earthy and cellar like for my tastebuds but Z liked it a lot. He is way easier going about weirdly textured things than I am. I’ll try them-once. Again, it’s a fairly huge board and would, I think be better for a couple more people.

There are only about 12-15 tables and due to the park being fairly empty we were able to snag a table when we walked in. I think normally you would have to have a bit of luck on your side not to wait if you wanted to eat here. They don’t take reservations and it is genuinely tiny. As you can see, lots and lots of tastes. It actually wore me out by the end. I would enjoy slightly less options. There were other menu items I’d like to try, a famous Brown Derby Cobb Salad and mini-dessert flights along with duck confit tacos. Yes, please.. Oh, I almost forgot, there were also some really delicious bread and butter pickles. They were so good with the goat cheese. I’m going to have to make some of those. This is not quick service-so if you are jonesing to go on rides, it probably isn’t for you. I’d say our lunch took around an hour or so. But, as a nice way to spend Superbowl Sunday afternoon? I’ll take it. So, sorry football fans. I hope we can still be friends.

Shutters

February 3, 2014Leave a comment

We went out for a surprise (although not for the birthday boy) birthday dinner last weekend. Our friend set up his own party and invited us out to dinner but didn’t say where we were going. He got some good joy out of making me stew and making the surprise be on us. Knowing how I google menus and pre-think restaurants he would randomly dangle the carrot throughout the week, asking if I was nerved up not knowing where we were going. I lived through it, barely. As it turned out we ate a a table service restaurant at the Disney Caribbean Beach Resort called Shutters. They said that it was island style food but we didn’t get that too much. There were a few nods to that culture-boat drinks (mine had a magical light up ice cube that gave me endless joy) and shrimp with plantains and some meat pie style empanadas. But oddly, no jerk and not much in the way of spices. Although there were some kicken spicy sweet chicken wings. I had some mahi tacos with mango salsa, all of which I enjoyed. The salsa didn’t have heat but a tasty sweetness and there was crunchy cabbage slaw. Z had steak with chimichurri with some type of boniato puree-more South American than island-inspired but it was flavorful and similar to tacos he really likes during Food & Wine. Our party was loud and full of laughter. We had fun hanging out with friends and meeting and getting to know some new folks. After our dinner they brought out a big goofy-cookie and Disneyfied cake for the table. Fun times!

The Ravenous Pig

February 2, 20141 Comment

We just had the most delicious lunch. It was just so good. We went out to a few shops afterward and I still had things I wanted to say. I also figured I ought to write it down while it still rings in my mind. The Ravenous Pig is a much acclaimed local and semi-seasonally inspired restaurant in Orlando. The owners also own my favorite local restaurant, Cask & Larder. The Ravenous Pig is styled as a gastropub serving up delicious and thoughtful food alongside masterful cocktails and beers. The chefs have been nominated for James Beard awards as well as best new chef by Food & Wine in 2012. This is actually only the second time we have been to the restaurant. The first being waaaaaay back in 2009 on our 1st anniversary, and if I remember correctly, the first meal out after Z’s liver transplant. Today was actually his 5th anniversary of the transplant and I happily responded to an email for today’s once a month pig roast and having made a reservation on Open Table. It worked out well to celebrate transplanitversary. Once we were seated Z ordered a Coke and I quickly weeded through the cocktail list and ordered a Gin & Jam. Oh. Em. Gee. It was ginny and filled with home made clementine rosemary jam. It was sweet and I had to totally restrain myself to not to chug it down in a long satisfied slurp.

This month the food was modeled after a French country roast and included heavenly succulent roast pork loin. It was so smooth and densely flavorful. It sat on top of lovely luke-cool new potato salad that was just lightly dressed with a bit of oil and vinegar and a few herbs. It was also piled on a small power packed choucroute (sourkraut en francais) with mustard seeds and warm vinegary sourness. Some highly flavored pork sausage also graced the plate which was swirled with some bitey mustard that had a bit of mustard oil heat and this cool accompaniment called bereweka on the menu. I’ve scouted around the interwebs for this item and it seems to be Alsatian in origin and seems to be in this case, a dark beer reduction chutney that was deeply sweet and raisiny. It paired perfectly with the pork and sourness of the choucroute. Everything was just delicious bites including the tiny little nod to dessert-a little brown butter and almond cupcake-maybe three bites with the wispiest hint of sweetness in an almost all butter frosting. It was so full of flavor that I could hardly believe what I was eating. Oh, and I almost forgot, we had a tall glass of truffle salted shoestring fries that just added salty goodness to the overall pleasure of the thing.

I kind of wonder why it took me five years to find this lunch but I’m really glad we did. It’s not the least expensive thing going but this is the kind of careful and delicious food that I crave and is so worth it.

Yellow Dog Eats

January 15, 20142 Comments

*I have started and stopped writing this post 3 or 4 times. I just need to push through the block. I know what the block is. How to live when people around you have passed away.

I am not sure where to take this post at all. We have been going through a prolonged season of grief at work and then Saturday we went to a memorial service for one of our close friend and colleagues mother and then in the midst of that another colleague passed away last Thursday. And as these things are they were both expected and shocking at the same time for the speed with which they happened. I was actually surprised to watch myself walk through Thursdays events in a way that I hadn’t expected. I could in no way convince myself that what I had heard and repeated was actually real and repeatedly found myself going to Facebook to hope that I would find out that I was wrong. I watched myself do this in a detached kind of way and kind of marvelled at my own actions as they happened because they seemed to come from someone other than me. A friend wrote a great post about hope in mourning that I resonate with. This same friend has a great way of keeping it real and suggested we all go out for lunch after the service on Saturday. So, that’s where we are. Life goes on for us as we contemplate the loss of life in another. It’s interesting how I feel sad or loss but those weird moments of joy too. Laughing feels wrong and right at the same time. Life is funny that way.

The service was on the west side of Orlando so we went to a place we had all heard about and no one had been to-unusual for a party of 6 in a town where one had grown up and the rest have lived between 5 and 15 years. Yellow Dog Eats. A really REALLY casual place (for two of us in heels and a couple of suits and a few more in ties and the fact they allowed dogs inside—incidentally not my favorite.) We tried to dissect the decor and found it could easily be dropped in a beach town or in my mind Breckenridge -it sort of had a surf shack/mountain bar vibe of casual thing. Lots of writing on the wall, a faux biggie fish, and in general a weird over-packedness. It’s an order at the counter and find a table spot and was really crowded over Saturday lunch. I would definitely recommend scoping the menu online before you go to avoid problem of a long menu and a short time to think about it. They have two general lines of food, deli type sandwiches and pulled pork sandwiches and all are sort of cheffy over the top towers of food. Prices in general are 8-12 for a sandwich with chips which is slightly high maybe but the portions are big. We could have easily shared something if we weren’t both so happy to eat lunch.

Z ordered the Fire Pig which is savory pulled pork, pecan-smoked bacon, Gouda cheese, tangy coleslaw and Sriracha, topped with Fish’s Gold BBQ sauce and fried onions, served in a southwest chipotle wrap. I was surprised to see him order a wrap and he offered me a bite. A sweetish bbq pork with a bit of heat and crunch from the slaw. I had the Mr Smokey which is pulled pork topped with smoked pineapple slices, fried onions, pecan- smoked bacon and Fish’s Gold BBQ sauce on a fun-fluffy bun. I used their text there and yes, the bun was fun and fluffy. It was a sweet handheld and I loved the addition of the pineapple. It could definitely become something I would crave. Bags of Miss Vickies chips and nice big dill pickles were served on the side. I liked the addition of the pickle for the acidic cut through the sweet sandwich fillings.

The food was good. Actually go back good. The atmosphere I didn’t love and would likely try to sit outside next time on the patio and definitely in casual clothes. The company though – that was the best part. This life is too short not to enjoy and adventure through with good people. We have another service this weekend for our beloved co-worker. It will be hard but I know that I should go into it looking for the joy in life.