Garni is the all-day restaurant at the Lake Nona Wave Hotel. It’s located on the second floor and overlooks the lobby on one side and the pool on the other. Like the rest of the hotel, the space is beautifully decorated, and it has a wide variety of breakfast, lunch, and dinner items, as you would expect from the all-day hotel restaurant at a hotel.
We were there on a Sunday, so they were also serving brunch. It was nice that, while there were a number of brunch items, you could still get plenty of lunch-oriented things as well. We enjoyed everything that we had, and the shishito pepper appetizer was a particularly interesting approach, different than the normal seared shishito peppers. These had been sort of roasted in an interesting cheese concoction, and they were quite tasty.
This is an attractive restaurant located off the lobby of the Wave Hotel in Lake Nona. It features mostly South American-influenced cuisine, and there’s a good variety on the menu. We had the tasting menu, and were a bit disappointed by the experience.
It wasn’t that the courses didn’t look attractive. It just seemed like nothing all that spectacular about any of them, and none of the ingredients really seemed to go together all that well. Perhaps it was just because we had a spectacular omakase the night before at Nami, which is in the same hotel, but we were just a bit underwhelmed. I think maybe a better bet is to just go and order a few things off the menu rather than have the tasting experience.
This is a review for the Chef’s Counter experience at Nami. While the restaurant itself is extraordinarily beautiful, the intimacy of the Chef’s Counter is a level above. The intimacy isn’t just all about size; it’s about the one-on-one connection with Executive Chef Jason Beliveau.
I’ve been to many omakase experiences, but I’ve never had one where the chef knew everyone’s name before he even arrived on stage, and that one-to-one connection continued throughout the dinner. What a dinner it was: 21 courses of meticulously assembled food presented with clear intent, where every ingredient was there for a reason. There wasn’t a single miss in the entire sequence, and the pacing and camaraderie were phenomenal.
Well, I could describe the courses one by one, but I’ll let the menu and the photos do the work, because I’m sure that Chef Justin’s creativity will have made any descriptions I could provide obsolete by your visit.
This is definitely an omakase, but that is not to say it is Japanese. There are influences from all over the world. Just put yourself in Chef’s hands, knowing you’re in for an extraordinary experience, undoubtedly the finest dining experience in Orlando.
The meal also includes a round of outstanding sake and a spectacularly created cocktail (think LN2). In addition, an extensive wine list and thoughtful availability of wine by the glass or cocktails mean that you’ll have plenty to accompany that wonderful food. Equally flawless service is personable while remaining unobtrusive.
If you’re looking for the best Orlando has to offer, whether you’re a resident or a visitor, this is the place to encounter it.
Note that the restaurant is not entered from the hotel lobby. There’s an exterior door on the west side of the Wave Hotel, and valet is available there, or self-parking is right across the street.
Hash House A-Go-Go is always a fun experience with good food and crazy amounts of it. I’ve been to the one in Chicago and one on I-Drive, but this is the first time that I went to the one in Horizon West. It’s a larger, more high-ceilinged space, so it has a somewhat different vibe, although it follows through with the traditional giant piece of mechanical equipment right as you enter (in this case, a big tractor).
Pretty much in a rut and always have to have the chicken and waffles because I think it’s the best around. Actually, it’s the chicken that is the best around, with its mixture of crispy leeks and green onions on top and the hot maple syrup. The waffles are just okay. They’re a bit too big for my taste, and it’s a little weird to have the bacon inside of them instead of crispy on top, but the sage flavoring is really good on everything.
My wife had the chilaquiles, which was a massive serving and was quite good and almost authentic.
Our server was quite a comedian, which made the experience even more fun.
This is a delightful wine bar with a terrific menu that also turns into a live entertainment venue at night. The wine list is thoughtful and reasonably priced, and the food is split between sharing plates and individual items.
We started with the baked brie, which was an unconventional but excellent presentation of four freshly baked sourdough baguette slices, toasted with a thin slice of brie and fruity toppings. It was a wonderful accompaniment to our wines.
For our mains, my wife had a shrimp ceviche stuffed into an avocado, and I had the grilled salmon salad. It was one of the best pieces of grilled salmon I’ve ever had. Service was friendly, and the atmosphere is excellent.
Harlow Grove is a great addition to the Winter Garden dining scene. It’s just a couple blocks south of Plant Street, where most of the other restaurants are, but it has a completely different vibe. The building is absolutely gorgeous. I felt like I was in a trendy new restaurant in Chicago. It’s visually stunning inside, and the acoustic design is pretty good. There’s a nice variety of seating from bar to table to booth. We loved our corner table in the nook.
The menu is really well thought out. It offers a nice variety of appetizers, salads, and main dishes along with some handhelds. Everything was very appealing, so it was difficult to decide where to start. We settled upon sharing a Caesar salad and the bread service. The Caesar was excellent. The crunch of toasted parmesan on the top was particularly appealing. The bread service was a pull-apart loaf served with two different butters. It was also very good. It might be the only thing on the menu that I thought was maybe overpriced for what it was, but everything else on the menu is extremely reasonably priced.
For our second course, we shared the bisque, a thick truffle-infused potage, and the shrimp cocktail: a conventional assortment of large fresh prawns served with cocktail sauce and horseradish. We enjoyed both of these.
For entrees, my wife had the PEI mussels and I had the filet mignon. She enjoyed her muscles, although they weren’t to my taste, but the filet mignon was wonderful. Perfectly seared and served with truffle mashed potatoes that were like the big brother of the bisque we had earlier.
Service provided by Renato was fabulous. He was not just a server but a delightful host whose recommendations were greatly appreciated.
This restaurant has a sizable cocktail list and a compact but extremely well-thought-out wine list. I can’t think of another wine list that has a higher hit ratio in terms of wines that I would personally choose to put on a wine list, and yet the overall wine pricing is extremely fair.
I also sampled two cocktails which were both standouts. The Fancy Martini is a spectacularly complex vodka-based martini with a terrific balance of pepper and saline flavors. And the caviar-stuffed olives that came with it were a nice bonus.
After dinner, I had the espresso martini, which is also very good and unusual in its incorporation of pistachio. Definitely worth trying.
We love this new addition to Winter Garden. It’s distinct from all the other restaurants in Winter Garden and has already obviously found a tremendous fan base because it was busy every moment that we were there on a Wednesday evening.
Bistro Boudin is on the upstairs level of the beautiful facility in Fisherman’s Wharf.
Downstairs you can buy bread to go. You can eat at the casual cafe that has outdoor seating, and you can also watch the fascinating process of making the bread in the semi-automated kitchen.
Upstairs is the fine dining restaurant with a great view of San Francisco Bay and a classic selection of menu items.
Of course, there’s the Boudin bread, which is what we all come here for, and it’s complimentary. They also have a garlic cheese bread, which we tried, but I felt like the heavy coating of cheese really masked what’s great about the Boudin sourdough flavor.
We began with a Caesar salad, which is made in a very traditional way and was an absolutely perfect accompaniment to the bread and served with croutons made from their bread.
Then we had two classic entrees:
– A generous and delicious shrimp cocktail with extraordinarily fresh shrimp in a tangy cocktail sauce.
– A wonderful serving of four oysters Rockefeller with just the right mixture of spinach and artichoke combining to form a creamy blanket for the perfect fresh oysters.
Service was friendly, and the ambiance can’t be beat.
This is an excellent Mexican restaurant that is just a short walk from the cruise terminal. If you’re stopping in San Diego and want to get a fix of authentic Mexican food, this is definitely the place.
The salsa assortment is definitely worth ordering to go with the complimentary basket of chips and the complimentary salsa, because the three in the salsa assortment include very creative flavors, including an avocado-based salsa and a delicious pistachio one, along with one that is spicy enough to suit any palate.
The house guacamole is also deliciously creamy and perfectly seasoned with lime.
The real knockout dish that I had, though, was the taco with chicken pastor. I’m a big fan of pastor, but this is a very non-traditional preparation of pastor. Instead of being shredded pork mixed with a spicy sauce and hunks of pineapple, this was almost more like a Mexican cordon bleu where the chicken had been amazingly seared in some combination with cheese and pastor spices. It was absolutely delicious.
The tacos might seem expensive at $10 apiece, but combined with the obviously house-made corn tortillas, I think they’re a bargain.
Service was friendly, and the atmosphere is very chill. There’s a large outside seating area to enjoy, and San Diego is nearly always perfect weather.
We took the Bright Line train from Orlando to Fort Lauderdale to get ready for our cruise and spent the night before the cruise at the Hyatt Centric because it is located on Las Olas Boulevard, where all the interesting shops and restaurants are, in Fort Lauderdale. But it was raining pretty hard, and we decided we didn’t want to go out walking to find a place for dinner. Searching around online, a speakeasy called Room 901 showed up, but we couldn’t figure out where it was. It seemed really close, though. So I went online, and there was a reservation open just 30 minutes from the current time. I booked a table for two, not having any idea what I was getting into.
When the confirmation email showed up, it didn’t really contain any clues, either. All we knew was that the place was called Room 901 and was really close. Then we realized we were in Room 956. “Is it possible that it’s at the other end of this hall?” I said.
So we walked down to the end of the hall and knocked on the door of Room 901. It opened, and there it was. Apparently, if you’re not staying on the ninth floor of the hotel, you’re supposed to somehow know that you go to the front desk of the hotel and ask for a key that will let you access the room. But the way we stumbled on it made it even more mysterious. Of all the speakeasies we’ve been to, it has definitely the most secret.
It is also the best. The mixology was phenomenal. The drink recipes are entirely enthusiastic to the period. And even though it’s in a room at a hotel that appears to not have a room service or a fancy restaurant, the food was terrific.
And the ambiance is amazing. The room is extremely dark, authentically decorated to the period, and features an imposing wall of every kind of liquor and liqueur you can imagine. The whole thing is run by a single bartender who acts as host and server, and made everyone in the room feel special and welcome. It’s 12 seats only, and you definitely need reservations. I would go back to Fort Lauderdale just to enjoy this experience again.
