After spending the Saturday of our trip exploring Orlando, we left Sunday morning to spend a few hours with each of Marie’s parents on Saint Simons Island. The road there takes us through Jacksonville, and I was looking forward to trying a place that we’d been thinking about sampling for quite some time. Beach Road Chicken Dinners originally opened in 1939, and we arrived just as the place started to fill up with both the after-church crowd and the Jaguars tailgating crowd. Since it’s one of the oldest existing restaurants in town, they’ve got a set, old-fashioned way of doing things. It’s not quite family-style dining, as everybody orders their own proteins, but they do offer up unlimited sides. Continue reading “Beach Road Chicken Dinners, Jacksonville FL”
Harry and Larry’s Bar-B-Que, Winter Garden FL
We’d been bumming around Orlando for many hours, wasting a fair chunk of them in traffic, and it was getting a little late as we made our way to the last restaurant on our list. Now, my original hypothesis had been that barbecue in Florida must be very heavily influenced by each restaurant’s proprietor’s hometown style. Ah, what a silly error that was to make. I totally overlooked that thousands of people are actually born in Florida and grow up here; they don’t just retire to the Sunshine State. Take Ashlee and Katie Grimes, for example. They’re sisters whose family has lived in central Florida for four previous generations, and they’ve grown up smoking barbecue not far from Orlando. Continue reading “Harry and Larry’s Bar-B-Que, Winter Garden FL”
Gabriel’s Sub Shop, Orlando FL
I figured, incorrectly as it turned out, that stopping by a sandwich shop would make a nice midday snack for Marie and our daughter. I had looked around and learned that Orlando is the home of two small chains of such shops. I flipped a coin and Sobik’s, which is very popular, came up tails. I picked Gabriel’s instead. The original store was opened in 1958 by Paul Gabriel, who passed away in 2013. That business, today in its second location on Edgewater Avenue, is still in family hands. At the chain’s peak in the 1970s, there were almost twenty stores around Florida and Georgia. Continue reading “Gabriel’s Sub Shop, Orlando FL”
Ice Cream in Orlando
A really fun resource for people looking for fun things to look at while driving around is Debra Jane Seltzer’s Roadside Architecture. I look at it from time to time wondering what might be nice to see. You know what we don’t have a lot of in Georgia? Buildings shaped like ice cream cones. That’s okay. Florida’s got that covered. There’s a small chain of ice cream shops around central Florida called Twistee Treat, and we drove out to the one on E. Colonial Drive (FL-50) to get some milkshakes. Continue reading “Ice Cream in Orlando”
Beefy King, Orlando FL
I’m going to say something here that might make Orlando natives and lovers bristle, but here goes: the city does not have a good reputation for interesting and unique eats. It’s said to be a roadfood desert. If it has champions, they are quieter than most. Nevertheless, Sweet Tea & Bourbon, the best of the many food blogs in Florida, has devoted some time to the town, but not even Mike sold me on any must-eats. This was going to take some time and research. I settled on five places for Marie and I to visit with our daughter while our son played with his grandmother all day in Apopka. I also picked eight places to shop to really give us a chance to dig into the city that the Mouse calls home and is surrounded by a more extensive grid of toll roads than I’ve seen anywhere before. Continue reading “Beefy King, Orlando FL”
Q Dogs, Tarpon Springs FL
In the previous chapter, I mentioned that Tarpon Springs has a very big Greek-American population, and a whole lot of restaurants serving Mediterranean and Greek cuisine. It’s possible that the town has reached saturation point, because how’s a new restaurant supposed to stand out in such a thriving community with established customer loyalty? That’s what George Krouskos had to consider when he was thinking about opening a restaurant, and he settled on a hot dog stand that also smokes up some pretty good barbecue in an outdoor steel upright. Continue reading “Q Dogs, Tarpon Springs FL”
Hellas Restaurant, Tarpon Springs FL
Six years ago, Marie and I drove up to Vermont, and visited her old college buddy Debbie for far too few hours. We had a really terrific dinner at Richmond’s Kitchen Table Bistro, and made our way on to New Hampshire.
A few months ago, Debbie and her husband relocated to Tarpon Springs, a suburb about twenty miles north of Tampa. Whatever we thought we were doing the next time we went to visit my mom, we had to incorporate a trip to see Debbie. Naturally, I was immediately digging around for something to eat, and was pleasantly surprised by the amazing number of Greek restaurants. That’s because the city of 24,000 has the highest percentage of Greek-Americans of any municipality in the country. The city itself is completely lovely, and is home to the gorgeous St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Cathedral. Continue reading “Hellas Restaurant, Tarpon Springs FL”
Marie, Let's Eat! 