Restaurants

Zaxby's serves unusual sides

Here’s an odd confession for you: I’ve always wanted to stop at a Zaxby’s. And if I had a self-preserving bone in my body, I’d say it’s because I once interviewed their executives for an article about improving drive-thru times and was impressed with their knowledge and friendliness.

But no. It’s because I am attracted to the name Zaxby. It reminds me of the coolest signature in Congress, Senator Saxby Chambliss. Say it a few times, let it roll off your tongue, try out a few foreign accents with it. Suddenly, you’re in the mood to call up the queen mum for tea and crumpets, aren’t you?

Which has nothing to do with the cartoon rooster logo at this fast-casual chicken chain, but I thought I should try to explain the quirkiness that made me pull the SUV into their parking lot somewhere along I-75 in Lake City, Florida. It’s OK … my husband didn’t quite follow the logic, either.

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Homemade pasta makes your mouth water

It’s a sad fact of life: My husband will never be as crazy about an escape to Hollywood, Florida, as I am. The second he stepped off the plane, he began sweating — and then he walked outside to meet me pulling up to the curb. He opened the door, threw his bag in the back seat and started right in on the topic nearest and dearest to his heart.

“I forgot about the damn humidity down here.” Hi to you, too, honey.

Pre-vacation he talked about sitting under a beach umbrella with me (as long as he was wearing his t-shirt and slathered in Bullfrog sunscreen, of course), listening to my iPod beach tunes and reading a book. After he arrived, he hung out in the bedroom at the Manta Ray Inn, right underneath the air conditioning unit, with said book. I was shocked when he actually ventured out onto the sand while the sun was still in the sky to bring me a bottle of water from the fridge on the last day.

But at 5 p.m. every night, he did a Jekyll and Hyde turn-around. There’s nothing like dinner to change my man’s attitude for the better — and I’m well-endowed with a list of restaurants to tempt him even further into a good mood.

My most successful recommendation: Mama Mia Italian Ristorante.

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Latin Cafe 2000 snapshots

Some food simply doesn’t need an atmosphere to improve it.

While hanging out in South Florida before and after a conference (held on the Carnival Imagination no less, which reminds me of that classic Dire Straits song lyric “that ain’t working. That’s the way you do it.”) I managed to stumble into two different groups of attendees who invited me to dinner … at a Cuban restaurant.

This Midwest meat-and-potatoes gal had images of chicken heads floating in the chicken noodle soup, mainly because that’s what the waitress put in front of my friend the last time we ate off the beaten cultural path in Miami. I’ve considered counseling to erase the image from my mind.

But when you’re the organizer for a 3-day group event, you go along to get along on these issues. So I said yes, and hoped I passed a drugstore to stock up on Snicker bars in my room back at the Doubletree Grand Biscayne.

In Miami, we pored over recommendations here at Uptake, and wound up choosing Latin Cafe 2000 local franchise — my friend because the concierge recommended it, and then I nodded yes because it was close. I dislike driving our SUV in the first place, and downtown Miami doesn’t do a thing to improve that attitude. And remember, I figured I was headed toward some kind of voodoo dinner to boot.

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It must be a cold, drizzly day.  Sure enough, it is.  Cold, rainy and drab.

But I knew it was rainy before I even looked out the window.  How?  Because I’m dreaming of pizza again.  But not the pizza of my childhood from Rodolfo’s.  No, I’m guessing it’s just as blah and dreary in New Jersey this time of year.  I want to eat a slice of great pizza outside, with the sun shining on my face and a sweet beach nearby.  I want to fill my belly at the Pizza Garden in Saint Augustine, Florida.

Truth be told, I was thinking about Saint Augustine last week.  In my Halloween preparations, I was thinking about this old and supposedly haunted city.  The oldest city in the United States, you’ll hear a lot about the ghouls and ghosts that still reside in the area.  Many claim to Back in my life before kids, my husband and I would often head down to this town for the weekend, stay at a Bed and Breakfast and enjoy just walking around.  Never saw a ghost though.

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Mamacita's guacamole

A stranger named Jimmy is my new best friend.

Back in June, when I wrote about Cancun Mexican Grill in Hollywood, Florida, Jimmy suggested I also try Mamacita’s Mexican Bar & Grill on the Broadwalk. I agreed to stop in the next time I was in town.

I’m not a gal who takes such written commitments lightly, so finding this place was on my first night’s agenda. And since I had my husband along on this trip, he enthusiastically endorsed the idea after he heard the words “Mexican food” — even if I did have to talk him through how to drive a mile straight down Ocean Drive, turn right on Johnson Street and find a parking space with a meter. Duh.

I was excited to see the location: all tables at Mamacita’s have a wonderful view of the Atlantic Ocean, and we were ahead of the crowd so we could take our pick. Chips, salsa and the sea are really all it takes to make my soul content. My husband, however, contained his excitement until they handed him a menu, and then his eyes bugged out of his head.

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The surprising Creolina's, now in Davie

The first day one of my best friends found out I like to vacation in the Fort Lauderdale/Hollywood area, she asked if I have ever eaten at Creolina’s.

The answer was no.

And, I’m sorry to say, even with the 10 trips I’ve made since she first brought it up, I never managed to look it up on Mapquest and drop in. I had lots of excuses: the spring breakers I was with didn’t want Creole food. I might get lost. Parking is a pain in downtown Ft. Lauderdale.

Pretty lame, huh? Especially now, after she and I were actually in Broward County together this week, and she personally drove me to Creolina’s Dixie Takeout new location in Davie for lunch. I have to admit, you could have knocked me over with a feather for the next hour.

I mean, seriously: This hole-in-the-wall strip center restaurant with an Old Western font sign too tiny to see from the frontage road is THE Creolina’s? The one the South Florida media goes nuts over? The place where the mayor eats and business people hang out? No. Way. Creolina’s is an elegant French bistro where you dress up for lunch and hope not to drop gravy on the white linen …  or so I imagined.

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Cody's Original Roadhouse

I am grateful I’m not a shy traveler. Unlike a lot of folks in my family, if I’m on the road and need a break, or hanging out at the hotel and hungry for a meal, I’m not relegated to drive-thrus at burger joints. I’ll walk up to the hostess at any sit-down casual dining restaurant and ask for a table for one. No book tucked under my arm, no pad of paper to look busy.

Which is how I wound up having dinner at Cody’s Original Roadhouse in Ocala, Florida. I was prowling around looking for a meal in the middle of the afternoon — hanging out at La Quinta Inn and Suites would mean working — and passed this unusual building with an old Chevy truck in front. I figured it for a regional chain right away, but it’s not a chain we have, so it was instantly cravable.

It doesn’t take a brain surgeon to figure out they really like the word “original” to describe themselves, even though both Logan’s and Texas Roadhouse share the Roadhouse label in their names. According to their website, original in this case means “an era gone by, when things were simpler, more casual and definitely relaxed.”

Route 66 pattern

Which explains why I walked in and saw that their booth fabric is the same cloth someone used for a Route 66 purse, carry-on luggage and vest I own. That pretty much sums up casual for me. And lucky me strolled in during happy hour, when I could get a chopped sirloin steak, baked potato, rolls, and a salad to look at for $8.98. Oh, and don’t forget the all-you-can-eat peanuts at the table.

Like I said, they share a lot in common with other national chains we know.

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Barb Freda has a serious passion for food.  A former-chef-turned-food-writer, you can definitely put her in the ueber-foodie category.  She just doesn’t write about food – as the Food Editor for Florida Table magazine, VisitFlorida.com’s former Dining Expert and a freelancer, she also edits and develops recipes and styles her own food photography.  Simply put, she adores food – and you can tell in each word she writes.

And what local restaurant does she recommend to those in the Miami, Florida area?  Michael’s Genuine Food and Drink.

“It’s this great place located in the Design District of Miami,” she says.  “It’s such a fun neighborhood, filled with these design showrooms and high-end shops.  And Michael’s Genuine Food and Drink fits right in – it’s a place that serves really good food with incredibly fresh ingredients.”

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Much of the time, choosing a restaurant is a simple mathematical formula for me: I had Mexican Saturday, a hamburger on Sunday, and so it’s time for Italian on Monday. My destination this evening is Johnson Street and Hollywood’s Broadwalk — add the two and you find yourself checking out the menu posted at Florio’s of Little Italy. (Apparently it’s the former Angelo’s Corner now under new ownership, but tourists rarely catch on to nuances like this.)

Delicious gnocchi on the beach

To be honest, I never actually read that menu. My eyes hadn’t adjusted to my glasses yet when Cassidy, a red-headed waiter looking as un-Italian as you can, aggressively invited me to have a seat and he’d provide top-notch service. Well, the rule about formula dinners is not to waste too much energy on the decision, so I sat down in the plastic chair at an outdoor table where I could see the ocean and the families passing by on the Broadwalk.

True to his word, Cassidy acted more like I was dining in a candlelit corner and paying prices twice as high. (Shhh, don’t tell my husband, but you could also call the banter between us flirting. <grin>) I knew I would have left overs but I ordered the bowl of pasta fagioli along with a serving of gnocchi because I was on a business trip and you tend to get more careless about dollars under these circumstances. Besides, I had plenty to entertain between watching kids play in Charnow Park and ride their rented bicycles up and down the sidewalk. And always, there’s that ocean in motion to add ambiance.

The Broadwalk view

So I truly wasn’t expecting great food, just something edible. Which is probably how that first spoonful of pasta fagioli blew my socks off. I thought nothing could top Olive Garden when it comes to my favorite soup, but Florio’s sure schooled me in what a stupid assumption that was. And the gnocchi — homemade, covered in cream sauce and spiced with pine nuts and basil. It was the far more flavorful (and fancy) than I was expecting from a shorts and tank top kind of place.

If this is what simple math gets you, I really should have knuckled down to conquer algebra.

Florio’s of Little Italy

200 Garfield St.

Hollywood, FL

954-925-0004

Photography: Julie Sturgeon

Sopes de Monterrey

Hollywood, Florida, is a bit skinny on Mexican restaurant selections, which is how we first stumbled onto the Cancun Mexican Grill off the Howard Young Circle. Now you can’t keep me out of the place — and my brother is even more of a fanatic. While in Miami for one day with tickets to the Super Bowl, he still drove up to this suburban restaurant for lunch.

It’s the salsa and the people-watching opportunities, frankly.

I usually order food to be polite, and then ask for a tub of the salsa and chips to take back to my refrigerator at the Manta Ray Inn, so I can make a few more meals out of it. They’ve never shared their recipe with us, but we suspect there’s garlic stirred in with the peppers.

However, you can’t take this caliber of oddball people back with you, which is probably a good thing. On my last visit, I thought the old guy riding the pink bicycle up and down the sidewalk while he hooted at cars would be my winner. Then I was sure it was the old geezer with Super Fly glasses who drove up in a Mercedes, took a sidewalk table with his arm bracelet wife/girlfriend/escort, and proceeded to play the hot shot with the waitress. And then Steve took a seat.

Steve, as I was able to eavesdrop from the five tables away, is a concierge. He grew up speaking Spanish, but his kid is failing that course in school, as he told the two women he was buying drinks for — a couple of giggleheads I dubbed Thing 1 and Thing 2. He wore a jacket, buttoned-down white shirt and a tie with bright blue Keds tennis shoes. If you’d asked him who he thinks he most resembles, I’m sure he’d say JLo’s husband, Marc Anthony. (He was certainly bragging about how he could sleep with her any time he wanted, along with Angelina Jolie. Teeheehee, said his fan club.) He was more like a cartoon of Ricky Ricardo.

I nearly spit Coke all over my table laughing when Steve started taking gadgets out of his pockets and inadvertently mentioned during his ongoing chatter that he had “another little tool right here,” which is quite the unfortunate phrase when you’re trying to pick up women. His adoring audience didn’t seem to notice, though, no doubt because the margaritas were flowing.

Hollywood beach

And then he felt compelled to impress these chicks by describing how a doctor stuck needles in his eyes during a surgery. “Ohhh, that must have been so painful,” said the chorus. No, macho Steve assured them, he could handle that. It was the nausea afterward that wasn’t any fun. He hates feeling nauseated. And Thing 1 cried, “Ohhh, nausea. I hate that,” and Thing 2 echoed, “Nausea. Disgusting.”

OK, there’s a difference between being a small tool and having a conversation about vomit while I’m trying to eat Sopes de Monterrey. Steve may have won this round of “who’s the weirdo?” but I lost my appetite. Well, for that hour anyhow. Me and the salsa had our own party about midnight out on the beach.

Cancun Mexican Grill

1828 Harrison St.

Hollywood, FL 33020

(954) 922-8515

Photography: Julie Sturgeon