Restaurant Widow

Luma on Park - Dining in Orlando

Being a foodblogger, I typically look to other food blogs to tell me where to eat when traveling to other cities.  I found a dearth of Orlando food blogs before traveling there, and I was having a hard time finding restaurants in which to dine while there covering the Bocuse d'Or.  I find Chowhound and Yelp to be remarkably unhelpful, quite frankly.  Searching for a decent sushi joint, I get tired of reading things like "I loved the pecans and peanut butter in the Daytona 500 roll, it was really great, authentic sushi, and a bargain."  Of course, I made that up, but this is the sort of thing I always read on Chowhound.  I just can't trust the opinion of someone who thinks these kind of ridiculous ingredients belong in sushi.  Fortunately, Open Table exists.  Something about the description of Luma made me think it would be just right for me.  When I looked at the website, I thought it might be a little too chic for a frumpy waitress, but I braved it. 

Luma on Park is located in Winter Park, which is a delightfully charming suburb of Orlando.  For some reason, I always had this idea that Winter Park was where the elderly overwintered; a chef told me I wasn't too far off, but I thought it was a great neighborhood.

As a single diner, I was offered a seat at the pastry counter, a bar-height counter which overlooked the cold app/garde manger station and the dessert station.  There's no better way to make a waitress feel at home them plopping her at a presentation counter where she can engaged in banter with disgruntled kitchen workers.  It was so entertaining I never even opened my magazine.

The menu made it very hard to decide, but for an appetizer, I settled on the wagyu beef tartare, which contained so many of my favorite things on one plate I just couldn't resist, just look at its beauty:
 
This was a very generous portion, and tasted amazing.  It was perfectly seasoned; notice how there is no toast or anything - it didn't need any.  Topping the tartare are pickled ramps (the chef already had my heart when I saw that on the menu) and a bitter green and herb salad.  The red garnish is a puree of pickled beets!  Another of my favorite things!  And then, just to gild the lily - a soft-cooked egg coated in panko bread crumbs and flash fried.  Are you kidding me?  I was in heaven.

From out of nowhere came some truffled popcorn, and all of a sudden I had a feeling I had been spotted taking pictures.  I usually try to be very, very discreet when taking pictures in restaurants, and I never take notes, but I figured - hey, I'm in Orlando.  Who cares?  The truffled popcorn was really, really tasty and was topped with shavings of parmesan:

Next up was oxtail ravioli.  It had chanterelles and I think ricotta salata.  Again, just look at it - these perfectly-made fat little ravioli, filled with pretty much just oxtail; there was no cheap filler.  I think I ate this whole bowl in about 2 minutes flat.  There were amazing, just my sort of thing:

Because I am powerless to resist Anson Mills grits, I ordered a side of Luma's rosemary grits which, if memory serves, might have been topped with a little drizzle of chorizo oil.  As much as I love the flavor of rosemary, it is so frequently misused - there is nothing worse than getting a branch or even leaf of unchewable rosemary.  However, these grits had a very nice and pleasing rosemary flavor and I vacuumed the entire bowl down with no yucky bits of rosemary.  See?  It's the little things which can make such a difference:

Then came a scallop from the chef!  Perfectly seared, this scallop was served on a different sort of large-grain hominy grits and was really amazing.  Even the green beans were perfect, and if you know me, you know that I have a little bit of a dislike for green beans.  They were only lightly cooked but weren't squeaky.  Of course, the bacon with the beans helped a lot:

Chef Brandon McGlamery came over and talked to me for awhile.  I asked him a bit about his history - because the menu reminded me so much of things Chef Tetzloff (from G Michael's) would cook, I thought perhaps he had done some training in Charleston, but if memory serves, he had worked in Atlanta.  He told me that he loved pickling veggies, and he loved to do lots of pickles and relishes when things were in season - hence the use of pickled ramps.  Pickled ramps, by the way, make a great foil to rich things, as you will see in a few minutes.  Chef Brandon expected his supply of pickled ramps to run out around December, and then it's just patient waiting.  I know the feeling.  He was also going to be at the Bocuse over the weekend.

Sitting a few seats away from me was another single diner, an Italian who had just moved to Orlando from Cleveland.  I tried to explain what ramps were, probably not very successfully, but I did my best. The cool thing was, when the Chef sent me the popcorn and the scallop, he did the same for this other single diner, which I thought was really cool.

When the Chef found out I was from Columbus Ohio, he sent over his sous chef Derek, who was also an Ohio boy.  He has lots of cook friends who live in Columbus and work on High Street.  So, I'll say hi to all of them on his behalf!  For being an Ohioan, he gave me his own foie gras and duck liver (non-fattened) pate, along with more pickled ramps (perfect with foie!!), black currant preserve, and fig jam.  A little garnish of salt, pepper, and chives was also on the plate, which reminded me of the Vietnamese "black and white" condiment of salt and pepper mixed with lime juice:

This was a great dinner, and I highly recommend Luma.  Chef Brandon seems very passionate about using seasonal ingredients, he loves to can things and make pickles and relishes, and the results of these little touches are amazing - from the pickled ramps and the pickled beet puree (something I've never seen before and would love to see again) to the jams and preserves, the homemade oxtail ravioli - everything was spot on.  And I'm not just saying that because I was "made" as a food writer.  Chef came over and talked to me - asked me lots of questions about myself, and he was a real charmer (I'm sure if I would have outed myself as a waitress he might not have been so nice; everyone knows chefs hate waitresses).

Luma was a bright surprise in the Orlando area, and I give it an A.  A note on the wine list - wines are available by the glass and the half glass, which was really nice because I was driving about 12 miles, at night, in a strange city in a strange car, so I wasn't going to drink very much.  I chose a glass of roussane/viognier, and was boggled by the giant pour - it must have been 8 ounces.  So it was nice to have the option of getting a half glass of red (a Cotes du Rhone) to go with the ravioli.

I did manage to charm the cold app guy into giving me one scoop of Thai basil ice cream, which came out with candied peanuts and was a perfect and refreshing end to a fantastic meal:

and you know what?  The manager even called the next day to ask me how dinner was!  That's service!

Info: Luma on Park 290 S. Park Ave Winter Park, FL 407.599.4112

A Few Pictures from Yesterday's Competition - FISH ONLY, all Chef Rosendale & Commis Seth Warren

I'm still sorting through all of my pictures (like a thousand in 2 days) and trying to regroup and ponder everything I've seen, heard, and thought about over the past 48 hours.  There were several recurring themes throughout the event that I can't wait to mull over and write about.  In general, I felt that this event was a good step in the right direction for the culinary scene in the US.  But more on all of that later.  For the moment, here are some shots of Chef Rosendale and Commis Seth Warren.  When I talked to Seth today about how he felt about things, he said he did the best he could and was proud of his performance.  I thought that was very Iron Chef Zen of him.

There were 2 parts of the competition; one focused on cod and the other on beef.  This set of pictures is just the cod presentation.  Stay tuned for beef, which I think is especially funny because Harmut Handke is a judge and his facial expressions are priceless.

Okay, there are a TON of photos in this post, so I am going to do the dreaded click-through, lest the few of you using dial up spend an hour trying to load my home page.  I do hope you'll click through, though, because there are some great pictures of the competition which tell the story, I think, of the stress and the madness and the sheer number of amazing chefs just strollling around being normal.

the fishbowl kitchen in which the chefs worked:

like I even need to say anything here, this man is the patron saint of American haute cuisine:

Chef Rosendale hard at work.  It was amazing how they never appeared to notice the crowds or the people and chefs judging them:

Chef Daniel Humm, deep in concentration.  Wonder what he's thinking about?

He's judging Commis Seth Warren's performance, and I mean all of it - cleanliness, precision, communication, everything.  There is an award for best commis which includes a trip to France, and probably a lot of job offers:

What Could be SO Tasty...

...that it caused an avowed non-clean plater to almost lick her plate?  If I were my friend Sam "Stuckey," I would have certainly licked this bowl without abandon.  I'll let you in on it tomorrow:

Chef Rosendale's Platters

Okay, since a reader asked, here is a picture of Chef Rosendale's platters for the competition.  I will have more later, along with details.  The foreground is beef, and the background is cod:

 

Bocuse, Day One

WOW.  What a day.  I saw almost every famous chef in the western hemisphere, stood next to Hung almost all day, saw lots of little girls dressed as various Diz princesses, saw Chef Mickey Mouse, heard John Besh call Hartmut Handke mean and angry looking, ate foie gras on brioche, had free champagne, was given a tin of foie gras (don't worry, Husband, I'm saving it), took 500 pictures, stood in the hot sun way longer than I would have liked, waiting for the shuttle back to the hotel (tomorrow I'm totally driving), and drank beer on the rocks.  I met a man whose wife reads my website here in Orlando, and I heard an emcee misprounce Chef Sbraga's name so many times that finally the Philadelphia contingent screamed out "SBRAH - GUH!!"

Let's see, what else - oh!  I paid $4 for a bottle of vitamin water so I wouldn't pass out, saw some of the most amazing food preparations I've ever seen, and did I mention took 500 pictures?  I think my laptop memory is down to like 1GB.  Might have to run out and purchase emergency external hard drive.

I promise more detailed reports later.  I am headed to the Ravenous Pig right now for dinner.  Here's to having some pork belly.  Let's just see how many grams of fat I can consume in one day . . . oh well, that's what being a food writer is all about, right?

Here's a little teaser of my day. . .

   

Updates

What a great, relaxing day I've had.  Seriously.  It is so nice to stay in a nice hotel, have coffee and write next to a waterfall and a fountain full of ducks.  It's nice to have room service deliver a $20 club sandwich (top of post - I know, I really wanted it to be a little more traditional, too) (I know my eyes will full-on pop right of my skull when I get my room service bill) and munch on it while watching Law & Order reruns, decide I need a longer nap and move my dinner reservation, and then, to top it all off, have an amazing dinner, talk to a great chef and other single diner, eat some foie gras with pickled ramps (Chef Tez, I'm looking right at you here), and manage to drive to Winter Park and back without a hitch.

Nice hotels are nice.  Hotwire is nice, for giving me this great deal.  Otherwise I would have never been able to afford to stay here, but seriously, the hotel is so nice I almost don't want to leave.  When I was leaving for dinner, I noticed that the area where I was writing this morning had turned into a lounge with a guy singing and playing the piano and lots of rich old white collar folks drinking martinins.  Tomorrow I'm going to have to join them. 

The nice thing about nice hotels is the tiny little trivial things - when the valet pulled my car around, the fan was on low and the car was cool, and the radio was turned to soothing classical music.  Considering I am probably paying about $20 a day to have my car parked, they should probably offer me a glass of champagne when I get in, too, but that's neither here nor there. 

At any rate, I was just informed that Chef Richard Rosendale & his commis Seth Warren will be the first team to present tomorrow, which is pretty cool.  Well, I would think it's cool to get it out of the way but I would worry about being the first to be judged.

I will be sending updates as soon as I get to the competition in the morning.  I will try to keep my anti D World thoughts to myself.

I can't wait to tell you about the great dinner I had at Luma, and will admit from the get go that I was totally caught taking pictures of my food and therefore might have had a slightly better than typical dinner, but I still think anyone would like it.  It's one of the best dinners I've had in a long time, and I'm not just saying that because of the oxtail ravioli or the Anson Mills grits.  Okay, maybe just a little . . .

Talk to you tomorrow!

Where I'm Writing From

If you only I had this kind of setting from which to write every day.  It's amazingly relaxing.  So much so, that many of the other people sitting near me are asleep.  The waterfall provides so much soothing white noise that you can hear only the tiniest snippets of conversation of people walking past.  A nice lady keeps coming to my table and asking me wouldn't I care for a martini?  (It's 2:30 in the afternoon - a little early even for a vacationing waitress!)

Here's the waterfall:

Here's my "workstation"

So relaxing I already need a nap... 

Greetings from the Happiest Place on Earth!

You know what palm trees mean right?  VACATION!!

Ahhhh.  Do you ever have that feeling?  After a day of delightfully smooth flights - I slept through both, and the baby sitting next to me didn't cry the whole time. I did wake up long enough to take this picture of something somewhere in North Carolina.  Foothills?

I of course got lost trying to find my hotel.  This is especially frustrating because I have a pretty good sense of direction and I hate getting lost.  It is also kind of hard to find your directional relation when you are driving in the dark in a strange place.  And a request to whomever controls the road systems: can we standardize everything from state to state?  Every highway in Ohio has mile markers.  This is helpful because the exits coincide with the mile markers, so it only takes seeing 2 mile markers to ensure one is on the right track.  See how easy it could be?

But I finally arrived at my hotel around midnight (plane didn't land until almost 11, lest you think I was driving around aimlessly for hours on end).  I am staying at the Peabody, which is on the Orlando Convention Center compound.  I can't think of anything else to call it, because it's an entire area devoted to the subject.

I was so loopy from all of the Dramamine and xanax (probably also contributed to the getting lost) that when I woke up this morning, I had to think for a few seconds if I tipped the valet or not.  They should put warnings on Dramamine - might turn you into a drooling idiot.

But I digress.  The folks at the Peabody were nice enough to offer me a King sized bed instead of 2 queens, and to put me on a high floor.  The windows even open about 6 inches, which is very nice because, even though it flies in the face of conservation, I like to have my room cooled by air conditioning and still have a breeze coming in.  Although it was down to 58 last night, so I doubt the air even had to kick on.

My room has TV in the bathroom:

and 7 feather pillows, all white-on-white stripe and embroidered with ducks:

It is probably for this reason that I fell into the bed and slept for 9 hours straight.  Something which never happens for me.

Before bed I ordered up a pizza for room service, which was strangely good.  Really good.  Curious:

I also treated myself to an elf-sized Knob Creek bourbon - these people are so nice, I wonder if they would get me Basil Hayden if I asked?

One complaint - no coffee maker in the room.  I like to have that little nip of coffee before I go out into the world to venture out for my real coffee.

At any rate.  This morning when I awoke I could finally check out the view from my room, which is a strange mix of nature and construction.  The hotel is adding on a sizable addition, so that is happening right outside my window, and then in the distance is a swamp:

Here is a picture of the construction - notice the hard-hat-wearing ducks, which I of course thought were super cute.

Downtown Orlando in the distance:

For some reason, I love cranes:

I will not be attending the presentation of the chef's coats today, because my press pass only begins tomorrow, and I'm just not sure I can face D World yet just to pay $75 to get in and see the drawing of the order in which the chefs will compete.  Chef Rosendale's commis, Seth, will be keeping me posted. 

So pretty much today I am going to relax.  I am sitting here in the lobby of the Peabody watching the ducks splash around, and listening to a waterfall, and sitting just outside of the pools of light coming in from the roof of the atrium, having my morning latte (at 1pm).  It's nice.  Very relaxing.  I love my cats, but it's very nice to not have any walking on/sitting on/or clawing at my laptop.

Oh, and if anyone can tell me how to turn on the interior lights of my rented Ford Focus, I'd really appreciate it.

Later on today, I be posting bios of all of the chefs so that their names will make sense when I starting talking about them.  I have requested a few interviews, but there is only a 1 hour window each day during which the chefs will be available, so who knows if my requests will be granted.

Tonight I will be dining at Luma, a restaurant I found on Open Table.  I think tomorrow it will be the Ravenous Pig, a gastropub.

Well, I'd best get going - high tea should begin any minute now, and then I have to inspect those 7 feather pillows again; should make it back to the room just in time to doze of whilst whilst watching Law & Order...

Bocuse d'Or Update

First of all, very special, amazing, hearthfelt thanks, because I absolutely WOULD NOT be going to Orlando to cover the Bocuse d'Or without these amazing people, especially Liz Lessner and Walker Evans, who hit everyone up for donations!:

Cookware Sorcerer
Fabulous Reader Short North Zoe
MoJoe Lounge
The Top Steakhouse
Liz Lessner
Surly Girl Saloon
CORA
Columbus Underground
Fabulous Reader Kim
Fabulous Reader JD
Market Mary

If I forgot you, please please please forgive me, and let me know.

So!  I just wanted to give everyone an update on my plans for the Bocuse d'Or.  Thanks to the very generous support of lots of super cool local people and business owners, I have just booked my trip to Orlando.  I got a great deal at the Peabody Hotel - I booked through Hotwire, and even though I got less-than-stellar travel times, I won't have to get up early, and for $800, I got my flight, a rental car, and 4 nights at the Peabody.  To book through the Peabody site, I would have paid $275 per night.  Well, I wouldn't have because I wouldn't have spent that much, but with the Hotwire deal, I felt pretty good.

I don't like to fly.  For this reason, I prefer to fly with as few stops as possible.  So I really wanted to fly Southwest, because they make nonstop flights to Orlando.  But once again, my desire to stay in a really comfy hotel with a soft and cushy bed and the thought of a cabana with a TV and wireless right next to the pool won over.  it's just like being at home, except there's a pool instead of hardwood and cats!  If you know me at all, the very thought of my vast ghost pale white body lounging in a cabana in a swim suit is pretty funny (my nickname as a child was "casper." I was very happy when this changed to "Weezy" around 8th grade); throw in a a cocktail with an umbrella, while sitting within spitting distance of the Magical Realm (I don't know what's copyrighted these days, and I don't have $ for a lawyer), and you have a nexus of irony that just might throw the entire world into chaos.  If I come back with a tan, or heaven forbid, go golfing, you'll know it's time to run for cover. 

At any rate, I will be in Orlando from Wednesday, September 24th through Sunday, 28th.  I will probably arrive too late on Wednesday to eat anywhere interesting, but I'm all in for Orlando restaurant recommendations.  Although I have to say, Orlandonians seem to have some sort of fixation on Churrascaria, according to Open Table. Now, while I am far from being a vegetarian, I really don't eat a ton of meat; the thought of going somewhere and getting pounds of meat doesn't really strike my fancy.  Unless it's an in-ground pig roast...

I tried using Chowhound, and someone recommended some sort of Mexican restaurant, which we'll call Mexico's, for the sake of the story, and then another "Chowhounder" replied "I used to love Mexico's until Chipotle came to town."  Um.  I love Chipotle, really, I do - even with their overuse of cilantro - but if I want to eat at Chipotle, there are at least 3 within a comfortable walk and a very short drive from my home.  I will not be eating at Chipotle or it's counterpart.  I've heard there's some good Cuban in Orlando, so hopefully someone can help me out.  There also seem to be a dearth of food blogs in Orlando, so please help me out if you know of some.

I will post more updates as they are available!!  Please keep your finger crossed that I will get a press pass.  Maybe that will even get me into the "gala" dinner!  Hey Amy D, do you do formal wear?  For big ladies?

Where Should I Go for My Staycation?

So, Husband is going to be out of town next week, taking his 3rd level Master Sommelier test (keep your fingers crossed!)  While he is out of town, I'm planning to visit Columbus as a tourist.  I suppose it isn't really visiting, being that I live here, but nonetheless, I am hoping to visit a few spots in Columbus I don't usually frequent.  Kind of like being a travel writer in my own fair city.

Is there any place you think I should visit?  Any place you've always wanted to visit but haven't and would like someone else to do it? 

Any suburban restaurants you think I should visit?  Husband doesn't really like to travel further than 5 minutes for dinner, but I don't mind, so I'm thinking of heading out to *gasp* Powell.  I promise not to make fun of any suburbanites. 

Here a few of my thoughts:

Columbus Museum of Art
Topiary Park
Paper Art Museum
Pulitzer Prize Winning Photograph Exhibit @ the Ohio Historical Society
Maca (tapas restaurant in Powell)
Something theater-y
Wexner Center
Some local parks
Comic Book museum on campus
Franklin Park Conservatory
Take a tour of the Santa Maria
A Somalian restaurant, maybe D'Arbo
Maybe, maybe go out east to Dawes Arboretum