“We own downtown on Wednesday nights,” manager Adam Williams told me. And this is why: for $20 you get all the “light bites” you can eat and all the wine you can drink. You wouldn’t be able to have a flatbread appetizer and a glass of decent wine in any restaurant for under 20 bucks. And, says Williams, he offers about 14 wines as part of the deal and “quite a bit of food.”
Is there a catch? The only one I can figure is that the deal is offered only to the first 100 people to show up and purchase a wrist band. And it starts at 5 p.m. each Wednesday, so if you don’t show up early you may get shut out.
Hmmm, I’m thinking if I worked downtown, I’d get there at 5 o’clock, buy a couple of wristbands, go home, change into something comfortable, pick up the significant other and go downtown for a really cheap dinner.
But kudos to Williams and the Urban Flats team for finding a way to attract crowds, especially in this economic climate. Anyone else have a bright idea?

Actually, things didn’t start out so grand. The requested attire for the evening was semi-formal, so there we all were trudging through Epcot in our suits and ties to get to the World Showplace where the dinner would take place. The problem was that the Bocuse d’Or competition had taken place in the same venue just that afternoon. And when hundreds of us showed up for the 7 p.m. starting time, the big gates to the Showplace were slammed shut. So there we all waited in the late afternoon sun for the doors to open.

It turns out the reason for the delay was that crews were busy dismantling and hauling away the stadium bleachers that had held the several thousand spectators just three hours earlier. Given that herculean task, it was pretty amazing we were made to wait only 20 minutes.

Once we were inside, the food and drink never stopped. We were greeted with flutes of Veuve Cliquot Champagne, tumblers of mojitos and martini glasses filled with Manhattans made with rum, which were oddly delicious.

The appetizers for the reception were cooked and assembled by teams working in the four cubicle kitchens that had been assembled in the event space for the cooking competition. Among those making the tasty tidbits were David Myers of Sona in Los Angeles; Traci des jardin of jardiniere, San Francisco; George Perrier, Le Bec Fin, Philadelphia; Andre Soltner of the French Culinary Institute, new York; Laurent Tourondel, BLT Restaurants, New York; Alain Sailhac, French Culinary Institute; and for the home teams, Roland Muller of Food and Beverage Development, Walt Disney World Resorts; and Scott Hunnel, Victoria & Albert’s.

Hunnel’s roasted muscovey duck with fennel and blood oranges, smoked bacon and Minus 8 vinaigrette were wonderful, but I kept going back for more of Tourondel’s fois gras terrine with raisin and apple mostarda.

After a time, Paul Bocuse announced that dinner was served, or at least that’s what everyone assumed he said because he speaks only French.
We all made our way to our table assignments in the back of the Showplace. Each place setting had a tall white chef’s toque. Underneath was a tin of Petrossian caviar, but it was not what it appeared to be on the surface. Well, yes, it was caviar on the surface, but the little black pearls was a peekytoe crab salad as assembled by Patrick O’Connell of the Inn at Little Washington. It was accompanied by a sauvignon bland from Edna Valley Vineyard (2006) in San Luis Obispo. The appetizer was genius in its simplicity, and at the end of the night I would say it was one of the best things served all evening.

But there was good competition.

Following the caviar appetizer was a fish course of steamed Pierless cod from Charlie Trotter of Charlie Trotter’s in Chicago. This was the only disappointing item all night. My cod had been steamed to a point of mush. But the Acacia Vineyard Chardonnay from Carneros (2006) helped lift the dish a bit.

Daniel Boulud’s “duo of Brandt beef” comprised the meat course. It featured four schnibbles of confection, a seared ribeye, glazed beets, root vegetable gratin, and red wine braised short ribs that positively melted before they hit the mouth. Beaulieu’s 2004 Tapestry meritage offered the appropriate roundness of tones to accompany the meats.

The formal dinner ended with a plate of artisanal cheeses assembled by cheesemaster Max McCalman. And what goes better with cheese than a 2000 Dom Perignon brut?

Desserts were served festival style back in the reception area. They were mostly by some of Disney’s best pastry chefs, including the incredible Erich Herbitschek of Disney’s Grand Floridian Resort & Spa. My favorite, however, was the salted caramel from Ewald Notter of the Notter School of Pastry Arts.

It was nearly midnight when I made my way back to the parking lot, walking through the eerily quiet Wolrd Showcase.

This was a grand dinner indeed, and it was an important event for Disney and Orlando. It showed the world — and people came from all over the world to attend — that Central Florida understands and appreciates fine cuisine.

I question the wisdom of using an address as a name when it isn’t the address of the location. Saks Fifth Avenue can get away with it; not so sure about 310 Park South. But what do I know?

A manager at 310 Park South in Winter Park told me that he expects renovations to be completed by the end of the month with an opening planned around Columbus Day. That seems ambitious. A peek through the windows shows a space that is all but gutted. A newly constructed bar is in place, but there’s little else there. But who knows, it could happen.
With the opening of this new location, the owners of 310 Park South have abandoned their plans to put a restaurant in Baldwin Park. The heel-dragging practices of Baldwin Park developers have dashed the plans of many a restaurateur.

When Sam Snead’s restaurant closed down — quite suddenly — last year, the owner of the franchise license had planned to reopen that space as another Sam Snead’s, but according to Pat Casey, that didn’t work out. Instead, he plans to open a Snead’s restaurant soon in Lake Mary on Highway 46 near Timacuan.

I was in Florence visiting a friend and arranged to meet with Marcella in Venice. I took the train up the day before and wound my way through the narrow passageways to the apartment building where I was greeted by Marcella and her husband, Victor.
We sat and chatted a while. I took notes and sipped the espresso they offered me (stunned that I preferred it without adding sugar). Then Victor took me off to the Venice market to buy supplies for a meal Marcella was planning. Even then, Marcella, who is 84 now, did not get around very easily, and Victor ran most of the errands. And when I say ran, I mean I had a hard time keeping up with this man who was easily 30 years older.
The fastest way to the market was by gondola, he said, but not one of those tourist trap boats that line the Grand Canal. This was a large boat that only went back and forth a canal from one bank to the other — a sort of ferry. Victor told me that real Venetians stood in the boat as it crossed — they did not sit down — so that’s what we did, like Washington crossing the Delaware.
The Venice market is an amazing place; no foodie should miss it, but you have to know where to look. There are a few food stalls set up around the Rialto Bridge for the tourists, but this is not the real market. Find your way beyond the bridge and you’ll come across the most dazzling array of produce, meats and seafood you can imagine.
The seafood is most impressive. You can stand in the middle of the fishmonger stalls and not smell one whiff of foul air, so fresh is the product. There were fish from all over Europe, but, counter-intuitively, the “imported” fish cost less than the locally caught seafood.
While walking through the produce, I asked Victor about an incident a few days earlier. In a Florence market I was fascinated by some immense mushrooms and reached out to touch one. The vendor went ballistic on me and started yelling and batting my hand away. “It’s absolutely forbidden by law” to touch produce, Victor explained. Mind you, the mushroom was covered with manure, but that apparently didn’t matter.
(Go into a supermarket in Italy and you’ll see rolls of plastic bags in the shape of crude gloves over the produce rows; these are for shoppers to pick up their selections.)
Victor was on a mission to buy pig snout for a special sausage Marcella had in mind, but the butchers were fresh out of snouts. We went back to the flat with some other meats and vegetables. I chatted a bit more with Marcella and started to thank them for all their time and say my good-byes — it was now late morning — and Marcella said, “But you’re coming to lunch with us.”
Then she said, “Julia is in town and wanted to have lunch today, but I told her we were having lunch with you.”
That would be Julia Child, who was in Venice, at a hotel on the Lido. And when Julia Child gets bumped in your favor, how can you refuse? (They made arrangements to have lunch with Child the next day; that’s what the pig snout was for, and, yes, they liked Julia Child very much.)
Victor and Marcella took me to one of their favorite restaurants, Fiaschettera Toscana. (Despite the name, the restaurant is Venetian, not Tuscan. Venice has exorbitant fees for changing signage, Victor told me, so when the current owner bought the restaurant, he kept the name so he wouldn’t have to pay for new signs.)
At the Hazans’ insistence, I had the house specialty. the fritto misto, fried assorted seafood, including, no doubt, some of the seafood I had seen in the market that morning, such as cuttlefish.
After much food and much conversation, Marcella had had enough. She ordered, in Italian, a shot of Jack Daniel’s (there it’s an import) and pushed her plate away. “Basta,” she said.
And if you saw my farewell column in the Sentinel where I used that word, that was where I got it — from Marcella Hazan, sitting in a small trattoria, in Venice, away from the crowds. Enough food, she was saying.
And more Jack Daniels.