Cheap eats

4 Rivers Smokehouse

Address
City
Phone
Price

1600 W. Fairbanks Ave.
Winter Park
407-474-8377
$

It’s easy to spot Four Rivers when you’re driving down Fairbanks Avenue; just look for the place with the line outside. Folks are happy to queue up for this ‘cue, especially the brisket. But the pulled pork is pretty darned tasty, too. There is no indoor seating, just some picnic tables on a covered patio. But no one seems to mind.

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4Rivers Smokehouse Winter Garden

Address
City
Phone
Price

1047 S. Dillard St.
Winter Garden
407-474-8377
$

 A second location for the wildly popular Winter Park barbecuerie. This one has better parking and indoor (read: air-conditioned) seating. But the barbecue is the same — excellent. Lines are just about as long here, too, but with two cash registers it moves a bit faster. Try the brisket, a house speciality, or the ribs. The baked cheese grits are pretty tasty.

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Babbi Babbi Korean Kitchen

Address
City
Phone
Price

8015 Turkey Lake Road
Orlando
407-270-6868
$$

Babbi Babbi Korean Kitchen wasn’t exactly what I was expecting it to be. In fact, I’ll admit to being a bit disappointed when I walked into the new eatery at Phillips Crossing and discovered it was a quick-serve (order at the counter) operation. Even more annoyed to discover that the classic dish Bibimbap was offered as an assemblage item, with the diner tasked with choosing type of rice, which meat and what toppings to enhance or possibly ruin this traditional rice dish.

But I found plenty of other dishes on the menu that didn’t require me to act as an inexperienced chef, and I soon learned that even though one orders the food at the counter, service is supplied throughout the meal. And even better, the food was quite good.

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Bar Harbor Seafood

Address
City
Phone
Price

2000 Premier Row
Orlando
407-447-6455
$

Bar Harbor Seafood, one of the companies that provides fresh fish, shellfish and other goodies from the sea to area restaurants, has been serving lunch from its South Orlando warehouse space for about a year now. I only learned of it recently, and stopped in thinking it would be an obscure, sparsely attended out-of-the-way lunch spot to try out.

Well, it certainly is out of the way. But sparsely attended, no.

In fact, I haven’t seen lines this long for a counter restaurant that didn’t specialize in barbecue and have the name Rivers attached to it for quite some time.

Bar Harbor’s wholesale facility is on Premier Row, just west of South Orange Blossom Trail, in Orlando’s Central Park. Its neighbors are other warehouses and showrooms, and I’m thinking it was a lot of the workers from those other businesses that were cramming into the decidedly too small space where lunch orders are taken. (It’s the same space where the company offers retail seafood orders to those who don’t buy their fish by the tonnage.

The menu features fish and chips, Ipswich clams, sushi rolls, cod sliders and such. Most of the cooking seems to be done somewhere else on the property — one of the workers was shouting orders into a walkie talkie device — although at one point I saw someone slip a live lobster into a large pot of water boiling on a portable hot plate.

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Black Bean Deli

Address
City
Phone
Price

1835 E. Colonial Drive
Orlando
407-203-0922
$

The decor is modern and youthful, and there is plenty of seating, indoors and out, at real tables. Food is pretty much the same. The Cuban sandwich may be the best one in the state of Florida.

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Black Hammock Fish Camp

Address
City
Phone
Price

2316 Black Hammock Fish Camp Road
Oviedo
407-365-2702
$

Black Hammock sits on the shore of Lake Jessup, which has the distinction of being home to the largest number of relocated “nuisance” gators. This is not a place where you want to take a swim. It’s also not a restaurant for you if you’re queasy about fried food. That’s the forte here. You can have frogs legs, various types of fish, or, in a delightful twist, gator tail. Chomp them before they chomp you.

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Brazas Chicken Avalon Park

Address
City
Phone
Price

12001 Avalon Lake Drive
Orlando
407-412-5995
$$

A new location for the popular SoDo grilled chicken restaurant, the Avalon Park Brazas also serves traditional Peruvian dishes.

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Brick & Fire

Address
City
Phone
Price

1621 S. Orange Ave.
Orlando
407-426-8922
$

Originally one of the tenants of Church Street Station, Brick & Fire cut its losses and moved from the historical confines of that downtown entertainment complex to a location on South Orange Avenue whose only history is as a Moe’s Southwestern food chain and a Pizza Hut joint. Better pizzas are coming out of chef Mark Dollard’s ovens, and the place is often filled with neighbors and workers from the nearby medical complex and their families. The wine list here isn’t stellar, but it’s cheap. Note: there is a second location at 1410 Semoran Blvd., Casselberry; phone 321-332-6430.

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Bugambilias

Address
City
Phone
Price

737 W. Lancaster Road
Orlando
407-745-5614
$

A simple little authentic Mexican eatery. How authentic? You might have to ask if the have a menu in English.

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Chi-Kin

Address
City
Phone
Price

813 N. Mills Ave.
Orlando
407-730-8658
$

Menus don’t get much more succinct – succincter? – than the one at Chi-Kin, a new quick-server in the Mills 50 district.

It’s basically chicken, as you probably phonetically guessed, and Korean fried chicken to be more precise. (Preciser?)

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