A quick-serve restaurant that not only serves a decent slice of pizza pie but also has very good sandwiches.

If you’re looking for “old Florida,” you can’t get much older than Red Wing Restaurant. For over 60 years the stone building, which at one time was a private home, has served as a meeting place for Lake County growers, farmers, truckers and others. It’s the sort of place where you might find a boothful of grimy construction workers next to a table with a family with children and not far away a couple on a date.
But you will find some obscure menu items. It isn’t often that you see Buffalo fried frog legs. Even less frequently will you hear me say they were really good. The appetizer featured three haunches, each with plenty of meat, deep-fried and tossed with a hot sauce, a la Buffalo wings, except there was more meat on the legs than you’ll ever find on a chicken wing.
And if fried frog legs don’t appeal to you, or even if they do, you might want to try the fried dill pickles. Why this delicacy is seen so seldom I don’t know. But usually they’re served as dill chips. Here they’re long spears with enough surface area to hold the light batters and even substance to give a good, salty crunch.
Fried green tomatoes had a crisp breading with firm fruit inside. The ranch dressing was the perfect accompaniment.
On a lunch visit my guest had the fish and chips, which featured big chunks of pure white grouper with a golden crisp jacket. At first I thought it odd the fish was served without sauce, but after a couple of bites I realized none was necessary. The chips were sweet potato fries, which were firm, decidedly ungreasy and thoroughly delicious.

There is, of course, a lot more on the menu than grains and legumes. R&B offers an array of mofongos (mofongi?), seafood, beef and pork dishes with Puerto Rican, Cuban and Dominican touches. You can order from the menu, or you can do as I did and choose a big platter of goodness from the items on display at the counter. For a lunch special of $6.95, you get your choice of rice — white, mixed with red beans, mixed with black beans, or yellow mixed with vegetables; sweet plantains or boiled yuca; stewed red beans or black beans; and one of the featured meats. I chose two types of rice (with black beans and with red beans), yuca (love my yuca), black beans and the roast pork. All good, and very reasonably priced.

An unassuming little spot along the road where you place your order at the counter then find a seat in the small dining area to wait – not a long time – for someone to bring your food to you. Threre’s a menu board on the wall behind the counter, but don’t overlook the hot food in the steam table at the other end of the room. And if you’re not sure what the food is called, it’s OK to point at whatever looks good. Map.

I stopped in recently and had the pernil, or roast pork shoulder. They referred to it on a hand-written specials menu board as pulled pork, but this wasn’t like what you’d find in your basic barbeque joint. The meat, which was moist and flavorful, was in large chunks and topped by a piece of delicious crispy skin. Woe to the person who takes this heavenly piece of epicurean epidermis and sets it aside. It’s OK to do that with chicken skin. But with pernil you have to eat the skin. And that’s that.

Quick serve specializing in rice bowls and ramen.

I knew I was going to like this place the moment I walked in and was warmly greeted by a smiling fellow behind the counter. That greeting was reinforced by a coworker who appeared from the kitchen area just off to the back. Why is it so difficult for so many restaurant staffers to express a sincere welcome to the people who have chosen to do business with them?

The concept here, as with many other similar Latin American restaurants, is pick and choose counter service. There is a selection of prepared dishes — pork, chicken, stews — in steam table trays behind the glass counter. You simply tell one of the nice folks which of the meats you prefer and whether you want white or yellow rice, then select two side dishes and stand back while the staffer loads up a plate.

What impressed me most about the food I had here was how vibrant and colorful it looked. Even the pho, which is many restaurants can look like day old dishwater, was vivid and fresh looking. Part of the reason may be that my dining companion had chosen the vegetable and tofu pho, so the broth was a clear vegetable broth. But the carrots and greens and even the white cubes of tofu were so enticing.

Despite the impermanence of its name, Shantell’s Just Until feels like an anchor of the neighborhood. At least it did when I visited on a balmy evening recently when when the owner, Shantell Williams, herself was seated at a table outside. My dining companion, dog and I took a table next to a large brick planter filled with colorful flowers. Nearby in a tall tree, an osprey stood watching over the restaurant. The menu is a bit more Caribbean than it is Southern soul.

Smoke & Donuts, the barbecue and oil-boiled dough specialty that started out as a food truck, finally made the move to the brick and mortar store they had been planning for a couple of years. I don’t know what took so long – it certainly wasn’t waiting for the flooring to go in. The space, which was previously occupied by a gourmet popcorn shop, looks sort of like an excavation site.

But the focus is the food, the duality of basic barbecue and gourmet donuts.

There are several restaurants in the area that specialize in Asian street fare, but Sticky Rice sticks to the foods of Laos. The title dish comes in a plastic bag instead of a bamboo steamer as it might on the streets of Vientiane, but you eat it the same, by pulling off a bit with your fingers and dipping it into one of the provided sauces.