The portions here are outsized and designed to impress, if not frighten and intimidate. Take, for example, the restaurant’s signature fried chicken and bacon waffle tower, which probably has more calories than the average adult male should eat in a week. (Excuse me, could you please pass the syrup?) Or the house version of eggs Benedict with smoked bacon, basted eggs, red pepper cream on a biscuit, all sitting atop mashed potatoes.

When the food gets this big and ostentatious, one naturally braces oneself for the trade-off in quality. But Hash House delivers there, too. All of the food I tasted — and I do mean tasted; I left a good deal of it on the plate — was quite good, well prepared and evenly seasoned.

A fun little seafood place with a Louisiana accent. Signature entree is a sort of seafood boil served in a large, poofed up plastic bag. Bibs and gloves are provided, so get as messy as you’d like

Its the House of Blues, a boisterous boite that celebrates the diversity and brotherhood of world culture and promotes racial and spiritual harmony through love, peace, truth, righteousness and non-violence. But despite a mission statement that makes it sound like the lunchroom at the United Nations, this is actually a themed restaurant that serves up rhythm, blues and soul and not so incidentally surprisingly good food, most of it rooted in a New Orleans style.

What’s surprising about it is that everything is of good quality, prepared and presented with the sort of gourmet flair you’d expect from a fine dining establishment, not a place that is made to look like a juke joint.

Menu highlights include a smoked double-cut pork chop, etouffe and Cajun meat loaf. For appetizers, the Mississippi catfish bites are pretty tasty.

The bread pudding is a must. The Sunday gospel brunch, which features an all-you-can-eat buffet,  is an inspirational treat.

As with other assemblage concepts, guests choose the ingredients and direct the staff member behind the sneeze guard who puts it all together into what one hopes will be a conglomeration that doesn’t suck. Here you can choose a burrito as your food container, or perhaps a pita pocket, or maybe just a bowl to hold it all.

I went with the burrito, choosing a white flour tortilla instead of a whole wheat one, Mexican rice instead of brown or mjedderah (the Lebanese mix of rice and lentils), black beans instead of lentils, and steak as my meat option. It doesn’t stop there. One must still choose sauces and other accouterments.

It all turned out well, however. My choices all came together into a well-stuffed burrito that was transferred into a well-stuffed diner. The quality of the ingredients — including hormone-free meat — was evident in the taste.

The newest full-service restaurant inside Magic Kingdom is themed on the Jungle River Cruise, which is known for its punacious river pilots. You can expect a lot of corn from the waiters here, too. Try the fish collar and shu mai.

The long-awaited Kavas Tacos + Tequila has finally opened at Pointe Orlando from the folks who brought you Taverna Opa, also at the Pointe, and Tapa Toro at Icon Park. With Kavas, they add Tex-Mex and Mexican street foods to their portfolio of Greek and Spanish cuisines.

I enjoyed everything else about my breakfast, from the sincerely pleasant staff and simple decor to the delicious food.  I ordered a sausage and cheese omelet with home fries. And because I knew that the first Keke’s started life as the Florida Wffle House, I wanted to see how this Keke’s flapjacks were, so I asked if I could order just one. I’m glad I got only one because it was huge. The buttermilk cake filled the plate (which was square, but that didn’t bother me) and was nearly three-quarters of an inch thick. (Yes, I measured it.) It had a fluffy texture and a golden hue, and while it might have been a bit hotter so as to melt the butter — they’re also called hotcakes, after all — it was delicious. So was the omelet, which was dotted with bits of sliced sausage and had gooey cheddar cheese folded inside. The home fries were good, too, and had the perfect bit of greasiness, but the wheat toast went uneaten — the pancake was bread enough.

The original Korea House, in Longwood, was the area’s first all Korean restaurant (and is still its oldest). With this new location, Korea House brings its well done cuisine closer to downtown Orlando. Tabletop cooking is a big draw here.

La Hacienda is one of the newest restaurant at Epcot’s World Showcase. It sits in front of the Mexico pavilion and juts out over the lagoon, which gives it a unique vantage point for the nightly Illuminatons show. The food is not authentic, but it’s very good. Be sure to try the chiles toreados y chorizitos, a bowl of bright green peppers and little fat chorizo pork links, sort of a Mexican version of Vienna sausages, all charred and grilled; and one of the mixed grill platters, which have enough for two to share. There’s a wonderful dessert at meal’s end, a tamal de dulce. It’s an actual corn masa tamale only sweet, and filled with guava then topped with strawberry coulis. Delicious.