How authentically Indian is Ahmed. It has a section on the menu for items made with beef. Need to know any more?

Sprawling sports bars with plenty of TVs and decent food.

Cedar Halal is Middle Eastern/Lebanese with such goodies as falafel, kafta, hummus, grape leaves, shawarma and shish kabob. I was all set to get the falafel, but then I noticed the gyro grills behind the counter and I was suddenly hungry for a good gyro sandwich.

And I wasn’t disappointed, it was delicious. The seasoned meat was folded into soft, warm bread with onions and tangy tzatziki, and it was accompanied by batons of pickled vegetables.

I was less thrilled with the lentil soup, which was overly thickened for my taste. Still, the flavors were good with just a bit of tumeric spice.

The small space includes a row of shelves with imported food stuffs, including tahini paste, jars of sour cherries and pistachio candies. I could easily have taken a trunkload of groceries back home.

Although it is pot themed the food contains no THC or CBD. But the sandwiches are good anyway.

Cooper’s Hawk Winery & Restaurant would love to sell you some wine-related gewgaws. Visitors enter and exit through a gift shop where they can buy corkscrews, coasters, and candles that look like glasses of wine. They’d also like to have you buy some tastes of the wines the company produces at its Arlington Heights, Illinois, winery; there’s a tasting-room feature in the gift shop, as well.

But I’m not convinced they’re all that serious about being a restaurant and providing a positive guest experience. On my recent visit I was subjected to one fail after another, and although a manager finally stepped up and did the right thing, enough ill will had been created by that point to prevent me from returning.

The final straw was the late delivery of a cold entree. Check, please! I cannot recommend this restaurant at the present time.

I can’t really see the difference between this place and similar restaurants specializing in Cuban cuisine. But I can tell you I liked the food very much. And the casual picnic-style atmosphere. And especially the way I was welcomed by the staff of Cuba 1800’s.

Go to Danketsu if it’s in your neighborhood and you have a hankering for Japanese, sushi, Korean or just about any other Asian cuisine. But I wouldn’t drive across town just to go there.

At Designer Greens, which occupies a small storefront space in the Waterford Lakes area, not far from the Home Depot, you have your own personal salad builder at your beck and call. She does the tonging and tossing — think of it as a salad bar without a sneeze guard.
You design your own salad in several steps. First you decide if you want a half salad or a full salad, which for our purposes we’ll call the Pittsburgh. (Go with a half; it’s plenty.) Then you choose the lettuce, romaine or spring mix.
In step three, you get to choose three toppings (five if you’re headed for Pittsburgh) from a list of about 36. You’ve got everything from artichokes and avocados to mushrooms, sun-dried tomatoes and various cheeses. If you can’t limit it to just three, you can add others at 50 cents each, but this is a slippery slope if you’re going the salad route as part of a dieting regimen.
Step four is optional — you can add a meat, such as turkey, ham or tuna. Chicken-fried steak is not an option, but chicken tenders are. Beware.
The last step is the dressing, which you can have your salad maker add and toss or request on the side. There are a baker’s dozen options, including some so-called light dressings.

Domu, the popular East End Market ramenerie, has opened a new concept, Domu Chibi Ramen, in Waterford Lakes. It’s meant to be a quick-serve operation, but they’ve managed to make it quicker serve in at least one aspect.

Instead of giving an order to someone at the counter, customers are prompted to use electronic tablets in front of it to place and pay for an order. Heck, you might even want to leave yourself a tip as you pay, because unlike other quick-serve restaurants, you must go back up to the pick-up counter to fetch your own food. I’m guessing if they could, they’d find away for a non-human to call the names.

It would seem that the place to be on a Friday night if you live in the area of Chickasaw Trail and Lake Underhill Road is Don Julio’s Mexican Kitchen and Tequila Bar. At least it seemed that way the Friday evening my companion and I stopped in. The restaurant in the aptly named Rio Pina Plaza was jumping like veritable frijoles saltarines.

It was so crowded that people waiting for tables were standing around on the sidewalk outside the strip plaza storefront. The only seats available, the young woman at the host stand told us, were at either of the bars, the tequila bar in the title or the ceviche bar on the other side of the room.

That suited us just fine because it was the ceviche bar that drew my attention to this particular D. Julio’s over the one in Lake Mary or the other location in Waterford Lakes.