It might be enough for the Hampton Social, a new restaurant at Pointe Orlando, to be all atmospherics. Its mien is a coastal yacht club with a stressful casualness, a yacht club whose members wear unscuffed boat shoes.

Hanamizuki’s menu features Kyoto style cooking, which tends to be more elegant and formal than many of the dishes served in most American Japanese restaurants. It also focuses more on fresh vegetables and seafood other than sushi, although that is also a part of it and is available at Hanamizuki.Don’t be suprised to find a predominantly Japanese clientele here. No small wonder when the restuarant’s Web site is written in Japanese (you can opt in to a translation).

Orlando is the home of the corporate headquarters for HRC, so you’d expect the restaurant here to be superlative. And it is. It’s a massive structure, and I doubt the music plays any louder at another location. The food is basic, but more than passable.Texas chili was a good chili, but I would hate to be there when it was served to a real Texan and he or she discovers beans in it. You can find chili in Texas with beans in it, but you’ll probably also find the cook strung up out back. Then there is the Tuscan chicken salad, which could just as easily have been named Tallahassee chicken salad, or Berlin chicken salad, or even world-class chicken salad because there certainly wasn’t anything remotely Tuscan about it. OK, there were some slivers of salami and provolone cheese (which mostly comes from northern Italy, by the way) mixed in with mesclun greens, red peppers, mushrooms and asparagus. The greens were topped with cubes of grilled chicken and tossed with a red wine vinaigrette. Despite its geographical misplacement, it was a good salad.

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.

Punjabi is the regional focus. The foods are honestly spiced, and the staff is welcoming.

Chef Michael McMullen has reenergized this upscale dining room with a new menu. Favorites include spicy shrimp and grits, maple horseradish mustard crusted baby rack of lamb, and cedar plank roasted sea bass. Service is among the best in town. The highlight of the dining room is the array of celebrity caricatures that cover the walls. They were done by Jack Rosen, father of hotelier Harris Rosen (hence the name of the restaurant), when he was employed by the Waldorf Astoria in New York.

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.

Kings is smaller than Splitsville, and is spread out over one floor. It occupies a space on International Drive that used to be a Gooding’s grocery store. So now there are alleys instead of aisles.

Although there are a couple of private rooms with their own lanes for party groups, most of Kings’ 22 lanes are grouped together. You may not notice them at first because there are so many ultra large television screens hanging over them. Hope you’re not easily distracted as you try to roll the ball to his that sweet spot that will knock all 10 pins down.

Also like Splitsville — there’s really no way to do this without comparing; we’re talking about a genre here — Kings strives to offer its guests more than your average old-style bowling alley food. I can still taste reheated frozen pizzas from my youth eaten with the same fingers that had just been placed in the holes on the balls where so many other fingers had been. And this was the pre-Purell era. But I digress.

Kings’ menu is extensive (perhaps too much so). It has sandwiches and wraps, it has burgers, it has pizzas, it has sliders (different from burgers), it has salads and it has steak, chicken and seafood entrees. What it doesn’t have is focus.

There’s barbecue, there’s Asian, there’s Southwestern. How about a little Hawaiian? Or British? Cajun, why not? And of course a Brazilian fish stew.

Most of what I tasted was perfectly acceptable. I especially liked the pulled pork sliders — very moist meat with a delightful smoky aroma. And the barbecued ribs were good, too, quite tender. And I liked the chicken wings, which are available in a variety of flavors. The pizzas I tried were a bit too thin.

Note: Kings is adults-only after 6 p.m.

Anyone who strives to maintain a kosher diet can tell you the options for dining out are close to bupkis. But not totally. Kosher Grill is among the few glatt kosher restaurants in the area, and its International Drive location allows it to serve visitors as well as locals.

Maggiano’s Little Italy is the sort of place that makes restaurant critics cringe when they hear one is coming to town. One has come to Orlando. First, it’s immense. Then there’s the issue of it being Italian, which in itself is not a cringe producer. But when you’re talking about an Americanized version of Italian food, and then factor in the mass production of a large restaurant, you can just start to picture the plates of spaghetti with sauce from an institutional sized can with meatballs that bear more than a couple of similarities to an eight ball. And it’s loud. And it plays Frank Sinatra virtually nonstop.
But it’s actually a lot of fun, and the food is decent.
So don’t let a critic’s jaded bias keep you away. Go with a group and order from the family style menu. Choose the pot roast for one of your choices, and have the tiramisu for dessert.