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.

No one is going to accuse the folks at Kimchi Korean restaurant of being too warm and fuzzy. The first time I tried to visit the Oviedo restaurant I stood at the front door for several minutes without an acknowledgement from the staff. I finally just left and went to a nearby lunch spot.

The second time I entered, alone, it was made clear to me that I could sit at the bar area, overlooking the unkemptness of scattered papers and a couple of wine bottles (this was not a working bar, apparently), or nowhere. The empty tables would not be wasted on a solo diner.

The attitude isn’t keeping people away, however. The place seems to do a brisk business.

I opted for one of the lunch specials, a spicy pork bulgogi box. It featured sliced pork sauteed with onions and peppery seasoning, but it wasn’t nearly spicy enough to be called spicy pork. It was accompanied by a ball of white rice, some soggy tempura, a surprisingly meager serving of kimchi, and a pretty good fresh salad with peanut dressing.

I found it all fairly unremarkable, but when I was leaving I noticed the people sitting next to me were being served more traditional Korean dishes from the main menu and it all looked much more enticing.

So I guess if I were to go back I would eschew the bulgogi box lunches and stick to the main menu.

But unless I know that I would be more welcomed, that isn’t likely to happen. You go; let me know how it is.

Oviedo is famously known for its feral chickens roaming about. So a new concept restaurant chose to pay homage to the free-range chickens with its name, The Local Hen.

Actually, it’s known as a micro restaurant and is part of the Food Factory Foodie Collective in the Oviedo on the Park district, where, ironically, there don’t seem to be any chickens wandering about. But maybe that’s just because they’ve met up with the folks at The Local Hen.

Quick serve specializing in rice bowls and ramen.

The first thing you’re likely to notice about Saigon Flavors is that it isn’t in downtown Orlando or anywhere near the intersection of Mills Avenue and Colonial Drive. That neighborhood, which locals have unofficially called Little Saigon for years, has the city’s greatest concentration of Vietnamese restaurants. Saigon Flavors is also more modernistic in style and decor. But the food is firmly set in tradition. Pho, the beef noodle soup with a variety of ingredients, is quite good. For an unusual appetizer, have the “golden pancake,” which is more like an omelet with bean sprouts.

A lively place with passable Mexican and Tex-Mex food.

The list of rolls at this funky little restaurant might frighten and horrify a sushi traditionalist, but they’d at least have to concede some of the offerings are pretty creative. Such as the Oviedo Chicken, a paean to the pullets who roam the streets of downtown Oviedo. One hardly ever sees tempura chicken in a sushi roll starring role. Or bacon, for that matter, as found in the cleverly named Choleste-roll. Or sliced bananas topping a roll that included eel. I dearly wish I had ordered the Hot Mess, which I saw delivered to another table. It had bacon, too, somewhere beneath a glop of spicy mayo and roe. Not that I was disappointed with my selections. I had the Black Widow, a tempura’d soft shell crab with avocado, asparagus and smelt roe flavored with a spicy tartar sauce. Or the Pair of Kings, with salmon and tuna. I also tried a serving of escolar nigirizushi, and although the fish was a lovely room temperature and had a buttery texture, it easily fell off the pad of rice when flipped. Service was friendly and fast

Sometimes being evicted can be a good thing.

The Townhouse Restaurant — or Town House, you’ll find it both ways, even on its website (or web site, if you prefer) — has been part of downtown Oviedo for decades. Some might even say it WAS downtown Oviedo. It had occupied a little box of a building at the corner of Broadway Street and Central Avenue on a spit of land triangulated by Railroad Street.

To call it rustic would be an understatement. It looked its age and was often unkempt. But it was comfortable, and it had a dedicated and loyal base of customers who were horrified when it was announced, in 2014, that the Townhouse house would be torn down to accommodate the broadening of Broadway.

But it didn’t mean the end of the Townhouse. It found new digs only several hundred feet up Central Avenue and now has more seating in a spacious restaurant with volume ceilings, a pleasant outdoor patio overlooking the Florida Trail bike path and a parking lot (which seemed to be used a lot by bikers who may or may not have been eating at the restaurant). And the old Colonial style sign has even been incorporated into the new building.

The oysters were nice and cold and a decent medium size — not too small and not too big as to be intimidating. They weren’t shucked very well, and I had to pull the meat away from the shell with my fork, which resulted in leaving some behind. The shucker has the sharp knife, and after using it to pry open the shell he should slice under the muscle to completely free it.

From the list of Italian dinners I had focused on the eggplant parmigiana, and I was happy to see that it was available in an appetizer portion for $7.99. And that was just the right size, too. The eggplant was a bit seedy, but the flavors of the tomato sauce and herbs and gooeyness of the mozzarella cheese were all very pleasant, though that isn’t a word I would use to describe the service.

There are other locations; check the website.