Boisterous sports bar out of South Florida with good food, especially the burger. Vibrant happy hour.

Amura continues to improve on a good thing with its latest location. Although it wants to be considered a chophouse, this is a sushi spot. If beef is what you want, the Kobe steak may be worth a really big splurge.
But for roughly the same price as the Kobe steak, my guests and I feasted on the Heathrow boat ($87.99), a small yacht decked out with sushi, sashimi and assorted hand rolls. Onboard were an Africa roll with yellowtail and tuna; crab Rangoon with real crab, smoked salmon and cream cheese; electric shock roll with tempura eel, avocado and cream cheese; rainbow roll with salmon and tuna; and nigirizushi nibbles of shrimp, salmon, snapper and tuna. All of the raw fish had a cool taste and a soft, buttery texture and every bit of it was delicious.
From among the kitchen foods, the Chilean sea bass with black bean sauce was a favorite. The fish was a large fillet with white flesh that broke off in big chunks. The sauce of tiny black beans provided subtle spiced notes.

Babbi Babbi Korean Kitchen wasn’t exactly what I was expecting it to be. In fact, I’ll admit to being a bit disappointed when I walked into the new eatery at Phillips Crossing and discovered it was a quick-serve (order at the counter) operation. Even more annoyed to discover that the classic dish Bibimbap was offered as an assemblage item, with the diner tasked with choosing type of rice, which meat and what toppings to enhance or possibly ruin this traditional rice dish.

But I found plenty of other dishes on the menu that didn’t require me to act as an inexperienced chef, and I soon learned that even though one orders the food at the counter, service is supplied throughout the meal. And even better, the food was quite good.

Located in the Marketplace at Dr. Phillips, bartaco, which insists on being lowercased, offers light bites and “upscale street food” in what it calls a beachy atmosphere, if photo collages of Arnold Palmer and other golfers make you think of catching some waves.

Bonefish is one of those restaurants that “gets it.” It offers a good product at a fair price in a pleasant atmosphere. Nothing fancy, nothing overblown but a consistently good dining experience. New location at 5463 Gateway Village Circle, Orlando,FL 32812 Phone: 407-816-6355.

A quick-serve version of a Manhattan restaurant.

Cedar’s represents itself as a fine dining restaurant, and indeed the atmosphere is a bit more upscale than you’d find in the average Middle Eastern restaurant. The cuisine is above average, too, with a menu that goes well beyond the basic hummus spreads and falafel sandwiches, even though many of the menu items were unavailable when I visited and some dishes seemed only slight variations on one another.
You can put together a lovely meal with the mouhamara dip, a bowl of lentil soup and the fish tajine entree. Other entrees may seem repetitive, but they are good, especially the lamb. Another past Foodie winner.

Chatham’s Place has gone through some changes, and much more than the fact that there are no members of the Chatham family involved in the restaurant. That’s not an issue; Louis Chatham, who served as executive chef, and his mother, Bettye, who ran the dining room in those first years, sold the operation years ago to Chatham’s sous chef, Tony Lopez, the maitre d’, Maurice Colindres, and a hostess, Carol Conwell. The three of them kept it going as strong as ever, perhaps stronger. It was clear that this was an operation of love for the three of them, and they worked together to make it a continued success.
Many of the dishes that became signatures back in Louis Chatham’s days remain on the menu, including the Florida black grouper, which has been one of my favorite Central Florida entrees for many years. It features a fresh fillet, thick and white, lightly sauteed and topped with pecan butter and scallions, dusted with just a soupcon of cayenne pepper. The pecan butter places the dish firmly in the south and the pepper points it towards New Orleans. But with the use of Florida black grouper I think we can just claim this one as one of our native dishes, don’t you?

Indistinct taco joint on Restaurant Row.

It’s big and modern and offers so much more than sushi, although the sushi is some of the best of what it does, especially the deftly executed nigirizushi. Dragonfly also features robata grilling, a popular cooking method in Japan but still fairly uncommon in the U.S. A robata grill uses special charcoal that heats to one thousand degrees (oh, how I wish I could do that on my Weber). The intense heat sears the skewered meats that are leaned against it, which results in tender, juicy bites. We tried the chicken, and it was impressively tender. We also tried the braised short ribs, served with pickled carrots, shiitake and tamago. They weren’t the most tender short ribs I’ve had — and a bit difficult to pick apart with chopsticks — but the flavor was very nice.