In the world of steakhouses, there are two distinct types. There are the family style restaurants with casual settings and, often, for some reason, peanut shells scattered about the floors. These are your LongHorns, your Lone Stars and Outbacks, among others.
Then there are the high-end steakhouses, with no peanuts on the floor or in the pricing. In this category you’ll find the Del Frisco’s, Shula’s and Ruth’s Chrises.
Some of these restaurants fall under the same corporate umbrella – Lone Star and Del Frisco’s, for instance – sort of like Toyota and Lexus.
But just as luxury cars brands have their lesser models (a Lexus ES350 is basically just a Camry), so too the luxury steakhouses. Think of them as the low end of the high-end meateries. Or a third category: not casual enough to be a family restaurant and without the quality to be considered top-notch.
There are three restaurants that I would put in that category based on my previous experiences: Fleming’s Prime Steakhouse & Wine Bar; Palm Restaurant; and the Capital Grille. The dinners I’ve had at these restaurants in the past have been OK but not good enough to justify the hefty price tags. I thought it might be time to check back to see if there have been any changes, especially in light of Darden Restaurants buying the Capital Grille (and getting LongHorn Steakhouse in the deal).
I don’t know if the new ownership had anything to do with it, but the Capital Grille was the most improved among the three, and that includes service and overall experience as well as the steaks.
And what steaks. I had the Delmonico ($40), basically a bone-in ribeye, that was had a flavorful, well-seasoned crust and beautiful red center. The higher fat content of the cut made it juicy and tender.
My companion chose the Kansas City sirloin ($40), offered as a special on the night I visited. Also a bone-in cut, the steak had a characteristically coarser texture but was cooked just as perfectly as the other and was every bit as flavorful.
So here’s the surprise: Capital Grille serves steaks graded USDA choice, not prime, although you wouldn’t know that from the pricing. Just as with luxury cars there are quality levels within each meat grade. CG is obviously purchasing the upper echelon of choice.

We like things fresh here at Scott Joseph’s Orlando Restaurant Guide. That includes our reviews. The review for this restaurant was getting a bit stale, so we’ve taken it down for now. Scott will be returning to freshen it up soon.

In the meantime, if you’ve been to this restaurant, please feel free to write your own review and give the restaurant a rating. That will help other flog readers get a sense of the place — and give fresher scents to the reviews.

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I’ve always been a fan of Park plaza Gardens, so at times the enthusiasm has flagged. There was a time in the ’90s and even into the 2000’s that the once venerable restaurant was a mere shadow of its former self. A few years ago, I strted to get excited about this place again.

I am even more enthusiastic about the quality and consistency of the food and service at Park Plaza Gardens now than I was four years ago.

Steak and fish were both highlights of my visits. The bone-in ribeye ($40) was a substantial steak, grilled to the requested medium-rare, and graced with the slightest hint of truffles in the demi-glace.

The New York strip au poivre ($37) also featured a fine piece of meat, but someone seems to have forgotten that poivre means pepper; it hadn’t the slightest hint of any. Instead, the sauce was a wild mushroom and cognac demi-glace.

If I had to choose one entrée that stood out among the rest it would be the crab-stuffed grouper ($32). The fish was firm and fresh-tasting, and the accompanying crabmeat added the perfect grace note. A caper sauce gave the two just the right saltiness. The plate was rounded out with fluffy jasmine rice and sautéed fresh baby spinach.

On a lunch visit I enjoyed the herb-roasted king salmon ($18), although I’m not sure where the herbs came into it. It was a long but slender steak with a good amount of fattiness in the texture. The salmon sat atop a mound of mashed potatoes and was surrounded by a puddle of roasted tomato coulis spiced with ginger, a lovely sauce.

But the blackened burger with blue cheese ($11) was disappointingly dry.

There were a number of good appetizers but the crab cakes ($13) were the standout. They had plenty of crab held together with a minimum of filler and with a light jacket of panko to give it a crispy crust. With a salad of baby greens, it was enough for a light entrée.

The pesto and goat cheese stuffed eggplant ($10) had the creamy richness of the cheese with the tanginess of the pesto with some more of that wonderful tomato coulis. Fried mac-n-cheese balls ($8), crusted with more panko, were only worth trying out of curiosity.

Special soups are listed as Chef Santos’ soup of the day ($7) with no information of who Santos is. He or she presented a chicken and corn chowder on one of my visits, but instead of being a thick soup, as most people expect a chowder to be, it was basically a brothy chicken soup with a few kernels of corn and small chunks of potato and chicken meat.

Actually one of the best starters at Park Plaza Gardens is the bread basket, which has delicious toasted bread with a little cheese and spicy pepper. How much better it would be with pure butter instead of the dish of over garlicked olive oil that is offered.

Service was very good on all my visits, and the cross-service among the staff ensures that no table goes wanting. The wine list is not extensive but has appropriate selections.

Park Plaza Gardens has two dining venues, the café that spills from the bar at the front of the building onto the sidewalk, and the more formal dining room in the back. That space had undergone a renovation back when the restaurant was rebranded with the Chef Justin name. It retains its outdoor ambience with red brick flooring and walls and towering trees, but all under the glass ceiling. An open window to the kitchen doesn’t offer diners much of a peek at the goings-on there but does add to the noise level.

I prefer the dining room, but to get an idea of PPG’s place in the Winter Park scene, take a sidewalk table and watch how diners and passers-by greet each other as the come and go. It is a neighborhood restaurant, just in a nice neighborhood. But in the dining room, Park Plaza Gardens can still be the special occasion restaurant it once was. Even more so now.

I have a distinct memory of the night I went on a tapeo, or tapas bar crawl, in Madrid. It was the evening of September 11, 2001. There are certain events that provoke a “where were you when” remembrance. That is certainly one for me.
So when, several years later, I visited Ceviche in downtown Orlando, I was impressed with how the food and overall feel of the place whisked me back to Spain.
I like just about everything about Ceviche. The food and the atmosphere are authentic, and the staff seem genuinely enthusiastic about the tapas they serve. Of course, it’s a lot easier to be enthusiastic about the food when it’s this good.
The Orlando Ceviche is a new location for a Tampa restaurant that opened in 1997. There is another location in St. Petersburg and a newer location in Sarasota. It took over the space that of late was occupied by the ill-fated Pearl Steakhouse but which is more recognizable to longtime locals as the former Lili Marlene’s at Church Street Station.
The restaurant is an expansive space with wide-plank pine flooring and the sort of hand-painted tiles that adorn walls all over Spain.
The name is probably the least authentic Spanish thing about the place, ceviche being more popular as a Latin American dish. That said, the ceviche de la casa ($8), one of about half a dozen choices, was a delicious selection of citrus marinated seafood, including big scallops, tender-firm shrimp, squid and two-bite-sized pieces of salmon mixed with fresh tomatoes, scallions, bell peppers and a touch of cilantro.
But the pinchos selection of sardines ($6), big, fat fillets served with tomatoes and onions of a sliver of bread, were a more authentic taste of Spanish tapas, and every bit as tasty.
No tapas crawl is complete without a tortilla Espanola ($4), the potato and onion omelet that is as close to a national dish as you’ll find. Ceviche’s was perfectly executed so that the omelet, served in a small square portion, was sufficiently firm.
By the way, most items on the menu are available as tapas plates, that is, as small bites, or as larger portions. Whenever given the choice I ordered the smaller plates, and those are the prices I quote here. But all the prices are more than fair, and a veritable feast for four people can be had here for about $100.
Include a portion of oxtail ($11) in your budget. The rabo de toro was braised in red wine so that the meat was as tender as it could be and was falling off the bone, or off the tail, as the case may be. The cross-sections were served on a bed of cubed potatoes.
I also liked the braised baby lamb ribs ($9), but mostly because of the white beans mixed with chunks of chorizo that accompanied the flavorful lamb.
My guests and I all agreed that one of the best dishes we sampled was the berenjenas fritas ($6), thin slices of eggplant fried crispy like potato chips. Simple and delicious.
Croquetas de bacalao ($7), deep-fried fritters of salt cod blended with bechamel, were appropriately salty. Albondigas ($6) were dense balls of meat fashioned out of ground veal, chorizo and pork served in a spicy tomato sauce.
Desserts were less wonderful than all that preceded them. Pudin de pan ($7) was a too-dense bread pudding, and torta Valenciana ($8.50) was a chocolate cake with hints of orange that probably would have been better a day or two earlier. Flan ($5) was surprisingly bland.
The centerpiece of the dining room is a cold tapas station where cheeses and meats are sliced. Full shanks of hams hang on the four sides, small paper cups inserted at the feet to catch the dripping juices.
On many nights, in the bar space just outside the main dining area, which has its own bar, there is flamenco-style music that is mezmerizingly entertaining.

If Ceviche is the kind of restaurant we want to see more of in downtown Orlando – and I think it is – we should do everything we can to encourage its survival.

Ceviche is at 125 W. Church St., Orlando. It’s open for lunch and dinner Tuesday through Saturday. The phone number is 321-281-8140.

Could a restaurant such as Bergamo’s exist anywhere other than Orlando, specifically the part Orlando that is known as Tourist World? The gimmick of singing waiters seemed uniquely suited to the International Drive environs.
Exist it did for more than 17 years at I-Drive’s Mercado complex until the imminent demolition of that venue forced the restaurant to move. Earlier this year Bergamo’s took over a space in Festival Bay that had been occupied for a mercifully short time by Murray Bros. Caddyshack.
That an independently-owned restaurant survived, perhaps thrived, for so long is impressive for our town. I should note that they did so with no help from me. When I reviewed the restaurant in 1990, and again in 1995, I experienced nothing I could recommend. The food was marginal at best, and the entertainment was amateurish – neither was good enough to put up with the other. But while few locals patronized the restaurant, it did just fine with its unique concept and a weekly refreshment of unsuspecting tourists and conventioneers. It didn’t require the recommendation of the local critic.
So it probably won’t matter to them that I think the new Bergamo’s is quite good. The singers demonstrate extensive vocal training and perform with professionalism, more so than in their table-waiting duties, but they manage to do both well enough. The servers, and even the hostess, take turns on the stage in sets that start at the top of the hour and last about 30 minutes. They sing songs that range from show tunes to arias to ballads, and most had lovely voices that at times brought chills.
The food was less thrilling but certainly better than anything I ever sampled at the old place. Most of it was acceptable, perhaps only mediocre in another venue but boosted a bit by the ambience and entertainment.
Best of the entrees I sampled was the petite veal chops ($25.95) served with a Marsala sauce with porcini mushrooms and mashed potatoes. The chops were about the size of lamb chops but with the characterisitc tenderness and milky taste of veal. They were served with delicious baby carrots and zucchini, but the potatoes were hard and dry.
I also liked the black linguine ($($29.99), pasta colored with squid in with other parts of the cephalopod sauteed with shrimp in a tomatoey sauce dotted with spicy bits of red pepper flakes.
But the braised beef ribs ($29.99) were disappointingly dry and stringy, and the polenta that accompanied had a hard crust.
Among the appetizers, crispy risotto croquettes ($9.99) were a little too crisp and were nearly blackened and hard. Seared scallops ($9.99), however, served with al dente cannellini beans and radicchio, were big, plump and cooked perfectly.
Seafood antipasti platter ($17.99), our server told us, was comprised of whatever the chef had in the kitchen, and that’s exactly how it appeared. There was a small stack of crumbled salmon, a few shrimp, sauteed calamari and raw tuna that was completely devoid of flavor. It was worth the cost.
The bread pudding ($9.99) was the best of the desserts I sampled. It was made with batonettes of bread that had transmogrified into a creamy custard. Limoncello cheesecake ($8.99) was dry and lacking much of a lemony flavor.
There is an impressively extensive wine list focusing on Italian varietals. By-the-glass options are not quite as numerous.
The new venue is perfect for Bergamo’s concept. The main dining room is a large rotunda with seating on the main floor surrounding a centrally located piano and a raised area with more tables for an in-the-round setting. The opulence of flowing fabrics and dramatic lighting might be over the top for other restaurants but are appropriate here. One thing you might not notice, at least not with your eyes, is the use of wood panels, hung at the direction of an accoustical engineer, to optimize the sound. Even with the most booming baritone at full voice, conversation is still possible.
But please don’t talk while the performers are singing. Sit and listen and appreciate something that is uniquely Orlando. And a restaurant that is finally worth recommending to the people who live there.