The Wave Restaurant at Disney’s Contemporary Resort

Have you ever been at the beach, out in the water, watching the waves as they roll toward you, waiting for the perfect one to pick you up and carry you to shore? And then you spot it, off in the distance, coming at you as though it’s going to break just right and give you a perfect ride. So you start paddling in anticipation only to have the wave fizzle out.

That’s how I feel about The Wave restaurant at Disney’s Contemporary Resort.

This is the first full-service restaurant to open on Disney property in quite a while, so anticipation and expectation were high. But it just seems that not enough effort was put into this concept, and there definitely is a lack of a follow-through on all fronts.

Things looked promising as I approached the new restaurant. The Wave occupies a space on the ground level of the not-quite-as-contemporary-as-it-used-to-be resort using an area that once held a game room and employee training classroom. You access the restaurant through a brushed metal tunnel that I suppose is supposed to resemble going through the curl of a wave. At the other end of the tunnel is a host stand, and on the other side of that, behind panels of mottled glass, is a large and stylish bar with cool blue lights and, overhead, glittering starlights.

It seems Disney spent all its money on the tunnel and the lounge area because the dining room is really quite plain. It’s a vast, open space with seating for 220 at bare wood tables. Overhead are undulating metal panels — oh, let’s just call them waves, shall we? — Above the metal waves are white and yellow neon lights that call attention to an unattractive acoustic tile ceiling.

The menu is surprisingly limited, and the food is even more surprisingly unexciting.

Appetizers were downright disappointing. The crab cakes ($11.49) had too much filler and a mealy texture. Lettuce wraps ($11.99) featured pebble-sized pieces of lamb along with bay scallops the size of an eraser on the end of a No. 2 pencil. They were sauteed in soy-rice wine vinegar and presented as a soggy mess that diners are supposed to scoop into lettuce leaves to eat. This one would have been a failure at half the price, which still would have been too much to charge.

The best among the entrees I sampled was the fish of the day, which is listed on the menu as “Today’s Sustainable Fish” to capitalize on a current ecological buzzword. That aside, the halibut fillet I had was fresh-tasting and had a lovely crisped exterior and beautiful white flesh inside. It was topped with cilantro chutney that offered a nice herby note.

Braised chicken pot pie ($19.99) was an odd presentation of meat — not much of it — peas, mushrooms and carrots in a creamy sauce served in a small casserole with a flat biscuit on top. I get the pot part but where’s the pie?

Braised lamb shank ($25.99) was a little more impressive, a huge hunk of tender meat laid atop a stew of bulgur wheat and lentils.

The wine list features an ecological gimmick in that all the wines — sparklers excepted — are in bottles with screw-cap closures. The ecological part is that cork trees needn’t be ravaged just to make bottle stoppers. I have nothing against screw caps, called Stelvin closures, and in fact I think they’re quite handy. The only problem with building a wine list around them is that availability is currently rather limited. So the Wave’s list features wines almost exclusively from producers in the Southern Hemisphere, where the use of screw caps has been more widely embraced. I found no stars among the wines.

Oddly, a flight of wines is offered on the drinks menu in the lounge, but it is not made available in the dining room. And, I overheard two guests being told, dining at the bar is not available.

Service had the appropriate Disney perkiness, but timing was way off on both my visits and long, inexplicable waits were endured.

I wish things had been better, and perhaps the restaurant will improve over the months. But as it stands now, the Wave is a washout.

HUE has been an important part of downtown Orlando and specifically the Thornton Park area for more than six years. Although there were other venues targeting young people at the time, HUE was among the first specifically designed to attract a more upscale and stylish group. And certainly the first to be successful at it. From my February 2002 review in the Orlando Sentinel:

… Hue is very hip. On just about any evening it is vibrantly alive with young urbanites frantic to unwind from the day’s pursuits. So they sip pretty cocktails and shout to each other to be heard over the din they themselves are creating. Then, after a suitable waiting period that seems necessary to demonstrate the popularity of the place, they might make their way to a table in one of the two small dining rooms, or perhaps on the patio that wraps around the corner of Central Boulevard and Summerlin Avenue…

Over the years, it has continued to draw young drinkers and not a few diners, too.

The menu continues to have a curious Asian bent, such as a tuna tartare appetizer presented on crispy wontons, or cripsy oysters served whimsically in the sort of spoons used in Vietnamese soups. But the best items here are the more straightforward, including grilled flatbread with duck confit; Burgundy balsamic braised short ribs; and one truly fine burger.

On one of my visits I had the wood-grilled rack of lamb and my companion chose the pan-seared halibut. Both were nicely done. The lamb featured two double chops, finished to the requested medium-rare, placed over a mound of risotto and accompanied by sautéed vegetables, including green beans, green pea pods, and red peppers. Although the menu said it was a red pepper risotto there was no indication red pepper had been involved.

The halibut was a good-sized fillet deftly cooked so the inside had white flaky flesh and the outside had a pleasantly crisped crust.

Servers tend to be young and range from green and inexperienced to highly trained and reliable.

Hue is at 629 E. Central Blvd., Orlando. It’s open daily for lunch and dinner. The phone number is 407-849-1800. Visit the Web site for more info.

This is a tale of two Thais.
I recently visited two new Thai restaurants, each with good food but each distinctly different from the other in its style and experience.
On one end of the spectrum is Orchid, a splashy and elegant restaurant with a hip vibe that befits its Park Avenue milieu.
And then there’s Chai Thai, a modest, unpretentious and unadorned eatery with a family-style mien. Unfortunately, it, too, has an ambience that matches its Curry Ford Road locale. (Isn’t there an Extreme Makeover: Urban Street Edition yet?)
But even with its decidedly downscale décor, Chai Thai delivers delicious Thai favorites. So does Orchid, but its menu also extends to more ambitious fare that is based on Thai seasonings and ingredients that may be unfamiliar even to devotees of the area’s many Thai restaurants.
Short rib massamam ($22), for example. It featured a large beef short rib, braised and then sautéed with potatoes and small pieces of sweet bell peppers with a chili sauce and a bit of roasted peanuts. That the meat was not the most tender hunk of rib I’ve had – a bit more braising might have helped – does not detract from the overall enjoyment of the dish.
And part of the enjoyment of this entrée, and indeed most every dish served here, was the elegant presentation, which almost invariably included luminous purple orchid blooms as plate garnish. (Yes, orchid petals are edible, but frankly I enjoy looking at them much more than ingesting them.)
More traditional entrees occupy the menu, including pad Thai (would it be possible for a Thai restaurant to operate without pad Thai?) I ordered mine with chicken ($14) and was surprised when the server asked me how spicy I wanted it. Pad Thai is done without spicy seasoning and is traditionally served with a condiment tray that includes crushed peppers and chili sauce, as well as chopped peanuts, for the diner to add at will.
There was no condiment tray, but the mix of rice noodles, bean sprouts, tangy chicken and ground peanuts was nonetheless delicious.
I also had the pad Thai ($9.95) at Chai, and again I was asked how spicy I wanted it. Are Thai restaurants going the way of Indian restaurants, succumbing to the uninformed notion of the dining public that these cuisines are nothing but spicy foods?
Chai Thai’s version was equally as good, the only difference being the presentation – and the price, which probably had something to do with the presentation. Orchids aren’t cheap.
Chai doesn’t decorate with orchids, but the crispy duck ($14.95) was a beautiful presentation all by itself. It was a fully platter of sliced meat with cispy crunchy skin topped with basil. There was a small amount of sauce, barely enough to wet the fluffy jasmine rice, but it wasn’t missed.
InWinter Park I ordered the Orchid duck ($24) and was surprised that what I was served was basically a salad. I didn’t think I was ordering a salad – the menu didn’t say anything about greens – and I certainly wouldn’t have ordered a $24 salad. When a server noticed my dismay he removed the dish from my table and the charge from my bill.
At Chai I had the red curry with beef ($9.95), which I ordered medium-hot. It was perfectly spiced, hot enough to put some heat on the tongue but not so much that it scorched the taste buds for the myriad other flavors.
Orchid did a nice yellow curry with chicken ($14), although here the spicing was more muted.
Both restaurants also offer one of my favorite Thai appetizers, stuffed chicken wings. These are wings that have the upper bone removed and its cavity filled with chopped chicken meat, clear noodles and vegetables. It’s then breaded and deep-fried to create a drumsticklike treat. Both were tasty and similarly priced, Orchid’s for $6 and Chai’s for $5.95. Orchid offered an unusual appetizer called mieng kum ($10), which was an assemble-yourself morsel. It included mounds of fresh ginger, tiny cubes of lime, onion, peanuts and – don’t be frightened – tiny freeze-dried shrimp. These were accompanied by fresh spinach leaves to wrap the ingredients in. Despite the woefully small leaves, it was an interesting and filling starter course, except there wasn’t enough freeze-dried shrimp, words I never thought I’d say.
I seldom order desserts in Thai restaurants, but I had to try the coconut sticky rice with mango ($7), a long pad of sweetened rice topped with slices of cool mango. It was quite nice.
Orchid is in the small space that was occupied by Bistro on Park before it moved across the street. The walls are a sedate mocha, and colorful, geometric-centric paintings adorn the walls. And, of course, there are plenty of orchids that line the small bar, which also, it seems, doubles as an office for the owner.
Chai Thai doesn’t have the decorative accouterments of Orchid, but each does a fine job with its common cuisine.

You may remember Rincon Cubano Cafeteria as Elijah’s Grill from a few years ago. Elijah’s moved to Eustis, of all places, and RCC moved in. They even kept the old phone number.
They must have kept some of the recipes, too, because just like Elijah’s the food here is first-rate.
The Hound stopped in recently and had the pernil, or roast pork shoulder. They referred to it on a hand-written specials menu board as pulled pork, but this wasn’t like what you’d find in your basic barbeque joint. The meat, which was moist and flavorful, was in large chunks and topped by a piece of delicious crispy skin. Woe to the person who takes this heavenly piece of epicurean epidermis and sets it aside. It’s OK to do that with chicken skin. But with pernil you have to eat the skin. And that’s that.
The dinner also came with a choice of rice – I had the white rice premixed with beans, because if I had ordered them separately I would have just mixed them together anyway. I also had a choice of fried plantains, tostones or yuca. I had the boiled yucca but I asked for the garlic sauce on the side. I had sampled the sauce on a previous visit and it was so strong that no one would speak to me for two days. The yuca was so good that it didn’t need any sauce, just a bit of salt to bring out the flavor of the pasty root.
I also tried one of the restaurant’s Cuban sandwiches, which had lots of thinly sliced ham and pork with a slather of yellow mustard and some tangy dill pickles.
The Cafeteria part of Rincon Cubano’s name is a bit misleading. This isn’t the kind of place where you grab a plastic tray and slide it along the rails as someone dishes out the food you point to. In fact, you place your order at the front counter and no rails are involved whatsoever.
But you can point at what you want, but you have to go to the other end of the counter. That’s where the few hot items that are offered each day are on display. This is unclear to those unfamiliar with the setup, and in fact if you just walk in the door and up to the counter and order from the menu board on the wall, you’ll miss out on the specials because they’re not listed there.
Back up by the order station, however, a few of the appetizers are displayed in a heated plastic cube. Be sure to point to a tamal, because they’re pretty good. The Cuban version of the tamale is mostly cornmeal with just a few flecks of meat that we’ll agree for the sake of argument is ham. This one didn’t need more meat because the steamed cornmeal was delicious on its own.

Rincon Cubano Cafeteria is at 3327 N. Forsyth Road, Winter Park. The hours are 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday and 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday. No alcohol is served but credit cards are accepted. The phone number is 407-679-5600.

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.