Supper Club is now adjourned.

Supper Club, more recently known as Dinner Party, was our occasional wine dinner event that started in 2011 with a gathering at the Citrus Club in Downtown Orlando and ended Wednesday evening in the Florida Room at Dubsdread, next door to the Tap Room at Dubsdread.

In between we had events at some of finest restaurants in Central Florida – and beyond, including an international Supper Club in Dublin, Ireland. And during the pandemic, we met virtually, with a Zoomed dinner featuring food and cocktails from Soco Thornton Park that was picked up or delivered to participants.

In bringing this aspect of Scott Joseph’s Orlando Restaurant Guide to a close, I strategically chose Dubsdread for one specific reason. When I started the website sixteen years ago, Tap Room at Dubsdread was the first one to sign on as a sponsor, and it has stayed with me the whole way. And as you may know, the rules for advertising on this site stipulate that only those restaurants that meet the standards for good food and service may do so.

Tap Room at Dubsdread certainly has met those qualifications and has maintained its high quality. We all know its award-winning burger and its great steaks and seafood. But the culinary team took our Dinner Party guests to a new level.

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This sounds like a fun time. The folks at Michelin Guide-recommended Four Flamingos: A Richard Blais Florida Kitchen are having a BBQ Pig-nic on Saturday, July 27, with Blais attending as host. The event will be from 4 to 7 p.m. on the Hydrangea Lawn near the restaurant at the Hyatt Regency Grand Cypress.

The family-style meal will include Puerto Rican lechon asado, slow roasted and seasoned with Four Flamingos’ signature Key Lime Mojo; poached shrimp ceviche; Pineapples Foster wings; spiced rum maduros; and a bar of house-made sauces. Plus desserts lime and blueberry arroz con leche; guava and cheese quesitos; and coconut macaroons.

Tickets are $65 per person plus tax and gratuity or $95 with unlimited beer and wine. Purchase tickets here.

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A morning cocktail. I don’t usually have a drink this early – unless I’m in New Orleans, or maybe London; Paris, of course, and New York certainly, but it isn’t a usual thing. This one, on the flight from ATL to MCO Monday morning, was earned.

Last Tuesday, I flew to Moline, Ill., to see family. I was scheduled to return home Friday evening on Delta flights – a small craft from MLI to ATL and then the usual large format plane home. But Friday morning I woke to news of a global tech glitch that affected airlines (also banks, hospitals and other entities using Microsoft software). A few hours after the news broke, so did my flight out of Moline. After some frustrating hours on hold with Delta customer service (I will forevermore use those three words with tongue in cheek) I gave up and drove out to the airport to see if I could speak to someone personally. I could, and she told me the soonest I could get out would be Sunday evening.

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Grazie, the restaurant that replaced Bem Bom in the Audubon District, bills itself as a “Modern Italian Kitchen.” I don’t know what that means. The setting is pleasant and lacks any of the stereotypical trappings of an “old timey” Italian restaurant – no red and white-checkered tablecloths, no candle wax dripping down a Chianti bottle’s basket.

Instead, the white-topped tables are set with simple placemats. A white brick wall has a neon sign that reads: “Pasta, yes[;] You, maybe.” (Apparently, neon signage as decor is all the rage.) And a stylish bar that overlooks a rollup window that when open has a view of the outdoor, out front covered patio.

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Walt Disney World Swan and Dolphin has hired Greg Sherman to be its new director of food and beverage. He fills the vacancy created when Luciano Sperduto left in April to join the Caribe Royale as its F&B head.

Sherman comes from Rosa Mexicano, the New York Tex-Mexery that the Swan and Dolphin added to its coterie of nearly two dozen restaurants last year. He served as Rosa Mexicano’s chief operating officer. 

The little house on Washington Street that was Garden Bistro and Island Time before that will now become Kaleidoscope Thornton Park, serving breakfast, lunch and dinner once it opens.

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Tabla, the locally owned fine Indian, Chinese and Thai restaurant, is celebrating its 15th year. And to commemorate the occasion, it is planning an expansion through franchising.

Owner Nora Jain said that it has always been a dream of hers to franchise the concept. “Now, we’re actually doing it!”

It’s  been an ongoing process involving a lot of research and development over the past two years, she said. Partnering with a supplier in India, Jain said, they’ve been able to streamline the backend of the operation and standardize the cooking process so that it will be consistent from one location to the next.

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It took a while for me to get around to visiting Crocante, a Puerto Rican restaurant that moved into a former Fuddrucker’s space on Colonial Drive a year and a half ago, but now that I’ve been I’ll count myself among its many fans.

Crocante bills itself as offering an upscale Puerto Rican experience, which may be a bit misleading. There’s nothing tony about the interior. It’s a big open space with an open kitchen along one side of the long room and a bar in the center-back that looks as though it was an afterthought. There are booths along the wall opposite the kitchen, and the rest of the room is filled with symmetrically spaced tables, both long high tops and smaller low tops, with chrome-framed chairs or stools with black vinyl seats and backs. The “tinny” utensils and ridiculously flimsy paper napkins don’t exactly scream top drawer, either.

But with the food, you’re definitely eating high on the hog, figuratively if not literally.

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Eddie Nickell and Nick Oliveri, the owners of Bites & Bubbles, invite you to storm Mills Park on Wed., July 17, for a four-course French dinner in honor of Bastille Day. (Never mind that Bastille Day is July 14, the French are good at extending celebrations.) The evening will begin with a reception (réception in French) at 6:30 followed by chef Nickell’s dinner with wine pairings. Cost is $99 including tax and gratuity. Reserve here.

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Just a block down Mills Avenue from Bites & Bubbles is the original location of Black Rooster Taqueria, a Michelin recommended restaurant. Black Rooster will continue to operate there, but the location it opened in Curry Ford West a few years ago has flown the coop. 

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Visit Orlando’s Magical Dining promotion will run six weeks, from Aug. 16 through Sept. 30, with a record 150 restaurants participating.

Once again, the restaurants will offer three-course, prix fixe menus of either $40 or $60, a tiered system first introduced in 2023, with either $1 or $2 from each sale going to a local charity. Visit Orlando has selected the Mustard Seed of Central Florida, which aids families recovering from hardships, as this year’s beneficiary.

You can see the full list of restaurants at magicaldining.com. Participants are searchable by location, type of cuisine and dietary restrictions. There is even a filter for restaurants listed in the Michelin Guide. Each listing has the Magical Dining menu choices, a link to make reservations and access to the restaurant’s own website where one can compare the regular prices to the Magical Dining deal. (It’s not always better, but we’ll discuss that another time.) The website, by the way, is nicely done. The full title of this year’s version is Visit Orlando’s Magical Dining presented by Orlando Health. (VOMDOH?)

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There are likely hundreds of Korean restaurants throughout the state of Florida; I count more than 50 in the Orlando area alone. But it wasn’t all that long ago that there was only one – not just in Central Florida but in the whole state. That was Korea House.

It first opened in Longwood in 1982, and I know that it was still the sole Seoul-food purveyor when I started reviewing restaurants in 1988 and it remained the only one for several more years. (There was another restaurant serving Korean dishes called Go Hyang Gip on West Oak Ridge Road in Orlando but it featured a pan-Asian menu.)

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