Fish On Fire has been operating on the lonely corner of Daetwyler Drive and McCoy Road since 2004, though not consistently, and not just because of pandemically forced shutdowns.

In April of 2010, a fire all but destroyed the structure, proving that the gods have a taste for irony. But owners Jay Herrington and John Mitchell rebuilt the restaurant, which sits in front of a motel across from the elevated Beachline Highway, and reopened it in 2011.

Except for the lack of a nearby body of water – Lake Conway Chain of Lakes is about a tenth of a mile away but that doesn’t count – FOF has all the trappings of a classic fish camp, especially in its overt rusticity. I did notice on my recent trip that the floors that were once bare concrete are now tiled, and galvanized buckets have been fashioned into overhead light fixtures, a bit of whimsy that might be considered too precious for an actual fish camp.

After just less than a year, Venoy Rogers III is leaving his post as executive chef at the Grand Bohemian Hotel Orlando to join the Certified Angus Beef brand organization in Wooster, Ohio, near Akron. He will be executive chef for the company, which maintains a culinary center for recipe development and education experiences for chefs and restaurateurs interested in expanding their meat knowledge.

Rogers moved to the downtown hotel and its signature restaurant, the Boheme, last year from the B Resort at Walt Disney World where he oversaw the American Kitchen Bar & Grill. He had been at the B Resort since 2016 and had previously cooked at the Palm Hotel & Spa in Miami Beach and W in San Diego. He is a 2008 graduate of the Culinary Institute of Platt College in North Oklahoma City.

It’s Earth Day. But don’t worry if you’re not reading this on Friday, April 22 – all of April is considered Earth Month, too. (If you’re reading this in May, you missed it; and where have you been, anyway?)

And while you might think that a good tie-in for Earth MonthDay for a restaurant would be specials on mud pie or planet-based foods, some are going more flowery. Patina Restaurant Group’s Disney Springs restaurants – Morimoto Asia, The Edison, Maria and Enzo’s, Enzo’s Hideaway and Pizza Ponte – are replacing their conventional coasters and beverage napkins with special paper coasters embedded with wildflower seeds. After you’ve consumed your refreshing beverage, you can take the coaster home and plant it in some dirt (if you’re in a hurry you can take the dirt with you to the restaurant). Then, after the appropriate germination period, lovely flowers will sprout. As far as I can tell, the plantable coasters will only be available during April. Then, presumably, it’s back to the old ones that eventually end up in the landfill.

Also part of Patina’s promotion: specials on Sierra Nevada’s Hazy Little Thing and Impossible Burgers. No mention of mud pie.

Also available on Earth Day only, 4 Rivers Smokehouses will be handing out pollinator-friendly wildflower seeds to dine-in customer. Just the seeds; you have to bring your own coaster. And dirt.

I don’t know why but whenever I consider places to dine on Park Avenue I usually begin my mental restaurant roll call at Lyman Avenue and head north from there. But of course that means I miss some others worth recommending that are on the lower end of the street, such as Cafe de France, which is one of the oldest restaurants on the avenue, Umi Japanese and Grato, a newcomer Italian.

Now add an even newercomer to the list, Lale a Mediterranean/Turkish restaurant that has moved into the compact space next to Umi (they’re so close to each other that it’s difficult to distinguish which sidewalk tables belong to which restaurant).