Bolay, a quick-server from South Florida, is another assemblage restaurant, though I’m not quite sure what the assembly is based on – I mean besides the rice, noodles or greens that you’d find in other assemblage concepts. It’s sort of American meets Asian meets Cuban. The name, according to the website – which currently features a popup pushing holiday gift cards every time one navigates to a different page; hugely annoying – the name is a portmanteau of bol, the Spanish word for bowl, and olay, which is either an alternative spelling of olé or refers to “oil of”; I’m assuming the former. (And wouldn’t it be Bololay?)

It came into the Central Florida market a couple of years ago with a restaurant in Lake Nona, then spread to Oviedo and Winter Park. I found myself nearby the Winter Park store recently, so I figured it was time to give it a try.

I’ve mentioned before that my main knife is the Wüsthof 8-inch chef’s knife, which I really like. It isn’t cheap but it lasts forever.

But even well-made expensive knives have to be sharpened now and then. A professional knife sharpener is great, but it isn’t always convenient to take your knives to a sharpener’s shop, and besides, they need to be sharpened more often than that.

I could never get the hang of using a sharpening stone because you have to keep the knife at a precise angle. Not easy to do.

But I’ve found a home knife sharpener that I really love and is easy to use. I’m never more than a few minutes from turning a dull knife to a sharp knife.

It’s the Trizor 15 from Chef’sChoice. And by the way, I had another Chef’s Choice sharpener years ago that didn’t work very well. This one, though, is terrific. Watch the video to see it in action.

Say goodbye to M.o.M.

Market on Magnolia, the downtown bar with a few food vendors in a rather compact space, will close permanently on Wed., Nov. 25, after three years in business.

Pete Downing, one of the principals of the market and also owner of Da Kine Poke, one of the food vendors inside M.o.M., told Bungalower that he decided not to renew the lease because of the loss of downtown workers due to Covid-19.

If you were to compare Papa Llama to other area Peruvian restaurants based solely on their menus, you might conclude the new Curry Ford West restaurant was a little meagre in its offerings. Three small plates, or appetizers, and four main dishes isn’t exactly an abundancia of selections.

But just taste the avocado anticuchero with its sulky chili sauce or the arroz chaufa with chicken and overweight kernels of corn and you’ll wonder why the other restaurants bother with any other menu items.

Even the lomo saltado, which is something of a national dish and found on every Peruvian restaurant’s menu, is somehow more special here. Perhaps it’s because the menu is so uncluttered that the kitchen can give more attention to the quality of the few items it offers.

Whatever the reason, Papa Llama is a restaurant worth visiting, regardless of the specialized cuisine.