Victoria & Albert’s, the crown jewel of Walt Disney Resort restaurants, named for someone who wore the actual Crown Jewels, has finally returned to the Grand Floridian Resort & Spa after its pandemic-forced closure and a renovation that has refreshed and revitalized the 34-year-old dining room.

Other changes have occurred, too.

Now in charge of the kitchen as chef de cuisine in the role that was defined by Scott Hunnel is Matthew Sowers, who was recruited by Hunnel more than a decade ago. (Aimee Rivera was chef de cuisine when the restaurant closed in 2020; she has left the company. Hunnel was promoted to an executive chef position that oversees culinary operations at several resorts, including the Grand Floridian.) The other major personnel change is Kristine Farmer as pasty chef, replacing Erich Herbitschek, who retired.

But we have a long way to go before we talk about pastries because some things about Victoria & Albert’s remain the same, including that dinner here is an evening-long affair.

I finally broke down and visited the new White Castle that opened a few months ago in the Flamingos Crossing area near Walt Disney World. I intentionally waited until the initial hoopla waned a bit. When it first opened there were rumors of eight hour waits to get food. I will do a lot of things for you, Gentle Diner, but waiting that long for a miniature burger is not among them. Heck, I wouldn’t even wait eight hours to get into Victoria & Albert’s (which, by the way, recently reopened; I’ll have that review next week).

And besides, it isn’t like White Castle isn’t a known commodity. It’s popular for its tiny, square burgers that initially had a reputation of being so small and greasy that they just slid down one’s gullet, bringing the term slider into our lexicon.

It doesn’t take a lot to convince people to go to the Tap Room at Dubsdread. It’s one of the area’s most popular and most celebrated restaurants, known for its casual atmosphere that belies the high quality of its food.

But of course Visit Orlando’s Magical Dining offers an extra reason to visit the College Park mainstay, especially because the prime rib, which is usually offered only on weekends, is available daily during the promotion.

I guess it really shouldn’t be too difficult to determine whether Fredster’s, a new venue in Maitland wants to be known as an entertainment spot that serves food or a restaurant with entertainment. It says right there in the logo under the name Fredster’s (in smaller letters), “featuring Adrian Mann’s Bar & Grill.”

You’d think that Mann would warrant higher billing. If truth were to be known, the small chain of restaurants (that also had entertainment) that were known as Dexter’s really probably should have been called Adrian’s. Mann was Dexter Richardson’s partner for many years and in the time that led to the recent breakup and selling of the brand it was Mann who was pretty much running things.

And I was a fan of Dexter’s and its food, which satisfied but didn’t overreach, didn’t try to be more than it needed to be. Unfortunately, the food at Fredster’s needs to be more than it is.

One of the questions I’m asked most frequently – not as much as “What’s your favorite restaurant?” but more than “How come you’re not fat” and “Really, you’re still writing reviews? I thought you were retired/dead.” – is “Is there anything new in town?”

And I’m surprised when I ask in return if they’ve been to Russell’s on Lake Ivanhoe and they say they haven’t heard of it. It’s been open two years, now, so it’s high time you gave it a try. Visit Orlando’s Magical dining is a good excuse.

I was invited recently to dine at Unreserved Food Bazaar at the JW Marriott Bonnet Creek and I have to say it wasn’t at all what I was expecting it to be.

I knew that it featured multiple food stations in a marketplace atmosphere, so I was thinking it was going to be like a typical food court where diners go up to a food counter, order and pay and then have a seat to wait for the food to be delivers.

Nope, not that at all.

BoVine is just the sort of restaurant I look for when Visit Orlando’s Magical Dining comes around. It’s an upscale, fine dining restaurant where many of the a la carte menu items are already in the $40 range, so you know you’re going to get a terrific deal with three courses for that price. For many people, this is a great opportunity to try a really good restaurant.

In my original review of BoVine, I mentioned how much I liked the Applewood Smoked Bacon Slab, similar to a popular appetizer at famed Peter Luger Steak House in Brooklyn. It’s one of the starter choices on the Park Avenue restaurant’s Magical Dining menu and I recommend it heartily. Bovine’s Caesar Salad is another good choice.

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If you’ve ever strolled around Midtown Manhattan you’ve noticed the numerous food carts. There’s one on just about every corner. And some of the most recognizable – and most popular – are the ones known as The Halal Guys. They’re all over the city and have been around for more than three decades. I first encountered one of their carts at 53d Street and 6th Avenue in the early nineties.

The concept was started by three Egyptian men who sold hot dogs from the corner carts, mainly for Muslim taxi drivers who had few choices for a quick meal with food certified halal. To oversimplify it, halal is to Muslims what kosher is to Jews. The Koran specifies which foods are permissible (halal) and which are forbidden (haram). So a place that certified the food was halal and served around the clock (see: sleeps, city that never) made it very popular. It wasn’t unusual to see long lines snaking down the block with people waiting for the food, especially after The Halal Guys expanded beyond hot dogs and included other meats and rice platters.

Boston’s Fish House and I both made our Orlando debuts in the same year, 1988. The restaurant opened in February and I rode in to town in May. We didn’t meet each other until that November, but it was instant love, at least for me.

As someone who had moved to Florida from the desert Southwest, I expected that every other restaurant I would be reviewing in my new job at the Orlando Sentinel would specialize in seafood. I couldn’t have been more wrong.

It may seem odd now (actually, it seemed odd then) but despite Central Florida’s proximity to the Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic Ocean their bounties made it into few of its restaurants. Instead, fish offloaded onto local docks were immediately boxed and sent flying to other parts of the country to restaurateurs who appreciated fresh seafood.

What made this doubly ironic was that it took a family from Massachusetts to move to town to demonstrate that Central Floridians do indeed appreciate good seafood. Want triple irony? The family was flying in its seafood from New England.

Black Rooster Taqueria, the popular Mills 50 restaurant, opened its second location, in the Curry Ford West District, last November, and when I visited it in late December I found that it wasn’t quite up to the standards of the original. Opening in a pandemic, supply-chain issues, staffing problems – who knows? Whatever the issues were back then seem to have been overcome or corrected, and based on a recent revisit, the Curry Ford West Rooster is proving itself to be a fine addition to the area.