- Delaney’s Tavern enters the brunch realm starting Sunday, offering a buffet of selections from chef Anthony Albino. Over the last few years, brunch menus have been trending toward á la carte, so a buffet style should be appealing. Cost is $39.99 per person and there are all-you-can-drink mimosa and bloodies options.
- Tapa Toro, too, is changing its Sunday menu, now offering a bottomless brunch. Bottomless means all you can eat paella and does not – I can’t stress this enough – refer to the dress code. Cost is $25 per person and bottomless mimosas and sangrias are also available for $16, but you’re limited to two hours, so leave your sleeping bag at home.
- You all ate a lot of Magical Dining meals this year, enough to send $306,772 to the National Alliance on Mental Illness Greater Orlando and Lighthouse Central Florida, the two charities chosen as the beneficiaries of the $1/dinner donation by Visit Orlando. I guess that means you ate somewhere around 306,772 dinners.
- White Castle, a mainly Midwestern burger chain, is returning to the Orlando area after half a century. Apparently some sort of statute of limitations has expired. The Disney area restaurant will be the chain’s largest, because of course it will. For the uninitiated, White Castle’s small square and decidedly greasy burgers are thought to be the inspiration for the term sliders, and it was not meant to be a compliment. Growing up in the Midwest, I had also heard them referred to as gut bombs. Don’t know why sliders caught on but gut bomb didn’t.
- Oh, here’s another brunch note. Canvas Restaurant & Market in Lake Nona will host a Santa Brunch on Sat., Dec. 14. It’s a buffet featuring such things as Meyer Lemon Pancakes, Cider-brined Turkey and Wagyu Beef Sliders.
- Great Harvest Bread Co. opened Friday in the Citi Tower building at 100 Lake Ave. in downtown Orlando. GHBC, which originated in Montana, is a “freedom franchise” that calls its owners franpreneurs, or entrepreneurial franchisees. Orlando’s owners answer to the names Brad and Rachel Cottle.
- Better Than Sex, the Key West dessert restaurant that opened a second location in Orlando in 2015, has gone the franchise route with locations in Savannah, Georgia, and Plano, Texas. Three more are set to open next year. If Great Harvest’s owners are called franpreneurs, what to you call a Better Than Sex franchisee? Carnalvores?
