- The real hell about weekend brunch is having to wait until 11 a.m. to get a Bloody Mary or mimosa. The folks at Soco feel our pain and will now start serving brunch on Saturday and Sunday at 10:30 a.m. Great, now I have to get up a half hour earlier.
- Second Harvest Food Bank of Central Florida will host its first Chef’s Night of the year on Feb. 6 featuring the Concept Development Team for Walt Disney World. They’ll prepare a four-course dinner and, who knows, maybe come up with a great idea for a new Disney restaurant at the same time. Dinner is from 6 to 9 p.m. at Second Harvest, 411 Mercy Drive, Orlando. Tickets are $125 per person or $200 per couple. If you’re single, you can team up with someone and get the discount; no one checks marriage certificates. But do know that your contributions go toward Second Harvest’s Culinary Training Program. Call 407-514-1070 or go online at FeedHopeNow.org.
- Icon Park, which gets annoyed whenever I don’t put its name in all caps (it’s not an acronym, so it’s Icon in my stylebook), is hosting its second annual Sip & Savor event on Sunday, Jan. 19, from noon to 7 p.m. Icon-ic restaurants will offer small plates of signature food items for $5 or $7, but you also have to buy a ticket to ride that silly Ferris wheel. I think I’ll just pop in to Tapa Toro and skip the whirl.
- The Coop, which would prefer I spell its name in all caps, too (also not an acronym), has added some new menu items from founder John Rivers and Derek Perez, former chef de cuisine at Luma on Park and Luke’s Kitchen. And, beginning Jan. 19, Coop will be open on Sundays. The quick-serve restaurant, which features Southern cooking, is owned by 4 Rivers Smokehouse, whose locations are famously closed on Sundays, just like Chick-fil-A and for the same reason. Rivers has opened his restaurants on Sundays in the past to raise funds following tragedies, such as the Pulse massacre and Hurricane Dorian. In that vein, a portion of the Coop’s Sunday proceeds will go to the company’s 4R Foundation and its 4Roots Farm Campus, a 40-acre farm planned for the College Park’s Packing District that will focus on feeding hungry people.
- First I told you, in December, that Kim Wu Chinese Restaurant had closed after 37 years. Then I had to amend that to say that the restaurant had not yet closed and would be open through the end of January. Now comes word that the Kirkman Road wokker will remain open indefinitely. Maybe the name should be Kim WU for We’re Unclosed.
