- Frontyard Festival, the clever initiative to make use of the vast space in front of the Dr. Phillips Center for concerts and other events, is adding a food element to go with the entertainment, including a Sunday brunch series. Seating is in boxes, just like in chichi theaters except these are constructed with metal pipes that look like scaffolding sections and they’re all on the ground instead of above the orchestra section. But they allow for distancing. And each box has a QR code you can scan with your phone to order drinks and food that someone will deliver to you. Upcoming brunches include Latin music performer Ángel López (Jan. 31); opera with Gabriel Preisser and the Opera Orlando chorus (Feb. 7); and jazz with members of the Jazz Orchestra (Feb. 14). Details and tickets at the Frontyard Festival website.
- Want more outdoor options? The Promenade at Sunset Walk will have a Super Bowl watch party on Feb. 7, which as luck would have it is the day the big game is being played this year.
- National Irish Coffee Day is Jan. 25. The nation in question, of course, is the United States, not Ireland. Which is good because it isn’t likely we’ll be making a hop to Hibernia anytime soon. But you can have a whiskied up brew at Raglan Road at Disney Springs and, as it offered last year, you buy the coffee and they’ll throw in the whiskey. Or slowly pour it in if you prefer. Either way it’s free.
- Susuru, a Buena Vista area restaurant that bills itself as a “retro-themed izakaya,” plans to open Susuru Yatai in downtown Orlando at Bumby Arcade, an under-construction food hall. Yatai means food cart, so expect Japanese street food stuff. Bumby Arcade’s developers are planning for a fall opening. If I remember my high school developer-speak courses, that translates to “sometime in late spring,” but I got a C in that class so I could be wrong.
- KrungThep Tea Time is also coming to downtown Orlando. Sort of. A sister restaurant to the non-gendered cafe on Fairbanks Avenue will offer an exclusively vegan menu from a virtual kitchen for delivery or pickup only. Where? The KrungThep Facebook page didn’t say in its post making the announcement. Perhaps they’ll give the address before the opening, which they plan by the end of the month. Or perhaps Memorial Day.
- An article in the Orlando Sentinel notes that Orange County businesses, including restaurants, are being cited and fined for mask violations as “strike teams” make unannounced visits to check on compliance. The article, by Austin Fuller, quotes the owner of Country House Restaurant in Winter Garden whose employee was spotted by an investigator walking through the restaurant unmasked. The owner, Heather Wooding is fighting the $300 fine and was quoted as saying, “This is America, and we should have the right to choose to handle the health of our own body.” She then presumably got into her car and drove home at 90 miles an hour in a 25 MPH zone without wearing a seat belt, ignoring stop signs and traveling on the left side of the street. Because America. And I’m wondering: Does she require her employees to wash their hands after using the restroom, or is that optional?
