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Newsy Nuggets: The Earth Day Edition

Written By Scott Joseph On April 22, 2022

Seed Coasters

It’s Earth Day. But don’t worry if you’re not reading this on Friday, April 22 – all of April is considered Earth Month, too. (If you’re reading this in May, you missed it; and where have you been, anyway?)

And while you might think that a good tie-in for Earth MonthDay for a restaurant would be specials on mud pie or planet-based foods, some are going more flowery. Patina Restaurant Group’s Disney Springs restaurants – Morimoto Asia, The Edison, Maria and Enzo’s, Enzo’s Hideaway and Pizza Ponte – are replacing their conventional coasters and beverage napkins with special paper coasters embedded with wildflower seeds. After you’ve consumed your refreshing beverage, you can take the coaster home and plant it in some dirt (if you’re in a hurry you can take the dirt with you to the restaurant). Then, after the appropriate germination period, lovely flowers will sprout. As far as I can tell, the plantable coasters will only be available during April. Then, presumably, it’s back to the old ones that eventually end up in the landfill.

Also part of Patina’s promotion: specials on Sierra Nevada’s Hazy Little Thing and Impossible Burgers. No mention of mud pie.

Also available on Earth Day only, 4 Rivers Smokehouses will be handing out pollinator-friendly wildflower seeds to dine-in customer. Just the seeds; you have to bring your own coaster. And dirt.

South Steel SJO March AD copy

Speaking of impossible burgers, White Castle is expanding its operation at Village in O-town West to add a takeout-only facility. I wonder what would happen if you took one of the sliders home and planted it in dirt?

Chicken Fire owner Kwame Boakye plans to open a chicken-wing restaurant called That Wing Spot in the Fort Gatlin Shopping Center. He’ll take over the storefront that had been Rapptors, a food-delivery service. That Wing Spot will be a few doors away from Brazas Chicken. Buttercrust Pizza, in between, will have to moderate.

And Bruno Fonseca of the Foreigner: A Culinary Experience, a wandering omakase-style dining experience that will settle into its permanent home in Audubon Park later this year, is planning Bruno’s Oysters, a small shucking bar at Plant Street Market in Winter Garden. It’s planned for this summer, which has no month with an r in its name, but that old trope doesn’t apply anymore. Thanks to better harvesting and farming techniques, you can eat oysters year round with the same odds of getting a bad one.

I think an item that mentions Plant Street Market is a good place to end an Earth Day column.

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