I hadn’t been to Thai Basil in more than 17 years. When the restaurant opened, in 2004, near the corner of Tuskawilla and Red Bug Lake Roads, that area wasn’t known for much beyond chain restaurants. Thai restaurants weren’t as scarce as they had been when I first came to Central Florida, but one opening in this part of town was a novelty. Most people were used to Taco Bells.

In fact, Thai Basil was and is next door to a Taco Bell. And Winter Springers (Tuskawillians?) took to TB (Thai Basil) in large numbers, so much so that TB (Taco Bell) resorted to towing cars whose drivers parked in its lot but walked next door to the Thai restaurant.

I went back to see how Thai Basil is doing these days. There was no problem finding a non Taco Bell parking space but the restaurant was doing a good business for an early-in-the-week lunch.

It occurs to me that Bites & Bubbles, the Mills 50 restaurant from longtime local restaurateurs Eddie Nickell and Nicholas Olivieri, is somewhat misnamed.

Not the Bubbles part. There is a a very nice list that does indeed include sparkling wines as well as good selections of still wines, both by the glass and by the bottle, and craft cocktails, too.

But Bites? That conjures images of nibbles and noshes or tapas-sized tidbits. That doesn’t describe the portions here, which, based on my multiple visits, have been ample and filling. And high quality, too.

Maybe Big Bites & Bubbles?

Even though I rolled my eyes when I heard the name, I was excited at the news that Urban Turban would bring Indian cuisine back to downtown Orlando. By my recollection, there hasn’t been an Indian restaurant in the Central Business District since the mid nineteen nineties when Uday Kadam owned Bombay Bistro.

Why Indian cuisine been missing from downtown for so long is a mystery, given that most other cuisines are there. (No Vietnamese either, I believe, though at least it’s well represented nearby at Mills 50).

That said, I was hoping more from Urban Turban. Or maybe my expectations should have been tempered based on the name.

Lunar New Year, which marks the beginning of the lunar calendar as observed in many Asian cultures, begins Sunday, Jan. 22. So let’s visit 818 Best Dim Sum to get in the holiday mood.

The restaurant, which opened in October, is in an outparcel in front of Mall at Millenia in a space that was previously The King Crab Shack Cajun Seafood. It’s a big place, brightly lit, with many large tables for families or groups.

Each Lunar New Year is denoted by a rotating roster of animals, including ox, snake and horse, among others. Coming up is the year of the rabbit, which last appeared in 2011 (as measured by the Gregorian calendar). I thought it would be clever of 818 to feature rabbit on its menu but there was none.

I had hog but somehow the hen escaped me. And it gets top billing.

This was at the Hen & Hog, a new quick-serve restaurant in Winter Park that is ostensibly a renamed and relocated reboot of the Mason Jar Provisions that previously was in Thornton Park.

The new menu is similar to the old, with sandwiches, salads, burgers, a few larger entrees and assorted “snacks” and starters.

It has been a while since a restaurant has been able to entice me to make the trip to Clermont, but The Southern On 8th finally got me there. And if the level of quality there is any indication of what’s going on in Clermont, I’ll have to go back more often.

As you might glean from the name, Southern on 8th serves a menu of Southern dishes, both traditional and contemporary, and occupies a corner space at West Montrose Street and – you probably can figure this out – 8th Street.

John Collazo, the chef and owner of the Foodster Award-winning Bad As’s Sandwich shop in the Milk District, has opened a burger version called Bad As’s Burgers in Curry Ford West District. Yes, you could make the argument that a burger is also a sandwich but let’s not niggle.

Also known as B.A. Burgers, at least on its Facebook page, the new concept moved into the storefront that previously was Kathi Rolls and before that the inaccurately named Forever Naan. (It started out as a Hungry Howie’s Pizza; anyone who ever ate one knew why Howie was hungry.) (I assume by calling it B.A. Burgers or even using the unnecessary apostrophe in As’s is meant to thwart social media algorithms.)

The menu is true to its name – all burgers and all made with meat. No chicken, no pretend meat, no vegetables or mushrooms served between buns. And the beef is all Australian wagyu. (We’ll save the discussion about the mainstreaming of the wagyu classification for another time, too, right after we get around to talking about what 100 percent angus beef means.)

The final Scott Joseph’s Supper Club of 2022 took place at Russell’s on Lake Ivanhoe and doubled as a celebration of the restaurant’s second anniversary.

Emmanuel Clement, the chef and co-owner, designed a menu in the spirit of France’s gastronomic dinners, and he, his kitchen brigade and the front of the house staff carried it all off beautifully.

After a reception cocktail in the bar area (I had the restaurant’s signature pineapple old fashioned) we all took our seats in the dining room overlooking Lake Ivanhoe (we had the place to ourselves for the night).

Wine 4 Oysters Bar & Bites is a charming little restaurant on South Alafaya Trail in the Shoppes of Eastwood. It’s a small storefront space with a few tables and chairs along one wall and a bar on the other. That the spaces at the bar seem to fill up before the tables lets you know that this is a neighborhoody kind of place.

It’s a mom and pop operation run by Tatiana Golenkova and Andrey Makhotin, who are mom and pop to Nikolay, who also works at the restaurant on weekends.

As the name suggests, oysters are a forte here, but this is not your divey kind of oyster bar with a concrete counter and shuckings scraped on the floor. The wine part of the name conveys its more boutiquey atmosphere, which may be one of the reasons that women made up most of the guests on the evening I visited recently.

The France pavilion at Epcot has reopened its boutique restaurant Monsieur Paul, which had been shuttered since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic in March 2020. It returns with a new concept that is ambitious both in scope and price, especially considering its location within a theme park.

It is presenting the “gastronomic meal of the French,” a festive meal that celebrates special occasions that in 2010 was inscribed in UNESCO’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. It doesn’t get much grander than that.

In more simplistic terms, it is a multi-course, prix fixe dinner that according to the dictates should begin with an apéritif, end with liqueurs and feature in between at least four courses – a starter, fish and/or meat with vegetables, cheese and dessert.

That’s all there, and more, at Monsieur Paul. Plus the added fun of having fellow diners in shorts, t-shirts and the occasional Minnie Mouse headdress. A note on the restaurant’s web page reads: “Guests are expected to dress accordingly in attire that adheres to the restaurant's sophisticated and upscale aesthetic. Please no swimwear.” So at least there’s that.