Japanese restaurants

  • Japanese restaurants,  Neighborhood favorites,  Neighborhood gems,  strip malls,  sushi

    Sushi Nirvana at Nagoya

    Some restaurants feel like home from the very first visit. Nagoya Sushi in Dr. Phillips is one of them. When my husband Steve and I moved to this part of Orlando a year and half ago, the bar for a go-to neighborhood Japanese place was set pretty high. First, at Ko Sushi during my NYC days, then here at Wa in Casselberry. Nagoya easily took its place alongside these greats. No surprise. A wall next to the restaurant’s sushi bar is lined with framed awards and accolades — going all the way back to 2005. Inside the arcade of The Marketplace at Dr. Phillips, a few feet away from a…

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  • Japanese restaurants,  Neighborhood gems,  strip malls,  sushi

    A New Dining Adventure

    Strip malls and fine dining don’t always go together. As a New York City native, I associated malls with chain restaurants, anticipating this and little else in Orlando when I moved here a few years ago. Of course, being the U.S. theme park capital, Orlando has more than its fair share of chain outposts. In my neighborhood alone within a five-mile radius are four steakhouses (Del Frisco’s, Eddie V’s, Mortons, et al), just as many cookie cutter Italian joints (including the ever ubiquitous Olive Garden) and a few old-school names I had forgotten about (hello again, Friendly’s). It didn’t take long to discover that, much like the city itself, there…

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