New Restaurant Tuesday - 2022 Review

By Melanie Courcy | January 1, 2023

At the beginning of last year, my husband and I made a commitment to try a new restaurant each week. The rule we set was that neither of us could have dined at the restaurant before, and it must be local. We chose Tuesday as our designated dining night out, thus we dubbed it New Restaurant Tuesday! We visited 51 new local restaurants this year, and through the process we found some amazing holes in the walls, ate at some great upscale restaurants, and tried foods we had never heard of before. Yes, I know there are 52 weeks, but we went to Canada in the summer and though we tried lots of new foods there, they were not local, so didn't count for purposes of our new tradition.

This week's edition is a look back on our experiences for the year with a call out to what we liked, and what we didn't. After each visit, my husband and I ranked the experience based on food, service, price, location, etc... Most of the time we agreed, though sometimes we did not, and the overall score reflected that. I won't share the specific scores - for this purpose they were simply used to compare the restaurants to generate relative rankings. I obviously did not blog about all the restaurants we visited, so you may see some new restaurants in this list that did not show up in a blog.

The Best of Dines

Who says save the best for last? Let's start with it! I can't just choose just one, as there were too many good ones, so I will call out the top 3.

Aji Ceviche Bar (Casselberry) was our highest ranked restaurant and may also have the most unique foods. In fact, this restaurant is one of the reasons I even started the blog - since it was so good and different, I wanted to share the experience! Thus, they were featured in my very first New Restaurant Tuesday blog post. If you missed it, be sure to check it out. The food here was so fresh and the fried items were crispy and light. And where else could you get a Potato Sushi? It's actually called Causaki, and made from cold mashed potatoes (as opposed to rice), and filled with chicken, shrimp, tuna, or octopus.

The Porch (Winter Park) also made the top of our list. My husband was fascinated with beer roulette (discount on beer but server chooses which one you get). The New Belgium Summer Bliss Tropical Wheat beer was delicious! We had Pulled Pork Tots and found the tots to be crispy, the pork moist, and the sauce was awesome. They also have mac and cheese that is creamy and flavorful, and crispy onion rings! The "Porch"-etta was also very good, which is a boneless pork roast served on a bun with caramelized onions, kale, banana peppers, mojo sauce, garlic aioli, provolone cheese, and chicharrons. So many tastebud delights going on in this dish!

Wine4Oysters (Orlando) was another one of our favorites this year. They were also featured in one of this year's blogs, so a detailed review can be found there. We dined here during Bite30, so was able to get an appetizer, meal, and dessert for one fixed price. We tried several different dishes, but our favorite was the Baked Oyster Sampler where we got to try several different types of oysters. We enjoyed the welcoming atmosphere the owners provided for our dining experience and very much look forward to returning!

The Worst of Dines

This is my least favorite category, but not all of our dining experiences were great. (So, the data analyst in me wanted to quantify this - out of 51 places, 35 of them were good, 12 of them were great, and we won't be returning to 4 of them). I won't list all 4 here but will call out the bottom two.

La Granja (Winter Park) is a Florida chain that started in Aruba and has locations in the Central Florida area as well as the Ft Lauderdale/Miami area. They serve Peruvian food in a fast-food type environment. We found the food to be very salty to a point where it was un-edible, overcooked to (the seafood was chewy), and was way overpriced for what we got. Perhaps our assessment only applies to the specific location or was just a bad day with a new cook or something, but we don't have any plans on giving it a second go.

Teriyaki Madness (Oviedo) was also not impressive. Again, this is more of a fast-food style restaurant where you order at the counter. Perhaps our standards are just too high, but we did dine at other restaurants like this that at least made it into the average category. The potstickers were ok, but our rice bowls left a lot to be desired. The chicken was dry, and the sauce was not that great.

The Back to the Good Stuff!

The most unique atmosphere was at The Old Jailhouse Kitchen & Spirits in Sanford. The building was constructed in 1890 and served many purposes through the years. It was a jailhouse from 1914 - 1959, and many of the architectural elements from that era were restored. Not only is the atmosphere unique, but the food is as well. We ordered several amazing appetizers - we especially like the Green Eggs and Ham Deviled Eggs and the Pork Belly!

The most authentic restaurant we dined at was El Pueblo Mexican Restaurant in Winter Park. This is a very small restaurant with 6 booths and was packed at 5pm on a Tuesday night. You've probably driven past it a dozen times and didn't even realize it was there! The food was the most authentic Mexican food we've probably ever eaten. I had a chicken soup that was amazing with a very flavorful broth and an entire leg of chicken! This was pre-blog, so I did not get any pictures of our experience (nor the next one for that matter), which just means we'll have to go back!

My husband also loved Circosta's Italian Ristorante in Oviedo. He ordered a sausage pasta dish that had an orange-colored sauce that was so creamy and very tasty. The marinara was amazing, and the bread was also very good. We have since ordered pizza as takeout, which is also really good. This is definitely on the repeat visit list!

The 2022 Takeway

There are a lot of great local restaurants in the central Florida area to choose from. Most people get stuck in a rut where they go to the same place and order the same thing. We truly enjoyed this years' experience of trying new local flavors and expanding our horizons. We found places we didn't even know existed and tried foods we had never heard of. It makes for a great date night, and you get to learn a little more about each other's likes and dislikes. We are excited for what we have planned for 2023 so stay tuned to a slight twist to our New Restaurant Tuesday tradition!