We met a friend for lunch at Molly Goodheads today.  Started out with the alligator tail appetizer, half fried & half blackened.

It didn’t do much for me.  Yeah, I thought it tasted like chicken and the pieces were really small and crunchy.  Loren said the blackend seasoning was pretty strong today.  He thinks the last time he ordered it, he must have asked for lightly blackened.  For lunch, he decided on gumbo.

Nice big bowl of tomatoey goodness.  Definitely a different take than what we get at the Cajun Cafe, but still pretty good.  Our friend got a crab cake sandwich & I got the crab cake plate with garlic mashed & cole slaw.

They had two different crab cake dishes on the menu, this one and a Maryland crab cake.  I hope the other one is better because this one wasn’t very good.  Mostly filler and cooked a bit too long.  The coating was too crispy.   Usually, I love the mashed potatoes here,  but today’s were a bit too thick & had way more garlic than I like.  Overall, not the best meal I’ve had here.  Total bill with 2 drinks was $35.

Molly Goodheads
400 Orange Street
Ozona, FL
727-786-6255

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We ate lunch at Nana’s Restaurant in Tarpon Springs today and it was one of the best lunches we’ve had in a while.  They serve breakfast & lunch throughout the week & dinner on Friday nights.  We decided to split a burger, plus some soup & salad.

First up, the Louisiana Butter Shrimp soup.

There are people who know how to make soup and the folks here at Nana’s definitely do.  This was really flavorful and creamy with lots of shrimp and homemade goodness.  Next up was the salad & burger.

It’s a good thing we decided to share the burger.  It was way more than I was going to be able to eat.  We got the mushroom burger, but I opted for American cheese instead of Swiss.  It was cooked a perfect medium and was juicy and flavorful.  The home fries were delicious.  Again, perfectly cooked and seasoned.  I really enjoyed the dipping sauce that came with them too.  It was sort of a honey mustard BBQ sauce.  Very, very tasty.  And here’s the best part, the whole thing with a drink was only $17.   This is definitely a restaurant we’ll be back to often.

Nana’s Restaurant
857 E Klosterman Rd
Tarpon Springs, FL
727-944-5788

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We decided to try Umberto’s of Long Island in Dunedin for dinner tonight.  It looked like a cozy little Italian restaurant.  We sat in the back, which was rather dark, so the photos are a bit washed out.  We started off with some salad.

If you’re only going to have one salad dressing, it should at least taste like more than oil & vinegar.  Mine actually tasted like just vinegar.   We tried the calamari.

The texture and crunch were there, but it was completely underseasoned.  A little salt & pepper went a long way to improve this dish.  The sauce was ok, but didn’t taste like a long simmering sauce by any means.

Loren tried the Chicken Maximo for his entree.

There was a definite lack of fresh ingredients in this dish.  Both the asparagus & mushrooms were out of a can and absolutely tasted like it.  The entire dish was also underseasoned.  I went for the chicken marsala with penne pasta.

Mine suffered the same lack of seasoning and there really wasn’t a lot of marsala sauce on the dish.  The chicken was very plain and the lack of an actual steak knife made cutting it more difficult.  I’m also not a big fan of canned mushrooms.

As for the service, our waitress was very nice, but unlike the other waitress in the dining area, she didn’t offer us bread or ask if we wanted dessert.   For what we got, the meals were overpriced.  Total bill with an undrinkable iced tea was $45.

Do you ever watch “Restaurant Impossible”?  All during our meal, I could hear Robert Irvine in my head talking about how fresh ingredients and a bit of seasoning would really help the food.

Umberto’s of Long Island
150 Patricia Ave
Dunedin, FL
727-736-3138

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Ate lunch at Tijuana Flats in Oldsmar today.  They still have the same issue that they had the last time I ate here, too many people coming to the table to ask if everything’s ok.  I’m convinced that every time someone brings food out of the kitchen, they make the rounds to all of the tables to ask if they can refill your drinks.  There were at least four different people who stopped by our table more than once in the 45 minutes we were there.

The chicken chimi was ok though.

Total bill with a drink was $8.75.

Tijuana Flats
3687 Tampa Road
Oldsmar, FL
813-749-8184

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So many Sunday nights we just want a quick, tasty meal, so we head out to Cuban Breezes in Oldsmar.  We just know we’re going to walk away with full tummies, happy taste buds, and not much strain on the wallet.

Tonight we went for a mahi cuban and some masitas de puerco.

Loren likes the masitas.  Crispy on the outside, tender on the inside.  This is my favorite mahi sandwich in the area.  I don’t know what they do to make it so tasty, but I’ve spent twice as much for mahi at other restaurants and it wasn’t as good as it is here.  Total bill with a drink was $22.

Cuban Breezes
13980 W Hillsborough Ave
Tampa, FL
813-814-9939

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Had to get my cajun food fix, so that means heading down to Pinellas Park to the Cajun Cafe on the Bayou.  Their crawfish etouffee is what keeps me coming back.

It has just the right amount of spicy without being too much for my wimpy taste buds.  There are plenty of crawfish in the dish and it has this creamy, tomatoey buttery texture to it.  Mmm, mmmm, good.  It also comes with a little side salad.

Loren went for a bowl of gumbo and a salad today.

He actually had his eye on some crab cakes, but they were out of them today.  He enjoyed the gumbo and made sure to save some room for dessert.

I’ve become a convert when it comes to whiskey bread pudding.  This stuff is awesome.  For the longest time, I wouldn’t try it thinking the alcohol taste would be too strong, but all you really taste in this dish is a buttery, cinnamon goodness.  We barely ate half of it and the rest came home with us.  For $34, we both left with happy taste buds and full tummies.

Cajun Cafe on the Bayou
8101 Park Blvd
Pinellas Park, FL
727-546-6732

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