Restaurant Review - Zen, Omni Orlando Resort, 1500 Masters Blvd, ChampionsGate, FL

For a fun adult night out with friends, Hubby and I like to go to Zen, a Chinese restaurant located inside the Omni Resort at ChampionsGate. What makes this different than other Chinese restaurants, beside its upscale location and decor, is the "Zen Experience." The Zen Experience is an all-you-can-eat extravaganza served from a special menu at Zen. For $46 per person (another reason we don't go with the kids), you basically choose whatever and how much you want of the selected dishes on the menu and the kitchen keeps bringing them out to you. Kind of like tapas or dim sum, but one price for all. There are lots of selections on the menu including soups, appetizers, entrees, and side dishes (desserts are a separate price). For this visit, we dined with another couple.

To start, we ordered a bottle of sake ($27), cold, and three of our party ordered hot jasmine tea while Hubby ordered an iced tea.

I was used to cold sake being served in wine glasses so I was surprised when we were each given the tiny hot sake cups and the whole bottle in a cooler to the side of our table (like you would see done with a bottle of wine). It made it a little difficult to pour more sake into our cups since the bottle is similar in size to a wine bottle. Also, the jasmine tea was served individually as well with each of us getting our own small pot. Zen uses whole leaves for the tea and leaves them in a basket in the tea pots, so here's a tip: jasmine tea leaves have a tendency to turn bitter if left in the water too long. I took my filter of tea leaves out after a few minutes and that stopped my whole pot from turning bitter.

Our server told us that the soups on the menu were served in bowls individually but everything else was served in a platter for the table. Hubby and my friend ordered the corn chowder, her husband ordered the wonton soup (which, strangely, is not listed on the special menu but we were able to get it), and I had the hot & sour soup. All the soups were good but we were eager to more on to the rest of the menu. We then ordered five (of the eight available) appetizers for our table -- Sesame Shrimp Toast, Salt & Pepper Calamari with spicy mayo, Hunan Dumplings with peanut sauce, Crispy Scallops which were pounded flat into circle shapes and then deep fried, and Sweet Potato Tempura which turned out to be small rectangular pockets of the potatoes. The appetizers arrived with three sauces on the side -- a duck sauce, spicy mayo, and a plum sauce. Our favorite was the shrimp toast which was greasy, but good. It was pounded out shrimp, with a crispy wrapper, covered with sesame seeds, and cut into triangles.

From the 10 entrees listed, we ordered the Stir Fry Lobster with Ginger Sauce, with large chunks of lobster in a clear sauce, with lots of green onions; the Stir Fry Beef with onions, tasty and very tender; and Black Pepper Shrimp with fried spinach - the shrimp were too peppery for me but I loved the spinach. The leaves were crispy and almost translucent and the leaves just melted on your tongue. We also ordered the Sweet and Sour Pork with large chunks of pineapples and peppers. Then we ordered side dishes of Vegetable Fried Rice, Szechuan Green Beans which turned out to not be hot at all, and Singapore Noodles which were curry but not too much, with big shrimp mixed in.

After we had polished off all that, we went back and ordered another shrimp toast, the Zen beef -- exceptional, not spicy, full of flavor and tender as well, a side of Sauteed Asparagus which tasted a little smokey, and another Stir Fry Lobster (can you tell that was our favorite entree?).

For dessert (not included in the Zen Experience), we chose the Banana Zangoes ($8), two tubes of banana cheesecake wrapped in egg roll paper and deep fried, and sitting on chocolate mousse, whipped cream, and a honey-like sweet sauce. Even though we though we were full, we ordered another one so we each got a tube. It was delicious and not as heavy as I thought it would be, though definitely rich.

Our dinner ended up being a three-hour meal but we were also in no rush. All in all, a great evening out.

Zen website: click here

Restaurant Review - Manny's Original Chophouse, 35496 Hwy 27, Haines City, FL

On a recent Sunday, Grandpa called up to say he had heard about a really good steak restaurant way down south on US Hwy 27 in Haines City. He had heard it could get pretty crowded so we decided to head down around 4 pm figuring we would beat the crowd. Around 4:45 pm, we had arrived in Haines City and it wasn't too hard to find Manny's Original Chophouse on the west side of US 27 - just look for the big sign with a cleaver as the "p" in Chophouse. We were able to sit right down at one of the last open tables. For the rest of our dinner, there was a constant crowd of people waiting to be seated so I figured we had gotten really lucky with our table.

The decor at Manny's Original Chophouse is eclectic roadside steakhouse. There are license plates from around the country used as wall-hangings as well as road signs, hubcaps, and a lot of neon. It's also very loud. I had to shout a few times so that Grandma, sitting just across the round table from me, could hear me. The tables are covered with white butcher paper and there are crayons for the kids (and adults) to color with and decorate their space. The menu is surprisingly extensive with chicken, fish, ribs, and burgers, but we decided to stick with the house specialty and get steak.

I ordered the 12 oz Prime Rib for $14.79. All entrees come with the bottomless salad bowl, yeast rolls, and a choice of a potato, veggies, or black beans & rice. I chose the garlic mashed potatoes and was asked if I wanted gravy on them. I thought that would ruin the garlic flavor so I said no - that ended up being a mistake that I'll get into later. Grandpa ordered the 16 oz T-bone steak ($16.99) with sweet potato and Grandma asked for the bacon-wrapped filet ($14.98) with a baked potato. The kids' menu runs from $3-$4 and includes the standards like mac-n-cheese, cheeseburger, pepperoni pizza, chicken fingers, grilled cheese, corn dog, as well as "steak-on-a-stick". BB ordered the corn dog and LB, no surprise to me, ordered the mac-n-cheese. Kids' entrees come with just fries, not a drink, which ended up being another issue. Inexplicably, Manny's does not have child-sized drink cups so both of my kids got their drinks in the same very large plastic cups as the adults did. BB ordered a sweet iced tea like I did and LB ordered a chocolate milk. Our server had to go check on the chocolate milk when she brought the other drinks to our table because apparently the chocolate milk came from the bar (?).

Service was kind of slow but I suspected that would be the case in this crowded restaurant although the kids seemed happy making drawings on the table. A little while later, our bottomless salad bowl arrived along with yeast rolls with cinnamon butter. Our server tossed our salad in a large stainless steel bowl tableside and then provided plates for us to serve ourselves. Seriously, this was one of the best tossed salads I have ever tasted. It just had your standard salad ingredients in it - iceburg lettuce, thinly sliced carrots, radishes, shredded cheese - so it had to be the dressing that was so amazing. The menu listed it as a garlic ranch dressing but it was incredibly flavorful and was a great accompaniment to the crisp lettuce. The yeast rolls were soft and still hot from the oven which made it even better to put on the sweet cinnamon butter.

It was at this point that we had a "fly" issue. For some unknown reason, there were a few flies buzzing around Manny's that day and even the server commented that was unusual - she figured maybe someone had left a back door open or something. Unfortunately, one particular fly was apparently as big a fan of chocolate milk as LB is. Luckily, LB had been guarding his chocolate milk and notified me immediately when he discovered the intruder. When we caught our server again, she quickly replaced LB's chocolate milk and all was well after that.

When our food arrived, I was pleased to see that the mac-n-cheese came with garlic toast and that the corn dog was pretty big - a good value for the money. All of the adults' food looked fantastic. My prime rib was incredible - done perfectly to medium with dipping sauces of au jus and creamy horseradish on the side. It was so flavorful and tender... until I tried Grandpa's T-bone. Wow, the T-bone was well-seasoned and juicy with great meaty flavor. Grandma's filet was also very good so Manny's main dishes got the "thumb's up" all the way around. While Grandma and Grandpa had equally good side dishes, my garlic mashed potatoes were... dry. Darn, I should have listened to the server and gotten the gravy! At this point, though, I was getting pretty full and we couldn't find the server for a while so I was fine just leaving the side dish alone.


LB had picked at his mac-n-cheese and, of course, eaten all of his garlic toast. BB had done really well and finished his complete corn dog and then started helping Grandpa eat his T-bone steak. In all, it was a really great meal, except for one last surprise when we received the check. While all of the soft drinks and iced teas were $1.99 a piece, LB's one chocolate milk was $3.45! That actually turned out to be more than his entire meal. When I asked the server about this, she said she was sorry but that's because it came from the bar. So, LB will be getting lemonade next time we come to Manny's Original Chophouse.