TulaneLSU's Top 10 meals on a trip to Orlando

Dear Friends,

Having returned from a trip to Disney a couple of weeks ago, I wanted to share with you, as a good friend is bound to do, some of the food I had during the trip. Occasionally I hear Orlando’s name bandied as a great food city, and shockingly, some of that static comes from the dining at Disney. I certainly am not in the number of singing the praises of Orlando’s food scene. While there may be some good restaurants, the rule is that Orlando, like other newly effloresced American cities such as Las Vegas and Nashville, does not have both a passion for and a tradition of food appreciation.

Disney is a place I have now visited twice in my life. I have quite mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, it is fun and a bit magical, for a very short while. On the other hand, it is a sad place, a place of sheer escapism and unrealistic expectations, a false heaven. I thought as I sat near the new lighting prisms at the Epcot entrance, What would our great cathedrals look like if they received the money Disney does? It is a shame to me that in our nation’s greatest period of prosperity, the houses of worship we build are increasingly cheap and distasteful, and some of our beautiful church buildings fall into dereliction. Disney’s upkept beauty is an indictment on our culture’s moral focus. Gone are the noble, the right, the pure, the lovely, the admirable. In their places are princesses and galactic wizards, a false dream of a heaven that does not exist.

Before I get too far from the purpose of this thread, let me catch myself and give you TulaneLSU’s Top 10 meals on a trip to Orlando:


10. Pizza from PizzeRizzo

While at Hollywood Studios, I considered trying the cousin to one of the great gas stations restaurants of New Orleans, Brown Derby. The self-proclaimed original is on Tulane Avenue, yet it is named Brown Derby No. 3. Was the Hollywood one first? Either way, I could not compare Disney’s to ours because all reservations were booked.





Instead, I found what looked like a promising pizzeria, PizzeRizzo. Even its sign proclaimed it the best pizza in the city. Ordering food at takeout Disney establishments like this one requires you order and pay ahead of time. You stand outside as they prepare food, and they send a message via the Disney app, at which time you show that message to the hostess, who lets you enter. There were essentially no lines once you entered and the process was quite smooth.





You can choose between cheese, pepperoni, meatlovers, and vegetable pizzas. I believe they were all $11 and the pizza comes with a Caesar salad served in a plastic up. Utensils are dispensed in sanitary individual dispensers so you do not have to worry about some filthy street urchin’s hands touching your plasticware. I would prefer metalware, but we live in a disposable culture, and Disney is no enemy of it.



There are four dining sections from which to choose. Two indoors and two patio sections. I chose to eat outside -- it was nice and I would prefer the fresh air even if we were not living among that nasty virus.





There are good pizzas and there are not-so good pizzas. What was served here qualifies as the rare bad pizza. It was mass produced and tasted like those frozen gas station personal pan pizza with the pepperonis that look like erasers. Except it was not even that good. The salad was not very good either, but at least it was not as bad as the pizza. The free tap water may have been the best part of this meal.

9. Blood orange

Toll roads are a brilliant idea. The ones I have driven have been well maintained, not too crowded, and I like the feeling of dropping money in a bin or having a chat with the toll booth worker. They are almost always friendly people, and it is sad that their profession is rapidly disappearing in our land, replaced by toll tag reading computers. Yes, the age of the toll booth worker is quickly coming to an end.



How much longer will they accept cash at this toll? I fear not long, and that will be a great travesty, further distancing ourselves from money made from materials and our friendly workers, who clearly derive joy from their job. While on the Florida Turnpike, which cost about three dollars, yet saves about an hour’s time for those driving to and from New Orleans, I also came across something I wish we saw more frequently: gas station exits.



I have seen these exits along 95 on the East Coast, but never in the South. They are much more efficient than the typical exits we have. Although I much prefer driving on the backroads and highways and avoiding the speed of today’s world, sometimes, one needs to get places fast. This sort of exit helps.


It was about this time that I began to see enormous amounts of construction, as fields, presumptively for cattle, met a bulldozed fate.What appeared to be golf courses and streets were taking shape from the wilderness. I had no clue what all this development was, but it felt out of place. It was then I came across a bridge with a giant sign reading The Villages. I only recently had heard of this community during the election. It seems to be the place to be for retirees. Why, I even saw from the turnpike a crowded baseball field, filled with elders. I wonder if The Villages has local leagues or their own version of travel ball.



Along this way, I also saw billboard after billboard for the Florida Citrus Center. The signs were enticing and I envisioned a small wooden shed staffed by a 70 year old man wearing a wide brim straw hat and a dirty white cloth shirt halfway buttoned, whose mouth was focused on chewing a piece of straw hanging at a 45 from his mouth. Only later, after having a short conversation with the attendant at the FCC, a teenager whose hair was dyed cherry red, did my expectation come crashing down. And then I learned, traveling up 75 that the FCC is a chain of interstate stores. Old Florida is disappearing. Like John Anderson, on my way to #5 after exiting at Micanopy, I sat upon a Cypress stump. I listened close and I heard the ghost of Osceola cry.





Yes, I sat there eating a semi-delicious blood orange that I purchased at the FCC. Enjoying a winter’s day in a cypress marsh with a delicious citrus in the hand is one of the most Florida things I can imagine. I recommend it.