what do I know

On Sunday, my wife and I were coming back from the mall and decided to drive towards the coast to find a local place to eat. We found the Sunset Waterfront Grille and Bar just east of the Banana River on SR 520 and figured we’d give it a shot. The restaurant has a huge outdoor bar and dining area (as well as a small indoor dining area). The view is amazing. There are plenty of folks pulling their boats up and grabbing a beer. The vibe of the restaurant reminded me of a few places we used to go to in Fort Lauderdale, that were on the water, that we really enjoyed. The menu was your average bar and grill menu with a focus on seafood. Entrees averaged about $16 a plate with most of the fish selections priced around $18 (ahi tuna, mahi, grouper, etc).

We ordered the Steak Caesar sandwich with cheese (~$11) and the crab cake sandwich (~$9). Both meals came with coleslaw and a pickle. The steak was really thin and fatty and the Caesar Salad that it was topped with had a lot of dressing. I could tell that the crab cake was fried in oil that was too hot; the outside was dark and crispy but the inside was mush. Both also came on soggy buttered buns. The staff was cordial and we got our food really quickly, but I wish they had taken a little more time in preparing it.

Overall the view was really great, but I don’t think we’ll be back because of the quality of the food. The prices seemed a little high too, considering that there are great, and reasonably priced, restaurants in the Brevard area for seafood. If you want a great view of the river, you can give it a shot, but I didn’t care for it.

Sunset Waterfront Grille and Bar is located at 500 W Cocoa Beach Cswy, Cocoa Beach, FL.

This past weekend, my family came to visit and my wife and I found ourselves doing what we do every time someone comes to town … we take them Slow and Low Bar-B-Que. We must go to Slow and Low at least once a month, especially when we have people visiting us. I own 3 of their large beer glasses and am a big fan of the Slater’s Way beer they keep on tap (~$4 for refills). They have a few other beers on tap (Bass, Guiness, etc.) as well as some decent bottles and a full liquor bar. The restaurant itself is split into 3: one part outdoor bar, one part indoor restaurant, and one part night club. Food is served at the bar and inside and the staff are accommodating and helpful.

This time around we went during early bird, but as usual, we ordered quite a bit of food. To start we got the foot long order of onion rings (~$7) with the tiger and raspberry sauces and the BBQ Nachos (~$7). The onion rings are beer battered and the nachos are topped with a mix of pulled pork, green pepper, onion, and the sweet sauce along with lettuce, tomato, red onion, cheese and fried jalapenos (these are amazing). From there all of us ordered what Slow and Low is known for, their pulled pork plate (~$7). The early bird special comes with 2 sides and your choice of corn bread or garlic toast. I got the corn bread, the turnip greens, and the fried sweet potatoes. These are by far my favorite, but they also have great fried okra, fries, beans, and baked sweet potato. If you’re looking for other great alternatives, check out the beef platter(~$9) or the baby back ribs (~$13 for 1/2 rack). The sandwiches are more cost effective options as well, but they only come with one side. If you are still undecided, stick with the pork, you can’t lose.

We always get our food really fast, but sometimes I do wish it was a little warmer. We’ve been when they’re really busy and when they’re not, and the food has never really been hot. I don’t know a lot about BBQ, but I know they smoke everything, so maybe that’s the reason for it. Whatever the case, it doesn’t detract from the quality of the food. In fact, the only thing we don’t order is dessert; we’ve never been able to make it that far into the meal and still have room.

Long story, short, if you’re looking for a great BBQ joint with a great atmosphere and some good beers on tap, look no further than Slow and Low Bar-B-Que. Good food at good prices.

Slow and Low Bar-B-Que Bar and Grill is located at 306 N Orlando Ave Cocoa Beach, FL 32931.

I joined my in-laws and some other family members this past week at the local Mexican restaurant, Cantina Dos Amigos. There are quite a few places in the Melbourne area, and Dos Amigos is by far one of the better joints. They’ve got a full liquor bar and we always go on Wednesday for their $1 margarita specials. If you do go on Wednesday’s make sure to get in early, the place fills up fast. The atmosphere of the restaurant is very friendly and the wait staff is always pleasant.

This time around I ordered the Pescado Tacos (~$13) which comes with tortilla soup, spanish rice, and refried beans. The tortilla soup is a bit salty but has some nice vegatables and tortilla strips in a good broth. The rice and beans come topped with cheese, but I usually ask for it without. The tacos themselves come with a great pico de gallo (some nice jalapenos are in the mix) and two soft shell tortillas filled with two big pieces of a white fish, shredded lettuce, and a creamy house fish sauce. The chips are good and the salsa, which is always a good metric of a good Mexican restaurant, has some great flavors and texture (medium spicy).

As a warning, be prepared to wait for your food. The staff and bartenders are really great, but I’ve never been to the restaurant and gotten my food right away. That being said, my food has always been hot. Other items you may want to try are the Shrimp and Spinach Enchiladas (~$13) and the Beef Tamales (~$11).

Cantina Dos Amigos is a place my wife and I regard as a local beach-side tradition in Mexican food. I’d definitely recommend it to anyone who is the mood for great Mexican food, or a refreshing drink, in the Brevard area.

Cantina Dos Amigos is located at 990 North AIA, Indialantic, FL 32952.

This weekend we met up with my wife’s parents for dinner at a local fish house called Bonefish Willy’s Riverfront Grille. My wife and I have eaten lunch here quite a few times and really like the food, so we were eager to try out the dinner menu to see what was different. Bonefish Willy’s has a really great location right on the river south of Lake Washington Road on Pineapple Drive. Inside dining is available but the bulk of their seating is outside on the deck with the tiki bar overlooking the river. The building itself could use some major work, but the food is worth overlooking the “amenities”. As far as beers, they have your basic domestics on tap as well Kona Fire Rock Pale Ale and Guinness as well as a decent selection of bottled beers.

So for the evening we showed up between lunch and dinner and we had our choice of menus. We ordered the Maryland Crab Cake appetizer (~$9), the Island Chicken Caesar Wrap (~$9) which came with pasta salad, the Grouper Willy sandwich which came with pasta salad (~$9), the Snook Bruschetta Pasta (~$22), and the Sea Scallop dinner (~$20). The wrap is a typical chicken caesar wrap but you can have the chicken prepared as cajun, jerked, or grilled. The grouper sandwich is really good and served on pumpernickel with pineapple coleslaw and cheddar cheese. The pasta salad is possibly some of the best pasta salad I’ve ever had. The appetizer came with 2 crab cakes that were made of lump and claw crab meat, fried, and came with a side of remoulade; I will definitely order these again, they were delicious. The dinner meals were a little more of a dissapointment, but the dinner menu has some awesome looking choices so I would just suggest trying something else besides what we ordered. The Sea Scallops were served in a mushroom and white wine sauce. We found that even though the scallops were very tender, the sauce gave the scallops a bit of a bitter taste (they were also a bit sandy). The Snook Bruschetta was angel hair pasta with a large piece of snook and a diced tomato and scallion mixture on top, then topped with melted mozarella. The cheese was a bit too much for the meal and I found myself putting a lot of lemon on the dish to mask the flavor. For dessert, we ordered our favorite, the Brownie a la mode (~$6) which is a light chocolate brownie topped with chocolate sauce and coconut served with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. There were also a couple coffees and teas in the mix (~$2 a piece).

There were a few menu items off the dinner menu I’d still like to try (e.g. - coconut curry chicken), but I think we may stick to lunch going forward if for nothing else but the price point; the prices seem to be 3x that of lunch for dinner. Just for the sake of mentioning, the jerked Mahi-Mahi sandwich is another great choice from the lunch menu.

Overall, Bonefish Willy’s is a great restaurant in a great location that could use a new building. The quality of the food is great and I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend it to anyone in the Brevard area that is looking for a great place for lunch.

Bonefish Willy’s Riverfront Grille is located on the intercoastal at 2459 Pineapple Ave # B, Melbourne, FL.

Over the last two weeks I’ve been researching CMS solutions in the ColdFusion space. We have a pretty large site with a lot of content so a CMS solution seems like the right fit. I tried out FarCry, one of the popular OSS ColdFusion CMS solutions, and didn’t have too much luck. I spent another week looking at commercial ColdFusion CMS solutions and came up on products in two categories: products with very expensive licensing but fully capable and products with reasonable licensing but limited capability. On top of that the price points were over $25K for 2 server licenses and 5 users, on average. We currently have our app load-balanced across 12 virtualized servers, so licensing for most of these apps would be ridiculous.

I ended up looking at the Savvy CMS from BeSavvy and my initial impressions were that I really liked what I saw. The UI was incredibly simple and easy to use. The constructs of approvals, a built-in authorization system, and templating were available and very easy to prep for a PoC. Installation was so easy, it was sick. Unfortunately, we ran into a large wall when we had to address separating content from its presentation. For example, we wanted to store information about all our Resorts, but we may want to show it on a page as a list of resort names or on a page highlighting a single resort’s details. In the Savvy product, there was no way, short of extending the application itself (which required different licensing or consulting fees for BeSavvy to do the work) to incorporate our content types (i.e. - Resort, Amenity, Destination) and gain the benefits of all the built-in features in the CMS. We did have the ability to make hooks into Savvy that could manage content reuse if we programmed it ourselves. However, I saw this as busting out of the CMS to manage content when that is the CMS’ job to manage content. Why should I have to provide these features? On a side note, licensing for the Savvy CMS was extremely reasonable compared to the other solutions I looked into (licensing per URL, not server, and 5 users was $1350 [see their website for latest pricing]).

So being disappointed that Savvy didn’t have the capabilities we wanted, I went back to Farcry and gave it another shot. I had a few replies on my previous blog post that helped me move a little further with the PoC. I was able to get rid of the unusable library tool from my forms (had to patch the core using fixes from JIRA); with some thought, I also found a compromise between using the site tree and the custom content scaffolding. Unfortunately, we really needed Oracle to be the database for our FarCry installation and my every attempt to do so with the the 4.x beta has failed. I spent quite a bit of time on the google-groups applying patches and fixes as people had found them, but I still had issues (e.g. - adding content types via the COAPI after the installation). Additionally, finding documentation on how to use Rules in FarCry was another struggle I kept running into. The developers wiki for 4.x didn’t have anything I could reference and the 4.x developer’s guide I downloaded covered a very small example of using a rule, but not describe how rules work and the options available for working with rules. As a side note, anyone working with FarCry developer documentation is going to run into a lot of Hungarian Notation; it’s actually part of their suggested coding standards. This was a huge detractor in terms of readability for me, but that’s just my opinion. In any case, I eventually got a rule working, but the process of doing so was pretty tedious. Overall, I felt like I was jumping through quite a few hoops to get the PoC up and running (e.g. - using fixes from JIRA, running edge builds of the software, etc).

To end this story, yesterday I went to lunch with my managers and talked about the last two weeks of effort I had put into exploring CMS products and my work with FarCry and Savvy. In the end, we agreed that the quirky nature of developing in FarCry and the price points of similarly capable, and more usable, commercial CMS solutions warranted more investigation than we could allot in this PoC process. Consequently, we are going to try and kill two birds with one stone. We are evaluating other web-tier languages and frameworks as possible replacements for ColdFusion (I will go into this in another post). Because of the heavy usage of Java in our environment and the great job we’ve done separating our presentation and application tiers, we are considering JRuby/Rails and Groovy/Grails as possible options. We have a PoC going on for JRuby/Rails currently, but none for Groovy/Grails. Our hopes are to use this project as the Groovy/Grails PoC. Even though its a custom solution, we want to see if the new frameworks available “now-a-days” (Grails in this case) will provide enough productivity such that a custom solution is more easily maintainable until we can devote the time to doing a much better evaluation of CMS solutions. Additionally, if we find that this PoC works out well, we may not choose to go down the CMS path, who knows. In the worse case scenario, this custom solution can benefit from the work done in past development efforts and we devote more time to CMS product analysis when we’re ready.

I’ve got mixed feelings about building a custom solution, it really feels like a CMS is a good fit here, but for the sake of being productive and getting this stop-gap done, I think we made a good decision. I’m actually a little excited about finally getting to build a Grails app for the office. My Groovy/Grails skills are pretty lacking, so this will definitely help me get some great exposure. Here’s to diving in.

Today for lunch, my wife and I decided to hit up a local favorite of ours, the Pineda Crossing Bar and Grill. Pineda Crossing is a casual gourmet restaurant that has been in Melbourne since the mid-90’s. My wife and I try to go for lunch instead of dinner since the prices are so much more reasonable. The restaurant isn’t much to look at, but don’t let looks be deceiving, the food is worth to visit. In addition to a great menu, they’ve got a couple of good beers on tap. The cuisine is mainly American with an assortment of steak, sandwiches, seafood, and salads. Initially, we found out about the restaurant from a friend of ours, but we continue going back for one thing and one thing alone, the soup. Don’t get me wrong, the food is really great (and once you see what I had today you’ll know why), but the soup “is to die for”. So far I’ve been able to try the She-Crab, Cream of Mushroom, Cream of Zucchini, and Black Bean. Who knew you could make a cream of zucchini soup?!? On top of that, in fact quite literally, they always find cool accents to add as toppers for the soup. So far I’ve seen cheese, onion, croûtons, and popcorn.

Today we ordered a bowl of the Southwestern Corn Chowder (~$5), a dinner salad (~$4.50), and one of the lunch specials, the Seafood Strudel (~$12) which came with rice, broccoli, and a cup of the soup. The meal as always comes with classic fresh-baked white dinner rolls. The soup was very zesty and was topped with a few popped kernels of popcorn and had a nice mix of onion, celery, potatoes, corn, and a cream base. We ordered the salad with homemade honey mustard and homemade champagne vinegarette dressings which we enjoy. The seafood strudel was made with a pastry crust and filled with fish, shrimp, and lump crab meat. The combination of the flavors was excellent and made me jealous that I only got so much and had to eat the rice and vegetables (which were also very good). We skipped dessert because we ordered so much food, but the key lime pie (~$5) is very good.

Unfortunately, as we have found out time and time again, the quality of the service at Pineda Crossing is really hit or miss. The staff is always courteous, but sometimes getting your food may take a while. That being said, we really like Pineda Crossing, especially for lunch, and will continue to patronize it demanding more and more of its soup.

Pineda Crossing is located on US1 near the Pineda Causeway at 2515 Roberts Rd., Melbourne, FL 32940.

One of the reasons I starting blogging about local restaurants in the Central Florida area was because I can never find any decent reviews for local places online; this is especially true for the Melbourne area. I really feel like chain restaurants and franchises don’t need the press, good or bad, because they have marketing initiatives that can do that for the them, IMO local joints don’t. That being said, I think I’m going to have to break my own rule for this one post.

A favorite place of my wife’s is the Darden restaurant Season 52, particularly the Dr. Phillips location. We’ve always been for dinner and I’ve had some really fresh and tasty meals. They have really great fish selections and creative menu choices which change 4 times annually. Just as a note, I had a Curry Red Snapper dish that was so good, I wanted to take home another one for leftovers the next day. The concept for the restaurant is low calorie meals with fresh ingredients. They don’t even have butter in the restaurant which I find kinda funny, but holds true to their mantra.

A couple days ago, my wife and I had lunch at the Dr. Phillips location next to my office. I really like the price points for the lunch entrees, usually around $8, and that fact that each comes with a nice side salad (romaine, baby greens, a strawberry, and a slice of mango, with a sweet oil-based dressing). I had tried the Grouper sandwich, which was ok, but this time I felt like something more on the veggie side of things. We ordered the side salad (~$7), a chicken flatbread (~$9), and the Fresh Market Roasted Veggie Sandwich, which came with a side salad (~$8). I didn’t ask the waitress what came on the sandwich; I was just hoping it wouldn’t be wimpy, simple, bland tomato, lettuce, and zucchini sandwich like I’ve gotten in the past from other restaurants. Boy, was I wrong. I think this was the heartiest vegetable sandwich I’ve ever had. I was so full after eating everything, I felt like I had consumed a lot more than the 400-whatever calories the meal was supposed to be. The sandwich had a stack of grilled zucchini, asparagus, grilled red onions, grilled mushrooms, a thick cut of tomato, and some type of three cheese blend that tasted like a mild version of goat cheese. What a sandwich! It was so good as were the other items we ordered. We didn’t do dessert, which for this restaurant is a must, because we were so full.

My only gripe about this restaurant is the fact that their beer selections are dismal as best. The food however is really great. Dinner has the best selection of food, excluding the sandwich I mentioned above, but it is a bit pricey and a little pretentious at times with the whole “we’re a wine bar, why wouldn’t you like wine with your meal” deal. Darden did a good job with this concept restaurant in Orlando (we didn’t like the Galleria location in Fort Lauderdale at all). We’ll definitely go back.

Season 52 is located in the Dr. Phillips area at 7700 W Sand Lake Rd, Orlando, FL.

I’ve never really been a huge fan of fondue restaurants. I’m not necessarily against the idea of cooking my own food, but I am against the high prices that places like the Melting Pot charge to dip a skewer in broth. In South Florida, I was always eager to try local fondue places in the hope that I’d find something reasonably priced so I could prove this stigma of fondue-style restaurants wrong. Unfortunately, I was never able to do so in Fort Lauderdale, although there may be more alternatives now. I have however, found renewed faith through the Colorado Fondue Company in Casselberry.

My wife and I, when we were dating and attending UCF, would always go to the Colorado Fondue Company, but it wasn’t until recently I realized how much I appreciated having this restaurant within reasonable driving range (i.e. - Orlando). Everything from the atmosphere to the server to, especially, the food is top notch. They have some of my favorite American micro-brew selections (e.g. - Rouge, Shipyard, Dogfish, etc), including seasonal selections, as well as a full liquor bar. Every server we’ve ever had, has been very attentive and great about hooking us up with extra food if we have larger parties. The quality of the food is great and the variations they offer on their menu have been the direction I’ve seen other fondue restaurants mimic, regardless of whether Colorado Fondue is that driving force. I never hesitate to take large parties to the restaurant and the only thing that have ever bothered me is that sometimes I need to make a reservation to guarantee I can get in.

This past weekend, a bunch of us went out for an evening of fondue, and the experience did not disappoint. We ordered the Fondue for Six (~$23 per person) which included 2 cheese selections for the table, a salad for each person, great garlic bread, and the entree. I always enjoy the Mountain Mix salad which is an iceberg lettuce salad with peppercorn dressing and trail mix that makes it delicious; I typically don’t like ranch, but they variation the restaurant serves is good. The entree includes pork tenderloin, fillet mignon, chicken, shrimp, mahi-mahi, mushroom caps, veggies, pasta, and 4 great sauces. We ordered a side of lobster as well (~$9). The meats can be prepared in the broth or on the 800 degree granite rock they give you for grilling. Grilling on the stone is a lot of fun. To end the meal, we ordered two custom desserts (~$13 each), milk chocolate, kalua, and Heath and milk chocolate and peanut butter.

All of the portions of food were prepared for 3 sets of 2 per our request and when the bill came there everything was spot on (we had a coupon) and the gratuity wasn’t included. I love it when servers do this for large parties because I’m inclined to give more than 18%. I can see how a waiter may get stiffed in doing this, because let’s face it, sometimes people are cheap, but I find it to a be a great gesture on behalf of the waiter. Maybe it’s their was of saying, this guy’s a sucker, but whatever, I appreciate it.

I would definitely recommend the Colorado Fondue Company to anyone who is in the Central Florida area that wants to try a great fondue experience for a much more reasonable price than other fondue restaurants. Now if I can only convince the owner and the brewer to keep a stash of pumpkin beer available year round … Oh, and re-do your website, your food is too good for what is out there right now.

Colorado Fondue Company is located at 1016 Semoran Blvd, Casselberry, FL

Last week, my wife and I in our usual willingness to cook, went out for dinner. We ended up, by the suggestion of a colleague, at the Enigma Cafe on A1A in Satellite Beach. Our tipster usually takes his family for nice dinner at what he said are reasonable prices. Since we’re always up for something new, we gave it a shot.

As far as the vibe of the restaurant goes, you notice almost immediately when pulling up to the restaurant that its got a cheesy paint job. It’s painted in sea-foam and pastel colors and has a “by the ocean” vibe (this is probably because it’s across the street from the Atlantic). Despite the paint job, the building looks relatively new and well constructed. From what we could tell, the inside of the restaurant is very clean as well. When we entered, there was a lounge singer performing in the bar, but after 30 minutes or so he was replaced by a jazz band. We were seated almost immediately (it was a Friday night), so that was cool and there seemed to be a healthy mix of people of different ages, which I always find encouraging. During the meal, the server seemed like a nice kid, but the service ending up being average.

We ordered the Shepard’s Pie (~$11) and the Chicken Parmesan (~$12) as well as added the salad bar (~$3 per person) to our meal. The waiter dropped off some really great garlic bread and the salad bar was the cleanest salad bar I’ve ever seen with some amazingly fresh ingredients. I’m usually against salad bars for cleanliness reasons, but I was shocked at how ridiculous they were about wiping everything down and keeping ingredients from being mixed together. I think what was nicest about the salad bar, was that it was just that, a really good, fresh place where you could assemble a salad; I didn’t have to wait behind the hungry guy in front of me grabbing 80 chicken wings to get to the lettuce. Unfortunately, I think the bread and the salad were the best part of the meal. I ordered the Shepard’s Pie, because the majority of other items came over pasta, and I’m not a huge pasta fan (I can boil it at home for less). The mashed potatoes topping the pie were dry and the stuffing was as mixture of beef, carrots, peas, and corn that was definitely over cooked and could have been frozen previously. The meal tasted, and looked, like it had been baked as part of a larger dish and kept under a heat lamp. I didn’t care for the Chicken Parmesan either. The sauce tasted was very thin without a lot of flavor and the cutlet was a cutlet; it kinda felt like a Chef Boyardee style meal. Since I ate literally none of my meal, which is unusual for me, even if I don’t care for it, we ordered dessert. We got the Chocolate Lava Cake (~$5, I think) a cup of coffee (~$2) and a chocolate martini (~$8). The cake was spongy and served with two huge scoops of ice cream and whipped cream. I kinda felt like I was eating a Little Debbie snack cake with hot fudge on it unfortunately.

Overall, I believe Enigma is living up to its name; I’m not sure what to think of it. The portions were large, but the quality wasn’t up to snuff with what I would have preferred, especially for the prices we paid (although I did like the salad and bread). I will admit, it is possible that I’m being unusually harsh. I wasn’t as hungry as I usually am when we went out and my wife, who usually likes similar things, did enjoy her food. That being said, I’m willing to give Enigma Cafe another shot. I am definitely doing so, however, with hesitant taste buds. Here’s to me finding something I like that’s not over pasta.

Enigma Cafe is located at 1024 Highway A1A, Satellite Beach, FL

Well after 1:45 I was able to complete my Connect presentation for the IECFUG on “Common Revision Control Practices using SVN”. You can get to the presentation using this link. If you would like to view the presentation file, you can find the link here. I think it ran way too long, and by the time I came out of PowerPoint, I had lost like 4 of the 6 in the chat. I was however able to finish everything but 3 slides of my presentation and all of my examples, so I guess that is good for me (just not the attendees).

Thanks again to the IECFUG for putting up with me as their presenter for October. I’m always available for long, drawn out presentations when you need me.