cookies and code

I’m happy to report that Brevard county finally has a gastropub that is worth patronizing. Vintage 56 is the most tasteful and affordable dining experience that my wife and I have had in the last year. Let’s do the walk-through.

When you come upon Vintage 56′s location, you may find yourself taken back a bit. The restaurant is tucked away in a shopping plaza which looks like it hasn’t seen much traffic in the last few years. In fact, if you’re a little faint of heart, you may turn back wondering how what you’ve heard is such a great place found it’s way there. Please trust me when I say, forge ahead, you don’t have to go into the clothing outlet and wig store; you’re just there for the restaurant. Once you make your way in, you’ll soon forget about the outside and appreciate the open floor plan and simple decor. The restaurant contains tables and half-booths (?) and open seating for its guests. We went on a Monday night and there were only a few couples dining which contributed to a nice and quiet ambiance.

I was excited to see that Vintage 56 stays fairly true to the gastropub style with its simple, seasonal menu and beer selection. I was even more ecstatic to see one of my favorite beers, Dogfish Head Pumpkin Ale ($5), on draft; they also had 2 for 1 martinis all evening, each ranging from $8 – $10 a piece. We each started with a cup of soup. I ordered a cup of the Portuguese Sausage and Kale ($3) and my wife ordered a cup of the Lobster Bisque ($4). The Portuguese Sausage soup was the perfect magnitude of spicy, made with chicken broth, kale, and diced carrot, celery, potato, and Andouille sausage; it reminded of the portions of a Zuppa Toscana that I enjoy with even more flavor. The Lobster Bisque has some small chunks of lobster in the broth and is served with a side of sherry crème fraîche which is must add to achieve the full flavor of the soup.

For our meals we went the sandwich route ordering the BLT ($8) and the Vintage Chicken Sandwich ($9). Part of what makes Vintage 56 so great is the way they can take menu items, like these simple sandwiches, and not break from your expectations, but still pleasantly surprise your palate. Both sandwiches are served on fresh baked Ciabatta bread with your choice of homemade sea-salt and cracked pepper potato chips or sweet potato fries (both of which taste great). The BLT is served with a light slathering of mayonnaise, melted whole-milk mozzarella, baby greens, yellow tomatoes, and an ample amount of crispy bacon. The Vintage Chicken Sandwich is made up of a reasonably portioned, grilled chicken breast, baby greens, brie cheese, and a pear and sun-dried cherry chutney. Although we didn’t try them, the menu also offers a selection of flat bread pizzas, burgers, tapas (cold and hot), and entrees. This evening there was also a paella for two on special, but I’m unsure of the price.

By the end of the meal, we were both stuffed, but when I heard a slice of homemade pumpkin pie ($6) was on the menu, I didn’t hesitate to order it. The texture of the pie wasn’t as smooth as I had hoped, but the flavor was amazing and definitely tasted as if the pumpkin was blended fresh. I also ordered a coffee ($2) which had a pretty typical flavor but was a nice complement to the pie.

On top of the great food, the table service was friendly and timely. We were able to sit and talk with the waiter and bartender who were very friendly and attentive. According to our waiter, by the second time he’d eaten at the restaurant he knew he wanted to work there. Being open for ~3 months thus far, it looks like he’s gotten in on the ground floor of what promises to be a great establishment. Also serving lunch, there are plenty of opportunities to stop in and see what I’m raving about. I can’t wait to see what the menu will hold as time goes on.

Vintage 56 is going into our permanent “dinner out” rotation and I’m already eager to visit again. I will go even as far as to say that Vintage 56 is the best restaurant in Rockledge at which I’ve eaten for all of my time in Brevard. Due yourself a favor and make time to stop in for a great meal and a great gastropub experience.

Vintage 56 is located at 200 Barton Boulevard, Rockledge, FL 32955.

Today my wife and I walked away from dinner saying, “That was the best meal we’ve had in a long time.” We’ve been going to Banzai Sushi and Thai Restaurant since the first week we moved into Brevard county. A friend of mine, who had grown up in Melbourne, recommended it as one of his favorite Japanese and Thai restaurants in the area. Ever since that first visit we have never had a bad experience being spoiled with amazing food, service, and ambiance. To call Banzai just an eatery doesn’t do it justice, it’s a dining experience. In fact Banzai has kept up its dining traditions when most restaurateurs have been quick to abandon them in these tough economic times. Allow me to share our latest experience.

Upon arriving at their small, but comfortable location, you are immediately greeted by one of the servers and immediately seated at a table; we’ve never had to wait. Within a minute or so, your server arrives with hot towels to clean your hands and small salad bowls with tiny spoons. The salad is a mixture of diced tomatoes and cucumber, shredded carrots, mandarin oranges, and pieces of fried tempura batter. It’s a great balance of sweet and salty and perfect to wet your appetite. We usually like to start with a pot of hot green tea ($1.50 p/person) and a couple ice waters. Once we work our way through the massive list of sushi, Japanese, Thai, and Chinese selections, we’ve never had to wait more than a 10-15 minutes to start our meal. This time around, I ordered one of the most fragrant and tasty green curry dishes with chicken (~$10) and my wife ordered the small green salad (~$3) and the shrimp and vegetable tempura appetizer (~$8). The curry is prepared with coconut millk, bell pepper, bamboo shoots, fresh basil, and red pepper oil in a huge portion; if you like spicy, try the Thai hot for that good kind of spicy. The small green salad comes with your option of ginger or honey ginger dressing on top of iceberg and romaine lettuce, tomato, shredded carrots, and sliced cucumber. The tempura appetizer is big enough to be a meal for a single person coming with three shrimp, onion, broccoli, and sweet potato. If all of this food wasn’t enough, at the end of the meal, the server brings out fried sweet doughnuts, dusted with sugar granules. This time around we didn’t order any sushi, but I have to say that Banzai has some of the best quality sushi for your dollar. Their sushi chefs will make pretty much anything you’d like, even if it’s not on the menu. The rolls are packed full of ingredients and they even have surfboards for larger groups.

Adding to the experience of dining at Banzai, every server in the restaurant is your server. They are all equally friendly and courteous offering help to anyone who needs it. I’m not sure if he’s the manager or owner, but even the man in charge is out and about taking care of his customers, making it a pleasent evening for everyone in the restaurant. What’s probably the best part of the service however, is the facet most people don’t consider, invisibility. Banzai works like a well oiled machine providing its customers with whatever they need, but without them having to ask for it. This breeds the peaceful quiet that I have to believe all of Banzai’s patrons associate with the restaurant.

Banzai Sushi and Thai Restaurant provides a high quality experience for what has become a more reasonable price now-a-days. The quality of food is high and you’ll find yourself eager for your next visit before you even walk out of the door. If you’re looking for an establishment that is just as much about the time you spend there as it is the food, do yourself a favor and give Banzai and shot. I promise you won’t regret it.

Banzai Sushi and Thai Restaurant is located in the Publix plaza on the corner of Lake Washington and Wickham at 3208 Lake Washington Road, Melbourne, FL.

In my spare time, I try to blog about locally owned restaurants at which my wife and I find ourselves dining at frequently, or just something we find along the beaten path, for the Brevard area. I am always frustrated with the quality of information I find on local restaurants when searching the web, so I hope the little I do contributes to community eatery search. With our new baby due in May, we’ve slowing been trying to acclimate to cooking more at home and dining out less. Consequently, my posts have been thinning out over the last few months, but fear not, other quality sources of information about local restaurants do exist.

I find myself always reading the online version of The Beachside Resident. They offer a monthly restaurant review with tons of details on the establishment, its ambiance, and its menu that gives a great picture of the restaurant. They don’t list prices and I have yet to see anything which denotes an inglorious experience, so sometimes reviews can get a little too shiny. The purpose of the column, however, seems to be highlighting local businesses, so this shouldn’t come as a surprise. Overall, definitely a great way to keep up with new places to try on the coast. This year they finally threw up an RSS feed, so now it’s even easier to watch.

The other publication I’ve started to use more recently is the Brevard edition of MetroMix from Gannet Press, maintained by the Florida Today. FL Today has slowly been building a nice directory of local restaurants in the Brevard area and its current incarnation, MetroMix, acts as a great directory of restaurants when you know what you’d like to eat. just not where. The foodie they have doing reviews has the rare and valuable quality of getting to the point about her experience. Her perspective is a little sugar coated at times, but she’s comes off as honest, which is refreshing. She lists prices, which is even nicer, and when the dining experience doesn’t go exactly planned, it’s easy to read into her words to understand what to watch out for if you choose to patronize the place. On a disappointing note, no RSS feeds, so you have to go to the content, just like all of the other FL Today web properties; catch up to 2009 already, even the whitehouse.gov has!

Worse case scenario, I’ll dive into Google Maps and look for inline reviews when searching. There is something about the anonymity of Google that let’s people share their true feelings when it comes to dining out. I find when people are being brash, it make it even easy to take their opinion with a grain of salt. It’s been a surprising source of information if you’re willing to dig a little. On a side note, I hope to eventually generate a KML document for Google Maps, so they can aggregate my reviews, so I can be one of those angry voices as well.

Good luck in your search of Brevard’s local restaurant scene. We’ve a diverse selection of establishments that has yet to leave me hungry, so I hope links help others to “get fed” as well.

Well, this week I’ve gotten one step close to organizing a Brevard RIA/web developer user group. I hope to have our first meeting on August 21, 2008. I’d like to have the meetings every 3rd Thursday of the month starting @ 8:00 PM, lasting for about 1 to 2 hours based on the topic. Short of finding a place beachside or near 95 that is open in the evenings and has wifi, we’re going to stick with House of Joe for now on 192, next to the Melbourne Mall. Initially it looks like it’ll be a small group of us, so I’m not too worried about space being available. The new Florida Creatives group for Brevard looks like they are going to meeting on the 3rd Tuesday of the month, so that may cause some conflicts initially, but since I have little visibility for the group as of yet, we’ll see how it goes.

Now we need to just work on a name/acronym so I can get a domain and blog up. Here are some of the suggestions we have thus far:

• Brevard Area Developer of Rich Internet Applications (BADORIA)
• Brevard Network of Developers and Enthusiasts (BNODE)
• Brevard Developer Web Group (BDWG)
• Brevard Area Rich Internet Application UG (BARIA)
• Brevard Rich Internet Application UG (BRIA)
• Brevard Rich Internet Application Developers (BRIAD)
• Rich Internet Application Techies (RIAT)
• Web Brevard User Group (WEBBUG)
• Brevard Area Web Developers (BAWD)
• Beachside Developers (BSDEV)
• Rich Internet Application Brevard User Group (RIABUG)

I’d like to have Brevard and something like Web or RIA in the name, but I’m still undecided. Does anyone has any suggestions? I’m open to ideas.

Well, after some searching, I’ve decided to give House of Joe on 192 next to the Melbourne mall a shot for the first meeting of the Brevard user group I’m trying to start. It’s open until 11:00 PM on weekdays and has free wifi, so hopefully it’ll work out. Thanks to Sebastian for the suggestion.

I’ve been doing some thinking about the focus on the group. I’ve decided that rather than focusing exclusively on Adobe technologies, I’d like to shift the focus to rich internet technologies (RIA) including Flex, AIR, AJAX, and possibly Silverlight. I’ve been messing a lot with jQuery recently, and just like the rest of the masses, I can’t get enough of it; I’m sure there are others that feel the same way too. There are other cool APIs that’d I’d like to mess with including the spread over at Google (Data, Charts, Maps, etc.) that can fall under the umbrella of the RIA buzzword as well.

Based on the audience I’ve seen in Brevard and the types of jobs I see advertised on the job boards, I think this type of group will have a better chance at growth than just an Adobe focused group. My next goal is to pick a day and time that we can meet, then the first meeting’s topic, then a hopefully a domain and website. Initially I’m going to focus on just meeting up with people and hacking away at code, but if we get more people joining us, then maybe we can start doing presentations too.

Keep a look out for more info as I continually try to get my act together, and fail at doing so.

As the Adogo has grown over the last year, I’ve noticed that a few people, like myself, make the trek from the Space Coast into Orlando for our monthly meeting. In an effort to bring the work of the group to Brevard County, I was wondering if anyone would be interested in participating in an Adobe group locally? Initially I’d be interested in just getting together a local coffee shop or pub and doing hackfests with Flex, ColdFusion, AIR, and whatever else we can get our hands on. As attendance grows, maybe we could get into presentations, but until then, I’d like to keep it layback. I’m still looking to stay involved in the Adogo, but who can turn down getting away and coding for a few hours each month.

I’m looking for spots to have the meeting still, but things close pretty early in the Melbourne area; does anyone have any ideas about good joints that could support us? I’m looking into Charlie and Jake’s in Suntree or possibly the Sun Shoppe Cafe (coffee shop) in downtown Melbourne. I’d love find something beachside, but I’m not sure where to look. If people are interested we also need to come up with a name, date, and time. Any suggestions?

As I put together more information, I’ll post about them here. Please comment and let me know if you would attend. Check back soon for more details.

Well, it’s been a crazy month or so since I’ve posted, but a lot has happened on the Brevard restaurant scene. Here are a few of the tidbits that have crossed my path:

• Islamorada Restaurant, our local Suntree Cuban joint, recently closed for renovation and re-opened as Cocomo’s Grill, a not so Cuban but more island inspired style restaurant. After stopping by for lunch (review to come one day), I found out that the place is under new ownership and has a new wait staff. I think they’ve retained some of the cooking staff since many of the dishes on the menu are from Islamorada’s original menu, but unfortunately tostones did not make it back onto the menu; I also didn’t see any of that amazing key lime butter or panitos on the table. The new menu looks good however, so I’m not that discouraged.
• In crazy, all of Brevard’s restaurants are catching on fire news, Meg O’Malley’s Irish Pub, located in downtown Melbourne, had a fire break out on their rear patio. Smoke damage extended to the building costling about $150K in damages. Here’s the write up on the event for those who are interested.
• Dinners2U, the latest local craze in delivered and prepared meals for the Melbourne area, is doing so well that in the next 6 months, the goal is to open a new location in Viera off of Murrell Road. This is great news for the Suntree area since delivery is not available in our area. I want to order a few more times from Dinners2U before I write them up, but so far it’s home cooked meals for a descent prices (considering all of the food you get with your order). Here’s more info for the curious.
• Leaning Tower of Pizza Restaurant is celebrating 25 years of serving the Melbourne area. They’re running spaghetti and slice specials for the month; buy one of either and get one of the same for $0.25. Leaning Tower is a great establishment and deserves all of the praise that it receives. Swing by, check it out, and show your support for a staple of the city.
• A little birdy told me that the owners of Island Pasta Company downtown have purchased, or are in the process of purchasing, Chowders on US1 in Suntree. From what it sounds like, Chowders will remain a seafood restaurant but look for a new name and menu in the future. Not sure when that future will be, but I’m excited to hear something new will come from that spot. They’ve got a great view and I’d love to go back.
• Cantina Dos Amigos is now back open after being previously closed due to fire. Looks like business is back to normal.

So that’s about all for now. I have some reviews for some Brevard classics coming down the pipe as well as some new establishments with some great potential. Talk to you soon.

So Sebastian recently reminded me about The Beachside Resident which is a local magazine put out for the coastal area. This month’s restaurant review … Trevor’s Blue Toucan, a Jamaican restaurant in the Cape Canaveral area. We don’t know if it’s any good yet, but I definitely need to try it out. I haven’t had ginger beer in a long time and could definitely use one. The menu looks good so I’m excited to give it a shot. I’ll let you all know what I think.

So my wife and I are pretty big into going out to eat at local mom and pop places in town. I don’t know much about cooking but I love to eat. So in an effort to put some more content into my blog and give me another outlet to talk about food (that I like to eat), I’m going to being blogging about the restaurants we visit. I’ll try to list things like what I order about how much I pay for each item. I always try to get something new every time I go out, so hopefully it’ll be enough variety to distract people from the recent lack of technical content.