After years of attempts, my wife (Doctor Professor Ma'am) and I finally had the most outstanding dinner last night at Outpost Kitchen, Bar, & Provisions (https://www.outpostkbp.com), a restaurant in suburban Maitland, nestled between Casselberry and Winter Park, surprisingly close to home. It seemed like life kept conspiring to keep us from dining there, with all kinds of illnesses, injuries, and random emergencies forcing us to cancel previous reservations, but once we made it, it was totally worth the wait.
The décor is at once both rustic and hipster-modern, full of wooden tables and chairs (no booths), Edison-style hanging light bulbs, and even a retro refrigerator in the dining room, not far from the open kitchen. There is also a large bar, an outdoor patio, and glass walls surrounding the free-standing building that provide plenty of natural light.
Shortly after being seated in that expansive, high-ceilinged, wide open dining room, we met the co-owner, Kevin Casey, who reached out to me on Facebook last year to invite us out to the Outpost. Kevin was jovial and warm and welcoming, and I apologized for it taking us so long to get out there. I can also say that the entire serving staff was top-notch. We received some of the best service we've ever encountered at a restaurant in Orlando, not just from our own server, but from her compatriots, who all checked in on us periodically, hoping we were having the best experience. (We were.)
I had not eaten all day, so my wife and I started our decadent dinner with handmade Outpost tots ($12), a wooden platter of eight golden-brown fried spheres, drizzled with Outpost sauce (not as sweet as a barbecue sauce, but thicker and not as hot as a hot sauce) and bourbon ranch. Now, we all know tater tots, but these were nothing like standard tots or the beloved Beefy spuds at Orlando's iconic Beefy King. Each of these orbs, which were about the size of large golf balls, were more like potato pancakes, also known as latkes -- crispy on the outside, but yielding and fluffy-soft and seasoned on the inside. 
Kevin told us that these are complicated to make right, because the potatoes are all hand-shredded, and if the kitchen staff took too long, they would oxidize and ruin the batch, but they came up with a method to simplify the process. Whatever they did, it worked, because these are some of the most perfect potato products we've ever partaken in. If you ever go to the Outpost, don't sleep on these not-so-tiny tots!
Something else cool about the Outpost is that they pay homage to Orlando's culinary past. So many people dismiss our touristy town as "chain restaurant hell," even though I started this blog just about five years ago to combat that misconception and shine a well-deserved spotlight on some of our best local restaurants. Kevin and Julie Casey are doing the same thing with their series of Memory Lane Menus, recreating classic dishes from beloved and much-missed eateries that closed years or even decades ago. They first did that with Pebbles, a restaurant that I've heard about, but it closed before I moved here in 2004, and their current Memory Lane Menu is a tribute to the legendary Ronnie's Restaurant.
Now I never made it to Ronnie's either, but my wife has told me all about it, and it would probably have been my favorite restaurant in the city, had I ever eaten there. I've seen the voluminous menu, and it looked very similar to another long-lost legend -- Wolfie Cohen's Rascal House, a Jewish delicatessen/diner on Collins Avenue in North Miami Beach. Unlike Ronnie's, I got to enjoy many meals at the Rascal House, first with my family as a kid and a teenager during weekends at the old-timey Art Deco motels right on the beach with names like the Dunes, the Driftwood, and the Desert Inn. Years later, I would visit friends on trips home from Gainesville and catch up with them over late-night overstuffed sandwiches and metal dishes of free pickles and cole slaw. I even got to take my wife to the Rascal House once, in 2007, when we were still newly dating, before the it closed its doors for good. I will always treasure those memories and those meals, especially because the Rascal House was the first restaurant I recall my family traveling out of its way to, trekking from suburban Kendall to Sunny Isles Beach, decades before seeking out the best food anywhere I could find it would become one of my adulthood hobbies.
But back to Ronnie's now: the Outpost's Memory Lane Menu for Ronnie's is available for ONE MORE WEEK, until Saturday, June 10th. They are offering three classic Ronnie's dishes: cabbage soup made with beef short ribs (which was sadly sold out when we went last night), a chocolate eclair made from an original Ronnie's recipe, and a corned beef and pastrami platter, which we ordered to share as an appetizer. I had heard stories and fables about Ronnie's corned beef and pastrami, served with potato salad and sliced tomatoes, and I must be honest, that was what finally spurred us to make it to the Outpost. I'm so glad it got us in the door, because it was amazing, and so was everything else. 
Here's a close-up of the thick, hand-carved slices of mostly lean pastrami, crusted with a delicious, peppery, spicy "bark": 
And as much as I love pastrami (which is a lot), I liked the Outpost's version of Ronnie's corned beef even better, because it was marbled with so much creamy, unctuous fat. Even without rye bread and mustard, these deli delicacies were a huge hit. We just nibbled on them at the restaurant, but I finished them in a sandwich earlier today (on a toasted sourdough roll since we didn't have rye at home, but with good Carnegie Deli dusseldorf mustard). 
My wife always likes a good steak even more than I do (I'm more of a sandwich and burger guy), and one thing she always craves is a coffee-rubbed steak. Very few restaurants in Orlando offer them, but the Outpost sure does: the Crusty New Yorker, a peppercorn and coffee-crusted New York strip steak, covered with garlic caper cream sauce and served on a bed of creamy cauliflower rice. She asked for the steak rare, and it was cooked perfectly, beautifully rare, pre-sliced and rich purple-red inside. She also loves capers and cream sauces, so she was in heaven with this dish. She was admittedly skeptical about the cauliflower rice, but we both really liked it. It had a slight crunch that regular rice doesn't have, but the creaminess and seasoning reminded me a bit of risotto.
And even though I was tempted by many dishes on the menu, one of the Outpost's burgers really sang out to me: the Black Cherry Burger, cooked to an ideal medium rare and topped with house-smoked brisket, yellow cheddar cheese, caramelized onions, and sliced hot cherry peppers on a brioche bun. I wish it had been a little bigger (only because I wish all burgers were bigger, from White Castle on up), but it was delicious. I would rank it among the finest burgers in the city, without a doubt. 
It came with really solid fries, which I dipped in a little metal ramekin of house-made barbecue sauce. Good fries, but after those tantalizing, tremendous tots, they were almost anticlimactic.
My wife is a bigger dessert person than I am, whereas I can often take or leave something sweet after a big meal. Still, we were both equally tempted by two different desserts on the Outpost's masterful menu, and we splurged and ordered both. This was the drunken blueberry bread pudding, served in a small, sizzling-hot skillet. It was made with brioche and sweet Hawaiian bread, bourbon custard, fresh blueberries, tangy orange icing, and blueberry compote. It was really decadent, but not nearly as sweet as you might be thinking. It was spectacular, and a perfect way to end a summer meal. This was my wife's favorite of the two desserts. 
They also offered a pineapple upside down cake special, and even though I bake a mean pineapple upside down cake myself, we were both intrigued by it too. Unlike mine, which is a light, moist pineapple-flavored cake, this one was a denser spice cake, almost like a richer, sweeter gingerbread. It was topped with a roasted pineapple ring and some sweet, sticky caramel glaze, and that is a dehydrated pineapple ring on the side, thin and chewy and sweet and sticky like fruit leather. (Kinky!) The dark pools are a cherry glaze, although i thought they might be balsamic reduction at first. Cherry definitely fit better with pineapple upside-down cake. Our dutiful server told us that this was such a big hit, it would probably become a regular menu item moving forward. You heard it here first, folks! 
Now you stalwart Saboscrivnerinos (my baker's dozens of regular readers) know that The Saboscrivner takes pride in his journalistic integrity. I am proudly not an influencer (in fact, I still take perverse pride in some rando Redditor referring to me as an "anti-influencer"), and I never go into these restaurants asking for freebies in exchange for a good review. I wouldn't dare, and I think that is rude and gauche and presumptuous and any number of unprintable terms. That said, since Kevin invited us in so long ago, I let him know we were coming since I wanted to meet him and thank him for reaching out... and he ended up hooking us up, out of the goodness of his heart. I was shocked, and I insisting on paying as much of the bill as they would let me, in addition to leaving a generous tip for our server based on what this large, luxurious meal would have originally cost. It was all so great, I would have written this identical review anyway, minus this paragraph. We loved everything, and we look forward to returning and becoming regulars. But that's how nice the owner is, even during a time when local restaurants are struggling.
That's why I am doubling down with my recommendation here. Visit the Outpost! They serve brunch on Saturdays and Sundays, and apparently Saturdays are a lot more chill compared to the busier Sundays. They are even planning to institute a weekday brunch menu, so be on the lookout for that. If you loved Ronnie's back in the day (or you just love Jewish delis, like I do with all my heart), definitely stop by in the next week for a taste of Ronnie's classic menu. I will definitely swing back by, hoping for that beef short rib cabbage soup to go! Also, stay tuned for the Outpost's next Memory Lane Menu, paying homage to Gary's Duck Inn, apparently the inspiration for the original Red Lobster. I never made it there either, but some locals probably have, and it sounds like something that should not be missed. The Outpost should not be missed, either.
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