Florida Foodie

NOTE: This is a re-release of the most popular Florida Foodie episode from 2022. Florida Foodie will return with new episodes on Jan. 24

Dr. Amber Orman likes to practice what she calls “true healthcare.”

“We are treating, preventing and reversing chronic disease with the way that you’re living rather than relying wholly on pills and procedures and tests and things like this,” Orman said.

She is a radiation oncologist and also a practitioner of lifestyle medicine “which is using food and movement, the way that you feel stress the way that you sleep, your relationships and your use of tobacco, alcohol and drugs, to really change your life in a positive way,” according to Orman.

Orman takes that practice into the HEAL Program at AdventHealth. HEAL stands for Healthy Eating Active Lifestyle. Orman started the program with Dr. Nathalie McKenzie, a gynecologic oncologist.

“This has been something that has been percolating for me for quite a few years and before I joined Advent, I was actually going to launch a similar program at Moffitt Cancer Center where I came from,” Orman said. “My life took a turn and I married somebody who happened to live in Orlando and then I found AdventHealth.”

The HEAL program shows cancer patients ways they can change their lifestyles to improve their overall health and help them recover from their diagnosis.

Part of the core of the HEAL program is encouraging patients to consume a diet that is at least majority plant-based.

“When you look at all of the data together, a plant-based diet, a plant predominant diet — that doesn’t have to be 100% vegan, or whatever term you want to use — but simply a diet that is mostly plants the healthiest way to eat. I can say that with complete confidence,” Orman said.

On Florida Foodie, Orman shares more about HEAL and the improvements she has seen in her patients as a result of the program. She also shares more about the benefits of a plant-dominant diet for overall health and what changes people can make to begin improving their nutrition.

Please follow our Florida Foodie hosts on social media. You can find Candace Campos on Twitter and Facebook. Lisa Bell is also on Facebook and Twitter and you can check out her children’s book, “Norman the Watchful Gnome.”

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Eliot Hillis has thought a lot about noodles.

“(Noodles are) a vehicle for so many options,” the chef said. “In much the same way that a pizza can have like an infinite number of combinations of toppings, you can have a noodle that’s expressed upon a myriad of ingredients and, depending on the time of year, this could be a cold noodle, it could be a hot noodle, this could be spicy or creamy or any combination of all of those things.”

Hillis recently started a new, noodle-focused venture with his long-time collaborator Seth Parker. The pair now operate pop-up restaurants under the name Red Panda Noodle.

“It just excites us to be able to have this blank canvas that is also so deep and richly bounded by history,” Hillis said.

Red Panda may be new to Orlando’s dining scene, but Hillis and Parker are not. The pair have worked together for years at several restaurants around town. Most recently, the pair worked together at the now-closed Orlando Meats.

“We actually wanted to open another restaurant, but we ended up with Orlando Meats,” Hillis said. “(We) did five years of that and now we decided to leave and we took pretty much everybody with us. So the whole of Orlando Meats staff is still employed by us.”

Even while working at Orlando Meats, Hillis said he and Parker were already workshopping the idea for Red Panda.

“Seth and I were workshopping this about five years ago,” Hillis said. “We were looking for a name that expressed a certain amount of playfulness with kind of hinting at authenticity without explicitly saying it.”

The chef describes Red Panda as being approachable and affordable while still being high quality.

“We want to be serious in our craft,” he said.

Hillis said he and Parker have different perspectives when it comes to their approach to food.

“I have no formal education and Seth did go to culinary school, but I didn’t, I started in the dish pit and just did my thing,” Hillis said. “I studied, like, literally just bought several thousands of dollars worth of books and I was like, ‘OK, well, I’m just gonna read these, I’m gonna watch as much as I can. I’m gonna learn from everybody.’ I would change restaurants every two years or so, to make sure I learned from different people. So I had a wide and diverse view on things.”

That drive to learn led Hillis to some pretty unique cooking situations, including running a kitchen along the Grand Canyon.

“I had this little cabin (near the kitchen) and I had to like check the windows before I left in the morning — because I left at like dawn to go to the kitchen — I had to check that there were no deer outside because they will kill you,” he said. Now that was a really fun experience.”

On the latest episode of Florida Foodie, Hillis nerds out about noodles. He also talks about his approach to creating new dishes and how he and his partner are expanding their business.

Please follow our Florida Foodie hosts on social media. You can find Candace Campos on Twitter and Facebook. Lisa Bell is also on Facebook and Twitter and you can check out her children’s book, “Norman the Watchful Gnome.”

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Billy Trudsoe spent 20 years as a chef in New York before making his way to Central Florida.

“The winters are long in the Adirondacks, so my wife and I said why not give Florida a shot?” Trudsoe said.

The chef came down south to work as an executive chef for a restaurant in Brevard County, but the gig did not end up working out in the long run.

“So I went all in on Hell’s Kitchen,” Trudsoe said.

Trudsoe had attempted to get on the hit reality show previously but did not make the cut on his first attempt.

“It’s a pretty grueling process — seven to eight months — and I got the phone call just before Christmas of last year, saying, ‘Hey, you made it. You need to be in LA in two weeks.’ Dreams do come true,” he said.

Trudsoe did not ultimately end up winning in the cooking competition, but he is hoping to use his elevated profile from the show to launch his own restaurant.

“My ultimate goal is to get BTrue’s Mad Flava, the first restaurant up and going,” he said.

The name comes from Trudsoe’s days as a college athlete.

“When I was playing college basketball many moons ago, my basketball coach gave me a nickname, BTrue, so it’s stuck ever since,” he said. “And then mad flavor — when I was a young chef on Lake George, I’d always — when I’m putting the food up in the window — I’d be like ‘Mad flavor.’ You know, that was just my slogan, my slang, and it’s stuck with me ever since.”

In the meantime, while he looks for investors, Trudsoe is working as a private chef.

“I’m willing to, you know, do whatever it takes to be successful,” he said. “I’m the type of chef that likes the formal sit down and everything like that. I like to be able to talk to my patrons and get their feedback.”

On the latest episode of Florida Foodie, Trudsoe shares more about what it was like to compete on Hell’s Kitchen and meet Gordan Ramsay, who is a personal idol of the chef. He also shares how he got his start as a cook and his favorite style of cooking.

Please follow our Florida Foodie hosts on social media. You can find Candace Campos on Twitter and Facebook. Lisa Bell is also on Facebook and Twitter and you can check out her children’s book, “Norman the Watchful Gnome.”

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Bruno Zacchini is best known in Orlando as the owner of Pizza Bruno, but he did not always have a love for pizza.

“Pizza was always like an afterthought for me, especially in the restaurant world,” Zacchini said. “I didn’t like doing it. I’ll be honest, I didn’t have any joy of doing it or whatever.”

That started to change for Zacchini when he was working as a chef consultant for Third Wave Cafe in New Smyrna Beach.

“The owners are like, ‘Hey, we want to do crepes in the morning and woodfired pizza at night,’” he said. “I was like, ‘OK, you’re gonna make some good pizza. And that’s the focus,’ because originally, that’s all they wanted to do. But as you know, New Smyrna grew and the place got well known and better known, they want to expand the menu — and we did over time — but the pizza, I really enjoyed it.”

At the time, Zacchini was living in College Park, and the daily commute became a major chore. So, in 2015, Zacchini started doing pop-ups around Orlando. He almost set up a space in the Mills 50 area, but it ultimately fell through.

It wasn’t until February 2016 that a space would ultimately become available in the Curry Ford West neighborhood.

“I had a very little amount of money — like a scary small amount, which I look back I was like, ‘What was I thinking?’” Zacchini said. “(I) financed everything to the hilt and took some crazy interest rates to get some things done, but I opened and I had no intentions other than making pizza how I wanted to.”

Pizza Bruno has since become an institution in the Curry Ford West neighborhood. Zacchini recently expanded his business, opening a second location in Orlando’s College Park.

The new location serves a slightly different kind of pizza, more akin to a New Jersey-style pie.

Zacchini also has his sights set on opening a new restaurant just a few doors down from his second location.

“We’re doing a donut shop right now,” he said. “I happen to be there and we’re building out the College Park store which is now open but graffiti junction actually got rid of I guess this extra seating space but it used to be a restaurant.”

Zacchini reached out to the landlords and they liked his idea. Zacchini is now working to open Dizzy Donuts. The idea is to sell hot cake donuts, just like the kind he finds when he visits New Jersey, which is where his wife is from and where Zacchini spent many of his summers growing up.

“They have a couple places (in New Jersey) that do these hotcake donuts,” he said. “So originally, one of the first places (my wife) brought me to was Frog Hollow which is not on the boardwalk. It’s like in this in the backwoods. You wouldn’t even know it’s there. It’s like this little hobbit house but they do hotcake doughnuts. They’re delicious.”

In addition to doughnuts, Zacchini wants to offer chicken karaage sandwiches. Karaage is a style of Japanese fried chicken that is typically served as a bar snack.

“I’m not trying to compete with the chicken battle that’s happening in Orlando at all,” he said. “It was a way to extend the hours, and then potentially offer something for lunch.”

On the latest episode of Florida Foodie, Zacchini talks about when he hopes to have his doughnut shop open to the public. He also shares his personal pizza preferences and how he got started working in kitchens as a teenager.

Please follow our Florida Foodie hosts on social media. You can find Candace Campos on Twitter and Facebook. Lisa Bell is also on Facebook and Twitter and you can check out her children’s book, “Norman the Watchful Gnome.”

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Dreyton McDonald runs his own business, but he’s not quite his own boss just yet.

The 12-year-old runs the food truck Ice Ice Dreyton, which he uses to sell snow cones around Ocala.

“My dad just, he asked me one day, would I like to do a mini-donut business or a snow cone business,” Dreyton McDonald said. “And I said snow cone.”

His dad, Dominic McDonald, helps him run the business and make sure his Dreyton doesn’t spend all his money in one place.

“My day job was working at the Marion County Children’s Alliance, and that was mentoring teenage boys,” Dominic McDonald said. “One of the things that we realized (is) that some of these teenage boys got in trouble because they had nothing to do. So they will go break into cars, or they will do something because they just had idle time. So I didn’t want my son to go down that path.”

Dominic McDonald said he originally thought of a doughnut truck because the Marion County school district has a Doughnuts with Dads event, which brings fathers into the schools.

“So I thought the doughnut idea would be a great thing to try to keep that going,” he said. “I also realized that we live in Florida, in this heat, and that everybody would love snow cones — whether it was mother, dad, son, daughter — so the snow cones worked out better.”

The pair take the trailer around to birthday parties, sporting events and other occasions around Marion County.

“I like the football games the most,” Dreyton said. “And I like the birthday party so I can get some of the treats.”

Dreyton said he offers between 25 and 30 flavors for his customers.

While his son is making all the money, Dominic McDonald said Ice Ice Dreyton is rewarding for him as well.

“The pay for me is seeing him do something and I can sit back and know that I created it — put him in a position to win,” the father said. “That’s something that my father didn’t do. But he’s trying, you know, and one thing that my father did teach me and my stepfather taught me is to keep trying.”

On the last episode of Florida Foodie, the father and son duo talk about getting Dreyton’s friends involved in the food truck. They also talk about how it has inspired other parents to help their children start a business and how they plan to grow Ice Ice Dreyton in the future.

Please follow our Florida Foodie hosts on social media. You can find Candace Campos on Twitter and Facebook. Lisa Bell is also on Facebook and Twitter and you can check out her children’s book, “Norman the Watchful Gnome.”

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Sean “Sonny” Nguyen spent a lot of his childhood inside his family’s restaurants.

“I was brought to the restaurants with my parents, just out of like, you know, they needed to continue watching me,” he said. “So I was always in the back room. My aunts and uncles also owned restaurants, primarily Chinese buffets, and there would always be a back room where all the kids and cousins would be hanging out.”

Nguyen — who owns Domu, along with several other restaurants — said he always had a love of cooking, but his parents actively discouraged him from working in restaurants.

“Honestly, they hated it,” he said. “They were like, ‘You got to be a doctor, you got to be a pharmacist, you got to be a lawyer, you got to have a high paying salary. I understood where they were coming from. My parents came over in the ‘70s, on a boat, by chance and floated to the Philippines and were saved and brought over to America. So they were during that wartime. Communists took over (Vietnam). It was really tough for them and so I think they just wanted a better life and I understand that part.”

Nguyen would work for the Bento Group from 2007 to 2016 when he first opened Domu at Orlando’s East End Market.

“I was opening the restaurants for (Bento) around the state and so I understood the project management side, the construction side, food costs, and all that — running the business side as well. So that’s super important, not just to know how to cook, but also how to run a business,” he said.

Nguyen describes Domu as a “neighborhood ramen shop.”

“You’re going to walk in and you’re going to hear hip-hop music on. It’s non-traditional,” he said.

He added that Domu has a lot of rules set for itself, such as no reservations and no take-out.

It’s because we want to be able to manage the room, but we’re looking at it as a standpoint of being able to take care of the customers and not overwhelming ourselves and making sure the team can keep up,” he said.

Domu has proven successful. The restaurant has expanded to three locations and was recently recognized by Michelin with a Bib Gourmand award, which honors high-quality food at reasonable prices.

Beyond Domu’s success, Nguyen has also opened two new concepts in Orlando’s Mills 50 neighborhood — Tori Tori, a cocktail bar serving Japanese-style bar snacks, and Edoboy, a standing sushi bar.

On the latest episode of Florida Foodie, Nguyen talks about balancing multiple restaurants with his family life. He also shares what it was like keeping his businesses alive during the pandemic and how it felt to be recognized by Michelin.

Please follow our Florida Foodie hosts on social media. You can find Candace Campos on Twitter and Facebook. Lisa Bell is also on Facebook and Twitter and you can check out her children’s book, “Norman the Watchful Gnome.”

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When Mike Daquino moved to Florida from New York, he did not plan on running a restaurant.

“No, not at all,” Daquino said.

He had previously worked with Brother Jimmy’s BBQ for 15 years in New York City, where the chain started in 1989. Daquino was a New York native and had lived there most of his life, but his family was looking for a change of pace in 2019.

“So my family and I moved down (to Florida) to work for what was a franchise company that was opening a few quick service locations (of Brother Jimmy’s BBQ) and one full service at point Orlando,” he said. “Then when the world shut down (due to the pandemic), that company ran out of funding, which was OK. Brother Jimmy’s got me to Florida and got us out of New York, which was what we wanted to do.”

Daquino then shifted gears, moving into real estate.

“I got into the real estate market right away. I still currently work for Douglas Elliman real estate,” he said. ”That was awesome. It was something new, something challenging. I used all my skills from running a restaurant. Business, at the end of the day, is people — talking to people, it’s dealing with people, it’s filling a void that someone needs help with. It’s just being a good person — to be able to help people get from point A to point B.”

Daquino was enjoying his new role but said he felt pulled back toward the restaurant industry.

“A restaurant is just so much more intentional serving,” he said. “You serve someone a plate of food, and they instantly eat it and are gratified and love it. It’s just such a nice feeling.”

Daquino happened to find himself at a traffic light near ICON Park. At the time, Jimmy Goldman, the owner of Brother Jimmy’s, was in the process of opening a new location at the tourist attraction. The chain saw a big contraction during the pandemic and was forced to shut down all of its New York locations, leaving only one Brother Jimmy’s in Maryland.

Daquino said Goldman, who he had known from his previous work with the company, had decided to pull out of his plans for an ICON Park location.

“So I said ‘You know what, I’ve become pretty good friends with Chris (Jaskiewicz), who’s the president of icon Park, let’s just go have a conversation with Chris and see if maybe there’s something that we can work out and we can see if we can still get the store open,” Daquino said.

Daquino and Jaskiewicz talked through what had gone wrong with the deal between ICON Park and Goldman and what it would take to get the restaurant back on track.

“So he said, ‘Alright, write me a proposal, put me together some logistics and show me you can do the funding and show me you can get it done. If you can do that, we’ll do it,’” Daquino said.

He managed to bring it all together, even traveling back to New York to gather up all of the furniture and decor from the now-shuttered restaurants there, shipping it all back to Orlando.

After three months of work, the new Brother Jimmy’s location opened on Aug. 12.

In the latest episode of Florida Foodie, Daquino talks about how he first became involved with Brother Jimmy’s and how he met his wife while working in one of the restaurants. He also talks about some of the menu highlights and what guests can expect when they stop in for a meal.

Please follow our Florida Foodie hosts on social media. You can find Candace Campos on Twitter and Facebook. Lisa Bell is also on Facebook and Twitter and you can check out her children’s book, “Norman the Watchful Gnome.”

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Jae Lee and Jason Rom spend their days as software engineers, but in their downtime, they have two passions: jiu-jitsu and making and selling hot sauces and chili oils.

The pair run Tapped Sauces out of their homes in Satellite Beach. The name comes from jiu-jitsu, where the goal is to get your opponent to submit or tap out.

“We wanted people to get tapped out,” Lee said. Not on the spice, but on the flavor.”

The jiu-jitsu team also comes into the naming of the individual sauces.

“So we got bow and arrow, which is a kind of choke, d’arce is a kind of choke, kimura is an arm lock, armbar is another arm lock, too,” Rom said.

The pair met at Accent Technologies, the software company where they work in Melbourne.

“One day, (Rom) wanted to go to the gym, and he was gonna go with someone else and his buddy at the time canceled,” Lee said. “So I was like, ‘Oh, I’ll take you,’ because I loved working out and he ended up going with me. Then we started hanging out a lot and we hung out a couple of times before, but like when you go to the gym with someone, you really get to know them.”

The pair started hanging out more often, having cookouts after sessions at the gym. Lee had already been making hot sauces for some time on his own, and started sharing them with Rom.

“We made this dish called mapo tofu which is a Chinese Sichuan dish — it’s like tofu with some protein and it requires Sichuan pepper oil,” Lee said. “So I was like, ‘Jason, can you like pick that up from the Asian grocery store?’ Because you can’t really find that at Publix? So he’s like, ‘No, I’m gonna make it.’

“COVID got me to cook,” Rom said. “I was wanting to try different things and one of the things that I wanted to try was chili oil.”

The experiment was a success, but the duo decided to refine the product. After sharing it with friends and seeing their reactions, the pair decided to take their project and turn it into a business.

“It’s nothing like (our friends have) tried before,” Rom said. “So that convinced me to actually join a business with (Lee.)”

Currently, Rom and Lee have two hot sauces and two chili oils in their line-up, all of which can be found in their online shop.

“This was something that we could do and design and have fun with it,” Lee said.

“For me, I just fell in love with the process of like, starting my own business,” Rom said.

The pair are hoping to grow Tapped further.

“We’re trying to figure out different paths in order to grow this thing because we want this to be like a household Asian item,” Lee said.

“We want to turn this more into like a lifestyle or like a food brand, almost, expanding to different kinds of products — like energy drinks or healthy snacks, things like that.” Rom said.

On the latest episode of Florida Foodie, Rom and Lee talk about what goes into making their chili oils and sauces. They also talk more about their love of jiu-jitsu and what their families think about their sauces.

Please follow our Florida Foodie hosts on social media. You can find Candace Campos on Twitter and Facebook. Lisa Bell is also on Facebook and Twitter and you can check out her children’s book, “Norman the Watchful Gnome.”

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Carling Ponder, the owner of Rollin’ Dough and The Knot, always has her hands full.

“It’s a nonstop job, but honestly, I couldn’t ask for a better thing,” Ponder said.

With her husband, Ponder runs three food trucks, along with monthly pop-ups at the University of Central Florida and she is getting ready to open a brick-and-mortar shop in New Smyrna Beach, all while wrangling two children.

“We started Rollin’ Dough and it’s just been nonstop ever since,” Ponder said. “It’s almost been four years.”

The pair actually met while working in food service.

“(My husband has) been in the restaurant business, basically, his whole life. His family in Puerto Rico runs a whole bunch of pizza places,” Ponder said. “And then when we met, we worked at a restaurant and we kind of both decided, ‘You know, we could probably do this better on our own.’”

Rollin’ Dough serves up wood-fired pizza along with oversized garlic knots, which are also used to make sliders. The pair opted for food truck because of the lower cost.

“It also gave us an opportunity to find out where we did better. We got to do so many different events, meet so many different people,” she said.

The couple originally planned to run their truck as a side hustle part-time, but their early success snowballed.

“I think it maybe only took us like one or two months to realize, ‘Hey, like, we could really do this.’ And so it didn’t take us long to just be like, ‘Alright, let’s go,’” Ponder said.

Ponder eventually opened The Knot as a second food truck, selling garlic knots and knot sliders exclusively. The success of that truck led her to open another one, also called The Knot. Now, Ponder is looking to open her first brick-and-mortar location.

“It’s definitely exciting and especially now because we’re kind of moving forward,” she said. “We’ve been working at this almost a year.”

Ponder said the restaurant will be off of Canal Street in New Smyrna Beach and will feature a pet-friendly outdoor patio. She said they hope to have the restaurant open by the end of the year.

On top of everything, Ponder is now running a monthly pop-up event at UCF.

“It’s for a whole week. We’re inside the Student Union. It really came out of nowhere,” she said. “So just another thing to add to our plate, but it’s great.”

On the latest episode of Florida Foodie, Ponder talks about growing her business. She also shares how she and her husband are able to juggle family life with their demanding schedule.

Please follow our Florida Foodie hosts on social media. You can find Candace Campos on Twitter and Facebook. Lisa Bell is also on Facebook and Twitter and you can check out her children’s book, “Norman the Watchful Gnome.”

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Florida Foodie has been running since May 2019, sharing thoughtful conversations about the food we eat and how it affects our lives.

Over the course of 78 episodes, hosts Candace Campos and Lisa Bell have spoken with some of the state’s premier chefs, small business owners, activists and CEOs who work daily to feed Floridians.

On the latest episode of Florida Foodie, hosts Candace and Lisa take a look back at some of their favorite interviews from the past year.

Please follow our Florida Foodie hosts on social media. You can find Candace Campos on Twitter and Facebook. Lisa Bell is also on Facebook and Twitter and you can check out her children’s book, “Norman the Watchful Gnome.”

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices