New Eats

We started our tour of Micanopy with lunch at the famous Pearl Country Store & Barbecue. We ordered the ribs and beef brisket with BBQ beans, green beans, veggie & cheese bake, and garlic toast. The brisket and sides (and the Southern sweet and Carolina sweet BBQ sauces) were pretty yummy, but the ribs were fantastic, probably one of the best we've ever had! Definitely worth a return visit.

While in the area, we also tried the Sunday brunch buffet at Cafe C. Mom and I are not big on breakfast food, unlike M, but we enjoyed it because it had hot lunch food, too. It starts with sausage, bacon, pancakes, muffins, Belgian waffles (& fried chicken), grits, biscuits & gravy, cinnamon rolls, blintzes, and made-to-order omelettes; then waldorff chicken salad, pad thai pasta salad, bow-tie pasta salad, and salmon (lox); even stuffing, sweet potato, grilled veggies, and beef pot roast; and fresh fruit, apple cobbler, and coffee cake for dessert; along with cucumber-lemon water, blueberry tea, sweet & unsweetened tea, coffee, mimosa, and sangria! Yeah, it's a lot! Much more than we were expecting. I didn't even order a custom omelette (next time), but I liked almost all the food I tried. There was also a live band duo singing & playing Southern blues/folk music (kinda too loud but a good performance). The brunch is a little too pricey (and too breakfasty) for us, so it wouldn't be a regular thing, but I'd definitely go back again. :D

Finally, we tried Gator Suyaki for the first time, although we've passed it for years. The name and design make it seem like a dubiously faux-Asian/fusion place, and good Chinese has been hard to find around there, but Gator Suyaki was a pleasant surprise. The spicy Korean chicken was tasty like Korean BBQ chicken and not too spicy, while the stir-fry beef udon dish was really quite yummy. Even Mom was impressed with the oyster hot pot. The only points-off part was that the waitress told us that they had run out of white rice and asked if brown rice was alright as an alternative. We didn't mind, and the brown rice was well-cooked, but the idea of an Asian restaurant running out of white rice is as ridiculous as the New Orleans restaurant running out of red beans & rice and the Italian buffet running out of meatballs. ;P Turns out, they had not totally run out of white rice, just temporarily while they waited for the new batch to finish cooking. The waitress offered white rice when it was done, but we were already halfway through our dinner, so no point. It's a very minor misstep on a pretty busy night, so Gator Suyaki still gets our approval.