The Strand flies under the radar with food that’s way over the top
“Toad’s Place!” I say when Alda Rees, co-owner of The Strand, tells me that she and her husband, Joseph, are from New Haven, Connecticut. She laughs.
“It’s still open,” she says of the venerable rock club where Billy Joel recorded “Los Angelenos” for “Songs in the Attic,” where U2 played its eighth ever U.S. tour date, where I saw the best Fishbone show of my life.
I had the best tiramisu of my life at The Strand. And while they’ve been feeding Mills 50 residents since only 2014 (Toad’s has been around since 1976), I am thrilled that they’re still open, too.
The dessert on my last visit came recommended by my server and tore me away from the pistachio cake toward which I was leaning. That one rotates in and out, Rees told me. I felt better.
There was just something about the way he stressed the tiramisu as a favorite. I believed him. Because I’ve been back to The Strand a few times since Magical Dining Month, where a truly enchanting fried mushroom appetizer bewitched my friend and me with honey, dashi aioli and togarashi amid the crispiest, most delicate fungi, and each time — the service dazzled.
The challenge of the evening: leaving over a couple of bites of that tiramisu, light as a Wondermade marshmallow in space and laced with orange-curd perfection (“it’s actually made with tangerine juice,” confesses Rees, the restaurant’s not-at-all-classically-trained pastry chef ). My companion dispatched of his half sans guilt. We both raved.
2021 was not my first rodeo with The Strand.
I had full intent in 2019 — after announcing my plans to write up both new finds and old favorites in this new post — to feature it in one of my early columns. Alas, the life of a reporter is fraught with news detours. Each time I made lunch plans to hit them up, something threw up a roadblock.
The pandemic has thrown up a permanent one.
The Strand is now dinner-only, a move that Rees says has been a success since going through their version of the takeout-only, 50% capacity, full-house evolution that COVID necessitated.
“My husband and I are still the primary people outside a small, very dedicated staff — we’re there 12 hours a day … and we’re not in our 30s or 40s anymore. The pandemic has made everyone question the balance in their lives. How much do we have to work? How many hours? Maybe 12 is enough.”
More than enough for tastes that tantalize, like the classic, juicy buttermilk chicken longtime fans appreciate. And that jalapeño-laden Strand burger. And a host of entrees and specials that in their sleek, new nights-only mode have blossomed on creative wings only a better worklife balance can beget.
Take a recent appetizer — grilled green stem cauliflower from Everoak Farms with overlapping flavors, Italian and Japanese. Agrodolce and basil, togarashi and bonito flake, all at once toothy, comforting and flavor-explosive.
Yes, I swear it was cauliflower.
Joseph Rees is not classically trained. He cut his teeth in his father-in-law’s restaurants — The Country House in Winter Garden (which endures, though Alda’s parents sold it many years ago) and LJ’s in Clermont.
“It was the ‘90s, and we were having our first recession,” she explains. Her father had suffered a heart attack. “So, we came to Florida to help my parents. I was skeptical — I knew what it took to run a restaurant — but we were young, and we love food and Joe really fell in love with it.”
Their first go-round as owners was Carlo’s, an Ocoee diner they named after her father they’ve since sold (to a guy named Carlo, go figure). But all the while, even with all the far-flung commutes, the Rees’ stayed in the same neighborhood they fell in love with when they arrived: Mills 50.
“When the spot that’s now The Strand became available, we figured we’d just do what we always wanted to do.”
They’re not precisely a sleeper hit — in fact they were overrun in the earliest days, “totally unprepared,” Rees laughs. “We didn’t even have the proper equipment … but we knew we didn’t want to simply open boxes and cook what was in the box.”
With dedication to local — harder she says these days, the pandemic has taken a toll on both supply chain and suppliers themselves — and an easy, nostalgic vibe she says evokes her parents’ living room in the ‘60s and ‘70s, The Strand has built a following. A loyal one.
It’s not uncommon, when I ask local chefs where they go on a night off, that The Strand comes up.
I think it’s as much for the friendly, knowledgeable service as it is the warm pretzel with pimento cheese or Rees’ orange olive oil cake simply adorned with a little Mascarpone whipped cream and some fruit or the eclectic list of all-natural wines.
It’s as much because on my last date night visit — reminiscent, as they always are, of cozy-warm neighborhood haunts back in Brooklyn — there was a dude at the bar with a beer in a T-shirt and shorts who didn’t at all spoil the vibe. In fact, he could have been a Yalie at some brewpub in New Haven. With flipflops instead of boat shoes.
“We’re sort of under the radar,” says Rees. “We’re not glitzy. We’re not for everyone.”
I can’t imagine who those people are, I tell her, but secretly I’m glad.
Everyone would be too many. And this place is too special.
If you go: 807 N. Mills Ave. in Orlando, 407-9207744; strandorlando.com
Want to reach out? Find me on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram @amydroo or on the OSFoodie Instagram account @orlando.foodie. Email: amthompson@ orlandosentinel.com. For more fun, join the Let’s Eat, Orlando Facebook group or follow @fun.things.orlando on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.