Being from the Midwest, one thing that I really love is good diner food.  When I went out on the road with James a couple of years ago, we ate at a lot of diners all over the country, and I can tell you that I thought very few were good.  I was really hoping to find a good diner to frequent in Florida and Darrell’s Dog Gone Good Diner did NOT disappoint! 

Darrell’s actually is a diner chain with several locations including Ocala, Silver Springs, and Bushnell to name some and we visited the Bushnell location. 

The diner was clean and practicing socially distancing guidelines which we appreciate so much! It was also decorated with lots of dog photos and a framed newspaper clipping from when the diner first expanded.

James ordered the huge fish sandwich with potato salad and I ordered a blackened chicken quesadilla with a side of creamy cucumber salad. We both enjoyed our dishes!  James’ fish sandwich was actually quite a bit better than one we recently got from a popular and more expensive restaurant and he cleaned out his whole bowl of potato salad which is definitely a good sign because we both can be rather picky about that particular side dish.

My blackened chicken quesadilla was also really good.  The chicken inside was delicious and it had a very liberal amount of cheese.  Maybe here in the south they use more cheese on things than they do in the Midwest because I am finding alot of my dishes to be too cheesy, but I don’t like a lot of cheese and James thought it had the perfect amount.  We are totally one of those couples who share our dishes so I can also testify to how good his food is as well as mine.  The creamy cucumber salad with onions was also really good and much more refreshing than just ordering french fries.

We will definitely be back to try out more of the food and me personally as a breakfast lover can’t wait to try some of their breakfast. 

We also took a little trip to The Villages recently to get Leia (our mini poodle) a haircut at their Petsmart location and while waiting we ran a few errands in Ocala and then came back to try a Vietnamese place we noticed after we dropped her off.  We are both fairly new to Vietnamese cuisine.  The options in our area in Missouri were pretty limited and the one restaurant that we had tried in Joplin, Missouri refused to cook my egg over hard (I just can’t do runny eggs) so we never dined there again and were looking forward to trying out a new and better place.

We had an amazing experience at Pho Sai Gon.  They don’t have a web page or Facebook page for me to tag them so you can see more about them, but if you just Google ‘Pho Sai Gon The Villages’ you can find address, phone number, and customer photos of the menu.

The restaurant itself was very clean, and again was another wonderful establishment respecting social distancing guidelines. Our server was one of the more helpful servers we have ever had.  We explained to him that we didn’t know much about this type of cuisine and he explained so much to us, including giving us recommendations on things we said we liked. 

We started off with the fried egg rolls which were quite possibly the best egg rolls I have ever had.  Super crispy and delicious and served with a really tasty dipping sauce.  For my entree I ordered the Mi Xao Mem (a shrimp and noodle dish) and James had Pho Dac Biet which had various types of meat in it.

My dish…was amazing.  I loved everything.  The noodles, the sauce, the mushrooms, the shrimp, the veggies.  The veggies were actually pretty awesome and fresh.  No canned mushrooms in this dish!  I’m actually feeling hungry right now just thinking about it.

James liked his pho, I didn’t care for it.  All I could taste was fennel which I don’t like, but he does.  I will say that it was really hearty and had a good amount of meat in it as well as noodles and veggies and again, super fresh and tasty vegetables.  If I could eat fennel without thinking of black licorice, I might have enjoyed it more.  Definitely not anything wrong with the dish, just my personal preference didn’t match with the recipe.

I do want to add that they have a vegan and vegetarian menu so anybody can eat here.  I always like to see vegan options at places even though I myself am not one.

There is just so much good food here in Florida, it is hard to decide which places to try next.  If you know of a place we should try, make sure to let me know either in the comment section of any of my blogs or you contact me directly.

Next blog won’t be food related so much as dog friendly related but an amazing sandwich will make an appearance!

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