(Warning - next sentence is goo-filled) I am madly, insanely, ridiculously in love with my husband. He is a successful research and development chef for a very prominent restaurant company. He is also a sommelier, so we eat and drink very well. He has to travel fairly often to "do research" (eat a ridiculous amount of delicious food and wine) or to test his recipes. Recently, he has been testing food and traveling quite a bit. Last week he was in Las Vegas testing (and of course eating at beautiful restaurants like Bouchon) and he returned home on Friday. We, of course, decided to go out to dinner that night to celebrate our reunion!
We decided to try out Funky Monkey Wine Company for the first time. They have a very eccentric and eclectic menu, it's close to our house, oh and we happened to have a gift certificate to burn. From the outside, Funky Monkey doesn't look like much. Once you're inside...it still doesn't exactly look like much. But, the food was delicious!
We started off with drinks of course. I had a glass of prosecco and my husband (from here on out he will be known as J) had one of the most tasty beers I think I have ever had the pleasure of sipping. It was complex and layered and flavorful...and I cannot for the life of me remember the name of it (which must mean that I had a good time). I'll find out and include that in a later post. It was brilliant. I even ordered a glass of it, which I almost never do. If you know me you know that I will always, always, always choose a light cocktail, champagne, or wine over beer. It was that good. Might I add that we were at a restaurant with WINE COMPANY in the name?
The menu at Funky Monkey is all over the place. They have everything from truffle fries to a half duck to hummus to a full sushi menu. We didn't know whether to get a bunch of small plates, go with an appetizer and some of the (very delicious sounding) entrees, or just get a bunch of sushi.
We ended up deciding to go in the sushi direction...which is a direction I am always happy to go in. J loves cooking mostly anything, but he loathes making sushi at home. He does whip it up on very special occasions (like the night he proposed to me), but ultimately if we want sushi...we go out. It's better for everyone that way - I get my sushi, a non-whiny husband, and he gets to eat his weight in sushi which always makes him very happy.
We started out with the "Mini Monkey Purses," which are basically a crab wonton. They came with a sweet chili dipping sauce on the side that I would most likely slather on anything I could get my hands on, but...I love sweet chili. My favorite roll that we ordered was the Funky Monkey...spicy Ahi tuna, avocado, cucumber, cream cheese, sesame seeds, and wasabi. It was rich from the cream cheese and avocado, but still light and fresh. The wasabi gave it just the right punch and spicy Ahi tuna is heaven sent to me. My least favorite, shockingly, was the Lobster roll. It consisted of Maine lobster, cucumber, avocado, and (way too much) lemon aioli & lemon zest. All I could taste was lemon...over the soy, over the wasabi, over the lobster...shame! The other rolls that we got were tasty, not quite as delicious or memorable as the Funky Monkey roll. Despite this, they were gone in record time...even with "sushi breaks" which we have had to implement in our sushi consuming.
Our conclusion was...Funky Monkey is really good! Next time we plan on ordering one sushi roll for an appetizer and trying some of their other cuisines. Our server was wonderful and very helpful as well. While it's not the best restaurant in Orlando (I am a Ravenous Pig and Luma girl), it is very good and we certainly will go back. The dessert menu looked very appealing, but we decided to be good and skip it. Until we had frozen yogurt in bed later.
Lobster Roll I Maine Lobster, avocado, lemon zest, cucumber, lemon aioli
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