[tophcfa]

Originally Posted by OrangeBlossomBaby

The two FMK restaurants are definitely great additions, but they're also both very expensive. Remember this is the OLDER part of The Villages, and the entire other side of the road there is still primarily manufactured homes. That means more people on a budget. Coastal del Mar and the new Italian place are treats for us, but not anything we could do even once a month.

Margaritaville's property is being worked on inside, so I'm guessing something is already planned to go in there and in progress.

Blondies is just one of the Developers tiki huts with an actual bar and tables outside, it's not a restaurant at all, of any kind. If anything, you could consider it additional seating for the FMK restaurants since you can pay Ubereats a fee to bring the food from those two places across the street to your table (which seems really silly, why not save the delivery fee and just order your meal "to go," have one member of your party leave the table, walk across the street, and pick up the bag themselves).

Sumter has Panera, Starbucks, and Johnny Rockets for "inexpensive meal" options. Now, Spanish Springs has Panera. Amerikano's interior is like dining in a tomb, and outside is only good if you enjoy incredibly loud karaoke-style music. Gator's Dockside has some of the absolute worst service I've experienced in any restaurant, though their steak and cheese subs are pretty good - when you can get someone to take your order, someone else to make one for you, and someone else to bring it to you from their kitchen.

Spanish Springs really needs a mid-range restaurant other than Gator's. Without any competition, Gator's corners the market and their service can go downhill even more, and the food can even suffer, and people will still go since it's the only place in the area in that budget option.

Mostly agree. Although the Italian FMK place is no doubt good, if we’re going to drop the coin on a FMK joint it’s going to be the seafood place. Blondies does nothing for us and Costal Del Mar is a rare occasion treat. Gators dockside is lousy pub food with poor service. Americanos has decent food, but poor dinning atmosphere and way too much smoking sitting outside. Only get takeout from there. But SS also has Ay Jalisco, you can take the golf cart to the drive up at Chick-fill-A and get relatively healthy food (grilled nuggets and market salad), and Sakura has excellent takeout sushi. Lake Sumter also has RJ Gators, which isn’t anything special, but has delicious blackened fish with rice and beans and it’s nice sitting outside looking across the lake from Palmer. We wouldn’t eat at Johnny Rockets if the food was free, total garbage, and I didn’t even realize Starbucks had food (thought it was just overpriced Pacific Northwest designer coffee).