So glad I grew up in a farm where we learned to eat any kind of food put on the table by my Mom. To this day, I still don’t have to eat “fine dining food” to enjoy a good meal.

I'm with you on that. Up north we belonged to a country club and the food was terrible. I often told the club manager to get rid of the chef and hire a cook so you can offer good old fashioned homemade meals. They didn't fire the chef but he was having homemade old fashioned meals offered once a week and it was a hit.

The problem with restaurants in The Villages is that MOST of them get the same stuff from the same distributors, and have the same menus with minor variations. There are a few "good" restaurants, but they're also expensive and not some place the average retiree would be able to afford on their monthly dine-out rotation. I really love Coastal del Mar. I'd really love to be able to afford to eat there more often than once every 4 months.

Pizza - nope. I'm going crap, because there is nothing good on the east side of the Villages. There's Gio's on 301 but it's not a take-out option when it's cold by the time I can get it home and why would I want to drive 30 minutes to get pizza anyway? Where I come from there was one in walking distance, no matter which town or part of town I lived in. And most of them were excellent.

There's very limited diversity. Zero Indian food. Zero Syrian or Middle-eastern food. Even the middle-eastern food truck that shows up at town square events serves their falafel sandwiches on GREEK pita, which isn't anything like syrian pita. And no one serves anything with tahini. There exists no decent meatball sub in The Villages. Sure, maybe you can get them outside the bubble but there are none within it. There is no GOOD lasagna in The Villages. Carrabbas overcooks their noodles, and Takis "lasagna" is actually pastitsio, not lasagna. Thankfully my sister in law taught me her recipe so we can have GOOD lasagna when I make a pan every 6-8 weeks. But it'd be really nice to have someone else do the dishes for a change when we're in the mood for lasagna.

The Chinese take-outs are abysmal, Koyame is the only chinese restaurant I would buy from and even they're only "decent." Their egg rolls are blech and they don't add strips of pork to their wonton soup like they should.

But hey you can get a $15 cheese burger or $28 strip steak or $25 chicken alfredo at any of 4000 restaurants that get their products from Sysco. And the same undercooked broccoli with no seasoning.

Stavros has excellent pizza, it just happens to be outside the bubble but well worth getting in the car and taking the 15 min drive.

We’re going to give Roberto’s a try.

Restaurants in TV are mediocre at best.
 

We moved to TV 3 months ago. We ate at the many restaurants in Brownwood and Sawgrass only because we had a lot of construction going on, oncluding a new kitchen so we were forced most of the time to eat out.
The commercial restaurants here are nothing to write home about as the quality of food they serve is good, but not exceptional. The Chop House was tops of all the places here for sure. Their service and ambience is fantastic, but as long as residents here in the Villages continue to patronize these below average and expensive restaurants nothing will change. There is not one Farm to Table establishment here which would serve top quality food, why is that? We are very happy living here but the restaurants leave a lot to be desired. The only good thing is that the beer is very cold and you get to meet some real nice people.

Well then thank God we moved here for golf and active lifestyle.

We are new to The Villages, but we have eaten out allot, and that is part of the reason we moved here. So far I'll state that the restaurants in TV are designed to service our retirement communities. While there are a couple restaurants, who appeal to the Wagyu A5 in butter sauce millionaires', most appeal to the average retired citizen like us, who are looking for a good meal at a fair price.

The farmers market on rolling acres rd {tuesdays-9-2} has a booth that bakes & sells the most delicious sour-dough bread..{all flavors}
As far as chinese food- takeout only-China Maxx-in the lady lake area{excellent/fresh food}

Tell them to go to Gio's on 301 just north of 466. Best pizza around. None of the chains in TV are any good, but the Sulieman and FMK restaurants are excellent. Bluefin, Havana, Lopez, Harvest, Chop House to name a few.

I see a lot of "food snobs" in this thread...

It’s just OPINION based on their criteria. If you want fine dining and that is your thing then move to a place like Naples or West Palm or Miami

Don't disagree, but realistically, I don't think it's much different than the typical 125k community anywhere. We lived in a small (139K) community about 30 miles from Chicago, definitely had to go to the city for the options you mentioned, great duck in China Town, Wagyu beef, etc. I do think people who live IN the city move here expecting all the options of the city, Greek town, China Town, Little Italy, etc. The Villages originally was the retirement mecca of the midwest, working class, small to medium town people. Winter park, not far, offers some decent options.

Preaching to the choir here, every word you wrote is not an exaggeration. People who travel abroad really pick up on that quickly (that we are actually being slowly fed food designed to cause chronic illness, increase diabetes and high blood pressure. Dyes in everything, to make peas green ? To color soda that needs no coloring, it's already flavored, the dye color adds nothing. Most people are not even aware that just a morning bowl of dry cereal can take up most of the day's sodium intake and who really eats 1/2 or 1/3 a cup of dry cereal. Have you ever looked up the ingredients in most prepared salad dressing ? Shocking when you look of those strange words you can't pronounce !

I do like their soup and salad combo, but the last TWO times the soup is even MORE salty than it's always been, I just could not eat it any more, like the soups of Panera, so many drown out the taste with salt, no balance of spices.

In my opinion, the best meal in the Villages is a turkey, cheddar, and hummus sandwich on multigrain bread along with a cold beer from the cooler on my golf cart while playing 18 holes. What more could I need or want?