Yellow Dog Eats — Restaurant in Ocoee

The food was pretty solid but when you combine the prices with the lack of service, I can't say I want to return. TLDR: If they offered full table service or if they improved their default side dishes or made it easy to upgrade side dishes, I would give this place 4 or 5 stars.

Our family ordered: Florida Cracker sandwich - This giant sandwich is sketchily served on a cold martins potato roll but it does hold up and is good. This is an overpriced $15 pork sandwich and comes with a bag of chips. Pugnacious Beef sandwich - This is $13 and comes with rinkydink bag of chips . It really reminded me of the old school philly cheese steaks from arbys but in a good way. Kids pulled pork - Kid enjoyed the sandwich, not the chips. Kids grilled cheese - Seemed ok I guess. Small side of caprese salad - Adults liked this. Some of the tomatoes were giant, unripe and/or uncut.

All of the food items were good and high quality but at the cost of $55 without ordering drinks for two adult meals and two kids meals, the prices suck. Honestly if the sandwiches came with actual sides the prices wouldnt suck so bad. But they don't they come with chips, a little lame bag of kettle chips. Or cole slaw, like people want to sit around eating cabbage and mayonaise. They have other higher quality side items but at the end of the day you have to pay an extra $6-9 for premium sides that are worth eating. Let me get a side salad easily as an upgrade.

Then you've got the service and tipping culture. The girl working up front was super busy laughing with her coworker and not really dialoging with customers or providing any sort of customer service. You pay up front and they rotate that tipping screen at you. The default tip is 20-25% For like WHAT?! Y They don't have servers here, so you order up front and then walk back with a buzzer. Food is ready fast (since they are just assembling sandwiches and throwing a bag of chips down). Get out of here with the default 25% tip on the credit card checkout.... You're not serving me the food, I have to get all the silverware, no ones checking in on us. They do bus tables. Set your default tip to 10% or even better make it more optional because you're making your customer do all the work. I tapped the custom tip button and hit them with the flat $5 and still felt like that was too much.

The kettle chips are offensive and the tipping culture is offensive. This place having a 4.8 is insane. People are...

I was at Disney one day just piddling around, and I got done early, and I was hungry. I wasn't about to eat any subpar, overpriced, theme park food. I was like, I'm already all the way in West Orlando, where could I go? And it hit me, I've been in Orlando for seven years now, and I have never been to the legendary Yellow Dog Eats.

So I head north towards Windermere and stop in for lunch. One of the best decisions I've ever made in my life. The atmosphere is amazing. It's like a combination of a dive bar and an old antique store. Pictures of dogs everywhere. Beautiful patio to eat on. Two whole bars, one inside and one outside. Really nice place.

The decision on what to eat was easy. I had the 1/2 Rack of Baby Back Ribs with "Gold" Sauce "Killer Rack Dawg!" (All served with kettle-cooked chips and homemade slaw). A-mazing. The tip of it was a little crunchy, but that's what the sauce is for. The rest of it was fall off the bone perfectly with that perfectly tangy Carolina Gold sauce.

Don't fall for it, though. Those kettle-cooked chips are a bag of potato chips. That was disappointing, but what can you do.

I also got to try the Florida Cracker (Our tender pulled pork topped with tangy coleslaw, gouda cheese, pecan-smoked bacon, spicy pickles, fried onions and topped with Fish’s Gold BBQ sauce, served on thick fun-fluffy bread. This one makes you want to slap your Grandma!).

This was also a marvel. That pork was buried under toppings, but it was still the star of the show. It had a pungent smoke flavor, which was complimented by the also kind-of-smoky gouda and the smoked bacon. All that smoke clashes nicely with the spicy pickles and the tangy sauce. It's just a good sandwich. Get it.

I also has some other odds and ends.

I had a delicious salted caramel chocolate brownie that was ooey gooey heaven.

I had a draft kombucha that was excellent. Very flavorful and pro-bioticy. Nice.

And I had a random salad that they homemake. It was like little tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, and vinegar. It was fresh and a good balance to the heavy BBQ that this place focuses on.

Overall, this place is a local legend and deserves five stars. If I lived anywhere near this place, I would be here all the time, and I would be...

Plenty of parking in the back of the building.

Cool, casual atmosphere and vibe. Dogs are allowed in the dining area, but it won't work if your dog doesn't get along with other dogs or people as it makes for a disruptive and unsafe environment. Most of the pets when I was there were friendly.

You order at the counter and sit anywhere. Only the small bar area and room where you place your order has a.c. That area also has a few seats/tables to eat at. Lots of dog pics on the wall - plenty to look at. The main large dining area has a sufficient amount of fans and is good enough on a not too humid day.

The menu is 2 pages with interesting or unique cute names. I had the rufus - pulled pork sandwich with brie, cherry pepper rings, raspberry melba and bbq sauce ($15). It was super messy with loads of raspberry and bbq sauce which was overkill as my bun was soaked in it as well. I like a pulled pork that can stand on its own flavor, but this was an overly sweet sandwich with the cherry pepper rings and brie cheese topped only on one side and not evenly placed so it would cut through the sweetness throughout. My sister had the chicken nachos ($16), also loaded with the same bbq sauce making all the nachos soggy and messy. The cubed chicken itself was bland and overcooked as they were on the tough, almost rubbery side. I would not serve that chicken to my guests. They need to cut back on the loads of bbq sauce that just drown out everything maybe to mask the bland meat. The bbq sauce should not be soaked throughout the bottom of the bun with loads more of it all throughout.

The two stars goes to the cool ambiance and dog friendly dining area and the trivia night Tuesday which we just happened upon. Charlie Bowie, the trivia MC was pleasantly inviting to all the patrons, had a good variety of trivia questions and worth coming back for a couple of beers on Tuesday evenings but probably not for the food. Did we just get a...