By AMANDA FARINOS

Juan Cruz is an animated guy. Sit at the counter of his Stuart restaurant, the casual Aloha Cafe, and he will chat you up with all sorts of stories, keeping you company while you watch him cook.

Three years after finishing culinary school, Cruz was surprised by a letter from Hawaii, and learned he had a half-brother who’d been searching for Cruz for years. The families met in Hawaii, and the brothers became close friends.

That trip, and Cruz’s experiences with his long-lost brother, inspired him to open the cafe, a place where he serves breakfast and lunch dishes with influences from Hawaii and Kentucky, where Cruz was raised.

Here you can have biscuits and gravy or fried rice for breakfast, or experience something of a Southern/island fusion with the Loko Moko ($7): a mound of rice and hamburger patties topped with fried eggs and sausage gravy.

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By AMANDA FARINOS

A friend of mine recently took a trip to Ireland. Enamored with the food, upon her return she began trying out Irish recipes and ended up making beef and Guinness stew for a dinner party in June.

We shared a laugh over this, but when I planned to visit the Town Crier Pub, I had a feeling I, too, was about to eat some unseasonably hearty food. Not so. Most old pub standards like shepherd’s pie weren’t even on the menu.

Town Crier can be classified as a gastropub, a term more recently used to describe not just a pub that includes a restaurant — but one that serves up dishes a foodie really can get excited about. Even the waitstaff was enthusiastic about the menu and beers on tap.

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