Orlando fights for a seat at food destination table
Restaurant critics, chefs and diners say Orlando deserves more recognition as a top restaurant city, if visitors would go beyond typical theme park fare to enjoy the broader flavors in the metro area.
Orlando rarely makes lists of the nation’s best food cities and an Orlando-area chef has also never won one of the most coveted national recognitions, a James Beard Award for best chef in the region. A decade after a dining renaissance took hold in Orlando, the area’s restaurant community is still fighting for the respect and notoriety of the food world.
Restaurant rating service Zagat left Orlando off its list of the 30 most interesting food cities in the United States for 2017, in favor of regional rivals Miami and Atlanta, and smaller cities such as Portland, Maine; and Birmingham, Ala. U.S. News and World Report, Travel and Leisure and nearly every other prestigious ranking of food destinations last year also ignored Or-
“Like the rest of the country, the food community probably closely associates Orlando with Disney World.” Food editor Dan Myers
lando.
“Orlando is simply not on the bucket list of sophisticated writers and foodies,” said Chris Sherman, restaurant editor for Florida Trend magazine. “They wrongly write off Florida as lazy and simple, and Orlando as a particularly commercial and suburbanized corner of it.”
One local success story, James Petrakis of Winter Park’s Ravenous Pig, said his award-winning Winter Park eatery almost never happened because he wasn’t sure local customers would embrace a chef-driven restaurant.
“We were close to moving back to New York, but being from here we thought we had to give it a shot,” he said. “And to their credit the customers wanted it; they were really craving innovation and change to catch up with the times.”
Ravenous Pig became a local favorite when it opened in 2007 with a seasonal menu based on fresh ingredients. Favorites include shrimp and grits with chorizo oil and green tomato chutney, or lamb ribs with plum glaze.
The last decade has changed the Orlando region’s perception for young chefs, Petrakis said.
“People used to look at this place as somewhere your career would go to die,” he said. “We’ve got some young kids that came from New York and D.C., and they see a lot of opportunity in Orlando.”
With young chefs here, Petrakis said the Orlando area needs more attractive neighborhood restaurants, such as Kadence in Audubon Park, an ambitious nine-seat restaurant that opened in 2017. It charges up to $155 a seat, with limited meal times.
Kadence’s three-chef team serves a unique menu every day, bringing in raw fish fresh from Japan and presenting meals of up to 18 courses.
“It says a lot about our scene that people have embraced that restaurant,” Petrakis said. “They are cooking from the heart while blaring Jay-Z and Beastie Boys. It’s the kind of thing you would expect in New York or Chicago, and that’s the kind of thing Orlando needs.”
Orlando certainly has the mass to be recognized as a top food destination, with 11,000 restaurants, 117,000 food industry employees and headquarters for Olive Garden, Red Lobster and Ruth’s Chris Steak Houses. WalletHub has called Orlando a top restaurant city, but its rankings give more weight to quantity and affordability than critical acclaim.
Corin Plucinski moved to east Orlando in 2016 from Milwaukee and said she has been impressed with the diversity in the area, including high-end restaurants, pizza joints and ethnic food.
“I do think it’s a great food city,” she said. “I think any city that has lots of cultural options is good.”
Even so, many point out that the number of restaurants and notable chain headquarters don’t make a food destination.
“Like the rest of the country, the food community probably closely associates Orlando with Disney World,” said Dan Myers, food editor for New York City-based website The Daily Meal. That perception also ignores the best restaurants at Disney World, such as Victoria & Albert’s or Morimoto Asia.
Denver, Detroit and Washington, D.C., have emerged as some of the nation’s top food cities by drawing — and embracing — innovative chefs, Myers said.
“I think it’s the chefs who have really made those cities home and really celebrating local food, local ingredients,” he said.
Orlando restaurant critic Scott Joseph said Orlando has many notable chefs, from Scott Hunnel at AAA Diamond-rated restaurant Victoria and Albert’s to Brandon McGlamery, who opened his third restaurant, Luke’s, in Maitland in 2017. Still, many of the country’s top restaurant writers ignore Central Florida, or at least the parts not inside theme parks, he said.
“The thing that galls me is they stay on International Drive and think that’s Orlando, because they walk out of the hotel room and see Olive Garden and Bubba Gump,” Joseph said. “You see the same restaurants if you stay in Times Square, but you don’t define New York by those places.”