Business is booming
Orlando’s Mills 50 neighborhood adds new dining spots
Customers inside Jimmy and Johnny Tung’s new restaurant in Orlando’s Mills 50 neighborhood tell the brothers the space reminds them of being in New York City.
“You’re close to the cars. You’re close to this parallel parking,” Johnny Tung said. “The decor feels urban, it feels modern, but the food is extremely traditional [and] authentic.”
Large glass windows looking out on Colonial Drive reach down to the floor at Zaru, which soft opened in mid-September with a menu of Japanese udon noodles. There’s an open kitchen as well as a door inside the restaurant leading to the Tien Hung Market.
Mills 50, once known as Orlando’s “Little Vietnam” and “Little Saigon,” is booming. A diverse mix of more than a dozen businesses has opened in the neighborhood in the past year, according to Joanne Grant, executive director of the Mills 50 Main Street program.
There’s Filipino ice cream shop Sampaguita, which drew long lines on the sidewalk along Colonial after its January opening. Thomas Ward opened Pigzza in April on Mills Avenue, where his popular barbecue restaurant Pig Floyd’s is also located, with a menu he described at the time as “Italianish.”
Even a place that sells mead called Zymarium Meadery opened in the neighborhood over the summer.
And at the end of August, the longtime Mills Avenue home of Armstrong Lock &
“There’s a lot of pent-up demand for a corridor that rarely sees anything come available for purchase or lease. You’ve got a population base in this area that is strong financially.”
— Alex Bisbee, the commercial real estate broker who represented the seller of the Armstrong Lock & Security Products property
Security Products sold for $3.15 million, reportedly to become another restaurant.
“There’s a lot of pent-up demand for a corridor that rarely sees anything come available for purchase or lease,” said Alex Bisbee, the commercial real estate broker who represented the seller of the property.
“You’ve got a population base in this area that is strong financially and spending money, and because of that, sales in this corridor for the current businesses are doing well.”
The Armstrong Lock building sold to a company backed by the same people behind Central Florida’s Agave Azul Mexican restaurant chain, public records show. The buyer could not be immediately reached for comment by the Orlando Sentinel, but Orlando Weekly reports the plans are for a more chef focused, “live-fire” restaurant.
Beau Armstrong’s great-grandfather started Armstrong Lock in 1929, and it moved into the Mills Avenue store in the late 1970s. That was a couple of years before its current CEO, Beau Armstrong, was born.
“This building’s almost like a family member to me. It’s what I’ve known my entire life,” he said. “I felt like the Agave group kind of fit the mold for this area.”
The business, which must leave by the end of November, is looking for a new, larger space as close by as possible, Armstrong said. The current space is about 4,000 square feet, and the company is looking for at least 5,000 square feet because it wants to consolidate a Longwood warehouse and have all of its operations under one roof.
He added the growth in Mills 50 has pros and cons, saying parking has become a nightmare.
Bisbee, meanwhile, is now representing the seller of the VisionMax building at 818 E. Colonial. The property is being marketed as ideal for medical, restaurant, bar, professional office or retail uses. He said they’re asking for $3 million but are open to reviewing offers.
The Tung brothers, James Beard Award semifinalists and partners in numerous eateries in Orlando and Mills 50, also have plans for breathing new life into the market where Zaru recently opened.
Johnny Tung’s in-laws own Tien Hung Market, and the brothers plan to bring in more “micro restaurants” in a multi-year project.
They likely will have more of an open feeling within the market than Zaru, with Johnny Tung describing his idea as “less of the more traditional food halls that everyone are doing and a little more of a market that offers different food.”
The new concepts are investments in an area the brothers, who are of Taiwanese descent, used to visit as children growing up in Gainesville.
“We would drive an hour and a half down to Orlando so our parents could pick up groceries and fresh seafood,” Johnny Tung said. “We grew up in the restaurant business, so my parents actually came here to find products to bring back to sell in Gainesville.”
Their restaurant Zaru, meanwhile, is already serving up its Japanese udon noodles, which chef William Shen says are larger than most noodles and have a chewy texture.
“If you’ve never had real udon noodles, our Nikutama is always good,” Shen said. “It has [sliced beef ] protein. It has an egg. It’s a classic, even in Japan.”
Customers can order noodles like the Nikutama Udon for $18, and then add even more ingredients such as chicken tempura or shrimp tempura for $3 each or grated yam for $4.
Johnny Tung sees Mills 50 as a “great catapult” for restaurants in Orlando, pointing to the Hawkers chain which opened its first restaurant in the neighborhood and now has locations as far away as Dallas and Bethesda.
“It’s just kind of like the cultural epicenter for Orlando,” he said.