CITY GUIDES | ORLANDO
The Best Restaurants in Orlando: Where Dinner Beats the Roller Coasters
Beyond the resort corridor, Orlando has quietly built one of Florida's deepest dining scenes. Start here.
By Eric Barton
Updated Oct. 26, 2026
June
AUTHOR BIO: Eric Barton is editor of The Adventurist and a freelance journalist who has reviewed restaurants for more than two decades. Email him here.
When I was in college in Lakeland nearby, Orlando meant theme parks by day, clubs by night, and dinner at whatever by-the-slice place was still open . The city I come back to now runs on reservations. Chefs who trained in New York, Tokyo, and Lima cook in Mills 50 bungalows, Audubon Park storefronts, and Baldwin Park dining rooms, and the hardest table in town might be a standing-room sushi bar. There are Michelin stars here now and counters that book out weeks ahead. The honest comparison isn't the roller coasters anymore—it's any dining city in the country. These are the tables I'd book first, the best restaurants right now in Orlando.
Bacán
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Bacán is the Lake Nona Wave Hotel's big-night restaurant, where chef Guillaume Robin cooks Latin American food with French discipline. The kitchen is an open theater at the center of it all, and the menu runs from lobster tostadas with passion fruit and burrata to a whole Florida snapper in Guyanese curry, with dry-aged steaks for the table. Order à la carte, or commit to the eight-course tasting menu and let the kitchen sequence the night.
Best for: A dress-up dinner that still feels lively
Capa Steakhouse & Bar
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Capa sits on the 17th floor of the Four Seasons Resort Orlando, a Spanish steakhouse built around a wood-fired grill that burns pecan wood. Chef Chris Edwards works both ends of the menu: tapas first—pan con tomate, gambas al ajillo, jamón croquetas—then prime steaks off the parrilla, up to a 32-ounce porterhouse and A5 wagyu by the ounce. Capa held a Michelin star for four years and sits on the Recommended list now; book near sunset and the Disney fireworks become the floor show.
Best for: A 17th-floor steak night, timed to the fireworks
Camille
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Baldwin Park’s Vietnamese-French tasting menu from chef Tung Phan is hospitality with precision: an intimate counter, a tighter edit of courses, and not a wasted garnish. The flavors lean bright—herbs, acid, heat—structured with French discipline. Booths get an abbreviated set; the counter is the show.
Best for: A chef’s-counter date that actually feels personal
Edoboy
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Standing-room sushi in Mills 50 could’ve been a gimmick; instead it’s a study in pacing and temperature. Nigiri from head chef Tyler Inthavongsa lands one piece at a time, pristine and quick, the way your sushi-loving friend swears it should be. Go with someone who understands “we’ll talk after.”
Best for: Fast, focused, fun sushi without the fluff
Foreigner Restaurant
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In Audubon Park, chef Bruno Fonseca runs a tasting menu that feels like a conversation—smoke, acid, a little nostalgia, then a left turn. The kitchen works inches from you, which means you get the sizzle, the plating, and the why. It’s intimate and refreshingly un-performative.
Best for: Chef-driven counter dining minus the pretense
June
$$$$ | MAP | WEBSITE | INSTAGRAM
June is Team Market Group's wood-fired contemporary Mexican restaurant in Thornton Park, from the group behind Mathers and The Wellborn, and it soft-opened in the summer of 2025. The menu leans Yucatán: corn bread with agave butter, wagyu carne apache and lump crab tostadas, and a wood-fired short rib with ancho jus and warm tortillas, with a chocolate cremosa to finish. The kitchen cooks gluten-free and without seed oils, and Michelin put June on its Recommended list in the restaurant's first year.
Best for: Wood-fired Mexican in Thornton Park—start with the tostadas
Kabooki Sushi
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Kabooki Sushi's original location, on East Colonial, is where Henry Moso built his following—moody, precise, and a little playful. The menu moves from hamachi carpaccio and maguro truffle to St. Louis sticky ribs without losing its thread, and the counter runs two tastings: ten pieces of nigiri served one at a time, or a longer omakase. A second location has opened on Sand Lake Road. This is still the one to book.
Best for: Big-night sushi with chef cred
Kadence
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Audubon Park’s nine-seat omakase is a jewel box—just you, the chefs, and a progression that rewards attention. Fish is treated like a thesis: texture, temperature, rice, the whole essay. It’s the reservation you take a screenshot of to make sure it’s real.
Best for: The purest sushi counter experience in town
Kaya
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Kaya is a Filipino restaurant in a Mills 50 bungalow, run by chef Lordfer Lalicon and general manager Jamilyn Salonga Bailey, and it holds Michelin's Green Star for the way it cooks—Central Florida farms on the menu and a no/low-waste kitchen. The flavors are vinegar-bright and coconut-rich: lumpiang Shanghai, adobo risotto, oxtail kare kare. The Sama Sama feast, from $57 a person, covers the menu in one sitting.
Best for: A sustainability-minded feast that still hits joy
Nami
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Nami shares the Lake Nona Wave Hotel with Bacán and goes the other direction—Japanese, in three registers: a bar, an à la carte dining room, and a communal chef's counter. The counter is the splurge, an 18-course tasting from chef Jason Beliveau at $225 a person, while the dining room keeps things playful, starting with the lobster donuts. The lighting says date night; the soundtrack keeps it loose.
Best for: Chef’s counter theater without stuffiness
Otto’s High Dive
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Also on my list of the best affordable Orlando restaurants, Otto’s is the Milk District’s Cuban-leaning neighborhood spot that pours daiquiris with dangerous grace. Plates of ropa vieja remember the point: beef, peppers, rice, done right. The room’s all tile, palms, and tropical swagger without kitsch. Come early, stay late, drink like a grown-up.
Best for: Cocktails first, everything else a close second
Sorekara
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Baldwin Park’s nearly twenty courses from chef William Shen land like chapters—Japanese technique, micro-season obsession, and little winks of whimsy. The room’s a stunner, but the rhythm is what sticks: quiet, deliberate, then suddenly playful. It’s a destination disguised as a dining room.
Best for: A blow-your-mind benchmark meal
Soseki Modern Omakase
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Soseki is a 10-seat omakase in Winter Park where chef Michael Collantes builds each month's menu around Florida—its farms, its fishermen, and its cheese and ceramic artisans. Highlights have included a corn chawanmushi as smooth as silk. The restaurant held its Michelin star again in 2026, and the cooking stays choreographed without going stiff. Book the counter and let the season decide.
Best for: A seasonal tasting that actually tastes like Central Florida
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