RESTAURANT NEWS | ORLANDO
Cañonita Opens in Lake Nona With Seven Salsas and a Butterfly Bar
The Mexican restaurant and bar brings family-style platters, a glowing tequila bar, and a covered patio to Lake Nona West.
CAÑONITA | MAP | INSTAGRAM
By Maria Rodriguez
6:59 a.m. ET, Nov. 11, 2026
AUTHOR BIO: With a day job that requires constant travel, Maria Rodriguez is likely a regular at your favorite restaurant. She’s reviewed restaurants since 2007 in magazines from Spain to Seattle.
At Cañonita, the salsas come first. Seven of them are made fresh every day in view of the dining room, alongside guacamole and queso, with tortillas made in-house. It’s the opening move of the new Mexican restaurant and bar in Orlando’s Lake Nona, and it tells you most of what you need to know about the place: the cooking happens in the open, and the food is meant to be passed around.
The restaurant opened Nov. 6 at Lake Nona West, the new open-air center off Lake Nona Boulevard, during a grand-opening weekend that ran Nov. 5–7 with DJs, a photo booth, and a makers market on the lawn. It’s the first full-service Cañonita outside its original Las Vegas home, where the brand began nearly 30 years ago, and it comes from Tavistock Restaurant Collection.
The kitchen works from heirloom masa, beans, and árbol chiles sourced from regions across Mexico, and the menu is built for the table. Large-format plates arrive on a lazy Susan: a fajita platter of pollo adobado, carne asada, and citrus shrimp, a taco bar, and a parrillada.
Behind the bar, everything is squeezed, steeped, and infused in-house, and every tequila is 100 percent agave. There’s a house-infused margarita flight, La Banda de Tres, and a Mojito Me mixed tableside. Zero-proof cocktails and aguas frescas made fresh each morning round out the drinks, and the kitchen keeps vegan and gluten-free options, including a plant-based chorizo, on the menu.
The space takes its cues from the monarch butterfly’s migration through Mexico, with a heritage mural that runs through the restaurant and a back bar of tequilas glowing behind it. There are three places to settle in: a bar and lounge, a dining room set with 10-top tables for family-style platters, and a covered patio with a butterfly-themed bar overlooking the green. The mural is the work of Fresh Ink Orlando, Lake Nona neighbors who designed and installed it.
The walk-up taqueria at Boxi Park, where Cañonita built its local following, keeps serving tacos. The new restaurant is where Lake Nona goes to sit down: bigger tables, longer nights, and a bar built for the neighborhood to gather around. It serves lunch and dinner daily, with brunch on the weekend, and it welcomes walk-ins.
